Precision M4500 Owner's Lounge

I'm on page 42 of (so far) 65 on this thread. I'm working my way through, but so far I haven't seen anyone ask these questions:

1) For those doing a full re-install of W7, what media are you using to do this? My previous two Dell laptops (D820 and C620 (or C630, I don't remember exactly)) I was able to buy with media, but it looks like almost no models are offered with anything but rescue media now. Which for the business part of the web site is deplorable. I see you can buy "rescue" media for $3. What exactly is on this rescue media?

I *always* do a full reinstall of the OS on any laptop I buy partly to get rid of crapware and partly to get things configured exactly how I want them.

2) Has anyone tried the M4500 with Fedora 13 Linux?

3) I haven't seen much out there that uses USB3, and nothing I care about, for sure. However, I expect to be using this laptop for many years, three or four at a minimum. Should I worry about the lack of USB3? So far it doesn't seem like anyone in this thread is very worried about this.

4) Both E6510 and M4500 are 1GB networking, correct? I've seen some ambiguous information about the E6510 suggesting it might be 10GB, which doesn't seem right.

5) If I'm not doing CAD or high-end gaming, is it worth paying $265 to go from the Quattro FX 880M to the Quattro FX 1800M? The E6510's NVS 3100M seems like it might be a bit underpowered, which has me looking at the M4500. I expect more and more software to make use of CUDA over the next few years, so video power is a strong consideration but I don't want to pay hundreds for something I won't really use. Other than software development, I do basic simple (not pro-level) video and photo editing, and I am making the guess that video encoding will be more and more offloaded to the video card over the next few years. Am I overly optimistic here?

I started out looking at the Latitude E6510 as the *only* current Latitude it seems with 15.6" screen and 1050 or more vertical pixels. It looks like WSXGA+ resolution is dead, so full HD seems to be the only replacement with sufficient vertical resolution. Then I figured out that the M4500 seems to be the same as the E6510 but with a more powerful video card and a different look to the case; posts in this thread seem to confirm this.

Thanks for any feedback.

 

Or just download Clonezilla and do the same for free. Acronis, in my experience, has ZERO customer support, so use the $34 for something else.

 

there's a software for adjust the speed of the main fan ?

 

It's interesting to me to see how other people are getting their systems configured. You can say it's not interesting to YOU, but you cannot accurately say it's not interesting to ANYbody.

I am surprised that so few people seem to be buying this system with the i5. My research seems to show that unless you buy an extreme edition, the i7 will consume far more battery life and generate more heat than you gain in CPU power.

 

I'll drop a link to the NBR M4500 review into this thread since it is now part of the background reading.

John

 

The notebook should come with the OS disc.The drivers are available as a downloaded package from dell's support site

Nope, but will be putting Ubuntu on mine in the next couple of weeks, don't know how I'll get on with the dell wifi card [which is not as good as intel btw] but that's really the only area I am concerned about

It's not a big deal for me at the moment, but it would have been nice to have it for USB 3.0 hard drive enclosures in the future

10GB is news to me, I thought it was the same 1GB as they've been for years.

For your use, I would personally buy the Latitude if it's considerably cheaper than the Precision where you live, my motto is buy what you need now, not what you might need in the future, or what you like more of course

Yes WSXGA is dead unfortunately, when picking a vertical resolution, remember the screen is a half inch shorter as well, for myself [wsxga is also my preference] I thought 1080 on a shorter screen may be too similar to WUXGA for me, so I went with 1600x900 which is ok, considering there's not much choice in the matter anymore, I don't like the panel colour quality at all though.
I have an i5-540m, I would have got something even slower if I was able to, it runs hotter than c2d x9100 and is slightly slower, is far, far hotter than a P8600 and the performance difference is no where near as noticable as the extra heat...i-hype imo, I like C2d more, but then I don't spend hours with my cpu taxed to the max, plus I use the notebook on my legs 90% of the time.

 

That's because this is an "owner's" lounge, so almost everyone here has already made the decision that it's not important enough for them!

I, on the other hand, am not an owner but will be purchasing a system in a few months. If there is still no USB3 in the M4500 by then, then it will likely be another system that I purchase.

 

Little FYI... If you order Windows 7 with XP mode installed and only a 64gb SSD drive, they wont sell it to you. Requires a minimum of 128gb. The configurator allows for this to happen of course. It's delayed my order since I placed the order my account rep went out of town July 1st, so I'm basically ordering today, the 6th.

 

Thanks for the response.

Hmm, when I look at the order page, all OS options say "no media." Also, under "System Recovery Options" you can select a $3 "Recovery Media for Genuine Windows® 7 Professional,64bit,Multiple Language" but this doesn't sound like a standard OS disk. That's why I'm confused.

Are you saying that the recovery disk is a bootable disk that allows you to install Windows on a totally reformatted laptop?

Good point. The eSATA connector covers that ground for me.

Like I said, the info I saw was ambiguous. It wasn't on Dell's website but on some review, and it didn't seem right. Everywhere else says 1GB.

Price difference does not seem that big to me. And yeah I've been thinking about the consequence of going from [email protected]" (128dpi) to [email protected]" (141dpi) ... 1/2" shorter and 30 more pixels. If it were worse I'd be forced to go to a 17" laptop, which begins to defeat the purpose of a laptop (e.g., portability).

By far the most taxing use of my laptop is when I transcode video from AVCHD to other formats. This is an occasional thing, but it runs far, far slower than real time. I'll take any improvement I can get. Perhaps I should use my desktop for this, but it's more convenient to use my laptop.

My current laptop is a Latitude D820 with a Core Duo (I missed Core 2 Duo by two months or less) T2500. I figure going from Core Duo to i5 should be best bang-for-the-buck increase in CPU when balancing battery life (not as critical for me) and heat output.

What's funny is that my C630 battery (now seven years old) still works OK while my D820 battery totally failed -- won't hold a charge -- after a little over three years. Heat?

 

Looking at the US configuration site, certainly looks to me like you need to spend $3 to get the OS disc, the way I read it, is, it doesn't come with the OS disc by default.
Mine came with W7 and XP OS discs by default, but then we pay nearly twice as much for the notebook in the asia pacific region.
Yes, battery wear seems to be more commonly mentioned these days, perhaps it's because people use their notebooks on battery a lot more due to the pretty decent battery run time compared to 5+ years ago, I don't really know.