M6600 Owners Thread

I really like the keyboard and its layout... even the touchpad being so far left.
I find the M6600 is pretty well conceived in most reasonable ways.
Of course there is always room for improvements but I've no `real' complaints at this point. Its a technician freindly build also.
(which is good since Dell can't seem to do assemblies properly lol)

I would have liked to see all the usb ports 3.0 instead of just one side. *edit*

As this is a long narrow machine, and slim for its size, the latch hooks could be spaced wider to better secure the screen when its closed and protect vulnerable edges from damage.


Anybody finding the touchpad not a 100% with taps and scrolling?

 

IMO both fabrizioT and dgdraftinguy have nice machines.

dgdraftinguy is a little higher end... and having SSD makes all the more true.

even though the 4000M and i7-2720QM are not at the top of the scale... they are a great match I think. They work well together.
Just as dgdraftinguy did... if I was looking for more out of my machine, I'd be looking at a higher end CPU before considering stepping up from from the 4000M and would go SSD (just as he did) ...and with a little RAM I think think I'd still par with his machine.
I wasn't going for more machine than I've got so I didn't look into how good of a match the 4000 and the 2920 (I'm jealous) but I think SSD is a gtrat choice... wish I thought of it when I was putting my 6600 on order.
( ugh... and dgdraftinguy still only rates his machine as only a `bit' better than average expectation)

Getting a good machine isn't just about individual components... it will depend on everything working together nicely.
Otherwise some compnents will not be propely made use of and or result in a less balanced system with less than expected performance.
Look for balance and then go SSD for now. This is an upgradable machine.
We all went with 1333MHz I think, as it won't make much diffeerence upgrading the RAM and still matches the system well.

 

Update the Bios if needed.
Turn on Optimus in the Bios.
Update chipset drivers - reboot
Update Intel HD video drivers - reboot
Update Nvidia Driver - reboot

You may not have to do that much rebooting, but I do when updating other Optimus machines.

 

For battery life I'm looking at about 2.5 hrs with my configuration (ATI video card so no optimus) with screen brightness at ~50% and fairly light usage. I'd love to know how that guy got 5.5 hrs. I know optimus can't double the battery life...

 

Had a replacement motherboard today and back up and running!!!

24 hours isn't bad support from Dell.

I dont know if its BIOS A00 it came with or what but its running better than ever:

Processor 7.5
Memory 7.6
Graphics 7.6
Gaming graphics 7.6
Primary HD 7.9

 

Why not? You effectively disabling a component that draws as much or more power than the CPU

 

Re: the two USB 3 comments - there are two ports not one, and you can tell them because they are red with 'SS' written next to them I believe.

 

I see that now, i was looking for blue inside the USB port.

 

Bokeh said it all. My notebook is updated to bios A03.
The "battery test" was done after a fresh install of W7 ultimate, updated to SP1.
Obviously i avoided installing most of the crap that's normally preinstalled ... especially the faulty DELL softwares.

I also managed to kill useless startup stuff via MSCONFIG.

Here is the minimal (unordered) list of drivers i had to install in order to have the notebook up-to-date and all hardware properly shown in device manager:

* M6600A03.EXE (bios updater)
* Intel_Chipset-Software-Insta_A04_R304291.exe
* INTEL_RAPID-STORAGE-TECHNOLO_A07_R291722.exe
* INTEL_UNIFIED-AMT-7-MANAGEME_A00_R292087.exe
* NEC_USB-3-0_A01_R292027.exe (not strictly needed)
* NIC_DRVR_WIN_R292654.EXE
* O2Micro-_OZ600XXX-Memory-Car_A01_R300787.exe
* R296919.EXE
* ST-MICROELECTRONICS_FREE-FAL_A06_R294986.exe
* Dell_ControlVault_A20_R298044.exe
* IDT_92HDXXX-HD-AUDIO_A03_R297613.exe
* Intel_825xx-Gigabit-Platform_A00_R291627.exe
* 275.33-notebook-win7-winvista-64bit-international-whql.exe (Nvidia Verde driver)

Note: i'm not perfectly sure of "INTEL_RAPID-STORAGE-TECHNOLO_A07_R291722.exe" and "Dell_ControlVault_A20_R298044.exe", since there were 2 executables for both Intel and Control vault and i may confuse the exact name.

Obviously depending on your config the list may be different.
My suggestion is: avoid installing what's not strictly needed.

 

Glad to know all is alright again.
However i think a bios update is deserved, first bios versions for new models are sometimes quite unreliable ...