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yet another brief i8600c review

post #1 of 37
9/24/04 at 5:00am
Thread Starter 
well, i FINALLY received my i8600c yesterday, so i thought that i'd post up my first impressions...
my specs are:
1.7MHz Dothan, WSXGA+
1gig RAM (Dell had a double memory offer)
7200 RPM 60gig HDD
NEC 8x DVD+RW
ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro Turbo 128mb
Intel 802.11b wireless
packaging was nothing exceptional, but then again i wasn't really concentrating on that!
thankfully, everything i ordered was included, and nothing was damaged.
No scratches or any damage to the notebook itself, other than a slightly greasy fingerprint on the screen!
Build quality seems decent to me, I honestly expected worse from some of the reviews i've read. No creaking, etc. anywhere.
The first thing i noticed after firing it up was how FAST the damn thing is! Probably thanks to the 7200rpm hard drive and the 1gig of RAM... it was a nice change from my old desktop (a P3!).
Proceeded to do a fresh install of XP Home and SP2, and I also reinstalled the relevant drivers. I used Omega's latest drivers (based on Catalyst 4.9) for the video card.
The whole process was a lot faster than I anticipated, which was a pleasant surprise. No hitches at all, other than the fact that I had a boot menu listing two installations of XP to choose from, even after formatting the drive. Odd... could be because i chose to do a quick format rather than a full one.
The screen is GORGEOUS. Crisp, clear, no dead pixels or noticable light leakage.
On the whole the machine is quiet, the fan only seems to kick in intemittently, and that's about the only time i can actually hear the machine.
Haven't had a chance to run any benchmarks or games, or connect to a wireless network yet.
The only issue i have at the moment seems to be the keyboard... there IS a very noticable amount of flex. might decide to pop it open and do the fix at some point soon.
On the whole? I love it
in appreciation to members of this forum, and to you for reading through to the end of this, 6 gmail invites are up for grabs, first come, first serve. PM me for invites.
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post #2 of 37
9/26/04 at 6:33pm
I just ordered a new i8600c, and I'm really excited to get it. I had heard about the keyboard flex issue, but I'm not terribly concerned about that. What I've also heard, however, is that the build quality is a little shoddy, and that they used cheap plastic which creaks when opening the laptop.

Is this true from what you've seen so far?

Here are the specs of the one I ordered:
2ghz Dothan
15.4" WSXGA+
512 MB PC2700 (Plan to upgrade later, but not with expensive pre-installed RAM from Dell)
128 MB Mobility Radeon 9600 PRO Turbo
60 GB 7200 RPM Hard Drive
24X CR-RW/DVD Combo drive
Intel PRO Wireless 2200 802.11g 54mbps
Venice Blue Quicksnap cover :P
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post #3 of 37
9/26/04 at 6:47pm
I have had my 8600 for about 2 weeks now and it's great!! No dead pixels (as far as i can see), to me, no light leakage either and if there is it is'nt noticeable at all, the key board seems sturdy to me as well and there is definetly no creeks or anything while opening and closing it. Feels solid to me!
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post #4 of 37
9/26/04 at 9:42pm
What do you all mean by keyboard flex?
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post #5 of 37
9/26/04 at 9:59pm
Sometimes the keyboard flexes a little as you press down on each key as if you were trying to get it to stick to the underside of the keyboard. I don't have any. Some do. Others don't.
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post #6 of 37
9/26/04 at 11:26pm
What is the difference between and i8600 and i8600c? This is the first time I've seen a C tacked onto the name. Ordered a i8600 somewhat hastily the other day for a business laptop since I don't feel like lugging my i9100 around all the time.

-Myhre
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post #7 of 37
9/27/04 at 3:15am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Myhre
What is the difference between and i8600 and i8600c? This is the first time I've seen a C tacked onto the name. Ordered a i8600 somewhat hastily the other day for a business laptop since I don't feel like lugging my i9100 around all the time.

-Myhre
"C" stands for Centrino
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post #8 of 37
9/27/04 at 4:02am
Thread Starter 
The build quality seems decent to me. It's obviously not in the same league as a Thinkpad or a Powerbook, but it doesn't seem like it's going to fall apart anytime soon.
As for the keyboard flex, it does get a little irritating sometimes, but it's a known issue with Dell keyboards in certain regions, apparently. There is a way to fix it (check the thread on modding, which i might decide to do if it bothers me too much.
I'm not too sure if the "C" stands for Centrino... from what I understand the second-generation i8600 is the "C" version. It has Dothan (as opposed to the earlier Banias) processors and has lost some of the legacy ports (serial, parallel, infrared). It also does not support SPDIF.
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post #9 of 37
9/27/04 at 11:06am
"C" shouldn't stand for "Centrino" as there are definitely users who don't have the Centrino packaging.

