I know Solidworks already approved this video card and
system. I am just wondering if anyone have any comments or
anytroubles with this laptop? Slow? Freeze?
What OS are you using on the M6300? I am thinking about purchasing
one for personal use, and I haven't decided whether or not to get
Vista and hope that SW supports it soon, or stick with XP.
I just bought 2 new systems in the last 60 days and I have XP
Pro (32 bit) on both. I just don't feel comfortable with Vista.
SW2008 only supports 32 bit Vista anyway so the way I look at, if
I'm going to upgrade the OS I'm going to upgrade to 64 bit at the
same time. Once SW supports Vista 64 bit (and I hear good things
about Vista) I'll make the switch. With all the hardware and OS
options currently available it's difficult to spec a new system you
can feel comfortable with lasting for 3-4 years.
I'm not even sure SW2007 fully supports Vista 32 bit. I know the
specific Vista SW 2007 version is prelease 2 and I read somewhere
(customer portal I believe) SW2007 SP 3.1 does support Vista
but???? I guess it's not just giving me a warm fuzzy feeling.
Bottom line. I need a system I can depend on to produce work and I
know that wil be the case on XP Pro.
We have bought 3 laptops in the last 3 months... Two that are
the most recent - One M4300, one M90. We primarily run SW'07, SP4
(I think) in both. I am also trying '08 in the M90.
The CPU's are 2.66 and 2.33, M4300 and M90, respectively. There is
a marginal difference in benchmark tests - on the same rebuild of
the same part I got times of 142 seconds and 151 seconds. Both of
these are about half of the time of my former desktop (AMD 3700)
that turned in a whopping 288 sec on that same part.
Both have 4 GB RAM.
Both are running XP64 Pro - but the 4300 is not supposed to work in
this configuration with Microsoft Office. At the time Dell would
not provide it with the system either. We have since found that
there are indeed a couple bugs there, but seems to run OK anyway.
(It is just an email and SolidWorks machine anyway. I found some
additional helps by downloading a number of optional Office
Updates.)
No problems on the M90. I nabbed the M90 just before the M6300 came
out just to avoid the apparent Office issue that we discovered in
the M4300.
The M4300 has the 360M GPU and the M90 has an FX2500M. The M90 does
seem to handle graphics on screen a bit better - probably because
of the card. Both have simliar resolution, WUXGA+, but the M90
screen is much larger.
The 360M card in the M4300 seems really solid, but I wish it had
more horsepower. Still, it has no problem on even rather large
assemblies. There is a little bit "flashing/filmstrip" effect when
tossing around a big file in the viewport. I suspect that there
will be better cards available later? (At the time of purchase the
360M was the only option on the M4300 and the FX1500M was the only
option on the M6300.)
Generally speeking, the M4300 being a rather new product yet, (and
we are running the 64 bit OS), has shown some minor bugs (one
moderate bug - that may be a page file issue that we are working at
the moment), but is otherwise an extremely nice system. The M90
(Mine) has been very solid for us all the way around so far.
I would still recommend that most people run XP (32 bit) due to the
driver issues, etc. and if necessary max the RAM and turn the 3 GB
switch rather than the 64 bit OS, though I have no serious
complaints at this time.
I do know someone who recently went back to the 32 bt OS on the
identical M90 platform due to graphics issues in SW '08. I don't
know what those specific issues were, however, and any issues that
I have experienced have been more or less cosmetic only. I expect
that they get fixed in future service packs or video drivers. I may
go back to the 32 bit OS myself if I get too irritated, but I have
been in the 64 bit for a long time now - just for the additional
memory. There really are no programs that actually run in 64 bit
that I am aware of. They all just sort of accomodate things in a
patched fashion.
How I wish that programming would make the leap to actually use the
64 bit properly!
RB
(PS - the available RAM shows only 3.25GB which concurs with
others' statements to the amount available on the M90
platform.)
Anybody has any experience with these?
Thanks