Dell Precision M6300 (M90 Successor) Revealed! - Page 3

Now that's interesting for those with an m1710 or m90 and wondering whether an upgrade to DX10 might be possible in the future. There'd need to be a more powerful DX10 part (specifically, more powerful than 7 series) than there is at present though. Ginga

http://www.dailytech.com/Dell+Launch...rticle8664.htm


launch went public, no led backlight yet, 1600quadro

Well, until I read this thread I had no idea it was so "new". I just ordered one two days ago (in "Pre-Production" with an estimated ship of 10/2).

I'm about to ditch my Inspiron 9200 -- it's gone thru a number of hard drives, but I really wish the M6300 had dual drives. I looked at the Vostro 1700 which does, but it had a few shortcomings and drawbacks -- the biggest being Vista .

I hope I'm not jumping the gun now, with no one else here who has one!!!

Sandy

make sure to take it apart, and take some up close pics of the mobo, and video card for us

Won't be possible. While the cards may be physically identical and even electronically. The BIOS of the 1710/M90 won't probably recognize those cards and there'll be no way to simply flash an M6300 BIOS to your M90 or 1710 since the M6300 uses different hardware. Its not like flashing a 9400/1705 to an M1710 or M90 BIOS. Unless you can program your own BIOS for the system you won't be upgrading.

You can still upgrade in a way. Replace the E1705 motherboard with the M6300 motherboard, buy a new CPU and a FX 3600 and you're ready to go

I think you also have to replace (atleast) bottom housing due to port connector.

Argh! While I (usually) love Dell's hardware dependability and their support for hardware issues (don't need, and can't stand their tech support for software issues), the sales end is for the birds.

I placed my original order online on 9/10. I think the wireless card I chose caused the ship date to be 10/2. Looking at the order this morning, I noticed that when I was "building" the laptop online, I accidentally chose the DVD player and not the burner.

When I called to ask to have it corrected, I was told I had to wait for my sales rep to come in this evening. I told them I didn't have a sales rep, that I ordered it myself, and they reminded me that I called yesterday. I did, BUT I called asking questions about the Vostro 1700 (it has dual drives, but not other features I wanted), and asked if there were any other 17" notebooks offering dual drives. I mentioned my order, and that if there were others, I'd consider canceling this order and buying that one.

Somehow he "tagged" my existing order to his name in order to get the commission. They wanted me to wait til tonight for him to come in to correct my order. Maybe I'm just cranky at the moment, but it really pi$$ed me off. It took four calls, two and a half hours, and one manager to get them to cancel my order, and reorder it now with the right DVD drive (and not wait for this sales rep to come). However, at the end of the call, I was told that any further questions needed to be directed to him.

Then after all that, the new estimated ship date is 10/18! How the heck does changing the DVD drive (which does not show as out of stock) four days later, add 16 days to the processing time?!

Sandy

(Am I still the only one who has ordered the M6300?)

Dang man, I would be pissed off too!

I feel your pain, Sandra... I don't quite get the benefit of ordering online rather than talking to a rep... I don't think you save a significant amount of money doing it completely 'self serve' through the Website... did you find it to be less costly than ordering through a sales rep? I also think that Dell's human sales agents can override some of the otherwise hard-wired configuration options (like getting a Blu-Ray DVD burner in a model that doesn't list it on the Website, lowering the memory below the 'recommended' amount) etc... I am usually a do-it-meself-er, but when it comes to something configurable and as expensive as a notebook, I want a human on the line to take "ownership" of the transaction, rather than "pwnership" which it sounds like what happened to you. My condolences.

I guess I suffer from "input overload" on any given day -- husband, two teens and a 21-year-old, 2 dogs and four parrots...bill collectors, eh, life. So the less I have to talk to people, and the more I can do online (ANY shopping possible -- I hate malls and recently discovered grocery shopping at ShopRite.com!) the better.

As for cost, it was penny for penny.



For this particular laptop, the only thing I would have changed from anything I could configure "myself" would have been dual hard drives...but no such luck!

...still no one else tho...?

