Why I love and hate my Dell Precision

To be honest, some of the recent threads about what might or might not be in the next Dell Precision worry me.

I have a Dell M6600 and love it totally. It has been to so many countries you cannot imagine. Up and down mountains, through uncountable security checks, and tested my patience on numerous occasions.

But I love it.

I bought the M6600 through a misadventure which started thousands of miles away. And frankly, I am glad I did.

So why do I love my Dell Precision M6600? I love it because it is customisable, I can easily change the SSD, RAM, even the screen and pretty much everything else. It puts up with everything I throw at it, and even though it is not supposed to have Windows 10 that seems to do the job.

Sure it is heavy, but frankly I love that as I know how powerful it is. Plus, it puts people of stealing it as they think it is old!

So to summarise, I love my M6600 because it is built like a tank, and is still today faster than many new computers.

Why do you love your Dell Precision?

 

Best performance you can get in a "portable" form factor, along with really great build quality and cooling, easy to maintain/tweak on top of that. Business support is really good as well and that's what tipped me over to Dell over HP, which was the only company offering a comparable workstation at the time.

I think I can work on the M6700 for at least two more years before I'll need to replace it. When the time comes, I will re-evaluate options from Dell, HP, and Lenovo.

As for the new Precision models, I'm sort of sad that the optical drive is gone but I don't use it that much, I can get by on an external. I'm not too worried about the new generation machines, the worst thing about it to me is some of the decisions that they made with the keyboard — losing the dedicated "Home" and "End" keys is pretty lousy. I hope they pay attention to feedback and adjust things in the next model.

 

I love my old dell m6500 because when it has had hardware issues as all machines do... keyboard replaced, quadro card failing, touchpad, mobo died... dell pro support has come out NBD or as soon as parts could be shipped... and after mobo died, replaced entire macchine with a more recent release of m6500 that had USB 3.0 (my first run early edition m6500 only had USB 2.0 on the daughter board).

so support has been key. I know with all those above issues, those failures sound kinda bad or unreliable. But in the past couple years, no issues at all other than occaisional driver issue with network card causing blue screens. But I have had the workstation over 5+ yrs, pushed it hard everyday. We have three m6500 actually, mine is an orange covet which looks pretty sweet still. Biggest praise to Dell is because of the Support Support Support.

Of course having enough RAM for multiple running VMs; Multiple drive bays (although only sata II). I'm still rocking the original sata II samsung 810 SSDs that shipped with the machine in 2010. Max capacity was only 256GB per SSD. SSDs were still pretty new back then... TRIM was the big talk back then and how to enable it using AHCI mode in BIOS. I reinstalled windows about 5 times before I got that right. Performance has never been an issue. It overheated a bit when the quadro was dying, but otherwise it ran at normal temps. I'm still very happy with it but about time to replace it.

 

Why I love Precisions: Mostly performance, screen size/quality and upgradability, and to a lesser extent, price. I've bought three in a row: M6300, M6400 and M6600. I like the large screen size, graphics performance, and the fact that I can upgrade to even more powerful hardware. On the price issue, Precisions usually take a sharp dip after 2 or 3 years on the market, which is when I usually pick one up. Great value for money, especially compared to equivalent gaming laptops.

Why I hate Precisions: These things are godawful heavy. On those rare days that my back is acting up, it can be painful to carry one around. And while they are upgradeable, getting to the CPU and GPU usually requires a full teardown.

 

Yes, I too completely disassembled my m6500 just to access the CPU to change thermal paste. I was quite proud of that accomplishment. I took ALOT of photos so I could reassemble it. I'm hoping I never have to go through all of that tear down again on my next workstation, but it wasn't really hard to do, just scary.

 

I wonder if it could realistically be expected to get to the CPU or GPU without taking apart much of the computer…

 

A few years back I disassembled my M6400 and upgraded the CPU and GPU. Much more difficult than a desktop, but it was a great decision economically - saved me the price of a new laptop. I'll probably need to do something similar with my M6600 soon - it's dual-core CPU isn't the best for running multiple VMs, or the latest games. A lot of the newer games seem to require quad core CPUs.

 

I replaced the CPU heatsink in my M6700, which required pretty much as much work as replacing the CPU. A lot more screws than a desktop, but as far as laptops go, I thought it was pretty reasonable. Really just had to remove the keyboard (5 screws) and the palmrest (13-14 screws, all on the bottom?) and then everything needed to replace the CPU and GPU was accessible. I'd love to upgrade my GPU but can't justify the expense at this point.

It's looking like replaceable mobile CPUs are going away with Skylake so that's one bit of flexibility that won't be around anymore...

 

Simple, it was the best tool and toy at that time.
There is 0 alternative out there that offer the same combination of performance, expandablity, upgradability ,and form factor.

The 8760w/8770w is close, but lacks the great cooling.

 

I was on the phone with my Dell rep at work about 3 weeks ago, and I mentioned to him that I was looking for another Windows machine for home use. I've been a ThinkPad man for years, but wanted to jump back in and give Dell a try again (my last owned Dell was a Latitude E4200). He offered me a killer deal on an M3800; I got it last week and haven't put it down since. I absolutely love this machine - keyboard is perfect, the palmrest is nice and comfortable, and the screen is REALLY good (got the 1080p touchscreen). So far, I've got nothing to dislike about this machine - still putting it through the ropes some, but its all good for right now