Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge *Part 2*

Thank you both

Veni

 

Thanks for the link.
Question: I see they have Dell Precision M6400 Center Control Power Button Cover with Biometric Fingerprint:

http://www.parts-people.com/index.php?action=item&id=5723

If I buy this, can I just put it in and the biometric fingerprint will just work?

 

My fans arrived in the post today and I mounted them on the lid of an old storage box. Just waiting on the power supply and a few leads and I'll be able to see if it helps to keep the laptop cool. The fans were about £5 each on ebay and the power supply about £8. I hope it works!

If anyone was thinking of buying some fans, i found that by checking the CFM (Cubic Feet per Meter) rating of the fans = how much air they push you have an idea of how good it will be. These ones are 65 CFM compared with the 20-40 CFM you seem to get with the laptop coolers these days. Still 65 CFM seems a little low for me, it chilled my hand but the breeze isnt that strong. There are similar ones on ebay which are 130 CFM which would be perfect I think but i'll see how these do.

Veni

 

If you're asking me, I really have no idea, but if you email the Parts People you stand a good chance of getting a satisfactory answer. I've emailed them twice with random questions and both times they got back to me quickly, like a day or two. I've sent questions to other companies regarding their products, especially software companies, that make that an excellent record.
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Precision Covet | QX9300 | 4GB 1066 | 64GB Samsung SLC SSD & 320GB Seagate | XP Pro 32bit & Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

 

ils,

Make sure the button cover comes with a biometric cable. There is an extra cable that needs to be connected for the fingerprint sensor to work properly.

 

Newbie here, dumb question, installing a intel x25 m SSD in bay 2, is there a sata cable to connect to the drive and where do I find it or do I need to buy one? I put the SSD in the carrier and put it in the tray, connector lines up but doesn't extend out far enough to contact what lloks like the connector on the board. Thank you in advance - NEVER MIND - my fault, found the adapter a while later in the foam, grey on grey, eyesight must be getting bad......

 

I will post the source and the price on Sunday if all goes well. So far so good; I ran Prime95 for about a half hour earlier tonight while doing real work in parallel, one of my friends mixed a song and although I haven't done ANY 3D or video NLE work on it, I'm fairly confident the processor is solid. Today was the first day I used the notebook for any real work; I am weaning myself off my Supermicro-based workstation which is running OpenSUSE 11.2.

So far, I am loving the notebook. One thing surprised me; the trackpointer (oops, sorry about the trademark infringement Lenovo ) is actually a primary mouse button as well! I found that out by chance. Another thing which surprised me was a feature I had long ago read about but had forgotten; the touch pad is also a jogging dial, and when it turned on I was wondering what was up with the touchpad (I was editing some embroidery designs) until I looked down at the touchpad, then I was like "oh, yeah, I'd forgotten about that!"

Upgrading the notebook was a breeze. I had it opened up, processor replaced and reassembled inside an hour (and I used OCZ heat sink compound rather than the compound included with the CPU). The second hard drive caddy and interposer were included and right now I have 2x640GB drives in it. Because I did not want every Linux kernel to break networking I also ordered an Intel 5300 card (I want to spend my time actually using the system not patching the kernel and compiling modules), so until the card comes in I am just using Windows 7. Also, runtime on battery is much longer than I expected; I had the notebook running most of the day on a single charge. I was not actively using it as I was away from my desk so it was mostly idle but it is still really impressive. I have been using it all evening and right now am in the third hour on battery, and it is saying there is 1:13 left on battery. I know better than to constantly deep cycle Li-ion batteries but am stressing everything I can on it for the first few days.

Shoulda, coulda, woulda. I should have bought this notebook a year ago! It is still a great buy now; With the Core 2 Quad (Q9100) it benches faster than a 720QM, which is what I was considering purchasing. The other option I was considering was the W700ds, but this notebook seemed like a better choice for my needs. There is no regret with this purchase!

 

Thank you both.

 

Free instant Multitouch upgrade for the M6400!?...

http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/showthread.php?p=44505922#post44505922

This driver upgrade worked for me on an m6400 running Win-7 x64. It adds two finger scrolling, three finger stab to launch, and three finger swipe to page up/down mulitouch options. It *removes* support for the jog dial. It does *not* add pinch to zoom.

Note that although this is a download from HP it seems that it is essentially the latest version of the generic OEM driver straight from Synaptics. I believe the touchpad is the same on all m6400's - and m6500's too judging by the fact I could also use the M6500's newer driver on my m6400.

It does delete the jog dial functionality. However for me, after the initial "woh, cool" I simply never used its functionality, worse than that, it can be mildly annoying and confusing when turned on by accident - as happens from time to time. So seems a slight plus overall that it's removed

This driver also seems to remember the "off" setting for touch to tap which all versions of the Dell specific drivers seem to forget from time to time...

Stick control is also there - which allows customization of all three buttons so maybe they can actually serve a useful function such as prev / play/pause / next track for example Also allows key sequences to be played back, etc.

Getting to quite like two finger scrolling....

Cheers, Paul.