Dell 600m Laptop

[bdsams Veteran]

I recently purchased a dell 600m laptop for college..... here is my review had it for about 1.5 mnths

i didnt need anything great since im taking my desktop so here are the specs:

1.4 centrino M cpu

512meg of ram

40 gig hd

32 meg radeon 9000 mobil ghx card

dvd/cdrw drive

integreted 802.11b wirelss

14.1xga screen

For starters, i was looking for a light, easy to carry laptop, my 600m weighs in at just over 6lbs and at 1.2 inches think this was a good canadate........i also did look at IBM,sony, and HP, but opted against them after reading reviews and going with consumer reports......

The Pro's

This laptop is light and powerfull, i have yet to run any app that causes it to slow down, it is light enough to carry around, and thin enough so that it doesnt bulk out in any carrying bag... the battery life is great, with all the options turned off, and screen contrast turned down low, i have no problem getting 4.5 hrs out of it easily, somtimes more depending on what im doing...with wireless on and the screen contrast at its max, its usually closer to 3 hrs, again depending on what your doing....

This laptop is also extremely quite, when the cooling fan is running, you can barley hear it, you literally have to put your head right next to the fan to actually know if its running or not, although you can hear the hardrive spin up somtimes, but that gives you an idea of how quite it is, my dad has an Emachine laptop, and comapred to it, my laptop is the stealth bomber of quiteness

This laptop also has a good array of ports, two usb 2.0, s video out, and then all of your other standard ports....

The keyboard is also useable, its not cramped, and has a nice feel to it, a softer feel than a stadard keyboard

The lights that are on the laptop can also be viewed lid open or closed

Also there is an external battery indacator, on the actually batter there is a button that you can push that will tell you how much battey life is left, very usefull if laptop is not turned on

The built in speakers are not to bad either, while there not your 5.1 dolby souround sound system, they get the job done, and can be turned up pretty loud without distortion

Somthing cool i noticed too is that the cd rw/dvd drive is an interchanable port, with the drive in you can turn it off, and this will give you about 5-15 more mins of battery life..

Cons:

This is not your hardcore gaming laptop, if your looking to playing games like Far Cry, Americas Army, or any other demanding games, the gfx card will not run the game smoothly....

The left side of the palm resting area can become warm as that is where the hard drive is, its never been warm enought to become uncomfortable, but if you have really sensative skin you may want to be aware of this

The laptop is missing a firewire port, while most of the time now you can get a converter to usb 2.0 it still would be nice to have a fire wire port

Result:

This laptop is great for those that are looking for a portable notebook that has enough power to do everything you will need it to do... light weight, durable, and thin, its a good small laptop for carrying on planes, to class, or business meetings with out taking up alot of space, and enough batter life to get you threw the tasks you need it to do

Feel free to ask any other ?'s

[Premgenius]

pictures would be great

[IlliniPi]

Have you tried playing either of the Warcraft 3 games on it, if you have them?

Also, what kind of resolution are you running on this?

[bdsams Veteran]

Resolution: 1024 by 786

pics:

THe only games i have run that worked well were:

Red Alert 2

Age Of Empires III

[BroChaos Veteran]

it probably woulda helped a little if you have the 64meg vid card option. i got the 600m for my gf, and it's been great. haven't played any games on it though.

[bdsams Veteran]

i love mine, but i didnt get it for gaming, its mainly going to class to take notes on, surf the net, and give presentations VIA powerpoint and S video out

my desktop is for gaming

[mipra]

A REAL pictures that you take will be really classy. Ur review looks original with u taking the pics urself....:D

[axis]

I work with this laptop every day at work. It is quite nice, nice and fast too. Great review.

[nuka_t]

ive used a d800 with a ti4200, it plays balltefile1942 awesomely, and also ut2k4

[rstroud]

I have been looking at these lately and have wanted one over an iBook. I currently have an Inspiron 1100 2.0 Celeron and would love to get a 600m. These are definately in my future! Now to unload my current beast...

[nuka_t]

definetly get the dell over the apple. w00t. another nonswitcher.

[rstroud]

I lusted after an iBook for so long, but the 600m may keep me in the Windows camp for sure. I love the battery life and portability of the 600m. It has okay looks and is more powerful than my current laptop (and maybe even desktop!)

