New M6500 Discussion Thread

This may be a regional thing. I got my m6500 here in Canada a week and a half ago and it did have the caddy and connector. 10 minutes and I had my WD 640 Gb HDD installed and running.

 

I was going to say the same. Maybe european builds are getting the shaft, cause my system delivered last week had it installed.

Just to be clear, realize that the mounting mechanism for each HDD bay is physically different from one another. One has a cover on the bottom and the other doesn't.

 

I've got a metal bracket where the 2nd HDD goes....is that the caddy? I saw it when I put in the intel 6300 card. I'm in Florida, btw....might be regional for some reason.

 

Primary drive

Secondary drive

Primary has a "bottom" to it, whereas the secondary has a frame more than a caddy.

 

Yeah- that's it. Bracket is actually a better deascription. There should be a little peice of foam that has the connecter and 4 little Phillips head screws. Use the 4 screws to attach the bracket to the sides of the hard drice and then push the connector on. Put the bracket (with new HDD) back in with the 4 screws that where holdining the bracket in the bay and you're done.
Trust me- I can screw up making a peanut butter sandwich and I got it right the first time around

 

I guess its just on par for dell - who else would actually charge you £4 for diagnostics disk as you were spending £2500-3000 !

I am placing my order tomorrow, and could not afford *GB RAM and a second drive right now so have gone for the over priced drive so that I dont have this hastle. Anyhow *GB RAM was a nice to have - anyone know what would be the best 1333 ram to match in with what dell provides...

 

Hey guys, sorry to break in here but I'm giving the M6500 some thought and had a few questions, if you don't mind.

How is the screen on this laptop? Does anyone have the WXGA+ screen, and if so, how is the resolution? I have a WUXGA Latitude for work and the resolution is starting to kill my eyes, so I'm leaning toward the WXGA+ screen. Is it a matte or glossy screen? Good color and viewing angles?

How is the fan noise? Does it sound like a "hair dryer," as someone described his Studio laptop recently?

Is the keyboard user friendly? Any reliability issues or other considerations that might sway one away from this model?

Thanks very much!

 

On the bags topic, I've seen a few mentioned earlier in the thread, but was looking at the Timbuk2 "Breakout Laptop Messenger", which seems to be an offering on the Dell website when you configure a 6500. Having used their 15" model that seems similar to this one, I liked it quite a bit. Anyone else have one of these? Called around town looking for someone local that might have one in stock to no avail, so it's either buy it from Dell or Timbuk2 directly apparently. \:

Edit: Nevermind..... picked a reasonably priced Targus messenger style bag from Staples. 6500 fits like a champ.

 

The only thing that should sway you away from this laptop is the price. This is their flagship laptop....if it's bad here, then it gets worse as you travel DOWN the Dell line.

I wear trifocals and use the RGBLED screen and Win 7 is set at default to 125% of 96dpi and I can read it fine...just as well as my M4400 with a 1440x900 screen. No hair dryer syndrome....remember, you are UP the line here from the Studio forum. Industry pro's use this laptop, so DELL is very conscious of support for this unit. The Studio goes out the Costco door and that's it.

I can't comment on the other screens for this model. If I didn't want to spend the money on this laptop, I probably would have gotten a Latitude or maybe even the 3700 Vostro as that seemed to be a very good price/performance combination.

I DO game....and my games also run on my Vostro 1220....everything except Crysis Wars (I suspect, didn't even try that one, but all Strat games, yes fine). So if you have gaming in mind, it doesn't take this unit for that. Hardware in general is gaining on game software it seems, thankfully.

If you have the money, and appreciate 'Precision' haha...then this unit could be for you. Awesome piece of machinery IMO.

 

M6500 Bulletin: New IDT Audio Driver out...I'm checking it now, carefully.... Dated today, 5/4.