Precision M4500 Owner's Lounge

For anyone that uninstalled the Dell Control program, what are you using for the touchpad?

Never mind, it's a different program than what I thought it was.

 

Now that I've installed Fedora 13 on this laptop and have played around with both Fedora and Win7 for a bit, I am surprised to say I don't see the need for Precision ON Flash. If you don't have an SSD I can see the need. I have the 64GB flash minicard with a 500 GB second drive, but Windows C: and Linux / and /usr and swap are on the SSD minicard. I have an extra Windows partition plus /var and /home on the physical hard drive.

This machine boots faster than I've ever seen a machine boot before, and that's with the BIOS set to always do a full boot and counting a five second delay in GRUB. I can boot to either Linux or Windows in well under a minute.

What did I notice for Fedora 13? I have the Intel WiFi, and for me the Intel WiFi works out of the box and the Ethernet NIC doesn't. I can fiddle a bit and get the Ethernet to work. There's some BIOS problem with the M4500 (and some other computers) that causes Linux to not be able to initialize this NIC properly. Some versions of the kernel have workarounds that solve the problem.

Of course, Linux doesn't see all of the features of the touchpad (yet). I don't have any of the advanced security features, so I can't report on those.

So far, so good.

 

Does anyone have any idea how often Dell Outlet for Precision M4500 is updated?

Somone wrote couple of post before that they should have updated it this Tuesday and they did but only with 2 laptops... and in addition quite pricey ( $1300-$1400 ).
I recall that only 2-3 weeks ago there were always 10-30 laptops to choose and now it's either 1 or 0;-(

I don't know if is still use to wait for bigger update or try to find sth esle insted of Precision m4500.

Do you have any clues?

 

Yeah, the ones they had yesterday were not to my liking at all. I'm going to still wait it out, because I believe that someone really good will come soon at a good price range. Just out of curiousity, I looked at other options, but for me, they paled in comparison to the m4500. They may have a better selection come Thursday.

 

I have placed orders on 4 laptops. Two were placed on a Friday. I was tracking them all Thursday and there were new ones popping up in and out. I immediately canceled one and waited on the other. The other one was eventually shown to be "delayed" and the representative I spoke with said that it was sent to another customer. I searched again that Tuesday when I found out and I saw a few more show up...this was when I scored the one I have now. I ordered yet another laptop for my brother on Thursday for $779 (a strip down one but had the FHD panel). What's funny is that on Thursday, I got a call from the same representative saying that the delayed/canceled order could be sent to be if I wanted and they would expedite that day. I declined.

In any event, after 1.5 weeks of hard core searching, 4 orders, 1 canceled by me, 1 canceled by dell and subsequently made available and 2 received by my brother and myself, I have to say that laptops show up on the website all the time. I can't explain if orders get canceled, customers cancel or whatever but I refreshed the site several hundred times over that time and that's what I noticed. You just need to be ready to order.

Bear in mind one thing as well. This thread has a LOT of eyes looking at it now. Only in the last two weeks have discussions of refurbished prices been going at full steam. Not coincidentally, the # of M4500's in the outlet has gone from consistently 3-5 pages to now 1-2.

 

This is a update to my previous post.

the mouse cursor used to freeze randomly and repeatedly. I have re installed the os and all drivers. It worked well for a couple of days.

Initially i thought DCP could be a problem but recently i noticed that pluging in power cord made the touch pad un responsive (only the touch pad. pointing device and other buttons work fine). un plug the power cord and the touch pad starts to work. what could the problem be? could this be a unintended BIOS setting or power setting?

thanks in advance.

------Update-----

If i keep the power cable plugged in and switch off the power; the trackpad is still un-responsive. The moment I unplug it, it starts working.
After browsing the internet, i found a suggestion (http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-111008-can-properly-work-my-laptop-touch-pad-key) where we should press the power button for 30 seconds after removing the battery and power plug for releasing the static current. But even this did not work.

The second suggestion was to replace the power cord and adapter. I am now waiting for it. If there is any other solution, please let me know.

Regards
K09

 

Hi guys,

After much soul searching and forum skimming I've settled on a purchase of the following rig. I wonder if you could confirm that this would be a good set up to use with visual/CAD software: Adobe CS5, Autodesk AutoCAD2011 and Revit 2010.

Also, I am not sure whether to upgrade to the 9 cell battery, could you tell me if it increases the weight beyond that of the 6 cell. Thanks!

Base Precision M4500 : Standard Base
Microsoft Operating System English Genuine Windows® 7 Professional (64Bit OS) Recovery DVD included
Memory 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 Dual Channel (2x4GB)
Video Card 1 GB NVIDIA Quadro FX 1800M (with 1GB dedicated memory) 45W
Hard Drive 500GB (7,200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive
Modem Worldwide Internal 56.6K V.92
Optical Devices 8X DVD+/-RW Drive with Roxio and Power DVD Software Included
Wireless Networking EMEA Intel® Pro Wireless 6200 (802.11 a/g/Draft-n 2x2) Mini Card
Bluetooth Dell™ Wireless 375 Bluetooth
Primary Battery Battery : Primary 6-cell 60W/HR
Processor One Intel® Core™ i7-820QM(1.73GHz,8MB,Quad Core,45W) operates at 1333MHz
Camera Integrated 2.0 Mega Pixel Camera with Microphone
Color Choice White Led Silver LCD Back Cover
LCD 15.6in Full High Definition (1920 x 1080) White Led Antiglare LCD Panel
Power Supply Worldwide 130W AC Adapter with UK/Irish Power Cord

 

I finally got a chance to fully test my system and I stressed it fully with prime95 (small ffts and 8 threads) and furmark (1.82 at default settings in stability test mode). I noticed that the 920xm throttled down using the i7 turbo utility. The temperatures were well within limits (82 degrees on 920xm and 77 degrees on fx 1800m) and nothing else was running except Argus Monitor, i7 turbo, furmark and prime95. I was not touching the computer during the testing when I noticed the multiplier drop to 9 or 10. After a few moments it went back to 15 as expected but then dropped again later and so on. The i7 turbo utility load filter was set to 97% and windows power management was set to high performance. I noticed this started happening about 5 minutes or so into my testing. But how can it be since the core i7 and gpu were still in a safe temperature zone where no throttling should occur. This leads me to believe that the 130 watt adapter is not big enough for my high powered configuration and even hp ships a 150 watt adapter with the 8540w.

If anyone has a similar high powered configuration and you have some free time can you please test? (preferably 920xm and fx 1800m)

 

For me, the base laptop with the 6 cell battery is on the absolute cusp of what I'd like to lug around. Mind you, I've been using primarily 13-14" laptops. In any event, I'm ordering a hard drive caddy to save some weight. The 9 cell pushes the weight from a flat 6 pounds to 7.2 pounds. While the extra life would be fantastic, the extra weight and the hideous looks made it a no-no for me.

 

I'll stick with the 6 cell methinks, thanks for the advice.