M6600 Owner's Review - Warning - Large pics - Personal Opinions

Hear, hear! The best extremely indepth online review of a laptop I have ever read.

 

Dell replaced my faulty top spec M6500 with an M6600 and the only thing that didn’t come back as max spec was the graphics card which is now a Quadro 3000M.

I used to have the IPS screen and due to the ambiguity on screens I asked for the Touch Screen version as the replacement.

The IPS screen on the M6500 does not benefit from an Anti-Glare (AG) coating and it has been one of the few things to annoy me on what was otherwise a great machine. Of course, you have to make some compromises for better picture quality.

Sadly, for me, the Touch Screen on the M6600 also lacks Anti-Glare, or at least what we would all understand AG to be. Certainly when you find the correct product descriptions on the Dell site, it is not referred to as AG.

So yes, the Touch Screen does reflect stuff, much in the same way that any non AG screen would, and it’s a real pain to use outdoors or with lights behind you.

If you are used to non-AG screens then I guess you won’t notice.

Sadly, I would also say that the M6500 IPS screen is brighter than the AUO screen in my replacement M6600 Touch version.

I would be interested to know if the new LG versions are better/same/worse than the AUO screens and whether there are Touch versions.

As far as the quality of the touch display goes, to date the only positive experiences I have ever had of touch devices is that of the iPhone and iPad, and I can happily say that the Touch screen on the M6600 does not disappoint. The four point touch and pen are fantastic (if you need that sort of thing).

I wonder though if a touch screen on a PC is really useful as a tablet format is much more practical …

Unless you specifically want a touch screen, and know you are going to use it, I might suggest that going for an AG screen would serve you better.

I went for a touch screen for the fun of it … but given that I barely have a use for it, but yet have to look at the screen constantly and am always having to move round reflections, I suspect I might have been better off forgoing that “cool feature” and benefiting from an AG screen.

 

The Quadro 3000M is almost exactly the same speed as the 3800M in the M6500. You do get nice upgrades in what it supports. Open GL 4.1, Shader Model 5, and Direct X 11. If you are a glass half full kind of person, you got an upgraded card that is just as fast as your old one.

The M6500 did not have an IPS panel. It had an RGBLED backlit wide gamut TN panel.

I see mostly the same things. It has less glare that the "black glass" screens and monitors that I have seen, but that anti glare coating is not very strong. The M6500 rgbled panel was about 20% brighter.

The AUO screens measure slightly better than the LG panels as far as color gamut. VERY slight. Could easily be variations in the color calibration hardware people are using the test the screens. They both cover the sRGB color gamut.

I agree with you on this as well. The touch screen has a few trade offs. It is slightly thicker and does not have as strong of an anti-glare coating as the regular screen. Color gamut, brightness, and overall quality of the panels are the same though. The IPS panel should blow everything out of the water when it is released.

One thing to think about - Windows 8. I have been playing around with it on the M6600 and the touch functionality is actually really good. With Windows 7 it really doesn't do much for me. With Windows 8 some things can be done more quickly with a touchscreen than using the trackpad.

 

Hi all!, can someone make a video showing the touchscreen in a real application like photoshop or maya, and using the pen.... and where did you keep the pen, it have a some hole on the computer for keep it?

Greetings!...

 

I'm curious - did you install windows 8 in a virtual machine, or did you dedicate your M6600 to testing the new OS?

I spent only a few minutes so far trying to install it under vmware and virtualbox. Neither product was successful so far.

-Brian

 

I installed it to a 2.5" SSD in the quick remove drive bay. Easier to multiboot by using the one time boot menu at startup. Having 2 2.5" drive bays and the OS on the mSata minicard gives me a ton of options.

 

Thanks for the info.
I'll have to give the mSata more serious thought. From your pics it looks like you have a 128gb ssd. From the little selection I've found in the 128gb size, the drives are even more expensive than the 2.5" sata-6gb.

Do you have any recommendations for mSata in the 128gb size?

Thanks again,

-Brian

 

Thanks Bokeh for your review.
Just wondering what is your graphic drivers?
I only got P10566 3DMarks, and it doesnt even recognize the Quadro 4000M, saying Generic VGA lol

 

I would like to ask the same question.

 

The mSata drive is about as fast as the the last generation of Intel drives. You can get faster speeds from the newest 2.5" sata 3 drives.

What you can't get is that drive slot back. The mSata lets you have both 2.5" drive bays open. You could put in a pair 750gb platter drives in raid0 for a fast 1.5tb of storage or in raid1 for a safely mirrored 750gb.

Price wise, the upgrade to the mSata 128gb is not bad.

I sometimes work with live hi def video. I use a pair of 750gb drives in Raid0 when doing live multicamera video capture. I need the 200mb/s write speed and 1.5tb of space.

I also like a fast boot drive so the mSata is ideal for me. 128gb of space also seems to work well.