Dell M6400 vs. 17" MBP - opinions wanted

[Don Libby]

While the weight is truly a factor look at what you get - larger screen, more RAM, dual disk drives to name a few.

The true weight is in the electronic box that plugs in the wall size similar to larger PDA and weights about the same. I have heard Dell came out with a smaller lighter weight box but haven't taken the time to research.

Getting a proper case can be a PIA as you need to find one that will fit the the laptop and beast called the black box (I'm having a mental block as to the correct name). I found the Tenba Large Messenger Bag works very well. I keep the shoulder sling attached for long walks from the lobby to hotel room.

You might also want to visit here for additional real life experiences with the 6400; you'll find some interesting view, thoughts and experiences here.

There isn't much more I can add here other than to say again I've got one and like it.

 

[Georg Baumann]

I am also using two Intel M 80gb SSD drives. In this case you have to say goodbye to your optical drive which I just added a nice fast external. Just for a FYI MBP 15 inch 2.93 setup with 8gb of ram and the two SSD drives I can process a full 16 bit P30+ file as a 186 mg Tif in about 15 seconds.

:bugeyes: this ain't a Laptop this is Max Planck institute in a suitcase!:thumbup:

 

[Mark Gowin]

A 15" screen with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 will make text small and difficult to read at full screen resolution. The high resolution is nice for photos, but not text. I had a Toshiba laptop a few years ago that had a 15" high resolution screen and found that it was PITA due to the small text. It was especially frustrating because I intentionally got that laptop for the high resolution screen thinking it would be great for photos. I didn't even think about usability for day-to-day tasks such as using the web, a word processor, or spreadsheet. Although it is possible to increase font size in Windows, that approach didn't work very well for me because it was still necessary to increase the view from 100% to 125% or 150% in Word or Excel for example. I ended up using the computer mainly with the video card set to a lower resolution to get a comfortable text size, but the screen didn't really look good at the lower resolution.

I recommend you go to a computer store and look at a 15" laptop with 1920 x 1200 resolution to see if you could live with it.

Mark

 

[Don Libby]

A 15" screen with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 will make text small and difficult to read at full screen resolution. The high resolution is nice for photos, but not text. I had a Toshiba laptop a few years ago that had a 15" high resolution screen and found that it was PITA due to the small text. It was especially frustrating because I intentionally got that laptop for the high resolution screen thinking it would be great for photos. I didn't even think about usability for day-to-day tasks such as using the web, a word processor, or spreadsheet. Although it is possible to increase font size in Windows, that approach didn't work very well for me because it was still necessary to increase the view from 100% to 125% or 150% in Word or Excel for example. I ended up using the computer mainly with the video card set to a lower resolution to get a comfortable text size, but the screen didn't really look good at the lower resolution.

I recommend you go to a computer store and look at a 15" laptop with 1920 x 1200 resolution to see if you could live with it.

Mark

Very good points Mark. I've used 13" and 15" laptops prior to this and in each one I had the same problems - not with a 17".

Don

 

[dfarkas]

Okay, just pulled the trigger on my M6400.

Quad core 2.53Ghz
8GB RAM (upgradeable to 16GB)
FX 3700M w/ 1GB VRAM
RGB LED 100% AdobeRGB LCD (anti-glare) 1920x1200

Came with a single 128GB SSD, but I am going to put in 2x Samsung 256GB SSDs in RAID 0 and steal the 128GB drive for my smaller travel laptop. Overkill perhaps, but I really wanted the speed, size and ruggedness of a 500GB SSD RAID setup. :thumbs:

I should have it in hand by the end of the week.


David