Precision M4500 Owner's Lounge

"A little bit of CAD" is just like a little bit of power-gaming: it needs computing power - and the M4500 has it. Computing power comes with electrical power requirements. Why did you reckon that the standard power supply is a 130W one?

What battery did you order, btw?

 

It’s my first week with my M4500, and it’s a mixed bag so far. We all know the good, so I will nitpick with the bad.

1. The screen. I am definitely not impressed with it. I went for the middle-spec 1600x900 screen, and it has a definite blue tint to it. I have tweaked it with the Windows 7 calibration tool, but it’s still not great. The monitor type (Device Manager – Hardware ID) is SEC544B. Do others with this screen resolution have the same ID?

2. As some have noted, there is some minor “electrical noise” on the machine that is noticeable in quiet environments. It appears to be louder when running on battery than on AC power.

3. The initial SSD speed was great. But the speed drops after two days of work and encrypting the SSD with Bitlocker are significant. Such as CrystalDiskMark Sequential write speeds dropping from 172 MB/s to 73 MB/sec.

4. No multimedia buttons on the keyboard. I’ve gotten used to those after having them on my last two Dell laptops. The infrared remote on the M1530 also came in handy on occasion.

 

You're right... On the US site the option is available... for an additional $4400 I now noticed that for example on the Belgian site the configuration options are just way more limited. It doesn't mention a fingerprint sensor or even a second harddisk! Not that the differences had impact on my order (yes, I ordered one today ).

 

I'm sorry to hear you're experiencing problems with the screen res and SSD hard drive. There's another thread that addresses the performance hit that bitlocker sometimes causes. http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/216904-bitlocker-performance-hit.html
Most people seem to think it presents reduced speeds only when you're doing something both process and disk intensive. I found that to be the case with my dell m65 running vista, but I can't speak for the SSD.

How do you find the keyboard on the 4500? Any flex or heat problems? I'm contemplating it as my new laptop, but have heard there are build quality issues.

 

Weird question: I tossed a Reese's to my wife and it bounced off the computer around the touchpad/keyboard area. It immediately went black and rebooted, attempting a safe mode reboot. Seems like it lost power for a split second. It was on battery power and the battery was locked in. What happened?
Jesse

 

Hi !

Can some of you post some dpc test results on your beast as well as wprime ....

Dpc latency running while wifi disabled on the control panel , no battery , full performance power scheme !!

Please , please , please , i'm really struglling for those infos , need to buy my laptop asap , hp 8740W on my list , the 4500 (as well as the 6500)is the best bang for the buck i can have for a fair price ....

thks to all

here's the dpc latency link :

http://www.thesycon.de/dpclat/dpclat.exe

 

Interesting that you have a samsung panel and say it has a blue tint to it, mine is an LG and has a strong pink or magenta tint that I haven't been able to remedy completely.
People need to keep an eye on cracking screen bezels just like with the M4400 also, I've replaced it on both models and is a nasty cheap piece of micro thin plastic that's fixed in place with use once snaps that has absolutely no place on products this expensive.

I can't remember the last notebook I owned that had no stepping noise, the Kingston SSD I used to have in my M4400 had a pretty loud electrical noise when working also.

 

Do you want wprime for an i5?

 

There is definitely some flex when I look at it to test. Though I don't notice it when typing and it doesn't really bother me.

So far I haven't noticed any heat issues, though I haven't run it full throttle too many times while using the keyboard.

 

It will warm up the hands a little bit, but more at the palm rest and not the keyboard.