New M6500 Discussion Thread

FWIW, the display blink is normal behavior on E6510's w Vidia's and M4500's w nVidia's and the factory software load. I suspect it is DCP.

 

Happens on mine after a cold boot, too.

 

There is a firmware update and new drivers for NEC usb 3.0. Just updated, and it works for M6500

SONY/NEC firmwares

 

There's also a new IDT audio driver on the dell support site, but I haven't been able to download it.

 

Likely purchase but uncertain on which screen but since I want 1920 x 1200 I have eliminated Covet edge to edge for cost reasons and it is glossy, so either WUXGA with white led OR WUXGA with RGBled.

1) RGBled gets excellent review with testing here Dell M6500: A Precision Strike on Bling - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News however it concerns me that one needs a work-around to improve Delta E scores by setting gamma at 1.8 versus the typical 2.2 in the PC world. Seems like Dell really dropped the ball. Are you doing color calibration at 1.8?

2) I cannot find review with testing of the RGB white led as to its color gamut etc. Want to consider this screen as there are pros/cons to the wide color gamut of RGBled screen. Can you point me to tech review?
Also I expect that there is more inconsistency from copy to copy of laptops with RGBled as I understand that each triad needs "to be tuned" during mfg, and to do it well is costly. Hence I expect that Dell is willing to cut corners here. While Lacie has a high end LCDrgb offering Eizo so far has held back on using LCDrgb with one explanation being that blue led ages more quickly than R or G and leads to calibration problems with age.

3) Does M6500 have a sRGB simulation mode if you purchase the RGBled display? If so does it tame image appearance in non-color managed programs? How quickly and easily can you switch in and out of this mode?

4) On Dell forum there are many reports of poor quality of power brick for M6500 with many reporting that they have had to replace power brick within 6 months of use. Any thoughts?

5) For any of the screens it seems that people are using either Color Munki or Spyder 3 Elite - is that correct?

Thanks for cutting my research time which has already been over 20 hours.

 

ddk632 here again. I've been in hiatus from the forum for a while and thought I'd chime back in.

I have a general question for the truly tech-savvy out here who are familiar with the ins and outs of the hardware of the M6500.

My Covet M6500 does not have the 64GB MiniPCIe SSD installed, and well since it can have one, I want to put one in .

I have seen the 128GB MiniPCIe SSD for Dell Mini 9 (http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/news/6065-dell-mini-9-modded-128gb-solid-state-drive.html) and for ASUS (http://www.amazon.com/128GB-RunCore-SATA-70mm-PCI-e/dp/B00369JTAE). Although the Dell one is PATA, the ASUS is SATA which I know is out there even though the link is out of stock at Amazon. I am assuming (correct me if wrong) that the M6500 MiniPCIe supports SATA interface?

I was wondering if anyone knows whether it's possible to install this 128GB MiniPCIe SSD instead of buying the 64GB MiniPCI-e SSD from Dell (I was quoted $250, which is higher than it costs when configuring the machine!) or the OCZ one from Newegg (Newegg.com - OCZ OCZSSDMPES-64G Mini PCIe 64GB Mini PCIe SATA Internal Solid state disk (SSD)) which is out of stock.

I imagine that physical dimensions and the location of the SATA interface on the SSD (I've seen a few where it was not at the long end of the minicard, most likely for a desktop) are the big question mark, but is it possible that M6500 has other hardware / BIOS restrictions for this?

Any ideas welcome!

Note that I am going to have a Dell tech do the install along with adding some extra RAM, as personally while I am a software/web developer and I've build desktops, I've never actually messed with laptops except the occasional removal of a harddrive, and as such I am not going to make my M6500 Covet into a student science experiment

 

The M6500 has only a half-size slot while the Mini-PCIe cards you found are full-sized. So they won't even fit physically.

btw: The M6500 is a great piece of craftsmanship. So if you ever plan to do hardware modifications beyond desktop PCs, the M6500 (or any other Dell I've seen (except the Netbooks)) would be the ideal device to start with. Their disassembly is well documented and as far as I could see there are no hidden traps if you stick to the documentation.
I've seen some FTS Amilos and Gericoms from the inside and compared to the Dells they look just horrible.

 

Nipped in the bud! Thanks for the heads up. So I should look for the half size.

As far as tinkering myself... it's that fear of having extra parts/screws left over that keeps me from getting into it... "Look honey, I'm so good at this, I have extra parts left over!"

 

Here's one: Scrolling in Firefox is no longer smooth. Hitches & jerks, plays catch-up. Also, video playback in Vimeo etc will freeze every few moments & skip frames.

Updated Direct X but really I have no clue what to check. Even now, my words will not show up for a moment then all fill in at once, catching up to what I'm typing.

Resource monitor shows SearchIndexer.exe at top of list when Status is the filter, that mean anything?

Brand new system (ok couple weeks), Win 7 Ultimate, i7 940, 12GB RAM... the 250GB 7200rpm HD is obviously the bottleneck but shouldn't be causing this I wouldn't think.

 

Updated Java as well. Is it okay now?? Time will tell but seems like something cleared up... please God lol