Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

Here's a recent-ish article from Microsoft on improvements made to rendering performance in Windows 8. There is a video at the bottom of the post.
Hardware accelerating everything: Windows 8 graphics - Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

They've also made improvements to things like boot time, file management, and across-the-board performance in IE.

That said, I haven't personally noticed any significant difference during my regular workload. Possibly because the difference is too small to be noticed without detailed testing; possibly because my workload doesn't take advantage of these improvements very much; and possibly because this machine is so stupidly fast anyway.
Note: I have not done any detailed benchmarking, this is my purely subjective observation.

(I did run 3DMark11 on both Win7 and Win8 and the results were comparable.)

 

Glad to hear of your purchase. This forum has tipped me towards the 6700 as well. What "discount" are you referring to? I can't seem to get anyone to budge on price and the website has listed the same "savings" for two weeks now. I want the K5000M as well, but our work budget won't allow for over $4k. thanks!

 

At least some of them seem to be shipping earlier than the estimated date. However, as far as we know, the M6700 is still in a "safe launch" period, where the machines get some sort of extra QA before shipping. That might cause some variability in the ship date. If in doubt, it might be good to call Dell and see what's up.

It's not specifically about the M6700, but this article has some nice charts. In summary, Windows 8 is 33% faster at startup/shutdown, slightly slower at gaming, and slightly faster at most everything else.

I won't be using Windows 8 for a while. My current project has known problems with Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5, and I want to upgrade to those at the same time. We have to release a couple of planned point updates before we can get back to R&D for vNext. Then we will be more free to change the underlying framework version.

I might actually run Windows Server 2008 R2 on my M6700, configured for workstation use. That's what I've been doing for VMs for a while. The server SKUs start out more minimal, allowing one to add just the parts that are needed. I'm not sure how that affects gaming, though.

I too had a budget to fit. I called the Dell SMB sales number. The sales rep was very nice and worked with me on the price. I'll PM you his contact information.

 

Well I took your advice and called and I must say the customer service at dell is great,well the person I got was very nice and she told me that my laptop was getting ready to be picked up by the carrier and she will personally keep checking on it and that it should arrive by the end of the week if not Monday.cant wait to finally get my covet!

 

Latest Windows 8 issue.

I have my machine at home, plugged into a USB hub which has several devices attached.

I put my machine to sleep, take it to work, and wake it up. Naturally, my USB devices have vanished.

At the end of the work day, I put it to sleep, take it home, plug in my stuff, and wake it back up. And a few devices show up like this...



This device cannot start. (Code 10)
A previous instance of the USB device was not removed.

Apparently, this is a new error message in Windows 8. If the error message is correct, it seems that the fix would be to properly disconnect stuff before I put the machine to sleep. I never had to be careful about this before so I hope they fix it soon after GA...

 

According to the Owner's Manual, the width of the M6700 (417mm/16.4") is too much for my trusty McKlein roller bag (an earlier version of this one). Specs say the bag has a 17" wide compartment, but mine measures only about 15.5". That's a disappointment, because that bag perfectly fits my W530 and MBP 17 simultaneously... plus accessories and a change of clothes. I'll need to find a replacement that can fit the M6700 and MBP.

 

The bags specs probably say/mean that it can fit a 17" notebook which it can with some reservations. The problem is that the 17" notebook dimensions changed in the meantime when the screen format switched from 16:10 to 16:9. E.g. your bag can fit the previous M6400/M6500 models easily (15,4" width).

 

Got info for you.

The 3D panel option is made by Samsung.

The touch panel option uses touch technology provided by Wacom. 10 finger touch. No stylus.

 

That explains it. My bag is old enough that it's definitely from the 16:10 era. Perhaps these days, most roller bags have been redesigned for 16:9 laptops. That would explain why the bag on the McKlein site looks a little different from my bag. I'll visit a dealer and see if that is the case.

 

Thanks Bokeh,

I'm confused though, by Dell's system. Why are they going to the extra expense of a Wacom digitizer, if it's only touch. People like me will never pay the extra money for it, without the pen. People like me dearly want the terrific Wacom pen system on this computer. The touch is a nice extra to us. This is quite frustrating and upsetting to me. So close, yet so far.