UNSOLVED
Closed
M
mikethebigo
4 Posts
0
28435
July 16th, 2003 02:00
new 600m
I just got my 600m and thought i'd share my own 2 cents with the board about it because i've been reading a lot of the posts on them. From what I can tell, it is a very nice machine. Booted up really quick, though I decided to reformat and start clean anyways. After all of my installing, the left palm rest is still only slightly warm, and that's without controlling the fan to come on at lower temperatures with fangui. the people that are complaining of things like, "IT'S TOO HOT!! IT'S BURNING MY HAND!!" are definitely overstating the matter, if it's a matter at all. There's a hard drive there, and hard drives get warm, plain and simple. I've had it running for 3 hours and its still cool on my lap (thanks to the pentium M). The max I can get the battery estimate to is 4 hours, which is definitely nice, especially since I have a spare battery (a total of 8 hours). The build seems quite sturdy to me, and the keyboard seems sturdy as well. It does slightly bounce if you hit it hard enough, but you'd have to be typing 3 or 4x what I do, and I'm a hard typer. The touchpad seems to be working fine for me after some tweaking in sensitivity and scrolling options. It doesnt seem any different from any other dell inspiron i've owned. The machine is definitely light, which is excellent for wireless and is a nice relief for me (my first laptop was a 7000, what a tank!) The screen is bright and sharp, and after using the higher sxga+ setting for a while, I definitely see how i am going to like it better than 1024x768. There's more room on the screen, yet the text is still clear, readable, and not blurred at all. I bought the dell truemobile wireless router and the intel pro wireless mini-pci, and they're working like a charm. I've had no disconnection problems whatsoever, and when downloading apps like Kazaa, it still goes at blazing speeds like 170 kb/s. When on battery power, the system did not seem significantly slowed, which was a relief after hearing all the problems with speedstep. The HD still makes the camera shutter noise, but all inspiron/hitachi hds do. The same thing happened on my 4150, so I'm pretty sure it's not a defect. I highly reccomend going with the faster 5400 rpm hard drive, because it seems speedy and responsive, moreso than any other laptop ive seen (i havent seen any lappy's with the 7200 though). The only thing that's bothering me is that there are 2 dead pixels on the screen. They're not noticable unless you stare directly at them and try to focus on them, just because of the density of the monitor. I just scanned where they are with my eyes and didnt see them, so it's not really a problem. Especially if, making it a problem means sending this baby back to dell for another monitor that probably has the same problems. I think the dead pixels are pretty much inherent in any lcd monitor, and it's just something you gotta live with. Other than that, I cannot reccomend this notebook enough. It is perfect for students, because it has a decent battery life, good wireless, it's light, and yet it still has an amazing amount of power. If you're worried about playing the games that will be released in the next few years-don't be. The radeon 9000 can play pretty much any game right now (even if it takes a little bit of resolution dropping), but once the next generation of video games come out, it won't matter if you have a radeon or a nvidia go 4, they'll both be obsolete . If you care that much about gaming-get a desktop! But if you just want a powerful yet mobile yet sturdy laptop for all your studying/messing around needs for the next four years, this machine is for you.
*NEW* Inspiron 600m
1.6 ghz Pentium M
512 mb ram, 1 dimm
40 gig hd, 5400 rpm
14.1 sxga+
Intel pro 802.11b
2 primary 48 whr batteries (so i won't have to sacrifice dvd watching with a modular battery!)
385
0
Posted July 16th, 2003 14:00
I just got a refurbished 600m 1.6 256mb unit. It appears flawless and looks alot better than those 1100 and 5100s. I was reading articles from Tom's Hardware site about their comparison of a PM 1.6 versus a P-4M 2.2 machine. The conclusion was that the PM 1.6 processor was not faster than the P-4M 2.2 machine. However, I have seen other articles stating that these new PM 1.6 are about a P-4M 2.2 or faster. Who is correct and what is a 600m 1.6 truly run at when compared to a P4M ???
I did my own test against an old Latitude C600 P3 850. Both machines were loaded with VMWare 4.0 and loaded onto the virtual machine W2K Adv server with AD installed, each virtual machine had 176 mb allowed to run. No surprise, the PM 1.6 came up faster but only by a 10-20 secs faster. BUT when I gave the Latitude virtual machine 80 mb more, the domain controller came up 30 secs faster than that of the inspiron PM 1.6. I couldn't understand why this was the case !!! 80 mb isn't that much and I though that this new centrino technology would beat a 2-3 year old latitude...
I am tempted to return the 600m and get a Inspiron 8200 that has P4M -2.0, but I am torn. I got an extremely good price on the 600m, almost a steal..... I am just afraid that I will be regretting my return only to realize that the older Inspiron 8200 is slower and uses soon to be outdated technology...