C is the revised 8600 -- without a trackstick and accompanying buttons and the legacy ports. Not much else is different.
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post #10 of 37
9/27/04 at 11:17am
Any idea why they removed the trackstick? Just to cut production or did they give a user specific reason?
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post #11 of 37
9/27/04 at 11:27am
Most people don't use or like a track stick.
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post #12 of 37
9/27/04 at 12:57pm
I'm pretty sure, as someone else mentioned, that "c" refers to the most recent case style. That is, they got rid of the legacy ports. (No serial, parallel or track stick.) I read on here that one of the reasons they got rid of it is because Intel is encouraging companies to move away from the older ports. However, I'm only passing on information I read from on here.

As much as I miss it, as we do use parallel port dongles at work for some software, it's not something I feel that I need. (Plus, it gives me a great excuse to not do work at home. I sort of wish, though, that they'd give us a few more USB ports to compensate. Ah well.
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post #13 of 37
9/27/04 at 10:49pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by surayne
...No hitches at all, other than the fact that I had a boot menu listing two installations of XP to choose from, even after formatting the drive. Odd... could be because i chose to do a quick format rather than a full one...
I think you hit the nail on the head as far as the dual listings. Here's a thread that may help you out with that one...

http://notebookforums.com/showthread...ight=dual+boot
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post #14 of 37
9/28/04 at 7:39am
Thread Starter 

more opinions, after a few days...

have had the chance to play around a little more...

I actually resolved the issue with the two boot options immediately after it came up, edited the boot.ini file with some guidance from the forums. works just fine now

flashed the NEC 6100 DVD writer to the 6500, worked like a charm. No more region issues! I'm also running a little app called DVD Region Killer. DVDs look great on the wide screen, I use Cyberlink PowerDVD as my player. Windows Media Player 10 somehow doesn't seem to be able to use the widescreen mode, i get black bars at the sides AND top and bottom
sound quality and volume is fine, comparable to most other laptops i've used. perhaps a little louder, but there is some distortion at the higher ends. wish the SPDIF port was still accessible via the s-video
installed Far Cry and it runs amazingly well... it's nice that far cry has some native widescreen resolutions so that there's no stretching or distortion. i'm running it at 1200x800 (or so) with no AA, with no noticable lag. haven't bothered to check the framerates as the game looks great and is very playable.
the GPU does tend to get hot though, it climbed to almost 100 degrees Celsius while Far Cry was running. I tend to take breaks every hour or so, just to let things cool off a little.
Am very tempted to do the heat mod, but i'm still a little apprehensive about opening this baby up... i've had lots of PCs and have done major surgery on them, but this is my first lappy! Ah well... let the initial love fade
if i hadn't mentioned it before, the screen is GORGEOUS... viewing angles are very impressive, recently i've been using a fujitsu-siemens amilio and an NEC laptop and the Dell just blows them out of the water...
in conclusion? i'm perfectly happy with this buy
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post #15 of 37
9/28/04 at 2:18pm
Can you point me in the direction to flash the NEC 6100? I can't seem to find it at the moment.
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post #16 of 37
9/28/04 at 11:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by paradigm_1
"C" stands for Centrino
The C doesn't relate to the Centrino at all. It refers to the hardware revision.

The "updated" version ditches the Accupoint and Legacy ports (Serial, Parallel, IrDA). Bit of an annoyance, but it doesn't hamper the machines performance or anything. I rarely use them but they would have been "nice to have".
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post #17 of 37
9/30/04 at 7:45am
Thread Starter 
the tool to flash the NEC DVD drive can be found here:
http://tdb.rpc1.org/#ND6500A

Please be sure to read all documents, disclaimers, etc. before doing this... it does have some risks.
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post #18 of 37
9/30/04 at 1:15pm
Thanks, surayne!
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post #19 of 37
9/30/04 at 1:27pm
I got my 8600 yesterday. I really like it so far. It definately kills my i9100 on battery life. I havn't run any sisoft or anything else on it yet, but I can't wait to test out the M.
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post #20 of 37
10/2/04 at 1:12am
I got my I8600C today, and it works wonderfully except for the LCD. I had heard rumors about ghosting and light leakage at the bottom, and I happened to fall victim to that. There's also a spot in the upper quarter of the LCD that's dimmer than the rest of the screen. I called Dell, and spoke to a representative in India, who, despite what I've heard about Dell technical support, was quite helpful. He walked me through a number of steps to verify it was the LCD and not the OS/driver that was causing the problem, and set me up with a service number so I could send the laptop in and have the LCD replaced.

I'm more than a little annoyed about the inferior quality of the LCD, but I'm please they're going to replace it and pay for shipping. Hopefully they're prompt about returning it to me. Any experiences with repairs?
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