Precision M4600 Owners Lounge

Exactly the reason why I went from wanting a m14x to wanting a precision. With similar price, precision packs so much more values and quality. Plus I have heard good things about small business CS.

 

Well been in class since ~5:45pm and Im still at 40% battery life on the m4600 (specs in sig) with wifi, web browsing ~5-8 tabs and coding in bluefish. I must say I am quite impressed thus far with the power and mobility and it seems i get more then enough battery life for my needs as Im 100% sure my battery will last the remainder of my class.

Couldnt be happier with my purchase. Now for an mSata OS drive and some docks and screens...

I considered the m14x since I game here and there and it has a nice quad core option. But I needed the much higher FHD+ resolution. Cant comment on dell small business CS as I havent had to use it ever on any of our desktops or my laptops.

 

Sphinx, I'm running the Dell (samsung) 256 SSD as my D drive (data, user files etc) and a Runcore T50 128 mSata as the OS. Overall I'm really happy with it but for a few points to consider:
1, Posted before that, although mixed opinions, the mSata port is only Sata 3Gb/s so I am not getting the full use from the Sata 6 runcore SSD. The benchmarking on this drive also show this limitation. Still much faster than a regular drive but consider not spending the extra for a Sata 6 card.
2. Occasionally (couple times a day or more) the laptop seems to stick for a minute with the harddrive light on then catches up. I'm still trying to troubleshoot but suspect it is the mSata card based on drive activity showing on the resource manager if I have this open when the problem occurs. Don't know the problem for sure and, if the mSata, may be the card or more generic.
3. Very strange issue with the Bios boot order changing and bumping the mSata down then failing to boot until you go back into the bios to reset. I have disabled all others but the mSata as boot devices. Example -This morning I put the laptop into my home dock and booted up to a failure. Checked the bios and 'USB Storage Device' had been added above the mSata (no USB device connected - only a USB KVM). This is annoying and I'm wondering if the mSata is not always being seen by the system early enough. Occasionally the CD/DVD option will re-establish itself in the boot order and then boot fails. Not sure why these devices are being added and then not sure why, when they fail to be bootable, the system does not roll down to the mSata.

 

Hmm thats not good. I rely on this machine for work, school and personal stuff so i need reliability. Anyone else experiencing similar issues with an msata drive?

As far as speed goes the sata 2 speeds of the msata should still exceed a sata 3 cyclical drive. I was considering an intel, but I hear that they are still fussing with that 8MB bug here and there, and the price for a drive that can handle my OS partition is pretty pricey. Maybe Ill just drop my sata 2 500GB for a sata 3 750GB drive and partition it. Not my ideal situation, but also might be better for battery life.

I guess Ill do some thinking and research.

 

speaking of extra HHD, where would you recommend I get a caddy from?

 

Overall I love this laptop - the performance is superb. I wish I could provide more details on the issues I am having but I have not really had a good chance to try to narrow them down as I, like you, use the laptop constantly for work and home. I'm not in a position to move the OS over to the samsung and remove the mSata for testing purposes (don't have the hours it would take). I do not know how many other's have a similar setup as mine. This may be unique to the runcore or not related at all to the mSata. Overall, I can live with it but would like to be able to figure the cause out. Given more time I may start to see a pattern for each of the issues.

 

I got mine from newmodeus. Second caddy I've purchased from them. The caddy for my M4400 was a PERFECT fit. The caddy for the M4600 sticks out just a teensy bit (1mm or less) and is a slightly different color than the chassis. It works fine though and doesn't really bother me that much. I have a 500gb HD in the caddy and an Intel SSD as the boot drive installed in the chassis.

 

Thanks, I will consider it.

My M4600 is arriving tomorrow, and I already feel that it is old as higher end of GT6xxMs are announced and ivy bridge will be released anytime soon. tragic, tragic~

 

Ivy bridge is really only an improvement if you use their igp. Otherwise the newest sandy bridge is more then enough.

Sent from my PG06100 using Tapatalk

 

Yep, plus if you really want a new nvidia then you can easily pick up a new mxm card and install it yourself. If we get a 660m released in mxm 3a I will be all over it

Edit - oops meant to multi quote pita's comment