ANY suggestions and advice would be appreciated!!!!
385
0
Posted July 16th, 2003 17:00
@sostenon250 wrote:
I just got a refurbished 600m 1.6 256mb unit. It appears flawless and looks alot better than those 1100 and 5100s. I was reading articles from Tom's Hardware site about their comparison of a PM 1.6 versus a P-4M 2.2 machine. The conclusion was that the PM 1.6 processor was not faster than the P-4M 2.2 machine. However, I have seen other articles stating that these new PM 1.6 are about a P-4M 2.2 or faster. Who is correct and what is a 600m 1.6 truly run at when compared to a P4M ???
I did my own test against an old Latitude C600 P3 850. Both machines were loaded with VMWare 4.0 and loaded onto the virtual machine W2K Adv server with AD installed, each virtual machine had 176 mb allowed to run. No surprise, the PM 1.6 came up faster but only by a 10-20 secs faster. BUT when I gave the Latitude virtual machine 80 mb more, the domain controller came up 30 secs faster than that of the inspiron PM 1.6. I couldn't understand why this was the case !!! 80 mb isn't that much and I though that this new centrino technology would beat a 2-3 year old latitude...
I am tempted to return the 600m and get a Inspiron 8200 that has P4M -2.0, but I am torn. I got an extremely good price on the 600m, almost a steal..... I am just afraid that I will be regretting my return only to realize that the older Inspiron 8200 is slower and uses soon to be outdated technology...
ANY suggestions and advice would be appreciated!!!!
When you gave the older system's VM more memory did you do the same with the VM running on the 600m? If not then of course the one with more memory would be faster. This situation is a HDD speed issue and not a Processor issue. Since the older machine allows more memory to be used it has to go to the HDD less, and one of the slowest components on a computer is it's HDD.
As far as the PM 1.6 being faster than a 2.2 P4-M, it depends on what you are doing. The Processors function quite differently, but I would be willing to bet that a majority of the time the PM 1.6 would be faster than the 2.2 P4-M.385
0
Posted July 16th, 2003 18:00
I would say the 600m would perform better. But I don't know how it will handle the heat from a 7200 RPM drive.385
0
Posted July 16th, 2003 18:00
The harddrive for both the Latitude and the new Inspiron 600 m were 20 gig 4200 rpm, slow and old.
My plan was to wait in Sept when the new IBM 7200 rpm drive would be released and then install this new type of drive into the notebook, be it either the 600m or 8200 if I decide to go that route. So I am hoping that with a faster drive, performance should increase.
I guess my bottom line question is this:
Which would perform faster my current 600m 1.6, loading it up with 1 gig of DDR ram and installing the new 7200 rpm hard drive or an Inspiron 8200 P4M-2.0 loaded up with 1 gig of DDR ram along with a new 7200 rpm
Thanks
389
0
Posted July 16th, 2003 19:00
I have pretty much the same machine as the reviewer and have had similar experiences.389
0
Posted July 16th, 2003 20:00
Hey Pyrosburn, do you mean that you like the performance of your 600m and that it is fast as or if not faster than a P4M- 2 machine ?
I ran a bench mark test using a freeware called Fresh Diagnose for the cpu.
When compared to a P4 1.6 gig machine it gave a value of 1006
In comparison the 600m 1.6 gave a value of 4025, all shown with bar graphs.
So I am starting to think that the 600 m is a powerhouse....
comments ??
389
0
Posted July 16th, 2003 21:00
@sostenon250 wrote:
Hey Pyrosburn, do you mean that you like the performance of your 600m and that it is fast as or if not faster than a P4M- 2 machine ?
I ran a bench mark test using a freeware called Fresh Diagnose for the cpu.
When compared to a P4 1.6 gig machine it gave a value of 1006
In comparison the 600m 1.6 gave a value of 4025, all shown with bar graphs.
So I am starting to think that the 600 m is a powerhouse....
comments ??
Clock for clock a P-M will always beat a P4-M.389
0
Posted July 16th, 2003 23:00
Ok, I need to retract my earlier statement about my results that I saw with Fresh Diagnose.
I apparently was not looking at speed but rather MWIPS, which I am not too sure about. Here is the revised results.
P4 1.6
369
0
Posted July 17th, 2003 00:00
Can't say that I've ever used a P4M machine but the performance is fast enough for me. Unless you are running processor intensive programs you will not notice a difference I am sure.
JohnM025
2 Intern
•
877 Posts
385
0
Posted July 16th, 2003 11:00
Thank you for th positive review, it is good to hear.
Thank you for choosing Dell.