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

So after using the M6600 for a few days, I've got some opinions of my own that people might be interested in... Bokeh's review is more than complete enough to negate any need for me to do a complete writeup of my own, so I'm just going to post my thoughts here, in no particular order.

Overall, I'm very happy with the machine; I can't say that there aren't things about it that I would change, given the chance, but relative to the issues that I've seen in other name-brand desktops, laptops, and workstations, my gripes about the M6600 are very, very minor indeed. It's one of the most competently engineered and well-built name brand systems that I've dealt with.

I would have liked to see heatsinks with copper fins rather than aluminum, and somewhat more aggressive fan control logic to pull temps down a bit, both at idle and under load. It is, however, very nice to see a machine that doesn't have to be almost completely disassembled to properly clean the CPU and GPU heatsinks for a change. This is just basic maintenance; it's like changing the oil on your car. Making it nearly impossible for the average user to do has never made sense to me. It would have been nice to see higher quality fans, though; I've got one Sunon maglev bearing fan and one chinese brand that I've never heard of. A couple of Deltas or Nidecs or something would not be much more expensive (probably $30-50 at retail, at most) and they would probably perform better and last longer.

I don't especially care for the hard drive mounting system, either. The secondary drive, under the wrist rest, is somewhat of a pain to install because there's not enough room to lay the drive flat and slide it into place. You kinda just angle it as best you can, ram it in and hope it doesn't bend anything too much. The primary hard drive mount itself is fine, but the drive is kinda sandwiched between a couple layers of other stuff in the middle-ish of the thickness of the machine, and as a result it gets pretty hot. The 750GB Scorpio Black I have mounted there is rated for an active (reading/writing) power consumption of 1.75 watts, and maxes out around 2.75w (which is what the sticker on the drive says). That's not very much power. It's about half what 1st and 2nd generation 7.2k laptop drives used, and it's actually less power than the 500GB 5.4K Hitachi drive in my W700 is rated for. Even so, after an extended period of hard drive access (during a zero fill and full surface scan), the drive was hitting 44-46*C. This is within spec (60*C max), but past experience indicates that it's hot enough for drive longevity to be a concern, and it's hotter than the drive would likely get in say, the Lenovo.

Other than that, the machine has been slightly fickle about video drivers (it didn't like the reference Intel drivers, and the GPU activity monitor in the Dell-supplied nVidia drivers didn't work right; it works fine with the Verde 275.33 drivers, though) and Optimus has hiccupped once.

The Bluetooth status LED above the keyboard evidently functions more as a decoration that goes on and off whenever it damn well pleases than it does as any actual indicator of anything. Bluetooth itself appears to work fine, though-I haven't tested it, but the systray icon shows up and I have the option to add a device and whatnot-so that's not so much a complaint as an observation.

Also, the machine is rather thick and the edge of the wrist rest is completely squared off, so some people may not find it comfortable to type on on a desk without the back end being elevated slightly. I couldn't, I ended up putting a couple of 2.5" hard drive enclosures under the back feet as a temporary solution until I unbury the dock from my desk.

My machine ended up getting the LGD02DA display. I consider myself a 'serious amateur' photographer (meaning that I can use the manual mode on my 7D and actually get things that vaguely resemble pictures out of it! ), so you can take that for whatever it's worth with respect to my subjective opinion of the display. If you're doing serious, professional-level, "I-make-my-money-doing-this" work with photographs, video, or graphic design, you're probably going to want an external monitor. But those of you that do that kind of work already knew that. For everyone else, the LCD is "good enough". It's a lot sharper and a lot brighter than anyone coming from a consumer-level notebook is likely to expect; in fact, it's the brightest notebook display I've ever used, and the only one that I've had to turn the backlighting down considerably on to keep it from hurting my eyes. The native whitepoint is definitely on the cool side (something that someone mentioned somewhere in the M6600 owner's thread) and the color gamut leaves a lot on the table relative to what it could be. But again, it's good enough. Most people probably won't have a problem with it out of the box, and for my needs, getting it calibrated properly ought to be sufficient.

