New M6500 Discussion Thread

Wanted to break in briefly and say I'm a new M6500 owner. Got one with an i5 off of Dell Outlet for a steal. Must say it's a darned nice laptop.

I had, and just returned, an HP Envy 17. It too was nice (not nearly as nice as the Dell), but about a week after I bought it, they dropped the price by about $600. When I called and asked them to refund the difference, they refused, so I just returned it. Doesn't make sense but they must really want used laptops back.

Anyways, I'm pleased with my purchase, even if it is overkill for most of what I'll use it for.

 

Congrats, and Welcome to the Money Pit I didn't realize they sold them with an I5....sounds nice....

 

In my case, it's two different mice that exhibit the same problems. I've got a Samsung N510 running Win7 Home Premium and from time to time, the Logitech mouse would lose connection. After a few minutes, it'd automatically reconnect. The MS 5000 otoh, never loses connection. The BT icon is also visible under Control Panel. I've run both Win7 Beta and Ultimate on two Lenovo 3000 N200 without problems. A clean install on the first try would see the module and install the drivers without user input.

None of that happens on the M6500. I still contend it is a combination of hard- and software that is the problem. Maybe the module isn't installed correctly, losing its link due to vibrations? Still, that wouldn't account for the absence of the BT module of the Control Panel. I'm now considering the possibility that the Dell OS cd might not be complete. As it is, I can't find Roxio DVD creator as is listed on the bill. In any case, I don't have a personal copy of Win7 64 bit, only 32 bit so I can't check with that.

 

Congratulations!

Yes, it's always overkill for what we'll use it for
Still, it reminds me of Tim "The Toolman" Taylor, "More POWERRRRRRR!"

 

Maybe Slackware or any of its derivatives is an idea? You can't get any more barebones then that. Or one of the BSD systems? I've never tried any of the Solaris flavors.

Truth is, back when Suse 8 was out, I ran it, 9 and 9.1 for a few years. Very smooth operation. I worked a lot with the command line and had to do a lot of tinkering. Ran stock Slackware on a Thinkpad T21, smooth as silk. I loved to tinker back then but building a kernel from source was a nightmare. I never succeeded.

Nowadays, I don't have the time nor the inclination to go too deeply into that kind of stuff. I need my system to work from the get go, only needing some basic calibration. Since I'm going to be using this machine for web design/programming and photography studies, I don't want to spend too much time with getting too deep inside the hardware/software tinkering I used to do.

 

There is a new Nvidia driver, 258.69 Beta on the Nvidia site. No problems here. It's supposed to fix some bugs.

 

Did you get the new PhysX software (9.10.0224)? They are available here.

 

No, but thanks !!! downloading now

 

I noticed my first dead pixel today; does anyone know dell's policy regarding dead pixels and the M6500? Thanks.

 

I do not know Dells policy, yet most hardware manufacturers state that they will not covet the "damage" unless there are more pixel faults than there is on the industry standard -- usually it should be 5 or more dead pixels.

Unless your laptop is 14 days old or younger -- then you can still call Dell and complain about a bad order/batch.

I fear that you may be out of luck, however. Which warranty policy do you have? CompleteCare, or?

[edit] I am off for two weeks of holiday in USA, so no replies for a while for me --- good luck, though! [/edit]
Oh, and even if you are not covered, you can *sometimes* be lucky that the phone support line makes a mistake and fixes your problem for free anyhow -- perhaps, but not likely.