Precision M4600 Owners Lounge

Dell has tried to maintain the size of M4600 180W brick almost the same as earlier 130W. Only thing is no rubber tie for cable management annoyed me very much.

 

i have a couple of old, dead dell laptops lying around. I'm planning to open them up to hunt for an appropriate screw.

what is the difference between AHCI and the other options?

cheers

 

Anyone know about this?

 

Sorry, I don't know about the Dells but Thinkpads have a Power Manager option where you can program for automatically switching profiles according to "plugged in" or "battery". I'd imagine Dell would have something similar because it's very useful and handy.

 

It's not possible, because it's entirely pointless.

Every Power Management Profile (in Windows) has two settings: On Battery, and On Power.

You just configure one plan to have different settings when it's on battery and when it's plugged in.

 

I see what you mean, even the advanced options are like that. I guess I will just have to merge two profiles together into a custom one.

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So I mixed max power and max performance into one setting and it seems to work, but when I have that profile chosen, it says "Your current plan might reduce battery life."

Does that mean its destroying the battery somehow?

 

I think when it says "max power" it means the battery will be kept fully charged at all times. Keeping the battery constantly at max power will, according to the manufacturers themselves, shorten battery life. So they advise to allow the battery to "breathe" by using up some of its stored energy, then allowing the battery to re-charge back up to 100%. If the battery is at 100% full charge, then unplug the machine from AC power, and run the machine on battery for some time; even a half hour. Then, the battery can "breathe" and get some fresh juice into its cells. Seems to keep the lithium ions happy.

 

All this nonsense about battery life. Lithium Ion batteries last longest when they are kept between 40-60% of their charge and not used. How the heck you do this and still enjoy your laptop is beyond me.

 

Yeah, it seems like a hassle. I'd rather replace the battery every couple of years rather than consistently keep it half empty.

 

I am planning to get the precision m6600 primarily for programming purposes. However, I wanted to find out what the display quality is like. I just walked into a Best Buy and fell in love with the display on the latest Sony Vaio F Series. The display is simply amazing! But all I could find out about it was that it was a 1920x1080 16.4 inch.

I had recently ordered the Latitude E6520, but promptly returned it the very next day because the display (1920x1080) sucked (compared to the Latitude E4300 I am using currently). Everything was way too small and the colors seemed washed out and seemed like there was a bluish tint. So I decided to try the Precision instead.

The display on the Sony Vaio F (which has a reasonable quad core configuration except that it maxes out at 8GB RAM) is so good that I feel like I'd want to use the laptop just to look at the display! Everything was so crisp, matte, not too bright, no reflection, just right. By contrast, with the Latitude E6520, I got a headache just after using it for 15 mins (to be fair, it was a 15.6 inch, so everything was smaller).

However, I am still interested in getting the Precision (primarily for the much better Dell support, and also the more extensible configuration), but not if the display quality will be more like the Latitude E6520 than the Sony. Wondering if anyone here who has the M6600 has also seen the Sony Vaio F and could give me a fair comparison. Or is there anyway to determine the actual display technologies used so I can know what to expect with the Precision?

Thanks!