New M6500 Discussion Thread

I’ve been a Thinkpad user for many years, and have come to believe (correctly or incorrectly) that the keyboards on the ThinkPad’s are really much better than much of what is out there. I’m weighing the purchase of a M6500 Covet, but as I can’t try the keyboard out at a store anywhere I’m concern about buying an expensive machine that I really don’t feel comfortable using. I would be interested in hearing from anyone that has used the ThinkPad keyboards and either the M6400/M6500 keyboard or the HP Elitebook keyboard. How was the transition? Thank you in advance.

 

The keyboard in the M6500 is different than the one in the M6400. The M6500 keyboard is more ridged. It was redesigned using customer feedback.

 

I feel the M6500 keyboard is an improvement over previous Dells (various Latitudes and Precisions), but still not quite on par with the Thinkpad's, which to me are still the best.

 

I sent an email to my dell rep, about the WiFi question: is Dell planning on offering the
Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 and the Advanced-N 6200 WiFi cards.
If so when will dell add them to its lineup for the M6500?

We will see, the Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 WiFi card would be a Sweet addition to the M6500.

 

I would really like to know why people are so worried about using the 6300 over the 5300 aside from the fact it's new.

It's not like it's going to make the machine any different, real world file transfers won't be that much different.

 

No one is worried about using the 6300, the Intel 6300 WiFi link is a good addition to the
Dell M6500 more Features see Attachment of the Product Brief for the Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 .

If you need Adobe Reader, on this Download page you Select your Operating System and your Language.

I hope this helps

 

Nice idea mannyA. So, let's wait and see their reply.

 

Does anyone know which 500GB drives dell is using in the m6500? Is it using the regular momentus (the one with quite a few negative reports regarding beeps and lags) or the constellation enterprise class drives?

I read that someone was getting the WD scorpio black in a different size, you think I am better off buying a 320GB for the WD or did seagate solve its problems with the 500GB

 

A quick update on the M6500 Covet before I write my full review.

The machine is by far the best i've ever owned.

Pros

• The screen is bright and vivid
• The GPU is powerful
• The CPU runs fast without any throttling
• The system runs cool and quiet
• The keyboard is the nicest i've ever typed on
• The touchpad and nipple are great
• Machine has minimal bloatware, after norton was deleted that is...
• All the ports are in sensible locatons
• The machine is SOOOOO easy to open and access the internal components.
• The screen hinges are strong and dont creak
• The screen catch is strong
• The sound is decent no subwoofer but thats fine imho
• The materials in the machine feel really nice.
• Keyboard layout is superb with no annoying changes
• Keyboard and Trackpad buttons dont click so loud the room can here
• Trackpad and Nipple have 3 buttons
• E2E Glass screen is gorgeous
• BIOS has a VERY decent amount of options (disable just about anything, only thing you cant do is overclock)
• Battery life seems to be very good
• System takes the laptopvideo2go.com upated drivers without issue
• Quadro Support Nvidia PhysX

Cons (ish)

• Slot loader is quite loud
• Machanical HDD performance is poor even in RAID 0 (got a 5.9 in WEI) put in a small 80GB gen 2 Intel x-25 and get 7.7 and the machine flies. The mechnical drives they use are Seagate Momentus 7200.4
• By default the machine ships with the DPI at 125% which if you didn't know it was there as a web developer can screw up some website layout and some older apps.

Wierdness

I reloaded the machine just to see and put in minimal drivers, just what was missing or necessary. The WEI process score went from 7.1 to 7.0... Interesting

Thats all I can think of for the moment

 

Thanks tomcom2k, looking forward to your full review (please include lots of pictures ).