On Wednesday 20 July 2011 07:30:11 Mick did opine thusly: > On Tuesday 19 Jul 2011 21:47:38 Alan McKinnon wrote: > > Notebook renewal time has rolled around again, I've had the old > > one for 3 years now. Amazing how much can change in 3 years. I > > don't do notebook support so my knowledge is always out of > > date... > > > > I'm tending towards a Dell Precision M4600 partly because I've > > had 4 Dells in a row all troublefree but mostly because the > > company discount is a big number that can only be properly > > described as "obscenely big" > > > > I'd like to get some input from folks who might have used this > > hardware. > > > > Screens; a choice between > > 1920x1080 WLED > > 1920x1080 RGBLED IPS > > > > The IPS screen only comes with an NVIDIA Quadro 2000M with 2GB > > GDDR3, The regular screen comes with these choices of video > > card: > > > > AMD FirePro M5950 Mobility Pro with 1GB GDDR5 dedicated memory > > NVIDIA Quadro 1000M with 2GB GDDR3 dedicated memory > > NVIDIA Quadro 2000M with 2GB GDDR3 dedicated memory > > > > The price difference is substantial. Considering that my usage > > is > > nothing more stressful than KDE eye-candy and mplayer, is the > > IPS > > screen worth the extra price? OTOH the machine has VGA, HDMI and > > DisplayPort as well as internal screen and I believe the ATI can > > drive all 4 at the same time whereas the nVidia is "pick any > > two". Up to 4 screens might be more useful than outright > > performance. > > I don't think it is. When I bought my XPS (a year and a half ago) > the RGBLED screen was c. £150 on top of what was a rather expensive > machine by my affordability standards. > > Perhaps it was an early version back then, but although it was > claimed by those who bought it that the RGBLED has somewhat > superior picture quality, it also had 2 more drawbacks besides the > price:
I *can* see a difference with the RGBLED screen (see why answer to Stroller where someone in the office got one today), but its not a compelling difference and not big enough to make me go Wow! yet > 1. You need to calibrate the monitor to get best picture and may > need to repeat that every now and then. I will likely never do this :-) Mostly coz I'm lazy... > 2. It will suck your battery dry (much?) faster than the WLED. > > If you're always on mains then the latter may be less of a problem. Mostly on mains, but I'd like to stay at more than 2 hours battery life from a full charge for 2.5 years > A word of warning: the 1920x1080 resolution on a 16" monitor is > *small*. Trying to read a typical website or even the content of my > desktop menu would cause eye strain! Ha! Fantastic picture if you > just want to watch videos in full 1080p HD, but if you are also > thinking of productivity you may need to readjust your desktop > settings to make reading comfortable. On e17 I had to change the > Scaling setting to 80 DPI. Currently I have 1920x1200, 96dpi and konsole fonts set at 8pt. I'm used to people looking over my shoulder saying "how the blazes do you read those tiny letters?" > A final note about Dell's build quality: This is meant to be a top > of the range laptop. However, there are no substantial rubber > stops to keep the screen surface away from the keyboard. Even with > 3 additional self-adhesive rubber stops that I added, the keyboard > is still touching and scratching the screen. For the sort of money > I paid to buy it I would expect some more thought to have gone into > the design and build of it. I guess all laptops these days are > being churned out of some Chinese sweat shop, but for the money I > expect a better product. I can't honestly fault this XPS's build quality. The palm rest area has warped, but it does run hot almost 24/7. The keyboard always felt a tad lower quality than it should have been, but did take 2.5 years for the legends to start wearing through. >From what I've seen, the Precisions are better (there's quite a lot in the office of varying ages). They are almost as good as ThinkPads - not as good, but close. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
