Precision M4400 Owner's Lounge

I did it, now I am waiting.

They said it will be an expedite order.

 

I see BluRay listed in the Tech Specs, but it's not mentioned anywhere in the overview or in the official brochure. I fear it may be a misprint, although I would be very happy to be proven wrong. After all, it doesn't seem like it would be too hard for them to swap out the DVD drive for a BluRay drive. That RGB-LED display is just itching for some hi-def content.

Nice. What type of configuration did you choose? Any hints on how I can get them to offer me a 28% discount?

 

I stand corrected. *gives middle finger to wiki*

 

a lot of the options you can only add if you call them up. i have no idea why.

 

It's possible to install a 2.5 inch second Hard Drive in the M4400 ?, I mean removing the DVD-ROM and installing the HD ?, do I need a special Bay for that ?, if yes what is the P/N ?, thanks

 

Do you need a special adapter for the 1.8" HD inside the Bay ?

 

Anybody know if the WUXGA RGB LED screen is glossy or matte? Thanks.

 

I just spent about 5 hours debugging the audio problem in my M4400 and want to pass on my findings to other people experiencing audio problems.

My machine is a 2.53 GHz machine with 2GB of RAM. I bought it exclusively to do music production and audio work, but I found that when playing music, it would stutter, drop out, pop, and click with absolutely no load on the machine. This would happen in XP or Vista, with all of the latest updates installed (including the Nov 14 audio driver update), and it would happen with Windows Media Player, FooBar 2000, Sony's Sound Forge, and Sony Acid. This made no sense -- my old iBook G4 can play music just fine, so this machine should be able to play a regular old MP3 or WAV file without breaking a sweat. So I had to drop science on the problem.

I generated a 1KHz reference tone in Audacity and exported it as a lossless WAV file. I then hooked up my M4400 to a Precision M65 using an 1/8" cord so I could record directly into the M65. This allowed me to easily identify glitches in playback by inspecting the recorded sound's waveform or by looking at a spectral frequency display in Adobe Audition (the spectral display shows glitches and deviations from the 1KHz reference tone quite easily). I also verified the M65 could record without glitches by playing the reference tone on my iBook G4 using a similar setup (it recorded perfectly from the Mac). Playback from the M4400 was a different story -- there were clear sound dropouts all over the place in the recorded WAV file.

To debug the problem, I turned off every peripheral I could find in the M4400's BIOS. With everything turned off, the reference tone played back perfectly from the M4400. After carefully turning stuff back on, I discovered the problem: If both the PC Card/1394 device and eSATA device are turned on, the sound glitches. Turning off the eSATA removes the sound problems (turn off the internal modem, too, to get a slightly cleaner signal). The Windows welcome sound still stutters when XP starts, but music playback is now silky smooth.

After discovering the source of the problem, the next question was whether the devices were conflicting with each other in hardware or software. So I started the machine using Ubuntu 8.10's LiveCD. With all devices back on again (including both the PC Card/1394 device and eSATA), the tone played back perfectly in Linux. So it is some Windows driver issue (at least in XP -- I haven't confirmed in Vista yet). But turning eSATA off has fixed my audio/music problems in XP.

So if you have this audio glitching/drop-out problem on your M4400, try disabling the external eSATA in the BIOS (System Configuration -> Miscellaneous Devices). And tell Dell to get better drivers -- a $2000 laptop should play an MP3 smooth as butter right out of the box.

 

Ya,told dell to get better drivers a couple of months ago......they haven't listened

Awesome post though soulfry,I enjoyed reading it and will have a little play around with your suggestion's,although I haven't had any popping,drop outs etc......just really poor sound quality [tin can,someone called it]if i leave the internal speakers enabled [in the control panel] while using external speakers or IEM's.

I'm actually surprised someone in your line of business would even consider onboard audio good enough for your use anyway? or is it more out of curiosity/annoyance?


@brosen...yes you need the enclosure for the 1.8" hard drive,I don't know the part number,email dell spare parts/customer services.
I remember reading in one of the latitude threads about another manufacturer making an enclosure that uses a 2.5" hard drive......but it eludes me at the mo


@nintendogs......glossy

 

and this is a business laptop =[