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

Ive had a few little problems. Some have still yet to be worked out. ANY laptop has these problems when it first comes out.
We were early buyers and therefore guinea pigs of a sort.

That said, I have 3 words to describe this laptop.


BEST LAPTOP EVER!

 

You'll want to wipe the factory image and reinstall from the OS disk yourself, most likely... There are many stories of botched factory images, and my system began operating correctly only after reinstalling Vista myself. (Before that it hard-locked the system if I ran AfterEffects.)

You might be disappointed with battery life. Go check if the HP or the Lenovo systems get better life than the M6400. On high performance profile, I get only an hour and 30 minutes. On power saving profile, I get one hour and 50 minutes. On my last laptop, an HP 8710w, I got 3.5 hours on power saver and 2.5 on high performance, using only the built-in battery.

Spec comparison, M6400 vs. 8710w:
QX9300 vs T9600 (45 vs 35 watts)
Quadro 3700 vs. 3600 (50 vs. 45 watts)
8 gigs RAM, 4 sticks vs. 2 sticks (don't know what that difference is)
17 inches on both
LED vs. CCFL backlight (LED should give power savings right?)

 

The Quadro FX 3700M has a TDP of 75W !
The manual says about the screens:

So the screen + the grafics could be a difference of 40W!

 

Battery life - I did some research on the 8730w, W700, and a Sager NP579x maybe a month back and it seemed like the battery life was very similar on all of them based on reviews (when specc'ed simliar), comming in at around 2 to 2 1/2 hours for light usage. The only W700 on my sheet that was specced simliar to your M6400 reported 2 1/3hrs on light use, 1hr on heavy use.

I'm thinking I'm going to go a little lower spec than you, more like a Core 2 Duo T9600 with 4GB ram and Vista32. I'm not ready to move up to a 64 bit OS yet. I wonder how much that might help the battery?

In all honesty, any of the three (8730w, W700, M6400) would be nice if specced with a good display. It just seems like I can get the best deal on the Dell if I can hold out for a good coupon. I would love to find a display comparison between those three.

 

I personally would hold out for the 6400...FWIW...I'm looking for a coupon myself for a 30 day rebate myself...post up if you see one!