[nuka_t]

ya i was in the same boat too, i really wanted an emac. but thanks to amd and ati, im still here. it will probably be about the same speed as your current one in regular crap, but will be no comparison at all in gaming.

also, when you buy it, make sure you dont get the centrino model. the centrino only has 802.11b, get the one with the dell triband a/b/g card. its the same price i think but it is compliant with all three standards, the only thing missing is the centrino sticker.

[rstroud]

Thanks for the advice...now to save some money! (So I can sell my 1100!)

[Fedorpheux]

yeah, just today i was looking at the 600m....this fall my dad is teaching a class at a community college in the area and he's planning to buy a laptop mainly for teaching (especially powerpoint presentations, notes, etc...). on the dell website, i customized a 600m for him and it came out at just over $2,000 (even including carrying case, extra battery, and nice specs) and he was happy cause he was ready to spent up to $3,000.

on the laptop i customized for him, i chose the fastest processor they had, 768 megs of ram (dont think he really needs much more than that), 60 gig hard drive, internal 802.11b/g (intel centrino technology), 32mb video, CD-RW/DVD, and other various stuff....does that sound pretty good? i told him that we should probably hold off on actually buying it because he really doesnt need it until like late summer and by then, the price of a laptop like the one i just custom built will probably drop several hundred dollars....anyways, thanks for the review, it really helped!

[John Veteran]

my laptop is the stealth bomber of quiteness

:woot: I want one now! :D

Nice review (Y) But it would have been nice if you had included some benchmarks. Thanks for adding the pics :)

[tang_tito]

i want one too :D :D :D

[nuka_t]

he should wait for the next pentium m's and get a 1.8ghz dothan for that price. also, might wantt oease off on the ram if hes not going to be doing gaming or photoshoping on it. 512 is enouch for regular use and he can always add more if he needs it. if hes willing to spend 3 grand though, yo umight want to look at the d800, the screen is fin amazing. 19xx x 1200 resolution.

[Fedorpheux]

he should wait for the next pentium m's and get a 1.8ghz dothan for that price. also, might wantt oease off on the ram if hes not going to be doing gaming or photoshoping on it. 512 is enouch for regular use and he can always add more if he needs it. if hes willing to spend 3 grand though, yo umight want to look at the d800, the screen is fin amazing. 19xx x 1200 resolution.

well, the only reason i went for 768 is cause it wasnt too much price increase and the more, the better....might as well make this laptop last longer...and i have a feeling it's probably cheaper and easier to just get the RAM put in when you buy it, as opposed to shipping it in or doing it yourself later on....and as for that other model, is that one fatter and heavier? cause he doesnt want anything all that fat or heavy...i mean, he is going to be carrying this back and forth every single day

[nuka_t]

the d800 is pretty light and thin. its got a 15.4 inch screen so its pretty wide, but its thin and light. it weighs very little about 5 pounds i would say, but dont quote me on that.

[Fedorpheux]

the d800 is pretty light and thin. its got a 15.4 inch screen so its pretty wide, but its thin and light. it weighs very little about 5 pounds i would say, but dont quote me on that.

okay, well we'll see how the market looks in about 3 months

[ANova]

The 2.13 GHz Dothan with a 533 MHz bus, and 2 MB L2 cache coming out Q4 is as fast as a P4 3.2EE and consumes 30 watts of power.

[Homer]

Hehe thats where Intel took a leaf out of AMD's book and realised fat amounts of ipc = speed.

Nice going Intel. Now if they do it with their desktop chips... hehehe.

BTW that's not provoking a flame war.

Congrats on the laptop, looks sweet. Reviews good too. My laptop sure ain't a stealth bomber quiet one, it has this terrible whine to one of the fans which I can't shut up, and I also asked pcworld to fix when I sent it in. Lazy ******s.

[chrispinto]

I personally had the Dell Inspiron 8600 (the "consumer version" or the D800 Latitude) And apart from cosmetic differences, the two laptops are pretty much identical.

It had the Radeon 9600 Pro 128 meg card inside, and it was sweet to play every game you could possibly chuck at it (including PoP: Sands of Time). I did lose faith in Dell though, so i sold it. (After two motherboard replacements, i couldnt be bothered to wait around for a 3rd) Though the warranty service was excellent.

I would reccommend dell for a laptop purchase, but it does seem they fire out a fair few glitchy machines (a couple of friends have had similar problems with 8500/8600's)

Pics can be seen at http://www.pintonet.co.uk/livingroom/dell8600/

[kombolcha]

hey i was going to write a review on this laptop :crazy:

;) you beat me to it though.. Very nice laptop