On 7/19/2011 1:47 PM, Alan McKinnon wrote:
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 have the slightly older Dell E6410 with the NVS 3100M. It won't drive move than two displays though it does do two 1920x1200's quite nicely. I've found the display port less useful than I'd hoped mostly because I haven't bought a display port to HDMI cable. I don't think I've come across a display with a display port yet. Oddly VGA is the only common interface on all my display devices.
As far as power I get 2.5 hours before needing to plug in. I'd expect to see about the same on the M4600.
You might head over to your local big box electronic store. Dell seems to be well represented at most and hopefully they'd have a model with the IPS. I skipped the upgrade at the time and haven't felt the lack though if you like to work outside and it's bright enough it might be worth it.
kashani
