InfoWorld's Review of Precision M6400

As promised, my formal review of the Precision M6400 has now been published to the InfoWorld Test Center web site. Here's the URL:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/...tations_1.html

Note: The review is a head-to-head comparison between the M6400 and the new HP EliteBook 8730w Mobile Workstation. So if you're interested in either unit, this review might be helpful. Enjoy!

RCK

JimBob,

Yeah, it took a while to get this one out the door. First, we had to swap-out the M6400 because the pre-production unit they sent us was flaky as hell.It had the LED display and the slot-load drive, both of which were buggy (DVD drive would hang the system from time to time while the LED display would get confused about when to turn-on the back lighting after a resume). The replacement had the normal LG D4C01 matte display and the tray-load DVD-ROM (no R/W!), but at least it was stable. Typing from that unit as we speak. :-)

Then there was the HP. Initially, they shipped it to us with only 4GB. Worse still, the unit had some bizarre pre-production/prototype quad-core chip (2.4GHz????). It took them a month to realize what they had done (we kept telling them that none of the normal utilities could recognize the CPU), and by then I was already overseas. Took 3 weeks to ship the unit to Houston, swap it out for a production-level config, and ship it back to me (I'm on Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean, and customs here is hell to deal with).

So, basically, it's a miracle the review ever got finished. As for the display comparison, I've seen both types on the Dell - and the HP has the "DreamColor" - and, frankly, I can't tell the difference during day-to-day use. The LED units certainly look "brighter" - the colors sort of "jump out at you." However, unless you're really into digital image/video editing and need that full-range Adobe color support, it might not be worth the extra $$$. Also, that edge-to-edge glass business on the M6400 is great until you start to smudge-it-up. In fact, the whole unit is rather smudge prone, something I mentioned in the review (keyboard and palm rest turn into an oil slick rather quickly during heavy use).

One thing I can say for certain: This thing is FAST! In fact, it's the fastest client system of any type I've every used. The 8GB is heaven for a hard core VMware user like me (heavy development/testing of large n-tier web apps), and the RAID 0 makes snapshotting and copying VM images around a breeze. Easily twice as fast as a single-disk rig, and with the M6400, I don't have to dump my optical drive to reap the benefit. Nice.

Bottom Line: Dell will have to pry this eval unit from my cold, dead hands... :-)

RCK

Skillz,

I wouldn't say that. The HP has some nice characteristics, including a lighter carrying weight and *much* better ergonomics. It's also VPro-compliant, which is a big deal for large scale IT manageability. Finally, those DDR-3 DIMMs in the M6400 are *expensive* and also difficult to come by in the 4GB form factor.

There's no question the M6400 is a brute of a machine, and my personal choice since I'm a big fan of the RAID. However, I wouldn't write-off the HP out of hand. It's still a very nice machine and will definitely appeal to the HP loyalists out there.

RCK