Precision M4600 Owners Lounge

As a new M4600 owner I'd say having a numeric keypad takes some getting used to. Optimus seems to give 5-10 hours battery life under light usage. The Lenovo is lighter. FHD non-IPS panel in M4600 is pretty good, color space almost exact match to sRGB so no huge color surprises using color-unaware apps. I like the cooling in the Dell but have no experience with W520 so I cannot compare. I paid $1175 for my M4600 on the auction site, brand new from dell with 3 years warranty (SSD purchased separately). Lenovo can run on smaller power adapter. W520 keyboard is fantastic but not backlit. $2000 seems steep unless it includes IPS screen, but then you get no Optimus, more heat, and thus more fan noise. Tradeoffs, tradeoffs.

 

How is Dell service for these premium laptops?

Price is not so much of a concern as is the warranty, customer service and reliability, but thank you for the suggestion.

I want to note that this computer will be used for university, business and personal use, I am not a gamer.

 

Overall WEI 6.4 (SATA II SSD ~150MB/s)
AERO 7.1
Gaming 7.1
CPU 7.6
RAM 7.8

The MyDigitalSSD mSATA SSD tends to freeze unexpectedly when doing anything but sitting idle. Until Dell can work out the SSD caching driver/firmware dilemma either use a full SSD drive or supplement with RAM cache.

 

As compared to Consumer Grade Laptops, the service, reliability and warranty is outstanding, however but buy the extra 24/7 Pro and Accidental Warranties for the time you expect to keep the unit.

I differ with some about the CPU, get the faster i7 quad with the most cache (i7-2860Q), but "not" the Extreme. I mirror the suggestions of updating memory and drive yourself but would add, do not mess with the mSATA. The bay used is SATA II speed only, and with the time and cost of setting up with an HDD, you can just use a single 512+GB SATA III SSD (in normal drive bay) for around the same price and be done with it. Quadro 2000M GPU with Optimus is better for Professional and Engineering applications, and saves battery if you do not get the ISP monitor. The FirePro reportedly games better, but does not revert to internal graphics during normal use to save battery. The back-lit keyboard is outstanding and layout is similar to that used with most desktops. Per my Son, his battery is good for 5+ hrs during normal actual use, less with graphics intense apps. That was a nice surprise.

These are my opinions as an owner, but there is no question, this is an Excellent Machine.

 

Other users reported that mSATA is SATA III. is there big performance penalty when using mSATA II instead of SATAIII?

 

http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8142/~/difference-between-sata-ii-vs.-sata-iii. The read is Dell's SSD Mini-Card is an OEM Samsung 810 mSATA2 @ 3G speed. Prior to purchase I was also told by reps it was 3G not 6G speed, the card and the WWAN bay connection/interface. If I was misinformed, please excuse me. I optimized my mSATA and it boots in <30 secs, so better than HDD. My point was, with the cost of a factory mini card and HDD, plus the extra hassle of dealing with multiple drives, it is better to go straight for a 512GB SATA3 SSD. That is a correction I will be making soon. Upgrading to Dell's mSATA + 750GB HDD as I did cost apx $440. For that you can order with stock HDD, and you have saved enough money to replace with a Crucial M4 512GB SSD, though I would suggest spending extra for the Samsung 830 512GB SSD. This is the single best improvement you can make, and will be the norm before you know it. The decision is yours, this is just my opinion. Best wishes.

 

My Mushkin 120GB mSATA cost $145 at Newegg. Performs at SATA II speeds, runs cool. I didn't get the Intel caching to work so I migrated my boot partition from HDD to SSD (backed up to server and restored to SSD).

Now my data all sits on the HDD (mostly VMs and very large drum scans of images). Running VMs off an SSD would have been ideal otherwise performance is quite decent.

Re faster CPU - sure, faster is better, and a larger CPU cache is better. I was intent on getting a 2860QM until I compared benchmarks. My conclusion was that for $200 I would get maybe 3-4% performance boost at full load (and less or none at medium loads), so I spent that money on an SSD instead.

 

Well you were smart going for the SSD over the CPU upgrade

 

Can someone please confirm that you can upgrade to a quad core from a dual core CPU? Did anyone go that route? Also, is Dell using the same CPU heatsink for both dual and quad core processors?

 

I can confirm that you can upgrade the CPU, I've bought an M4600 with an i5-2520. Now I'm using a i7-2720QM, with 24GB of RAM. 2x 8GB 1600MHz & 2x4GB 1333MHz. Chipset currently running the RAMs at 1333MHz. The copper heat sink contact to the CPU was big enough for the i7, but I got no other heatsink to compare.