Verify your account to enable IT peers to see that you are a professional. mace We use all of the above. These are high-end graphics workstations for graphics-heavy applications. I give the 6600 and 6700s to our engineers who are running 3D CAD all day and our designers get the 4600 and 4700s for graphic design and light CAD. The big differences between the mobile workstations and a "laptop" is the graphics card options and expandability with memory and hard disks, not to mention higher end built-in LCD and processor. Was this post helpful? thumb_up thumb_down  They are well built machines. My family purchased one for my youngest brother, who is studying to be an engineer, and it's been good to him. They are far more expandable than your average laptop -- for example my brother's machine has four slots for RAM, where as most notebooks only have one or two. Was this post helpful? thumb_up thumb_down I am mainly looking for a laptop with a mSATA option. Was this post helpful? thumb_up thumb_down I use only 2 laptops exclusively; precision m6x00 for heavy rendering asus g7x for for anything else Ive never had a bad experience with either. Was this post helpful? thumb_up thumb_down ErikN This person is a verified professional. Verify your account to enable IT peers to see that you are a professional. mace diverges wrote: I am mainly looking for a laptop with a mSATA option. Going this route seems like an expensive way to get mSATA.... What is the need for that particular hard drive option? Was this post helpful? thumb_up thumb_down Erik6041 wrote:diverges wrote: I am mainly looking for a laptop with a mSATA option.Going this route seems like an expensive way to get mSATA.... What is the need for that particular hard drive option? I have been wanting to get an SSD for my laptop. Then I read about the mSATA drives but my old laptop isn't compatible. In all honesty, I just want to treat myself. We had a another dept. head buy a $2000 desk while I'm struggling with this 5 year old laptop. Was this post helpful? thumb_up thumb_down ErikN This person is a verified professional. Verify your account to enable IT peers to see that you are a professional. mace Unless you are doing 3D work, the Precision laptops are overkill (not to mention large and heavy). Here is a recent list I found of mSATA compatible laptops that may suit you better: http:/ Opens a new window/www.mydigitaldiscount.com/msata-ssd-compatability-list.html Was this post helpful? thumb_up thumb_down BenSpain This person is a verified professional. Verify your account to enable IT peers to see that you are a professional. thai pepper We use 6600 and 6700 for 3D CAD as well. They are fantastic. The extra money in my opinion is for the mobile Quadro graphics cards. Was this post helpful? thumb_up thumb_down I am using an M4600 and it has been rock solid. Of course, it is not a machine you want to drag around if you travel a lot but if you are looking for a desktop replacement the Precision line is a great option. Given that they are pricey machines, you may look at ThinkPads for comparison. I love the M4600 but I will be taking an in-depth look at Lenovo machines for my next purchase. Was this post helpful? thumb_up thumb_down We have a few Presicion M4400s that are loaner laptops. From my perspective they seem a little heavy and the 3D performance based on benchmarks I ran doesn't seem to knock my socks off. We're looking at a Cinebench score of 13 for the included Quadro FX 770M. A lot of our employees have personally purchased ThinkPads and the next time I need to replenish laptops I might follow suit. Compare that to 10 for a Macbook Air that's a few years old and. 44 for our desktops with Quadro 4000s and 55 for our Quadro K5000s. I'm actually starting to wonder how important the actual 3D cards are for our modeling. From most of what I've seen people seem more comfortable with a run of the mill 3D card and solid state drives than a top of the line 3D card and standard hard drives. Of course I say that and I'm still ordering new computers with Quadro K5000s, but we consciously overbuy with regard to desktop hardware. Was this post helpful? thumb_up thumb_down ErikN This person is a verified professional. Verify your account to enable IT peers to see that you are a professional. mace ChrisDSR wrote: We have some old M4400s as well and they seem to be the most problematic of the Precisions. The newer models perform much better. Was this post helpful? thumb_up thumb_down I bought a Dell after having some very bad customer service from them years ago and swearing to never buy a Dell again. Well I read a review on the m4700 on PC Magazine and decided to take a chance. I made a huge mistake. It has been a 5 month living nightmare. I was sent a m4800 as a replacement for a broken m4700. So this does include the M4800. I bought the m4700 5 months ago and it was broken on delivery. They sent a tech guy out who replaced the screen, hard drive, video card and something else. 3 service calls the first week I had the new computer. The computer shut down all the time and gave me copious blue screens. After hours on the computer with the remote repair they gave up finally. After 3.5 months of nothing but problems. Then 3 weeks ago they sent me a brand new m4800. After two weeks it totally broke. It is unfixable. The tech guy replaced the motherboard, video card, power source twice in a week and it is unfix-able. I asked for a refund. They refuse. I have documented all the phone calls and hours and I have spent over 30 hours and been hung up on over 25 times in 5 months. Or "disconnected" They bounce you from India, to the wrong dept, to this and that and no one takes responsibility for your case. It is so bad. I have now been without a computer for another 10 days and it will be another 3-4 weeks before they can get me a replacement. Since I bought this computer I have not had one good day of use and yet they refuse to refund me. I hate Dell with every fiber of my being now. I run an online business so this has severely impacted me. I have had to move hard drives over 3 times. I spent the entire weekend moving my files that are a year old to an old laptop I had to borrow, since the entire reason I bought this Dell in the first place is my Acer was overheating all the time. I am on hold now with a tech talking to his manager to reorder the next replacement and guess what? He swore he would not hang up on me, and the phone just disconnected. Do not buy a Dell. Do not buy a Dell. It is not worth it. Miracle, he called me back. He said they cannot replace it since the service tech said it was unfixable, but that does not mean it cannot be fixed! The tech rep I told me I had to take apart my computer on the phone with him first before I could get a replacement. He refused to order me a replacement. I decided to try a different tech rep and the next one I got decided to actually help me and order me my 3rd computer. I am now waiting for my 3rd computer from my original order 5 months ago. Nightmare, total total nightmare. I am in the small-medium business sector so that is better service than the consumer, so it it is this bad for me, if you buy not as a business I cannot imagine how bad it would be. Dell will spend millions on advertising, and then they will totally burn someone like me. Guess what, I work online and I am going to go all over the internet and leave my experiences with Dell on all the websites I can find that talk about these two computers. I would say refusing to refund me, and dicking me around so bad like this, and others, just shows they do not care about goodwill. In this day and age, personal reviews and making enemies out of the consumer is very stupid. I rely on these kind of reviews to help me avoid this kind of trouble. If I had read this review, I would of never bought a Dell. I would of been reminded of how bad they were years ago when I needed help with one of the 6 Dell's I owned at that time and I would of stuck to my vow to never buy another Dell. They have not changed at all. If anything they have gotten worse. With both the m4700 and m4800 if you go online and google "broken, blue screen of death", not working and go to the Dell Support Community you will find 100's of stories like mine. Dell has a problem wtih these machines. One of the CS reps even said to me today, our software is crap. Save yourself the heartache and do not buy a Dell. |
