New M6500 Discussion Thread

That's me and dtdionne:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...-m6500-discussion-thread-448.html#post6572549

I know. I had this experience twice. The 2nd time I could already assist the technician. And I'm glad I could, because he seemed a bit scatterbrained and almost forgot some screws.

 

Speaking of repairs, the Dell tech came by today, right on time. He not only replaced the USB 3.0 daughterboard, but also the motherboard, just to be on the safe side. One thing I noticed, that's a LOT of screws!

Anyway, after closing up everything and rebooting, the BIOS had reverted to RAID so that had to be changed to AHCI. After that, it was smooth sailing. Windows found the new hardware ie. the USB 3.0 board and automatically installed the drivers through Windows Update. Sliding in a USB key, immediately produced a gong sound and opened up a Win Explorer window.

I'm a happy man, after about two months of going back and forth with Dell Support. The tech made me aware that the WIFI toggle switch is broken and he's going to mention this to Dell. He promised to call back tomorrow for another appointment to come fix that. I didn't even know it was broken since I've not used it at all.

All in all, at home tech support seems to be pretty competent.

 

So i am trying to update to BIOS A04 and for some reason after I try and do the installation the machine reboot but just hangs there and does not update. Anyone know what that could be??

 

Sounds like the BIOS flash went wrong. If that's true, the only way to solve it is to dismount the BIOS chip and reflash it in an external device.
Most likely you have no such equipment so you'll have to find someone who has or call the Dell support to switch your BIOS chip.

There is always a little risk that a BIOS flash goes wrong, which leaves you with a stylish brick instead of a high-end laptop. You can reduce this risk by strictly following the instructions for BIOS updates, especially having power pack and battery connected and doing nothing else during the update.
On the other hand Dell could reduce this risk by simply offering OS-independent BIOS updates via bootable ISO files. This would eliminate all the troubles that might be caused by the OS.

 

Congratulations - finally

 

Anyone willing to create a bios .iso file??

 

OK. Perhaps a weird question I'm thinking of an M6500 as I love the extra screen real estate, but my favorite computing position is lounging on the couch with the front edge of the laptop resting on my chest. Works great with my current 6 lb Dell 820 but I'm concerned this will be uncomfortable with the extra weight of the M6500. Can anyone out there with M6500 confirm whether or not this laptop is too heavy for this (or gets too hot)? Thanks

 

New Nvidia Quadro 5000M released. Looks fast and has DirectX 11.

NVIDIA Quadro 5000M

 

Heavyiness depends a bit on your physics, which I don't know. You might upload some pics and measures of yourself

Enough joking: I like sitting on my lazy boy with the m6500 on my lap. No problem with the weight for me (male, 6.1 ft, 171 lb). But when its warm weather and I wear shorts than I find the m6500 gets too warm on my legs. But putting a towel over my legs makes it comfortable again.

The heat itself depends on the usage (browsing the web is cool, running VMs and my dev tools is a bit hotter) and on the components in your m6500. The i920/40XM will produce more heat than an i7xx/8xxqm and I seem to remember that the nvidias were quoted in this thread to consume more power than the ATIs. Replacing HDs with SSDs makes you cooler as well.

But you must still decide on your own