M6600 Owners Thread

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The AC adapter IS huge; as someone else said, it's practically the size of a small laptop, itself! Or a netbook, anyways...

 

Hi all,

I received my M6600 with the non-IPS FHD screen last week, I thought I'd share some details on how it calibrates for anyone who is interested...

Panel is identified as an LGD02DA by PCWizard for what it's worth:



Cutting to the chase - the good news is that it's basically what DELL said it was - ~300 nits @ full brightness, ~500:1 contrast, 72% Gamut (basically sRGB).

The bad news is that when calibrating, the whole 72% gamut is only available at the native whitepoint of ~10000K, which is waaaay too hot for any kind of even psuedo-serious photo editing. Also, the vertical viewing angles on the screen are so-so, leading to obvious shifts in gamma from the top to the bottom of the panel. There are hue shifts as well, but you have to move your head to notice them.

The following profiling details have been gleaned with a Spyder 3 Elite, targeting a whitepoint of 6500K, gamma 2.2 and brightness of 120cd/m2.

Here is the available gamut - you can see that wrestling the display down to 6500K stunts the gamut fairly significantly (at 10000K it's pretty much bang on sRGB):



Forgetting the gamut drop for a second, it seems to calibrate reasonably well with a good tone response at gamma 2.2:




Screen uniformity at 50% brightness (slightly more than required to achieve 120cd/m2) is a bit iffy according to the measurements, I can't really notice it that much:



Finally, you can see the native white point is crazy hot here:



All in all I'm reasonably happy with it, I guess it depends on how good the IPS is when it comes out (according to DELL when I ordered this laptop it wasn't even on the horizon, so good luck to the folks who are holding out...). Every wide-gamut display I've seen on laptops to date has had it's own raft of problems (e.g. M6500 had an atrocious sRGB mode and dodgy delta-E at 2.2 gamma, 8740w has to use HP's over-priced calibrator due to in-panel LUT, which often didn't work properly with crummy software as well). I'm beginning to wonder if it mightn't be best just to bite the bullet and spring for a dedicated IPS display...

Other than that, the system is pretty good. Flex on the backlit keyboard is as others have demonstrated, not my taste personally but not a deal-breaker either. It's quiet and cool, good video performance with the 8900M ( I used the catalyst 11.5b hotfix referred to earlier ). With 1333MHz RAM you can put 16GB in cheaply (great for VMware Workstation). Only snag I've had was the Crucial M4 SSD I put in which had to be flashed to bios 0.2 to play nicely with the Intel RST drivers (SSD would stop responding for long periods routinely otherwise).

Anyway, hope this is of use to someone. I'd be very interested to see some details about the IPS screen when it arrives

Cheers,

J

 

I ordered the M6600 last Friday in large part based upon the comments in this forum thread.

My estimated delivery date is 7/29/2011. I am hoping it arrives earlier.

I am upgrading from a 2006 DELL Latitude and this seemed to be what I was looking for (a portable desktop). I primarily use my laptop closed in a docking station with separate monitor, mouse and full keyboard. However, there are a few times when I go mobile and love the convenience of working on the laptop and taking everything with me. I basically transfer from one power outlet (office) to another (remote work or hotel), so battery time is not essential.

I've had problems with the Latitude overheating when used closed in the docking station, even with a cooling pad. I am hoping the M6600's two fans minimize this.

I primarily use business applications (word, excel, outlook) but also have an older 3D CAD program (ProE) that has not worked very well on my old systems. I am hoping I can finally play around with that on this system.

I am sure I will have additional questions for the experts (like upgrading ram and adding an additional SSD drive).

Thanks for the reviews and comments!

 

I am looking to upgrade my external monitor.

I currently have a Dell 22" external monitor with a 16:10 ratio. It is ok, but I would like a bigger monitor (like at least 27", preferably 30" or 32").

Does anyone use smaller LCD HDTV's (like 32") as monitors? I mostly use business apps and don't game so response times are not much of a concern for me. I just like lots of space (vertical) to lay out documents.

Thanks!

 

Is the screen aspect ratio 16:10, as stated in the chart or 16:9, as I understood?

I thought one of the downsides for many, including me, was the 16:9 screen aspect ratio.

 

It should be 16:9 if my math is correct. 1920/1080 = 1.778 & 16/9 = 1.778

Also amazing info colvilj, by any chance are there display profiles that you can save or send to others?

 

It is 16:9... I can't see the images as I'm at work atm and they're filtered :-( but I'm guessing it's PC Wizard that drew the conclusion it's 16:10.

Happy to share profiles for anyone who would like them.. I'll see what I can sort out tonight. They're obviously unique to a panel, but should be better than nothing I suppose.

Cheers,

J

 

Will it be possible to change the standard screen with an IPS one once it is available? and what price would it be approximately?

 

No... checked this when I ordered. The chassis is different as well as the panel.

Cheers,

J