M6600 Owners Thread

Agreed. If you are a heavy Solidworks or AutoDesk user than the CUDA in a Quadros is so much better than the FirePro. Also if the 3000M is currently a free upgrade than also note that the Quadros 3000M is also based off of the GTX 560M GeForce, so it is no slouch either as a gaming card, but the Quadros drivers could hurt its FPS a bit in DirectX gaming performance, but isn't much that the gaming experience is going to be a bad one either...

 

Well, hopeuflly I can get that "Bumblebee" code to work in Ubuntu Linux to handle the switching between the Nvidia card and the Intel on-board chipset.

I do like to work in Linux. If there was comparable software in Linux similar to Solidworks and Autocad, I wouldn't have a reason for using Windoz.

Thanks to everyone for their advice. I am going with the Quadro 3000M for my video card.

As long as I can play my C&C3 and older games, I will be happy. I have not really found any new ones that look good to me, except possibly Starcraft II.

I am kind of old and slow, can't really play these fast-twitch, FPS games. Just don't have the reflexes like I used to.

 

Thanks to all of you who offered up your $.02 regarding the M6600 vs. the HP Envy 17 3D. I've tried out both, and decided to keep the M6600.
Main reasons: 1) Better build quality.
2) Better video card...and zero upgradeability for the HP.
3) Better cpu temps...by about 10C per core. The M6600 does a great job of cooling with all four hyperthreaded cores (8 logical cores) max'd out to 100%, while the HP sounds like a jet engine and gets a bit hotter...and the HP power brick gets too hot to touch, while the M6600 brick merely gets warm.
4) 4 ram slots vs. 2.
5) The trackpad. BIG fail on the part of HP. The one on the DV7T Quad Edition is decent...it should be on the ENVY. This one is just impossible to work with...and I really do mean "impossible". That alone is a deal breaker for me.

I have some questions regarding SSD's and the booting on the M6600. When I pulled the stock hard drive and replaced it with my Corsair Force SATA 3 240GB SSD, the BIOS would not recognize my SSD at all. So I installed the SSD in the second bay, and reinstalled the stock drive in the first bay, which before installing the SSD was recognized as the primary drive. The BIOS then recognizes the SSD as the primary drive...and I don't know why. Furthermore, when I do an Acronis True Image clone disk sequence from the stock to the SSD, the SSD will not boot (I'm not sure if this is because the system reserved partition disappears from the SSD). If I do a clean install, it does boot (and the system reserved partition is present)...? Am I missing something obvious?

SATA is on AHCI in BIOS.

Oh yes before I forget...there is some sort of bootloader that flashes up briefly on screen during boot-up. I'm then given two windows installations to choose from...the stock, and the SSD. When I clone, I get an error on the SSD that it is not bootable. When I clean install, no problem booting to the SSD. The stock drive is always able to boot no matter what.

I just want to clone the stock drive to the SSD and then I want to install 32 bit Windows 7 on the stock SSD, as I actually need to run some applications that will not run on 64 bit Windows 7. I want to retain the option of which drive to boot from on startup.

I must be doing something incorrectly. Any ideas?

 

I have made the same experience with the Dell tech chat.
Two different employees of the chatline/serviceline have assured me that it would be possible to run the Intel HD graphics on demand with dedicated ATI FirePro M8900 graphics. Unfortunately I cant prove it anymore.
It was definitive a false information!

Although I would appreciate the option of ATI Power Express I can live without. Nvidia graphic cards are way too expensive compared to the ATI and I dont need the book for CAD and similar applications. So I ordered the raw power of a Corvette for a well built desktop replacement notebook.

 

I think that is one of my biggest concern right now. If Dell's own "tech support" people don't even know what the M6600 is capable of, what kind of service can you expect from "independent contractor" service reps if you have to have them come out on warrenty work?

 

As far as I can say Dell has the best service partners.
I could tell many stories from colleagues with there IBM/Lenovo notebooks and HP EliteBooks.

I do not want to appoligize Dell and theire stuff but I guess the Precision M6600 is a very new model and that was why we got some false information. Should not be but happened.

For me the Precision is the best business notebook on the market.
I already had one some time ago, the Precsion M90 and it was the best notebook I have ever had. I tried to be satisfied with much cheaper notebooks since I had the Precision but I no one was as good as the Precision.

My conclusion:
The Precision is worth the money and the Dell service is better than the service of other competitors. I am looking forward to my Dell Precision M6600.

 

hello there,

is it possible to turn off camera LED?

cheers
greg

 

Yes you can in the Bios

 

HCW, thanks for quick answer.

but could you be so kind and give more information?
I went through all BIOS options and didnt find any camera LED

 

Check out this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...n-m4600-transfer-windows-included-hd-ssd.html

Originally Posted by mgoldshteyn
Did you enable AHCI via the registry, before you backed up your original Windows installation? That's the number one thing people forget to do when moving a Windows image from a conventional Hard Drive to an SSD, only to discover that they cannot start Windows, because it is not loading the AHCI driver on (Windows) startup, even though AHCI is enabled via the BIOS.