Dell M6500: A Precision Strike on Bling
by Jarred Walton on March 9, 2010 3:00 AM ESTDesign: Understated and Attractive
Some women have natural beauty and don't need to put a lot of effort into their hair, makeup, and clothing. They can put on an understated outfit and still turn heads. Others need some good lighting and photoshopping skills to reach the level of magazine covers. We'd place the M6500 firmly into the former category, and when we unpacked it our first thought was, "Wow… why can't more desktop replacements look this nice?" There are no real extra lights or chrome to liven things up, just clean lines and an excellent industrial design aesthetic. The flashiest part of the M6500 is the backlit keyboard, but it's a truly useful feature rather than just unnecessary flare. If you walk into a meeting carrying the M6500, it will likely go unnoticed, but anyone that gives it a closer look is sure to be impressed with the design and construction.
Part of what we like about the M6500 is the flat design; there's no sloping keyboard or chassis here. Many notebooks with a high-end CPU and GPU will have a thicker back to accommodate larger cooling configurations. Dell has put some real effort into keeping the chassis as slim as possible. Make no mistake, it's still a 17" chassis, but compared to many other such notebooks the M6500 looks and feels a bit smaller. It also fits into my "standard" 17" notebook bag quite easily, which isn't always the case. The slim slot-load drive also helps with the chassis design.
While we really like a lot of the features in the M6500 construction, there are a few areas where it falls a bit short. The biggest complaint we have is with the number and type of ports. It's little surprise that Dell includes DisplayPort for video output, and it worked quite well connected to a Dell U2711 LCD. The problem is that there are no other video output options other than an aging VGA port! You want HDMI or dual-link DVI? Sorry. (Note that the docking station can support additional DVI ports, but we still would have preferred a DVI output instead of the VGA port; DVI-to-HDMI and DVI-to-VGA dongles would seal the deal.) As mentioned on the previous page, there is a lot of unused space on the sides of the chassis where Dell could have added additional ports. Sure, routing traces for another video port costs money, but we'd much rather have a DVI port with a DVI-to-VGA adapter, and a couple extra USB ports would have been nice. Not everyone needs a ton of USB ports, particularly on a laptop, but then not everyone needs some of the other extras (contactless Smart Card, FireWire, DisplayPort, PC Card, etc.).
Back to the better aspects of the design, the chassis and metal exterior are a great example of what Dell has done to help the M6500 stand out from the competition. For one, it gives the notebook a durable feel without adding to the weight. What's more, the chassis is extremely easy to disassemble compared to most notebooks. Remove the battery and two screws and you can access two of the SO-DIMMs and both hard drives. Accessing the other two SO-DIMMs requires a bit more effort, as you have to pop off the hinge cover and remove the keyboard first (four screws), but that's a small price to pay to get four DIMM slots. Even with the extra steps to remove the keyboard the disassembly process is far easier than most notebooks.
The chassis does come with a huge palm rest area and a full size keyboard. It's good to see Dell make full use of the available chassis space, though the palm rest is so large that it almost looks barren compared to smaller laptops. Or maybe it's the lack of stickers? Thankfully, Dell doesn't slap a bunch of stickers on the palm rest listing features and branding; the only sticker on our test unit was for "Windows Vista"—and Dell actually shipped both Vista and Win7 hard drives for testing. (Vista was required for SPECviewperf testing; otherwise we stuck with Win7.)
In the end, what appeals to your sense of aesthetic will largely determine what you think of the M6500. It's either simple and elegant… or boring and dull. Dell does offer a "covet" version that ditches the sliver/grey exterior for an orange anodized aluminum finish if you want a bit more flash. The Covet version also comes standard with WUXGA RGBLED, only with a glossy "edge to edge" sheet of plastic in front of the LCD panel. If you want more bling than that, you'll need to look elsewhere, but "bling" and "mobile workstation" make strange bedfellows.
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geekforhire - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
Some things I forgot to note:The cost of mine was a little more than half the amount quoted in the article - complete. This a beast of a machine is available for a modest premium if you just resist the temptation of designing with only bleeding edge equipment.
When I ordered mine, the Core i5 processors were not available for the M6500. That may be part of the intent as part of the prerelease whisper from the manufacturer, but as of yesterday they still aren't available for the M6500.
There's a wonderful article on the virtues of the Core i7-720QM processor from last fall, here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mobile-core-i7...">http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mobile-core-i7...
geekforhire - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
Here's a link to the Core i7-790QM processor spec sheet from Intel:http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=43122">http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=43122
Here's a link to a page on the Intel website which helps decode what the processor numbers mean.
http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/ind...">http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/ind...
