M6600 and M4600 are coming in Feb.

Actually, you might need to. I have been in presentations where a question was asked and they played a video from the web to a room full of people just using the laptop's built in speakers. The E43 and E65 machines do surprisingly well. The M6500 has great sound quality - trust me - boot one sitting in the audience of an AUDITORIUM with your speakers accidentally on at full volume . The only speakers that ever were bad to me were the ones on the original E6400.

 

Thanks for the replies. Yea, ideally consumer grade notebooks would be much better in the audio realm, but I have to balance that with my hate for glossy screens, lol. If I want a matte screen I usually need a business notebook which is most cases means bad speakers. I've heard the M6500 and it's good because I've had one recently. I just couldn't see from the pictures of the M6600 if there are speaker grills above the keyboard like before. It looked as though that area was solid with no holes in it similar to the Vostro series.

 

I would really like to order an M4600 right now. I love its looks!

 

Yeah the M6500's audio quality was a huge surprise, it's gets close to my Creative SB X-Fi 5.1 USB sound card however the Creative sound card still wins.
Albeit the M6500's speakers are on the weak side, and are comparable to most consumer notebooks, perhaps just tiny bit more clearer but definitely lacking in several departments.

The audio quality definitely is a step up from MOST consumer laptops, and I have handled hundreds of laptops, the minority have as good as audio quality as the M6500 (some of the newer laptops have better audio quality now with the newer chipsets). MBP falls a bit short of it just to give you guys a reference point.

 

Ditto the M6600 for me ..... when, Dell, when?

 

The offset and keyboard are once again an abosolute travesty for most technical professionals. Dell is obviously not in touch with the professionals who need a high end laptop or quasi-workstation. I've waited and waited to see Dell get rid of the accountant or strict-number-cruncher related design, but to no avail. Now they have wrecked the 15" version as well as the 17". There is no logic with this for the vast majority of potential customers who want a precision. I've been loyal to Dell for many years, but may have to finally look elsewhere for a high end laptop. Thanks for not seeing the light Dell, if anyone of your designers actually pays attention to what most technical professionals need.

 

Number pads aren't just for accountants. Some design professionals work with numbers as much as they work with models, videos or pictures. I can understand your personal preference, but don't fool yourself into thinking Dell has missed their market. I think Lenovo is your only option at this point, though they have not released any info about their next generation 15" workstation that I'm aware of (so it might have numpad too).

 

I realize this, but I'm a 51-year old engineer/geologist, the exact type of professional Dell seems to be targeting the Precisions to, and most of the technical professionals in my business find the off-centered design very awkward.

 

Especially if you are right-handed!!!

 

Not to mention scientific fields were thousands of hours of data needs to compiled into one database. Then there is oil companies requiring massive number crunching tasks that require a lot of number input. Then there's animation specialists that need to code the physics for the animation, as well as the animations themselves specially for custom hollywood effects.

I think the number pad is pretty critical for many places, personally I don't find the offset to cause any issues with my typing abilities, nor comfort. In fact I prefer it over my E6500 where you had speakers on both sides but the keyboard was centered (mousepad was slightly off centered though).