Precision M4500 Owner's Lounge

I can confirm this; it seems to be a side effect of Control Point. I love my M4500 but Dell's Control Point and the Embassy Wave security software are pure junk.

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About control point. I noticed a strange thing. If I uninstall control point I am unable to control backlight properly. What I mean is I can either turn off light sensor and lose manual control at the same time (fn plus up/down do nothing) or I can have them both (fn plus up/down work but so does light sensor)

Anyone else with this issue? (test light sensor by covering it with finger and waiting cca 8s)

 

I'm going to get a quote from Dell on the M4500 and some accessories. If you had a good experience with your sales associate, please PM me their contact info. This will be a small order (1 laptop, 1 display and dock) though, so if your associate normally works with large companies, then they might not be the right fit for my sole proprietorship.

If you can't PM yet, you can send an email to [myNBRname] at yahoo dot com.
Thanks

FYI I'm posting this over on the HP 8540w thread for HP associates...so if you browse both I apologize for the x-post, but promise I'm only doing this for the M4500 and 8540w

 

Received my m4500 a few days ago. Opened the lid, and the first impression was the keyboard is warped, along with the plastic trim piece behind it. Two 'waves' approx 1.5mm deep max each side. The computer seemed to work, but this is not a $200 Netbook. Dell is replacing. Seems someone torqued the keyboard down to a warped base piece - it warped the covers and the keyboard seems warped - the last row is bent at a backwards angle.
The 1920 x 1080 WLED screen is bright, much more so that the CCFL one from my m4300, but still not daylight readable as advertised.
First boot up - the audio driver stuttered, and the screen flashed as reported earlier. There is definitely a bug / conflict in the video driver. I also noticed that the reads from an attached USB drive are hideously slow. When attached to my m4300, a USB drive will move ~~ 30 Mb/S. Same drive, same cable, only 6MB/s as reported by Win 7. Likely the driver issue also.

Had a chance to play with the 'instant on' feature - which takes about 5 seconds slower than coming out of hibernation, not so instant, and has many limitations on usage as far as the number of entries. It also causes a long delay in shutting down Outlook from Win 7 while it syncs - shut it off.

I have had two drive crashes on my m4300 - which touts free fall sensors. Dont remember dropping the system, but maybe too many hours operating in a plane? In any event, I went looking for the feature on my m4500 to verify it was working - I have the 64gb SSD boot / 250gb spinning second. The literature promises free fall protection. It doesnt have it. Dell reps tell me there is a sensor on them motherboard - I can see a reference to an ST chipset that appears to be a MEMs accelerometer, and supposedly it connects through the sata interface to the non free fall sensor to park the computer drives.
Oh, ok Dell, and there's no 'g' in gullible.(just look it up)
If you drop the m4300, which is equipped with a free fall sensor for real, maybe 1/2" in the air, you can immediately hear a clunk from 10' away that is the hdd parking itself. Works almost too well - sometimes it will activate while using in a car or plane, but thats ok, doesnt hang the system.
The m4500 does not make * any * head parking noise when moving the system. I went the extra mile, plugged in a thumb drive and moved 16gb worth of video files over to the drive. I then dropped the computer into a pile of high density foam > 12" from a height of 1', 2' , 3' etc. No parking noise, although I will say the drive is quiet, but more importantly, the drive copy progress / indicator did not stop moving. Perhaps a tad unscientific, but then I put my ear to the backside of the computer while the same test was running and shook, still no parking - in fact, you can hear the drive doing its thing.
A dell senior technical supervisor and I are working out my issues; a new computer is coming next week to address the build qual stuff, who knows, I may actually get what I paid for.
There is also * no * documentation - I was sending pictures culled from this forum to tech support to help work through these issues. They say another 2 months before its made available to Dell, including an owners manual and repair manual. I figured the E6510 would be a good resource - nope. Same manual will cover both models.

On the positive side - this computer is damn fast, boots fast, does everything 2.5 - 5 times faster than my maxed m4300 (i7-820 vs. T7700, 8GB PC1333 vs. 4GB of whatever), and it runs cooler in the lap (not cool, just less hot than the m4300) doing simple tasks. Battery life on the m4300 on a good day with all the power saver stuff turned on was 3 - 4 hours with a new battery; on the m4500, closer to 5. And more a treatise on Win 7 than the computer (win 7 64 bit) - not a single piece of software from my XP has any issues on this computer - including some 10+ old circuit sim/ EM sim software.
Case is sturdy enough, trackpad is nice, although negative - that middle button is a pain, keep hitting it thinking I have left mouse clicked - could be bigger. Keyboard backlight is real nice, and the wifi seems to grab weak signals much more readily than my m4300.

Sorry, R&R long enough, but one more note about the e-port+ dock. I am purchasing a WQXGA screen - 2560x1600. Wanted to ensure the DVI connectors are dual link, since there is an amazing lack of documentation. THEY ARE NOT so if you dont want to spend the $$$ for a displayport enabled monitor, which seems to come at a $500 premium, you must purchase a display port to DVI-D/L adaptor. There are several cheap ones but they are *all* DVI-D not DUAL LINK. Confusing? Dell happens to sell an adaptor at $99 which seems reasonable.

 

Great take, thanks for the really informative post. I'd love to hear if anyone else has anything to add about the machine

 

Just got my M4500 laptop yesterday

First impressions:
A lot bigger and heavier than I was expecting, but not excessive
1600x900 screen is fantastic and perfect DPI for general use, no light leakage, great viewing angles and very bright.
Core I7 is super quick as would be expected
Battery power is great but the 9 cell does stick out, on second thoughts i should have gone with the 6 cell and sacrificed the run time.
For me the speakers are a non issue for this type of laptop.
Keyboard is excellent except for the enter key which is a bit hit and miss, the button underneath the key is only attached at the top of the key so if you hit it on the low side it doesnt always work and feedback is a little poor.
3x3 wireless card delivers amazing performance, expecially compared to my samsung NC10 netbook.

A few niggles:
The hard drive (500GB SATA) is excessively loud, can be constantly heard spinning. Whereas the fan never kicks in, if i had a better hard drive or a SSD this laptop would be complete slient.
A pulsing buzzing noise can be heard from the power supply (anyone else have this issue?)
Dell control point software is horrendous and does not appear to do anything useful except cause the mouse movements to be stuttered.

 

Was it really necessary to quote a one-page post in full just to append a one-line answer with zero content? Sheesh...

P.S.: If you want "to hear if anyone else has anything to add about the machine", just read the bloody thread you just posted to. Lots and lots of info in here already.

 

My advice is to keep it installed so that you retain the option to adjust keyboard backlighting and ALS, but to remove the two startup processes so that the software doesn't run in the background. This way you'll only use the on-screen display for screen brightness and speaker volume, which I don't need anyway.

 

First part: I suppose you're right, but as far as the rest, I have read every single page of this thread and am just wanting to know more so I know what to expect. Don't be such a .

 

Who you callin' a .?