M6600 Owners Thread

The existing HDD will probably be in the slot on the left. You should take it out and put in in the slot on the bottom, and put the SSD in the slot on the left.

 

Can I keep the power pluged in to the laptop (but battery removed) to keep it earthed while working on it?

 

Sinner comprehensive reading is not your strength seems to me.

Is it so difficult to understand what I wrote above?

ONCE AGAIN:

 

reeding & righting has never been my strenghts, anyway just got confused with the term "hot swap bay caddy". But now I get it.

Thanks for the diagram, excellent, I now feel I can do this! is it that simple!

 

Please look up and tell me that you got it now.

 

How can I do a reinstall of my OS on my SSD? I can not find the option during the boot section.

Thx again.

BTW. Did anyone get his Chi Mei Display replaced with the action over the forum?

 

Maybe it is different on the M6600 (I have the M4600), but I find it rather easy to remove with nothing but my fingernails (and yes, my nails are trimmed, haha!). In fact, using fingernails is exactly how the Dell engineer did it when he visited (that's where I got the idea in the first place, otherwise I was going to use a sharpened credit card or plastic stylus like everyone discussed on here). I start on the left and right sides, just pulling straight up. Then I lift the top edge if any top part is still sticking. Lastly, I remove the bottom edge by working my way towards the center while pulling up and slightly away towards the screen. I've done it a few times now without any issues. The Dell QE that visited said the keyboard trim is made of a very flexible plastic and is designed for 20 gentle removals. That way it can survive several rough removals by careless and rushed service techs.

 

I upgraded the RAM in the secondary memory/switched to a SSD/added a optical drive. Removing the keyboard trim was the hardest part of the upgrade process. Not so much because it was hard, but a bit nerve-wrecking. I had trouble getting it started with my fingernail - perhaps I was a bit timid with my nail. I wound up using...get ready to cringe...a small paperclip, which helped to pop the first few snaps. After it was started, I was able to use my fingernails with some gentle prodding from the paperclip. I started at the back towards the display on each side and worked forward. By the time I was at the front it was easy to pop off the rest of the way. Be extra careful when removing the trim from above the trackpad, it's very thin there and I was scared a bit when removing it, the trim is very flexible and bendy. Putting it back on was very easy. I had one snap that had trouble snapping on the left hand side, but then easily popped in when I reseated that side.

 

Well, I have officially given up on Optimus. It is absolutely, 100%, totally and completely broken.

The M6600 is the *only* Windows machine I've ever owned that I can honestly call unstable and unreliable, and it's completely due to nVidia's failure to write a decent driver for graphics switching.

I've had random reboots at least once per 24-48hrs of use since I got the machine, with Optimus sometimes (and sometimes not) disabled afterwards. I've tried the Intel official reference IGP drivers (breaks screen brightness adjustment) with the nVidia reference Quadro drivers, I've tried the Dell Intel IGP drivers with the nVidia reference Quadro drivers, both v275 and v280 (not very stable) and I've tried Dell's official Intel IGP AND Quadro drivers, which are more stable but the Optimus status applet in the systray is broken and it's still flaky as hell.

I've got Windows systems with *months* of uptime. Windows is not an inherently unstable OS, despite what some people would have you believe. It is, however, easily undermined by crap drivers and that's exactly what's happening here.

This isn't Dell's fault, but I'd hope that Dell is putting some pressure on nVidia to get it fixed. This is unacceptable in *any* machine, let alone a $5000 workstation with which people intend to get actual, serious work done.

I've disabled Optimus to make doubly sure that it's causing the problem. If it is, I'm going to call Dell and complain and I'd strongly encourage the rest of you that've reported Optimus issues to do the same. I think a partial refund of the Quadro upgrade price and a M8900 is a reasonable resolution, personally.

Don't get me wrong; despite the negativity in this post I'm very happy with the machine overall. But this just isn't OK, and people looking at buying one should expect to need to disable Optimus on the nVidia cards. Not the end of the world, really, but it is disappointing.

 

Hello, Siorus,

Based upon what forum users have commented on Optimus, I elected to order the AMD M8900 GPU and avoid potential frustration of a quirky setup. My work does not involve gaming or CAD.

Here is a brief status report after almost one week of M6600 operation:

• I'm not pleased with receiving the Chi Mei display, particularly because of the way it emasculates and distorts color saturation of photo images.
• Stability, overall performance, heat dissipation, and low fan noise of the M6600 have been very satisfying.

--John