Precision M4600 Owners Lounge

Anile, I am about to receive a set up almost identical to yours (i.e., I am putting in 16 GB of RAM and an SSD). So, on the windows side, am I correct in understanding that you cannot back up the Windows 7 Ultimate on the provided hard drive to an image file using either Windows Backup or Norton Ghost and just restore it to the SSD? What exact steps did you use where this failed? Is the Windows installed on the included (Dell provided) hard drive already activated? Even if it is, I think MS allows you to activate up to five times on the same host, before you have to call them and beg for additional (legitimate) activations. Certainly changing hard drives does not violate the Windows license as far as I know. I mean what would you (or Dell for that matter) do if your hard drive broke, for example. You should be able to restore a backup of the OS and included apps to a new hard drive. I can't imagine that this is not possible.

If the hard drive image cannot be transferred, I regret having paid the $50 for the upgrade to Windows Ultimate and that basically means I have to do a completely fresh install on the SSD which will suck big time, in terms of time wasted. I was hoping to just create a backup of the included hard drive partition(s) and restore to the SSD and be done with it. Hopefully someone has gone through this process successfuly.

 

Can anyone post the specific make and model of the 128GB mSATA mini-SSD that Dell ships? If you also could post a picture of it, that would be very cool.

I'm referring to this option from the on-line store:

128GB Solid State Minicard Drive

Thanks Much!

 

its a samsung which is not available to the public. there are already so many posts about this

 

I got sucked in by DELL when I bought my XPS16 just over 12mths ago now and paid the extra coin for the WIN7-Ultimate up-grade. Thinking as you do that it should be the same as a retail O/S license. Never again will I do that when I order a DELL or any system for that matter.

From memory I tried everything. I used the WIN7 Back-Up utility, some other cloning program and also the DELL program that is shipped with the system that basically claims to do the exact same thing. I kept getting boot file errors and other such problems that persisted for over 6 hours.

After that I had enough and just drove down to my local I.T. store and bought a copy of WIN7 for around $150. It worked straight away! In my job I cannot afford to waste 6+ hrs on nothing and I could not justify devoting anymore time to something like that.

I am not saying that it is impossible to do but that has certainly been my experience and corresponds to the advise that I have been given. Maybe your experience might be different.

 

Pure speculation on my part, but it's clear now that the Thinkpad people did a lot of homework to get the max battery time out of their latest iterations of laptops. They advertise it, and have backed it up. They are using the best power management programming I've seen or heard about on any laptops. The nVidias support Optimus, yes, but it goes beyond that. Sorry I cannot give more specifics, but one example I know is that the T-pad optical drives are now powered "OFF" until called into action. Don't know if Dell does that on the Precisions.

 

Yes, you're correct, sorry, after reading through the 600 posts on this forum several times, I lost track of my notes...

It's the Samsung PM800 128GB mSATA

It appears from all the data sheets, and a couple of forum comments, that these will also work, and they seem to be fairly readily available for purchase on-line:

MyDigitalSSD 128GB mSATA - MDMS-50128
Renice 120GB mSATA - RN-K3M-S5120
There's also the Intel 310, but it's only 80GB

I just ordered the last MyDigitalSSD that mydigitaldiscount.com had in stock. So, I'm committed down the path of ordering a minimal M4600 from Dell, and adding my own mSATA SSD, swapping the HDD for a 750GB Seagate, and upgrading the SDRAM to 16GB. I estimate I'll save about $1,000, even considering I need to buy a copy of Win 7 Ultimate off eBay. I'll let y'all know how it goes.

Many thanks for everyone's help!!!

 

Curious why you are going with the Seagate over the WD Black, which seems to have better performance??? And price.

 

I wonder if a reinstall or windows is possible following the instructions given by Dell on their website.
Windows 7 Manual Reinstall | Dell Australia

I plan to reinstall windows on an Intel 510 SSD as soon as my m4600 arrives in the next week or so. If it doesn't work I might risk a call to Dell support...

 

you might want to call up dell and ask for a discount with the upgrades. when i bought my previous precision, the M4400, after all the discounts they gave me it was only marginally more expensive than buying the upgrades myself. plus its covered by the dell warranty so it didnt make sense for me not to just go with it.

 

The quoted on-line price for the full config from Dell is $3,711.

My total, with the quoted on-line price for the minimal config, plus the non-Dell parts, plus a copy of Win 7 Ultimate, is $2,682.

That's $1,029 difference, or 27% less. Serious coin.

I've had several people tell me they've gotten about 10-12% discount after repeated calls and haggling. That's not enough. What % discount did they give you?

As far as warranty, the only part I think I'd be concerned about is the hard drive, and it's only $80.