News on Haswell based mobile Precision M6800 ?

I'm not saying make it as thin as the macbooks, that would be ridiculous, but it would be nice if they manages to shave off 1/8th to1/4th of an inch. I certainly hope they don't change their power brick design though, it may be large, but it's "thin" which is great for transport.

 

For those of us who use the M6600 pen digitizer extensively, it would be nice to see pen support in the new model: Dell presumably ditched that idea with the 6700. Also, better vertical viewing angles would be nice as well for the non-IPS screen.

 

I agree with this, it is large but as it is quite thin it does make it easier to pack and travel with.

Of course, I would love the 6800 to be as thin and light as possible, and have a finger print / smart card reader that actually works properly (and comes with the smart card).

I think all of us probably want the same thing, as much power as possible in a super strong and stable casing that is as light and thin as possible. Compromises have to be made, but it would be great if they could build a M6X00 and knock a kilo or two off. ;-)

 

Personally, I like the 'boxy' look of the M6700 with its straight edges, so I hope Dell leaves this as is. :thumbsup:

My wishlist for the M6800 would be:

- Rectangular base cover with 4 rubber feet, that can be released with a latch, and a 'normal' battery pack under the cover, instead of the current L-shaped cover and battery pack with the rubber foot on it.
- SATA 3 support on mSATA port and optical drive bay.
- 802.11ac wifi.

The M6700 already is a great machine, but with these minor improvements, it would be an awesome machine...

 

I'm not sure that's possible with the current cooling technologies used if you want to support the strongest graphics cards. On the other hand, with the cancellation of the 17" Macbook Pro, there certainly is some room for some thinner 17" workstations. Maybe a new line could be made?

Personally, I upgraded from the M6400 for one reason only - new graphics cards and MXM 3.0b support. So, I'd like them to continue the trend to be sure there are future upgrades available

The main readon I went for the M6700 over M6600 was all these little improvements compared to e.g. getting the RGB LED M6600 and upgrading the GPU.

 

Wishlist for M6800:
- SATA 3 support on mSATA port and optical drive bay,
- Wacom digitizer + pen WITH eraser
- 2560x1600 RGB LED IPS PremierColor matt screen with 10-bit colors

 

Hi everyone,

I am strongly considering upgrading to the M4800 or M6800 when they come out and replacing my trusty old Latitude e6510. However, I have a few questions that I would love feedback on.

1. I have always used a 15 inch laptop, so I was initially leaning toward the m4800. However, unlike in the past, I am no longer a graduate student (now a professor) so I don't have to haul my laptop all over creation, though I will likely take it home every night. Given this, what form factor would you recommend? It seems most prefer the m6800, which makes sense with the bigger screen, but I am not sure how much harder it is to travel with it, how it affects battery life, performance, etc.

2. I noticed that with the m6800 you can easily have a second hard drive installed, which has me tempted to have a SSD boot drive and a 500 GB secondary hard drive. However, I am worried about how much this will affect my battery life. I don't need amazing battery life, like I did in the last, but I would love to have at least 4 hours. Is this possible with the 17 inch model with two hard drives?

3. Assuming it is similar to the m6700, which looks fairly easy to upgrade, I am planning on buying the most basic RAM and HDD I can and then I will upgrade both when I get the machine as this will save me at least $500. Any reason not to do this and to instead pay Dell's exorbitant prices?

4. Again, I am an academic, so I run a lot of statistics, but otherwise don't do that much that is power or graphics heavy. My e6510 has an i7 dual core gen 1 I believe (m640), 8 GB RAM, 250 GB SSD. If I go for a 2.7 - 2.8 GHz quad core Haswell, 32 GB RAM, and 512 SSD (or a 256 SSD and a second hard drive) do you think the speed increase will be noticeable? Not sure what all has changed between the first and fourth version of the i7.

Thanks for your advice!

 

1. With a backpack there shouldnt be any issues when hauling bigger notebook around.

2. I believe that as soon as you unplug battery that secondary drive shuts down to conserve battery. And it turns on when you or any of your software needs data from it. You can fine tune that via windows. In terms of battery life make sure you go with nvidia card as optimus will give you quite nice amount of extra battery life.

3. I dont see why would you pay such a premium for memory and ssd installed by dell. Unless yo can get a hefty discount on entir system and end price differnce is only few bucks.

4. If your applications support multi core prcessors intel's 4th gen should bring enormus a boost in performance. If not and your apps only use single/dual cores higher turbo frequency and more optimized cpu itself will bring you at least 30% more cpu performance.

i suck at tapatalk typin...

 

Thank you very much for your feedback, I really appreciate it. Ahh, I can't wait for them to announce the new Precision!

 

I think darkydark, answered all your questions so no need to duplicate. I just wanted to say that finding a backpack for the M6X00 is much easier than finding a wheely bag. Targus do one or two, and there are a couple of others, but it can be quite hard to find a wheely bag that fits the laptop with all the protection you should have (a real computer bag) and be carry-on friendly. Of course this is not at al an issue with the M4X00.

Still, I would not give up my M6600 for anything, and look forward to upgrading to either the M6800 or more likely the M6900 or even M7000.

If I was buying a new M6X00 all over again I would definitely put it in RAID, and would also buy a mSATA HD as well as get rid of the optical bay and stick another SSD in there. These things are always best done when the machine is brand new, though you can do them at any time.

Changing the RAM post-purchase is what most of us here have done, and it is very easy to do.