Sandy

I am considering the M6300 as a replacement for my 2 year old XPS Gen2... but Dell hasn't made it available via dell.ca (Canada) so all I can do so far is fawn over it on dell.com (and, of course dell.no, or dell.co.uk, or dell.fr, or dell.it...) I like the similarity to the XPS form factor, and really like that it has a docking station port... cheezed off that it doesn't have a numeric keypad... I admit that I am also waiting to see some of the performance benchmarks... replacing my $2800 (in 2005) notebook with another $2800 unit to only see, possibly 15-20% performance increase isn't great value in my book.

It doesn't have good GPU yet though. I think it's worth wait a bit more.

I've done some thinking regarding the possible upgrade of the E1705 to the M6300-motherboard, GPU and CPU.

What is the chance that the current E1705-harddrive, DVD-RW and WUXGA screen will fit with the M6300 motherboard?

M6300 Order

Just to let you know Sandra I too have ordered the M6300. My original shipment date was 9/27 but it shipped out today so hopefully yours will be sooner as well.

I received my M6300 late last week. I've been swamped with work but initial impressions are very, very good. I managed to get a quick run through on 3DMark06. Standard drivers.

3DMark 06 Score 4637
CPU Score 1927

Screen looks great, machine is very sturdy. Fingerprint reader works perfectly so far.

If you have any specific questions let me know.

Good to know you're happy with the machine, KCTraveller.

If you want a laugh, go to dell.ca and configure a Precision 6300. The upgrade from T7250 CPU (2GHz) to T7700 (2.4GHz) is $900! I don't even think the CPU costs half that at retail! Something is amiss....

Vista Retail fails to install on M6300

I received one with Vista Buisness, and attempted to clean install my full retail Vista Ultimate. The install fails when Vista begins to start the first time. A blue screen will flash, then the computer will reboot. This will continue to cycle untill the install is stopped. The Dell Vista Buisness disk clean installs fine. I suspect the Dell disk has critical drivers, and the retail Vista disk programming is to stupid to require the user provide driver sources that will work prior to install. A clean install of either Vista Ultimate 32bit or 64bit fails, but an upgrade to Vista Ultimate 32bit works.

Does anyone know how to get around the driver issue during install and load the drivers after the first Vista startup? I think it is possible to interrupt install and load some drivers, but I don't know the procedure, and haven't been successful on finding it on a microsoft support site. If I can't load 64 bit Vista Ultimate, I'll have to return the machine. Safe mode doesn't work during the install failure.

I think Dell and Microsoft have a responsibility to ensure a full retail version of Vista should install on a new Windows computer product if that product is advertised as Vista compatible, 'not' Dell Vista proprietary operating system disk compatible only!

Since Dell customer service/sales want to charge me $300 for a Dell Vista Ultimate disk, and don't acknowledge my purchasing assumptions, I'm probably going to return the product, and reasses my product and vendor choice.

I've used the M6300 for about a week now, and it is very quiet, and energy efficient. The TPM chip, Wave security software, and finger print reader work well. Cyberlink DVD player software works well too. I was going to get some CAD and computer algebra software, but everything is on hold now. The 1900 x 1200 screen is not the glossy type. I like the strong, heat dissipating, magnesium frames of the dell laptops, and the lid on this laptop is sturdy with a nice brushed aluminum surface. A brushed aluminum palm pad deck like the XPS 1330 would have been very appealing, but budgets are budgets.

Unfortunately, Dell's customer service does not seem capable of providing a satisfactory Vista x64 bit solution for my situation. I seem to have better communication results with Dell tech support when I call them versus emailing. Emailing has, 75% of the time, been problematic seemingly due a language barrier. The support that responds to my emails, responds as if they only read one sentence out of 10.

Hmmmmm. This could be interesting. I ordered mine with Windows XP Pro, with every intention of reformatting and installing my non-Dell version of WinXP Pro.

Maybe I'll try this with a spare drive (that I guess I need to buy!) first. Does anyone know if the hard drive caddy is the same as the one for the Inspiron 9200?

Thanks,
Sandy

Did you get XP or Vista?

Sandy