The keyboard is pretty good, too. I don't notice any more flex than my W700 had, and I actually like the key action on the Dell better. Layout-wise it's pretty much a draw. The backlighting is the brightest that I've seen, although the only comparison that I've got is my old Macbook Pro. I really don't like-or see the point of-the 3rd mouse button, but it doesn't really get in the way of anything so I suppose it doesn't really matter, and the Alps touchpad itself is decent.

So yeah. Overall, it's a good machine. It's not perfect, but it's about as close as you can reasonably expect to get, all things considered.

 

The third mouse button is heavily used in many professional software packages. I can't imagine using Solidworks (CAD software) without a 3rd mouse button. If it were a feature they charged more for, I'd gladly pay even a couple hundred $ for it.

Additionally, I'm not a fan of touch pads, much preferring the trackpoint. The 3rd mouse button is very handy for scrolling with the trackpoint; just hold it down and move the trackpoint for scrolling.

 

Thanks for the information and comparison that must have taken some time to do

 

I am preparing to buy a M6600 with Touchscreen and FirePro M8900 for business. I choose the FirePro because it had AutoCad certification and the Quadro 3000 was $300 more and the Quadro 4000 was $800 more. I will be using the FirePro M8900 for ESRI ArcGIS 10 desktop and have performance concerns and the rumor of its apparent OpenGL issues. I will do some 3D but mostly map and layer editing. Does anyone have any input, benchmarks or background on this card for CAD, GIS or similar software? Anyone having issues with OpenGL?

More importantly should I panic and halt the order and get the lower performing Quadro 3000?

All information will be greatly welcomed.

 

To assist on the Firepro M8900 question, here are the video requirements for ArcGIS Desktop 10.

64 MB RAM minimum, 256 MB RAM or higher recommended. NVIDIA, ATI and INTEL chipsets supported. 24 bit capable graphics accelerator

OpenGL version 2.0 runtime or higher is required, and Shader Model 3.0 or higher is recommended. Be sure to use the latest available driver.

 

Can anyone provide a more detailed review of the M6600's four point touchscreen? Please let me know how well it interacts and if the glossy screen is bearable?

Many thanks.

 

4 point touch response is very good. At least as good as an iPad. Better imho than the Dell XT2 was. The pressure sensitive stylus is also very good.

Glossy screen only has issues if you have bright sunlight directly behind you. Not an issue most of the time. Lights around the office / house are no big deal.

Both FHD screens currently available measure very closely. Both cover the sRGB color space. Both are around 300 nits of brightness.

 

Bokeh - May thanks on the review and touch screen info.

I have a couple related questions.

Do Windows 7 applications support the touchscreen fairly well?

The glare sounds like a possible issue as I have direct sunlight behind my desk. Currently I have the orginal Dell XPS 17 similar to old the M6400. Is the glossy screen similar to the old Dell XPS?

Any thoughts, I just want to set expectations.

 

Thanks for the excelent review ...

Interestingly on the UK Dell web site the touch screen is described as 17.3" UltraSharp™ FHD(1920x1080) Wide View Anti-Glare LED-backlit Multi-Touch and Pen with Premium Panel Guarantee.

It is described as "Anti-Glare".

Your pictures and comments identify it as glossy ...

Is the touch screen AG or not?

 

Hello, Bokeh,

Your labor of love in reviewing the M6600 has been very influential in my decision to purchase this mobile workstation.

Photos in your posts captured the M6600's dual fans and massive heat sinks in a memorable way. The contrast to the corresponding parts in Lenovo W520 and HP Elitebooks is striking.

My unit's CPU is an i7-2820QM; 8GB RAM; M8900 GPU. Profile details will shortly appear in my signature.

M6600's overall PassMark 7.0 system score is 3283.3.
CPU Mark: 8148.1
2D Graphics Mark: 765.1
3D Graphics Mark: 2702.1
Memory Mark: 2064.5
Disk Mark: 2074.7
CD Mark: 92.3 (.75 MB/sec read rate is unusually low for some reason)

Thanks again for your pacesetting work. I really appreciate your contributions to the forum.

--John