Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

Thanks for the reply -- yeah, I had the RAM replaced by Dell as well as purchased my own, tested each slot with each DIMM with the BIOS memory diagnostic tests in several motherboards and they passed all the tests consistently while the freezing continued. The Dell Depot was the "last straw" on this system. I love my M6500 lemons and all I was thinking it was some magic combination of components with the configuration I have on the M6500 since the one thing constant was the components were always replaced with, well, the same components. That exlcludes my RAM and SSD's though which I replaced in several iterations on my own; made no difference.

Anyway it's an M6700 thread and I can at least be happy that out of 139 pages before my comment there was one comment even closely resembling the issue I experienced (although it was definitely common as Dell was aware of it on the M6500's). Will post some pics of the M6700 Covet when I get it as I haven't seen any in this thread, with the exception of Dell published photos.

 

Bokeh has some pics of the covet somewhere in one of the two M6700 threads, let me see if I can dig em up.

EDIT: Here are some: http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...ision-m6700-owners-review-83.html#post9023288 , you don't see the display, but you do get a good idea of the actual color.

 

Close the lid.

Make sure the setting for closing the lid does nothing.

 

fn+d with Dell control point software do that trick on the m6600. Not sure if DFEP do the same. Always missed that feature when I move to consumer machines from thinkpad.

Or software mean with "Monitoroff" MonitorOff | Free System Administration software downloads at SourceForge.net

 

Without an external monitor attached - mine comes back on within 3 seconds using fn + D, same with fn + F8. The only problem with any attempted solution is how to lock the computer then kill the display. Closing the lid method seems to be the only one that works.

 

I too suffered the random freezing with several M6500s over the last three years. I too had many components and even whole computers replaced, but only for a M6500 covet.

The issue seems to be related to the Nvidia card. I got the new versionof the Nvidia card FX3800 in my M6500 covet and it still had the same or even more freezes. Downgrading the driver to the ISV driver seemed to eliminate the problem.


Because of the 1920x1200 and the seemingly eliminated freezing problem I happily keep my M6500 as a backup.

Since about a month now I have a well spec'd M6700 and it has not given me a single similar issue so far. Other than the horribly shorter screen, everything else is much better, faster, smoother, crisper....

 

True, it turn back on when any key/mouse is detected, but I believe it is the intended implementation.(same on thinkpad). My solution is to use a off external monitor, my computer is also my bed hifi ~~.

 

Nice thanks for your response, glad to hear the new M6700 is running smooth and if you got an M6500 Covet with no issues, she's definitely a keeper!

 

One more question, as I am about to have 2x 256GB SSD's and one mSata 256GB SSD, is it possible to set all 3 drives in a RAID 0 configuration?

Backing up isn't an issue as I've been doing that with Acronis TrueImage over to an external drive.

Just curious as my current setup is the dual 256GB SSD's in RAID 0 but only a 64GB (largest at the time!) mSata SSD used as a cache drive. Now I am getting the new system with a 256GB mSata and thought a 3-SSD RAID 0 array should be pretty sweet, until I pony up for the 512's anyway

My other thought was to set the internal drive and the mSata in a RAID 0 and then use the primary (swappable) bay for multiple other drives. Not sure if I'll actually do that, but seems kind of cool. Obviously RAID 0 with all 3 drives would preclude the use of the swappable drive bay.

 

I do have a M6400 that does (infrequently) suffer from the same lockup. Fortunately, it has been rare enough that I did not bother tech support with this. I think that I track it down to the video card and my solution thus far has been to use a utility like "evga precision" to under clock the video card (not the greatest solution but this has seem to do the trick).

Hope it helped.

Note: I am considering getting a M6700, but this is a bummer about the 1080 only resolution (I would miss the 1920x1200 resolution).

Quick questions:
Would the docking station for the M6400 works for the M6700?
Has the power brick "grown" any smaller since the M6400 (I got the slim version)?