Should i buy a precision m70?

I just purchased two M70s at work with 2.2Ghz 2GB RAM and the 16x10 screen. In general Dell laptops are ok. Not the best and not the worst.

The 2Ghz Pentium M will be roughly as fast as a 3Ghz P4. Its really a choice between a 3-4Hr battery life or a 1.5 hour battery life. A P4 laptop requires massive fan noise to keep cool too. The video card is a 6800go with OpenGL certified drivers. It benches about 33% faster than an X700 or go6600 but slower than a go6800 or go7800 in the XPS line. You can overclock the Quadro 1400 to make it close to the go6800 in terms of performance (4000K 3Dmark05?).

Laptop sound is terrible. period. If you need decent, hw accelerated sound get a PCMCIA sound card.

My greatest gripe about the M70 is the lack of firewire and built in memory card readers. I can live with that.

I am a video editor and dont do any extensive sound work.
I bought the m70/Pm 1.86/2gb ram to use with the Avid express pro and it is on the approved list from Avid. It runs fine.
You can check the benchmarks from Toms hardware to compare processors, but I think for a pure desktop replacement the p4 with hyperthreading would be superior. I am mobile and battery use could be an issue so the M is better for me, I dumped my desktop which was a P4 hyperthreaded rig and it was definitely more powerful.
Best of luck.

You want to stay away from ANY notebook that uses pentium4's, those dam processors are power hungry heat hogs and not as efficient as the Pentium M processors, to add insult to injury to the pentium 4, the Pentium M processors perform better as shown in benchmarks from web review sites.
Trust me YOU DO NOT WANT A LAPTOP WITH A NON MOBILE PENTIUM 4 PROCESSOR. THe pentium M's are cooler, lower power requirements, better on battery and perform better so its a no brainer.

Should you buy an M70? Well that depends, what are you using it for? Its a professional laptop workstation and as such carries a much higher price than an Inspiron 9300 and/or similar price to the XPS M170, both of these systems have larger widscreens and more powerful video cards and though not built as solid as the m70 they are built very well with mag alloy in the chassis and lcd lid unlike the m70 which is all mag alloy, having said this the 9399 and xps models are built very very well, no flexing anywhere and very solid feel, better than hp's sony's compaq's and toshibas build quality.
The M70 will include legacy ports like parallel and serial, the inspiron and xps will have more usb ports and dvi port.
Of the three the 9300 runs the coolest, they all get about the same battery life and the m70 runs the warmest though I dont think much warmer than an xps m170.
All three models are great systems that can handle guitar playing, the m70 is geared more toward 3d apps like maya, cad and cam but as all these models have nvidia cards, such open gl apps will work great on any of them, you will find a big difference in prices between the three models.

Actually, a 2.0 gig pentium M runs as fast as a 3.2 ghz to 3.4 ghz Pentium 4 and does it for a third of the wattage and heat dissipation.

the sager 5720 will be a lot better for maya and gaming if you dont mind the decreased battery life.

build quality of sager from what ive heard is OK. probably better than an average dell, but not as good as a latitude/precision.

For reference M70 vs P4 (650)

First, I have the M70 and find it to have the best balance of performance vs ergonomics. The P4 (650 - 64 bit version) is indeed faster at multi-threaded applications, but the PM 770 is very fast (and in some cases, faster) than the power hungry 650. For most people (at least those wanting reasonable battery life and portability), the PM notebooks will be the first choice. For those needed a 17" screen and needed either 64 bit or multi-threaded capability, there are a number of good P4 notebooks out there. Figure on 2-4 hours with a PM and 1-1.5 hours with a P4 for battery life.
For your application, the M70 should work well, and will also provide a good general purpose computing platform. Only for hard core gaming will this computer be lacking, and even then, not by much. The 1920x 1200 screen is super (would suggest loading all the updates and setting the fonts to 150%). The video performance is excellent, processor temperature low enough to keep the fans off most of the time, and the weight is just (barely) acceptable. The big plus is the solid construction (much like the Thinkpads of old), both track point and touch pad (track point is not the superior IBM model, but still works very well, especially for rapid movements), excellent port placement (and if you use an older GPS, the serial port really comes in handly for downloading maps and routes), and the wireless performance far exceeds Toshibas, Sonys, and HPs that I have tried. Downside? Well, the lack of 1394 could be a problem and the lack of an SD or CF card reader could affect those with digital cameras.
Check the outlet store and you might be able to save a thousand dollars
or so.

The M70 will be better and faster for MAYA than either the 9300 or xps

really? what video card does the sager 5720 offer?
The best video cards for such 3d apps as I recall are nvidia cards as they excel in open gl applications which maya is yes?

I seriously doubt that since all three have nvidia cards and the 6800 g0, ultra are more powerful than the quadro card in the m70.

Man,you really like spouting crap about things that you obviously have no knowledge of.
Either that or you deliberately try to wind people up to liven up your pretty boring life,I mean 9 post a day,do you work for a living or use your notebook for anything besides sitting on this forum being a dick with an opinion on anything and everything known to man.

