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

What about the extended monitor test?

 

Hello - great review! I have one question thought - how do I know which display panel I have? Is there a way to determine that?

Cheers

 

Yes, there are many ways do determine.
I use the following two software tools:
1.) Everest Home/Ultimate Edition-> Monitor
2.) HWiNFO64 -> Monitor

 

Some Information from the other thread:

 

Hye.. Do we need special driver for the monitor or just let it be " Generic PnP Monitor "... just curios

 

If you have the IPS Panel, you will need to install the Premier Color application. You can also install it on the other FHD displays, but it will not give you all of the functionality.

 

I'm looking into purchasing an M6600 and wondered if I could get some advice and answers to some questions. Nobody I've asked has been helpful (all they seem to want to say is EW DELLS I HATE DELLS). I recently bought a new laptop to replace my old Dell, a M4400, and decided to go with a laptop a friend pointed me towards - a Samsung Chronos 7. There were some obvious issues with the laptop, but the biggest one that came about was the colors on the display. I'm a semi-professional digital artist and as soon as I opened up a WIP in Photoshop, I knew something was wrong. Mainly, the colors. Were. Terrible. No amount of color calibration could get it to anywhere near what I was used to. After some digging I found out that the M4400 I had had an amazing color display, something I took for granted. Some more consulting with my friend and we found the M6600, which seems to be a great machine. I do have some concerns about the laptop I'd like to hear addressed in an actually helpful manner.

1) I'm about halfway between 'casual user' and 'professional user'. I'm certainly not a bigwig or anything, but art is a major passion of mine, and the color accuracy is important to me. Compared to the M4400, how is the M6600? I'd assume it's better.

2) How hot does the M6600 run under casual use (maybe a few programs, but not intensive Photoshop usage)? I spend about half my day with the laptop on my legs, and my M4400 would tend to run as hot as the sun at certain times. Nothing a chillpad can't fix, but still something I'm wondering about.

3) With the power brick included, how heavy is it? Is it going to murder my legs to sit around with it? The laptop I'm using right now is about 7 pounds, but doesn't feel that heavy. Not a dealbreaker, but still something I'm wondering.

4) What are any possible drawbacks you can think of? Like I said, the most intensive work I'll be using this laptop for is heavy Photoshop use (likely running another art program at the same time, along with browsers and music players), maybe some gaming here and there but not quite as much. Netflix usage now and again. Is there a similar laptop I should be looking into instead of the M6600, since I'm not a super hardcore professional user? I was happy with the M4400, but it didn't have a great graphics card and tended to run fairly slow. Basically, I'm trying to approach this from every angle before pulling the trigger like I did on this damn Samsung.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

1. I am a professional and find the IPS panel to be very accurate. Below shows just how accurate the colors are. If you do not have access to an IPS based system, go for the AUO display panel, which is not IPS but has a very good color range for a traditional TFT based panel.

2. The M6600 is very stable and runs great during light or heavy workloads. Since the system has two dedicated fans (one for the CPU section and one for the GPU section), nothing excessively heats up nor do the fans run constantly. Regardless, the fans are quiet when they are active so it's all good.

3. They M6600 with the power brick will be around 12 pounds. You can use it on your lap, but that is not what it was designed for. It is a desktop replacement so it comes down to what you can live with.

4. Off the top of my head, I cannot really reference any drawbacks to the overall system. Small things like a few port locations or short battery life can be debated, but anything questionable falls more into the personal use preference category than a blatant design flaw. I have tried dozens of laptops and review many and would be first in line to say no system is perfect. However, in the end, the M6600 is my choice as both my daily business and personal powerhouse. It is reliable, stable, has a professional aesthetic to it, and is very user serviceable/upgradeable.

Good luck with whatever you decide on.

Scott-

 

I have a rather "old" M6600 - from 2011 or 2012 I believe.

Is it possible to upgrade processor? Or is it mainly RAM, disks, WIFI... What about Bluetooth?

 

It is possible.
Dell did not put on this model _different_ cooling system.
Choose any processor. For example, on eBay. With any TDP. And make the replace.
You need a ivy bridge processor (i7 second generation).

Best Regards,
Alex.

PS. Everything else is possible too...