[User Review] Dell Precision M4600 15.6" Mobile Workstation

When your M4600 arrive, please tell us if you experience http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...sion/595496-m4600-ips-screen-corner-tint.html

As to battery life, I cannot tell, because I am almost constantly plugged in.

 

I get with the same config as yours (except the msata ssd) on a 9 cell battery around 3 hours of runtime...

 

I brought up the screen tint issue with my sales rep as well as the links to the complaints that have been posted here. The response from their tec. folks was that they expext about a 1-2% failure rate on these screens but that there was no known issue. I was assured that if there was an issue they would address it immediatly and take whatever action I though was necessary.

Well..we shall see. Will keep you posted.

A

 

Huh, that's weird...
I considered calling up my dell rep too and this response definitely is a turnoff.

Many of us with the tint issue have had multiple replacements and it seems as if there's no real cure so far...

 

Thanks very much for your reply. What Jutti says is true, I had my display exchanged, but the problem prevails. I am waiting for info from other M4600 (and also M6600) users to decide what move to do next.
EDIT: I don't think sales representatives are the right people to turn to. After all they are payed for selling stuff, not for making it work. So in worst case they will say anything just to make you happy and to get their "cut".

 

Well my 4600 arrived yesterday and I've got about 8 hours on it so far. Has the IPS screen and you can see the rest of the specs on my 11/15 posting. Again, the sales help was excellent. She got in touch with me last week to tell me that the unit was 'on the shuttle' and that it would arrive early. It did...two days early. No screen issues at all. In fact, so far the screen is brilliant even without calibration, right out of the box. Calibration will follow though once I have it all set up and that should take a couple of weeks as I transfer data and phase in other software. Weighs in at 7lbs, 2oz which is 10 oz over my original goal but if I can find an air bay and take the optical bay out that should drop it a little more. Fit and finish very similar to my E6400. Keyboard seems ever so slightly softer than on the E6400 but still quite fine. Fairly simple and straight forward case. Not elegant but fully acceptable for a business work station. Haven't docked it yet or tried multiple monitors. Wonder how the 180 watt brick will work with the Dell pro dock as that came with a 90 or 120 watt power supply. The mSATA SSD is a Samsung and that seems to be near or at the top of the line for this type of SSD. Only running on 4 GB of RAM but have another 8 coming next week.

So, bottom line(s). So far have absolutely none of the issues described in these threads. No issues with the ISP screen as hardware and no issues with any software or web graphics. Runs well on AO7. Very nice machine but need to see how far I can go with the 6 cell battery but don't want to do that testing until I have all 12 GB of RAM installed. Really nice to have USB 3 onboard.

Andrew

 

Nice! Can you post some benchmarks for the mSATA SSD? I have the Intel 310, and the numbers are roughly what I have seen on my other SSD (Intel G2).

Also, what is your battery life? I stupidly bought the AMD Firepro video adapter even though cost was no object for me. I just was too lazy to click the NVIDIA option. Now my battery life sucks, around 4 hours.

 

I think you can find out all you need about the Samsung mSata here

Samsung PM800 128GB mSATA SSD Review - Samsung Quietly Releases another Top Tier SSD - The SSD Review

 

This is great news - I will pressure Dell until they resolve the issue. Just to double check - have you made your screen fully white (I do it by creating 1920x1080 picture in MS Paint and pressing F11 to enter fullscreen mode)? The issue is most visible in white and light grey.

I kinda wonder, why not all of the USBs are 3.0 (since it is downward compatible).

 

Hi guyz , first of all great review ...would love to see more icture of the design ....

i'm on the process to get a new beast to replace my hp 8540w and with the mbp 17 and the hp 8560w , the dell 4600 is a serious to not say the first option i'm considering ....

first question : build quality versus hp ?
design : does it look as ugly as it looks on pictures ? lol

is it better to get the amd or the nvidia card for occasional gaming (COH) while the main interest i need is great cpu (i'm going for the i7 2760QM)?

is it difficlut to find and buy mini ssd ? are they as quik as regular (at least my intel ...) ?

Noisy ? battery (quadro 1000 versus amd ?)

Oh yes i wanted to go with the ips screen but i'm afraid to get issues , how is the regular screen ? is it good also or really weak compared to the ips ..?

Thks any inputs from people that own or have own any of those options is welcome