Precision M4400 Owner's Lounge

i plan to buy an m4400 from the dell outlet in the future, should i worry about its keyboard, durability, heat?

does it suffer from anything else that would make it a big dealbreaker?

 

The M4400 chassis is made out of a magnesium alloy, it is very stable, but not as stable as the Thinkpads.
The keyboard is very, very good, yet not built as good as the Thinkpads'. In my opinion, however, the backlight makes that keyboard better than anything you can get at Lenovo. The Thinkpads have this little LED light that illuminates the keyboard from above, but it's not really comparative. You will not know how useful the BL keyboard is even in daylight conditions if you don't have to use another keyboard after having gotten used to it. I consider it the must-have upgrade of the M4400 if you will be typing in more than a hundred words per day.

There is this DPC latency issue that should be solved with the latest version of "Intel Matrix Storage Manager - Driver" and "Intel Matrix Storage Manager - Application". The latter seems to be the reason for these problems, and you only need the former. It seems that some people are still having DPS latency issues, though. The DPC issue is known to cause stuttering audio playback for some people.

Some M4400 still suffer from too much heat and too loud fans. Some people are still having problems with that, although it became much better with the latest two BIOS revisions. My M4400 in particular is not making any noise at all anymore whenever it doesn't have much to do (when I'm just surfing the web, for example). The fan is copmpletely turned off. This is due to the changes made by Dell software updates. I can remember that I found the Laptop to be particularly loud back when I turned it on for the first time in last december.

These are some of the important things that instantly came into my mind. It's not meant to be a complete list (for now, at least).

I hope I could help you.

 

i've differ here. i consider the light built into the thinkpads (this little led at the top of the screen) way better than the backlid keyboad of my m4400. actually i've turned the backlid completly off, and can't say, that i used it once so far.
the ibm light was quite usefull, but actually i used it very rarely to light the keyboad but to be able to read something on a paper, or just have a little 'ambient' light.

well, it all comes down to preference .)

 

Weird, you're the first I hear saying that. But you're right, because in the end...

Yes, it does. Actually, a friend of mine hates chokolate sprinkles, which is much more weird, so...

 

is the build quality difference between the precision and the thinkpads enough to make you think otherwise if u were to do it all over again?

the screen and res on the m4400 does own the t500 screen =D

 

Depends on what you are planning to do with it. I would absolutely buy the M4400 again, but I am mainly using it in different stationary work places, carrying it around in a special case which fits perfectly (when having the 6-cell battery).

Don't get me wrong, the M4400 is way more robust than most notebooks out there, but it still can't reach the superior build quality of the Thinkpads. If you are planning to use your Notebook under a bit rougher conditions than I do, I can't actually do any judgement. But I guess I personally will never have to use my Accidental Damage Cover. Still nice to have it (and I'd buy that again as well) for this expensive machine.

 

thanks for your input, i have just been doing ALOT of research on what to get, and it seems the m4400 can last a very long time when i go to college
only time will tell until buying time

 

well, from my point of view i liked my old t41p alot more, thats handling wise.

the keyboard is/was superior, and the feel beeter (the plastic panels for your hand etc..). in addition it was alot smaller (but also a 14" and not 15,4").
but don't get me wrong, the m4400 is better than most stuff out there - probably even than current thinkpads, they've lost alot of they'r qualitiy after moving from ibm to lenovo..

the size of the m4400 actually botheres me a little bit, especially as it is bigger than what dell tells you at the webpage.

the battery life is absolutley no comparism. i had a standard and large power cell for the t41p, and both lasted really long, even under load.
for the m4400 i've the 6cell battery and i can roughly say, that i can use it for 1 - 1.5 hours (without putting real load onto it).
again, this isnt a dealbreaker for me, as i've bout 98% of the times the notebook on the powercord.

speed and for the screen im pretty happy. only problem is at some point the heat generation (had the notebook replaced completly after the first wouldn't stop downclocking the gpu).
i can tell that the current system is mostly not downclocking the gpu, although the cpu gets downclocked sometimes (which can be annoying). specially trying few games i noticed that the speed is not what it should be. but for 3d and cad the speed is fine. can tell, its about ~20 times as fast as my previous macbook pro.

yep, what else :}

 

1-1.5 hours sounds really poor, on my 9 cell i get 3.5 hours under mid-high load and 6 hours under max power saving

with some power saving activated it does 3.5-4 hours on average.

 

I can get more than 1 1/2 hours out of my M4400 w/ QX9300 and 2 hard drives on a 6 cell...