The i7-720QM has a 45W package, 4x1.6 Ghz processor cores with HyperThreading, 6M cache, DDR3-1066/1333 memory, 8GB max physical memory limit, and a "Turbo Mode" which allows a few cores to spin up to 2.8Ghz (note that all processors cannot operate at this speed simultaneously, but is available when some cores have been dynamically turned off and the TDP would not be exceeded).
Naina - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
I like what you said about the Dell M6500. I am a photoartist and work mostly with Photoshop. I do thisprofessionally and I am travelling a good deal. I like the Dell M6500 but am not sure what configuration to look at which would meet my need for speed and space.
I wonder if you could make a suggestion.
Naina
icrf - Tuesday, March 9, 2010 - link
I've been using an M6400 at work for the last six months, which is very similar to this. The chassis looks the same, but it's generation older hardware (Q9100 / FX2700M).On the docking station front, I apparently ended up with the cheaper one. It has DVI, DP, and VGA ports, but it won't drive both the DVI and DP, so I have to run one of my two external displays on an analog VGA connection.
hko45 - Tuesday, March 9, 2010 - link
I haven't seen any other comparable docking station to the E-Port Plus -- to be able to connect to two monitors through the same kind of ports (DVIs or DisplayPorts). When you're editing images, you need to make sure that both monitors are reasonably alike. That's why I would only buy Dell's Precision or Latitude (not all) laptops -- just for to be able to use that docking station.icrf - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 - link
Some of my co-workers have dual-DVI (but no DP) docking stations. We're just developers, so the accurate color reproduction isn't all that important. Honestly, if I could have gotten the thing without the Nvidia graphics, I'd of been better off. I never render anything in 3D. I was just looking for a 17" 1920x1200 chassis with a speedy quad core and 8 GB of RAM. Unfortunately, the office wouldn't spring for a SSD, as I think that would have made the most difference. I get the feeling random read is the biggest bottleneck.Fanfoot - Thursday, April 1, 2010 - link
The laptop I see on Dell's site doesn't appear to bear much of a resemblance to the one you describe. The one I see has a max of 4GB of RAM, comes with 32-bit Windows, has no USB 3.0 support, and is very expensive. Even basic WiFi isn't included in the price of this thing. Three drives? Where does it say that? I assume one of the drives you're counting is the special 64GB Flash drive, probably a mini PCIe card, but still, show me where it says you can swap out the SLOT LOADING DVD for a second full sized 2.5" drive, something I'm used to with Thinkpads, but that is otherwise uncommon.From the machine that I appear to be able to configure on Dell's website, I'd say both HP and Lenovo have better, more capable, machines in this range available today. The one you talk about sounds fine, but I see no way to configure a machine like that on Dell's website...
holytouch - Sunday, April 11, 2010 - link
i think you should go back to dell.com and try again. the laptop he describes is there, and contains the specs within the review. make sure you look at the 6500/6500 covet. i ordered mine with win7 pro/64bit with no issues.honestly, it couldn't be any easier to see that the machine he describes is on the site.
tozndsand - Saturday, June 19, 2010 - link
I have heard that i5-i7 processors are not supported by Adobe CS5. Is that correct? That would be a deal breaker for many. ThanksDellVictim - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link
I am frustrated with how many positive editorial reviews this machine is getting. I bought one with all the trimmings (twin HD's with RAID etc) and before long at all, started having lots of issues. One of the HD's has been replaced 4 or 5 times, the motherboard 3 times, the graphics card twice, the screen, and it's currently broken, again, despite two dell technician visits - the last of which left telling me the RAID was rebuilding and all was good. Less than 30 minutes after he left, there was a beep, the computer restarted, got stuck in the dos BIOS screen and when I pressed F1 to continue it told me that there was now NO bootable disk! I'm fusious. I have been without my laptop and important data now for over three weeks. So much for next day service, everytime they need to get parts, they seem to be out of stock for several days, then they don't ship them early enough in the day for me to get them next day. They leave voicemails saying they'll call you later and they don't. They won't give you a direct dial number to your service representative. They won't pass you through to the team that deal with refund/replacement requests and that team seems to take 3-4 days to decide that despite the appaulling history or clearly recurring problems with this machine, they don't feel it deserves either a replacement or refund. Instead, they'll send someone out a week later with insufficient parts to make it worse!I don't think I need to explain the moral of the story here folks.