Everybody knows that you think the 9300 is the best value and its not very big etc etc,you go on and on about it,and sales of it and the fact it has its own forum is testament to that

I won't even bother going into technical details of why the M70 will be faster and better than the other two as I've given you a link in another post once before,which you obviously didn't read to try and enlighten your "they all have nvidia cards so they are really really good,and the 6800 scores more in 3dmark so it must be better for DCC" mentality.

3dmark means F""" All when it comes to 3D cad or content creation apps like maya,if you really want to quantify the dribble that comes out in some of your posts,download specviewperf 8.0.1 and show me with screenshots how your 9300 outperforms the M70 in 3D content creation software.
The quadro has many published spec benchmarks on the web so I won't bother doing it again.

I would be interested in XPS2 scores as well if anybody feels the urge to try it out on their gaming rig.

download at http://www.spec.org/gpc/opc.static/prev_benchmarks.html

Don't say you havn't got time either,with the amount of time you spend on notebookforums it won't matter much having it down loading in the backgorund.

Front up or shut up.

NICE!!!

WHAT A JERK

Here in the states the M70 is rather expensive, this guy isnt doing any engineering projects so why should he spend the extra money on an M70???
If youre interested in benchmarks, there are any number of review sites like tom's hardware, anandtech, xibit labs, the tech report, amdmb just to name a few, you can google a search by any processor you are interested in seeing benchmarks for if you dont like those sights.
All of these systems are good systems, the 9300, xps gen2, xps m170, Precision M70, the latter doesnt offer what most home users want, more usb ports, sd card reader, firewire and dvi as well as a vga port. I looked at all of these models before making my purchase.


Now be a good boy and bloviate elsewhere.

You don't get away that easy by trying to change the subject.
The original poster didn't say he was a home user,he said he was going to use Maya,photoshop and record music.
My reply was "the M70 will be better and faster for Maya" then you come along with your superior knowledge of 3D apps and reply "I seriously doubt that blah blah blah",now your trying to change the subject and go on about value for home users and what sites I can visit for benchmarks.
I don't need to see benchmarks to know that what I've got works better for MCAD than a gaming card equipped laptop because I have tried them for myself,the benchmarks comment and link in my post was purely for YOU to show me and the rest of the forum readers that your comments actually had some validity,which you are now trying to skirt around by not even mentioning it.

I might be a jerk,and I may have bloviated in this and my last post,but hey,until you actually quantify your "I doubt that" post[of which the specview benchmark would be the easiest means]your posts about the M70 mean NOTHING,for one thing you don't own one and you obviously don't use a 3D cad or DCC program professionally or we wouldn't be having this discussion,so maybe its you who should be a good boy and keep your mouth shut until you know what your talking about.

I see you've posted in another thread[surprise,surprise]that the geforce 6800 is more powerfull than the quadro.
This is a thread started by someone looking to softmod his 6800 into a quadro [I wonder why]
I'm not going to continue debating this with someone who has limited intelligence,and no experience with the subject.

I will just keep replying to your posts with [PROVE IT]

Hmm, here's a link to a thread similar to this one, seems there are plenty of people using 3d programs on the 9300 and xps lappies with no problems.

ENJOY.........YOU JACKASS

http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=111116

Not only are you not very bright,but you don't read things properly either.
I never said any 3D programs wouldn't work with a 9300 or XPS,I said the M70 will be faster and better,which you still havent proved NOT to be the case.
The thread you linked to proves nothing apart from the fact that there are people who use gaming pc's for 3D apps and even then most of them in this thread appear to be home users using mostly 2d apps like photoshop,autocad ,llustrator and the like,you act like you've proved some sort of point with your comments "YEAH THAT" and "ENJOY ....YOU JACKASS but all your doing is making yourself look a bigger dickhead than you already have by not doing the one thing that can prove your "I seriously doubt that since all three have nvidia cards and the 6800 g0, ultra are more powerful than the quadro card in the m70" comments.

So why don't stop beating around the bush,run specviewperf on your 9300 and show me,the rest of the forum readers,the MCAD and DCC software developers,and the largest computer manufacturer in the world,that good ol Cutters knows better than everybody whats best.

I dont recall gerry saying it couldnt be done. He simply said that the M70 would be better than the 9300 and the XPS for running Maya, a comment which you slated.

Unfortunately for you, he is correct. You are confusing what are generally capable laptops like the 9300 and XPS with a more specialist product like the M70. The M70 doesnt win on 3dmark scores, but then its not meant to.

I think it might be best just to admit your mistake and move on. But then I'm just an unbiased party to this discussion, what would I know.

S.

Edit: Gerry just beat me to the reply

Perhaps an odd request, but does anyone have both the 9300 and the M70 and can comment on the differences? Seems we've already identified the variations between the Quadro 1400go and the Nvidia 6800go... but what other differences are there?

I can think of one... size. Which could be a pro or con. The 9300 has a larger screen than the M70... but some people might like the smaller feel of the M70.

Also, the M70 doesn't have firewire.

What about general sturdiness??

No one is questioning that the m70 is more of a specialist product for 3d applications, the question here is does the original thread poster require a specialist m70 with a specialist high price to meet his needs if an m170, xps gen2 or 9300 couldnt do the job for him quite well enough and for a lower price than the M70.