So am I crazy to still be interested in an M6400?

I thought that with the beautiful screen, good graphics card and the potential for a really good coupon if I showed enough patience, the M6400 might be the best option, but I just keep hearing one problem after the next. For those with experience, would it be stupid to buy the M6400 for the following applications?

Visual Studio 05/08
SQL Server 05/08
Photoshop & Illustrator (CS3, maybe upgrade to CS4 soon)
Adobe Flash & Flex
Adobe Lightroom
Expression Studio
Blender

World of Warcraft
Farcry 3

I would hate to spend a lot of money on a laptop just to be disappointed in it. It just seemed like that of the W700 / 8730w / M6400 choice, the Dell had the best chance of getting great specs, a great display, and a reasonable (sub $3k) price (assuming I can find one of those elusive coupons). It also helps that I'm typing this on a 5 year old Inspiron 8600 that has been pretty solid.

TIA

 

I am only using a few of the applications you have mentioned, but maybe your are interested in my feedback:
My DELL M6400 has become my primary workstation for software development and server administration. I have put my entire web and ASP productivity tools in 2 virtual machines, one configured as a webserver and the other as database server with SQL Server 2005. Booting up BOTH of those VMs simultaneously takes 1/3 of the time a single VM took on my old notebook (and I'm not using SSD, but the standard 320 GB harddisk, encrypted with Truecrypt).

World of Warcraft runs with 30+ frames with all details sent to maximum (resolution 1440 * 900, for 3D-games I prefer the slightly "blurry" image of an interpolated resolution).

Overall, a very good, reliable and lightning fast notebook. The only issues are of minor nature - sound is sometimes stuttering on startup and the graphics card driver has crashed twice in the last 6 weeks. But I think there are no issues that can't be cured with an update.

My configuration is Quad Core, 8 GB, 2*320 harddisk, 1920*1200, FX 2700, Vista 64.

 

Well, there a many postings about problems with the M6400. But have a look at the people that are present in that postings, for quite a lot of threads you can find the same "faces" over and over. Just take a search for my username

Go and order the M6400. It is and will be (at least for some time) the best notebook available.

My config is X9100, FX3700M, 4GB, 1920x1200 RGB LED


btw, if you want to play Farcry 3 you really need to wait for the M6500.

 

If the underlying hardware is good then we can reasonably hope that Dell will fix the driver / software /BIOS issues. They have prudently put much commonality between the new Latitudes and Precisions so that the development effort can be shared.

John

 

"btw, if you want to play Farcry 3 you really need to wait for the M6500"

Seriously? Dang... I had just about gotten to the point where the only desktop in the house was for the kids. I can't stand to be tethered to a desk unless it's absolutely critical.

 

No, it was a joke. You wrote Farcry 3 and we're assuming you meant Fallout 3 or Far Cry 2. Far Cry 3 doesn't have a Release-date yet, that's why he wrote you'll need a M6500

Fallout 3 or Far Cry 2 runs perfekt with highest settings on my M6400 (T9400 2,53GHz, 8GB, FX 3700M).

 

No, I don't think you're crazy. Despite my complaints, which are really all about software issues, I think the M6400 offers the most powerful hardware, in a well-built package, and at a competitive price.

Well, there's lots of problems reported from CS4 users, but those are not specific to the M6400, but relate to 64bit Vista. You may want to wait for an update from Adobe on this one.

It is possible to get the machine solid software-wise as well, but that really requires a wipe and re-install of Vista. Once you have done that, the only issue is the slightly flaky video driver. Again, that's a software issue which, more likely than not, all laptops with the same graphics card will have. Just yell at NVidia for that one

8600? I still have one of these in my basement! Great laptop for the time, but coming from this machine to an M6400, the latter will blow you away...

 

I appreciate reading these comments. My M6400 will be here on the 16th and I can hardly wait.

 

Visual Studio and SQL Server run great. They are my primary development environment (along with an old copy of Borland C for low level development without all the fluff and overhead and I still try to produce as much ANSI C code as possible out of old habits).

World of Warcraft runs great. Everything to max (except shadows to min and foilage and distance to low) at 1920x1200, 180.48 drivers. Quadro 3700 is a beast, and is more powerful than a 9800M GTX.

 

I use VS 2005 & 2008 + SQL Server - and it is great.

I have also restored a backup of my previous XP workstation to a virtual machine on the M6400 - so I can also run VS6.0 and other legacy applications. The virtual XP machine is faster than my previous Pentium 5 Extreme Edition incarnation of the same disk image. I would recommend it.

Spec: Quad core, 8GB, 2*250GB disk (RAID 0) [well, 1*250GB + 1*320GB, but that is another story], FX2700.

I love the M6400. It keeps my knees warm when undocked too. And I've managed to get my WWLAN card from my D820 work too.

Hey, I wonder if the blue-tooth module would work...