M6800 Owners' Thread

The BIOS lets you turn it on or off, or set the light level, but to adjust the timeout an actual application is needed.
(I don't know where they hid it on the M6800. On the M6700, it's in the "Dell Feature Enhancement Pack", which is no longer available on the M6800.)

 

Yeah, that's what I was looking for. I hope it's still an option somewhere and that you can no longer change it at all.

 

So I installed an old version of the Dell Feature enhancement pack just to see what would happen. There seem to be no negative side effects, and you can change the backlight time out to any of the settings except "never". If you change it to that one, the backlight turns off, and when you use the Fn key to turn it back on, the time-out is just whatever the previous setting was. It is something though, and I'm going to make sure that I have the latest version and try again.

Also, if you disable the second entry for dell feature enhancement pack (the one with the dell logo) the on screen display that comes up when you change the volume and such goes away, as it was annoying and redundant in windows 8.

 

Make sure you're messing with a current version, later versions that are Windows 8 aware are supposed to automatically not show the OSD if you are using Windows 8. If you set the keyboard timeout for 5 minutes (I believe the maximum) you should be good. If you don't use the keyboard for 5 minutes, do you really need the backlight on?

 

I got the version that specifically stated that as one of the fixes, but yet it doesn't disable it. It must either be because it's not technically supported, or because it doesn't recognize windows 8.1 as windows 8.

 

Will the m6100 support 3d blurays via powerDVD 13 on a projector?

 

It should. More importantly the Intel 4600 HD graphics should support it.

 

Anyone try out the new BIOS yet (A07)?

 

yes.


it's actually pretty great; dell fixed almost all issues i have had with this machine since i first bought it.

one of the usb ports would not work with some of my usb 3 disks – fixed (i think around A05).
no nvidia graphics due to 32GB of ram – fixed (pretty sure that was A04 and new nvidia drivers. first had to set it to nvidia only in BIOS/EFI settings, later optimus got enabled properly).


BIOS/EFI A07 significantly reduces fan speed/noise for me. it now hovers around silent to barely noticeable (i have two external monitors attached and at least one VM running 24/7).

the only two things that still bother me is that the dedicated 'volume down' key is not at all working (not as in 'the function', but as in 'the key is dead'), and the keyboard likes to give me two letters, even though i've only pressed the respective key once.

cherry on top would be a setting in the BIOS/EFI to set the keyboard lighting to indefinitely...

honestly, i feel like i am taking part in a public beta test here

 

Does anyone else get, randomly, a popping noise from the speakers? It usually happens when they havent been used for a while, then you open something that makes a noise, and you get a quick little pop sound as the speakers turn on?

And the touch pad on mine is just, in general, pretty average. Multi-touch is a pain to use.