Dell Precision M6700 Owner's Review

Given that I have tested my M6700 with the firepro and i get 5 to 5.5 hours on battery without switchable, 8 to 10 hours isn't unreasonable. Note that I haven't taken the extreme steps taken below. Screen brightness is lower, I have an all SSD laptop and i have nothing using GPU acceleration, power profile set to balanced.

 

You have to take some steps to get 10 hours but it is possible. Set the system to the "extended battery life" power profile from Dell (disables a lot of stuff including the optical drive), best if you don't have any HDDs, screen brightness to minimum, no background tasks, etc. Anyway, on the M6600 review thread Bokeh has a screen shot of the 10+ hour expected runtime:

http://www.appstate.edu/~taylorsa1/m6600/m6600power.jpg

Without taking any of those measures I'm able to get a bit over 4 hours out of my battery with Optimus on. (Max brightness, two HDDs, lots of background tasks.) I also have the battery set to "primarily AC usage" in the BIOS which I believe limits the max charge it will take.

 

Does anyone know the details on the 'Custom" charge plan? Does it charge at Standard or ExpressCharge speeds?

I've set mine to Custom in BIOS, start charge at 50%, stop charge at 90% (not configurable inside Windows)

I had it previously set to Primarily AC Usage as well, but I switched to Custom because I don't like that it already starts recharging the battery at 95%.

 

Just an FYI for you M6700 owners...the finger Print Reader is now working in Windows 8 on my M6600.

See my post here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...0712-m6600-owners-thread-572.html#post8998193

Source/Credit for fix: Re: Fingerprint driver for Windows 8 on Latitude E6520? - Laptop General Hardware Forum - Laptop - Dell Community

 

Unfortunately, you can't order a fingerprint reader in combination with Windows 8 pre-installed at the moment. If you need a fingerprint reader, you still have to order the M6700 with Windows 7 pre-installed and upgrade to Windows 8 yourself.

Another FYI:

If you order the M6700 with Windows 8 pre-installed, you don't get a Certificate of Authority (COA) label anymore. Microsoft doesn't supply COA labels anymore for OEM versions of Windows, starting with Windows 8. This is because Windows 8 automatically activates itself when you connect to the internet for the first time. Upto Windows 7, the user was asked for permission to activate Windows.

According to the Microsoft helpdesk, it is still possible to activate by phone if the automatic activation fails for some reason, even though you don't have a product key printed on a COA label. How this works, I have no idea...

According to Dell Technical Support in The Netherlands, the Windows 8 product key is 'injected' into the motherboard. Not sure how this works, but I think it's stored somewhere in the BIOS or the TPM.

 

Where are you guys finding these charging options? All I have in the BIOS setup is the choice between standard or express charging. I'm on A06. I knew to look for it because I briefly owned an XPS 15, which had the feature. I was dismayed to find nothing equivalent on the M6700, yet some of you have it. My laptop is connected to power almost permanently whilst in use and I'd rather not fry the battery needlessly.

 

I don't recall seeing this option either in the BIOS of my M6700, which came with BIOS version A06 from the factory. Unfortunately, I can't check because I returned my M6700 a couple of weeks ago and am still waiting for my new M6700 to be delivered.

I ordered my (third) M6700 on 12/04/2012 and estimated delivery date was 12/17/2012, but order status is still 'In production' to this date (12/20/2012) . I will check when it arrives.

 

I just checked to make sure it is still there. I found it under Power Management -> Primary Battery Charge Configuration. There are five options: Adaptive, Standard, ExpressCharge, Primarily AC Usage, and Custom (which lets you set the charge start and charge stop %'s). I don't know any more details on custom but I doubt it uses the ExpressCharge charge rate.

I'm on A06 as well, but if it makes any difference, I bought the machine at launch and it originally came with A01.

 

I just installed the Dell Feature Enhancement Pack, in the vain hope that it might bring a spark of interest to the battery, but nothing, even after a reboot. In the control panel battery options I have the same two choices as in the BIOS....



My system was from the Outlet so I didn't cherry pick my options for every aspect of the system configuration. Maybe there is another battery option - the long life battery? - which is needed for these extra options to appear. Of course, simply by being able to pick some of these fancy options I suspect any battery could have its life extended. I wonder why they don't appear for me. Marketing decision to squeeze more cash from punters?

 

BIOS Version A06, as delivered:



Here are the options in the BIOS:

I was just going to mention that, I have the normal ExpressCharge capable battery, which is rated at 97Wh
Could it be that you've got the 87Wh battery 3Yr long-life battery?
Edit: Never mind, I see that you've got the ExpressCharge option available to you.