Precision M4500 Owner's Lounge

Is it the latest bios version?


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Yes, it's the latest BIOS version.

 

Hi all, just purchased a M4500 on Amazon. Crossing fingers that everything in the specs is exactly what I will be getting (Amazon is not easy to browse used machines in).

She will have a 920XM i7, 8GB RAM, 1920x1080 screen but only the 880 GPU, but honestly, I really don't do any gaming other than classic arcade games using the MAME emulator. I mainly do programming and will be watching movies with it too (I am away from home a lot so I spend a lot of time in my car "camping").

I will be transferring my 840 Pro SSD from my current Precision M6300 17" beast and let it retire. It's not worth lugging around with my new job and battery life is down to 5 minutes tops (lol). I hope to use the guts for a car computer project later on.

Anyway - I'll update you guys when it gets here.

 

I've had mine since about Jan 2014. Tossed in an msata for Windows and run a 2.5 SSD for Linux. Been a great machine even though it's older. Upgraded the CPU from an i5-540m to an i7-720qm. Other than the battery life getting worse, it's been great

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Awesome! I won't be using it off the battery much (I use a custom step-up voltage converter in my car to provide the 19 volts for the laptop). I do my programming in visual studio so I don't dabble in Linux much but perhaps an mSATA for a linux distro should be fun. It may even be better for playing movies/video since Windows usually has a lot of overhead with background services constantly running.

My order is not coming with the optional 9-cell but when it comes to it, I will get it.

 

With my aging 9-cell (bought it in Jan 2014) I get about 1-2 hrs depending on my usage. 2 for web browsing, 1 for MATLAB code (using as much multi-threading as possible).

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Well it turns out the one I found on Amazon had completely different specs than listed on the product page. I'm real bummed out. The seller says he has another does actually have the 1080 screen, but processor is an 840QM. If I find a 920 or 940XM processor to replace it with later, are the heatsinks the same?

 

Yes they are, but the 920/940s are somewhat pricey.

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Yayyyy. I found another M4500 with some minor differences: This one only has the 1.87GHz quad core, but it DOES have the Quadro 1800, so a little trade-off. I've already moved over my Samsung 840 Pro SSD from my old Precision M6300 and just took me about 20 minutes to load up some of the drivers manually (Win 10 took care of the rest). Very happy with the machine so far. Also, the guy I bought it from only had a 90 watt power brick so I think the machine is "down-clocking" the CPU. No matter - will get the 130 on Amazon.

Also, I didn't have any issue moving the SSD over being that I have Bitlocker enabled on the drive. Only thing to remember is to suspend Bitlocker in the control panel before moving it over. I didn't have to enter the recovery key during first boot up in the M4500. Once back in Windows, you'll have to do the TPM module reset (easy) before Bitlocker is re-enabled (and make sure the TPM is enabled in the BIOS beforehand). This would be useful for anyone searching this thread in the future.

I know this was posted a long time ago, but I'm wondering if the attachment is still available somewhere?