I'm not too keen on the m6500 Covet's red look. THe problem I have with it is, while it's an INCREDIBLY fast computer, (Reportedly, the FX3800m's clocks are 625 / 1600 / 1000 or something of that sort, saw on Notebookcheck.com, but they're not terribly reliable) I find the screaming red background to be un-necessary. I know the covet has some pre-installed features like the full WUXGA RGBLED screen, the 3800m, etc., but why paint the back red in a business atmosphere? Granted, a lot of modern engineering firms favor a little style in their workstations, but from my observations in business, dress code for humans, and to some extent computers, loosens in direct proportion to the strength of the economy. Personally, i like plain black; it looks the part in business (you can go from a CES show to a corporate meeting without incurring any ire), it's simple, and thinkpads and sagers look really nice in black.
Second, the wattage concerns me. I understand that nVidia is stuck at the G92 core process so they have to eke out whatever they can, but at 100w TDP for the laptop, and up to 55w or more TDP if one has a 920xm, that doesn't leave a great deal of power for other internals in the computer, even with the offered 240w PSU. Dell, in their halo model of precisions is moving dangerously close not to Alienware in terms of intended goal, but to the Sager NP9280, which has an i7 as well, but the full-fat desktop i7 with triple channel DDR3 and a proper RAID 5 kit (ie: you don't have to sacrifice the optical drive to get raid 5 in the NP9280). Back to wattage, having a model that is so power-hungry (in no small part due to the 100w GPU) and running on what is quickly becoming superceded by GDDR5 is not a quality DELL wants to have in its line of computers if it wishes to maintain its "green status". Granted, the wattage problem does lie with nVidia for being incapable of making a performance-and-ISV-ready yield of GDDR5 chips @ 256-bit bandwidth, but Dell should also be more conducive to letting the 3700m carry over if need be. It's essentially as fast as the 280m, and uses 25w less than the 3800m.
As for raw power (16GB DDR3, possible RAID 5 capabilities), Dell amazingly has held its own here. I was skeptical at first when the m6400 came out with 16GB DDR3 because the NP9280 had 12GB DDR3, but in the "we need gobs of RAM department", they seem to have succeeded quite nicely. However they are playing with fire in the "we can do RAID 5!" department. The key difference is that with the M6500, it has 2 bays, plus the option of sacrificing the Optical drive for a 3rd drive, making a dvd-rom'less computer with 3 hard drives. An oversized netbook in that regard. The NP9280 makes itself a proper raid 5, with the CD-Rom Drive intact, and this means not only do you have fault tolerance and striping, but that you can, without disrupting the RAID, burn any file you wish onto a CD or DVD or BluRay and provide it to a friend or colleague. The CPU though, doesn't concern me as much. Even though a NP9280 can have up to an i7-975, or the xeon w5590 (check eurocom's page, they will do it), the fact it uses a desktop-class CPU sort of makes CPU comparing apples to oranges, but strictly in terms of number-crunching, because of i7-9xx's features, gives it a huge lead over i7-x20-ym.
I want to see this computer succeed, but i also think that a large part of its power problems lie in the GPU. Blame nVidia for falling asleep for too long behind the wheel and waiting too long to start testing and developing GDDR5.
