[gentoo-user] new notebook

[gentoo-user] new notebook

[Alan McKinnon]

Notebook renewal time has rolled around again, I've had the old one 
for 3 years now. Amazing how much can change in 3 years. I don't do 
notebook support so my knowledge is always out of date...

I'm tending towards a Dell Precision M4600 partly because I've had 4 
Dells in a row all troublefree but mostly because the company discount 
is a big number that can only be properly described as "obscenely big"

I'd like to get some input from folks who might have used this 
hardware.

Screens; a choice between
1920x1080 WLED
1920x1080 RGBLED IPS

The IPS screen only comes with an NVIDIA Quadro 2000M with 2GB GDDR3,
The regular screen comes with these choices of video card:

AMD FirePro M5950 Mobility Pro with 1GB GDDR5 dedicated memory
NVIDIA Quadro 1000M with 2GB GDDR3 dedicated memory
NVIDIA Quadro 2000M with 2GB GDDR3 dedicated memory

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.


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] new notebook

[Mick]

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On Tuesday 19 Jul 2011 21:47:38 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> Notebook renewal time has rolled around again, I've had the old one
> for 3 years now. Amazing how much can change in 3 years. I don't do
> notebook support so my knowledge is always out of date...
> 
> I'm tending towards a Dell Precision M4600 partly because I've had 4
> Dells in a row all troublefree but mostly because the company discount
> is a big number that can only be properly described as "obscenely big"
> 
> I'd like to get some input from folks who might have used this
> hardware.
> 
> Screens; a choice between
> 1920x1080 WLED
> 1920x1080 RGBLED IPS
> 
> The IPS screen only comes with an NVIDIA Quadro 2000M with 2GB GDDR3,
> The regular screen comes with these choices of video card:
> 
> AMD FirePro M5950 Mobility Pro with 1GB GDDR5 dedicated memory
> NVIDIA Quadro 1000M with 2GB GDDR3 dedicated memory
> NVIDIA Quadro 2000M with 2GB GDDR3 dedicated memory
> 
> 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 don't think it is.  When I bought my XPS (a year and a half ago) the RGBLED 
screen was c. £150 on top of what was a rather expensive machine by my 
affordability standards.

Perhaps it was an early version back then, but although it was claimed by 
those who bought it that the RGBLED has somewhat superior picture quality, it 
also had 2 more drawbacks besides the price:

1. You need to calibrate the monitor to get best picture and may need to 
repeat that every now and then.
2. It will suck your battery dry (much?) faster than the WLED.

If you're always on mains then the latter may be less of a problem.

A word of warning:  the 1920x1080 resolution on a 16" monitor is *small*.  
Trying to read a typical website or even the content of my desktop menu would 
cause eye strain!  Ha!  Fantastic picture if you just want to watch videos in 
full 1080p HD, but if you are also thinking of productivity you may need to 
readjust your desktop settings to make reading comfortable.  On e17 I had to 
change the Scaling setting to 80 DPI.

A final note about Dell's build quality:  This is meant to be a top of the 
range laptop.  However, there are no substantial rubber stops to keep the 
screen surface away from the keyboard.  Even with 3 additional self-adhesive 
rubber stops that I added, the keyboard is still touching and scratching the 
screen.  For the sort of money I paid to buy it I would expect some more 
thought to have gone into the design and build of it.  I guess all laptops 
these days are being churned out of some Chinese sweat shop, but for the money 
I expect a better product.
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] new notebook

[Stroller]

On 19 July 2011, at 21:47, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> ...
> Screens; a choice between
> 1920x1080 WLED
> 1920x1080 RGBLED IPS
> 
> The IPS screen only comes with an NVIDIA Quadro 2000M with 2GB GDDR3,
> The regular screen comes with these choices of video card:
> 
> AMD FirePro M5950 Mobility Pro with 1GB GDDR5 dedicated memory
> NVIDIA Quadro 1000M with 2GB GDDR3 dedicated memory
> NVIDIA Quadro 2000M with 2GB GDDR3 dedicated memory
> 
> 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? 

I *believe* that the difference between IPS screen and the other may manifest itself in things like viewing angle, accuracy or consistency of colour reproduction (for photographers / graphics designers) and clarity of viewing in daylight.

This thread is 5 years old, so there may well have been developments since:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/44510-what-ips-screen.html

This may not matter at all to you, and maybe you're just asking about the GPU, but I thought I'd address the question you actually posed. ;)

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] new notebook

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 20 July 2011 16:09:58 Stroller did opine thusly:
> On 19 July 2011, at 21:47, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > ...
> > Screens; a choice between
> > 1920x1080 WLED
> > 1920x1080 RGBLED IPS
> > 
> > The IPS screen only comes with an NVIDIA Quadro 2000M with 2GB
> > GDDR3, The regular screen comes with these choices of video
> > card:
> > 
> > AMD FirePro M5950 Mobility Pro with 1GB GDDR5 dedicated memory
> > NVIDIA Quadro 1000M with 2GB GDDR3 dedicated memory
> > NVIDIA Quadro 2000M with 2GB GDDR3 dedicated memory
> > 
> > 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?
> 
> I *believe* that the difference between IPS screen and the other may
> manifest itself in things like viewing angle, accuracy or
> consistency of colour reproduction (for photographers / graphics
> designers) and clarity of viewing in daylight.
> 
> This thread is 5 years old, so there may well have been developments
> since:
> http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/44510-what-ips-screen.html
> 
> This may not matter at all to you, and maybe you're just asking
> about the GPU, but I thought I'd address the question you actually
> posed. ;)

Another admin just had his new notebook delivered with an IPS screen, 
so we sat for 3 hours inspecting it while an installer removed 
Windows. 

It's true that the IPS does have a fantastic viewing angle. I only 
started seeing bothersome colour shifts at about a 70degree angle 
viewed from the 10 o'clock position. Which is all great except that 
no-one in their right mind looks at a notebook from that acute angle. 
And I've never needed hugely accurate colour reproduction in 20 years, 
so I doubt that will change either anytime soon.

My current machine is 1920x1200 with a regular display, and it's 
plenty good enough for me so I can't honestly say I see a need for the 
latest and greatest. But there's always a chance someone who's used 
one for a while will report significantly reduced eye strain or 
similar (impossible to detect this in the first short trial), hence my 
original question.

I'm tending to think the ATI and a regular screen is the way forward, 
now to google how good the linux driver support is (my last ATI GPU 
was 6 years ago)

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] new notebook

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 20 July 2011 07:30:11 Mick did opine thusly:
> On Tuesday 19 Jul 2011 21:47:38 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > Notebook renewal time has rolled around again, I've had the old
> > one for 3 years now. Amazing how much can change in 3 years. I
> > don't do notebook support so my knowledge is always out of
> > date...
> > 
> > I'm tending towards a Dell Precision M4600 partly because I've
> > had 4 Dells in a row all troublefree but mostly because the
> > company discount is a big number that can only be properly
> > described as "obscenely big"
> > 
> > I'd like to get some input from folks who might have used this
> > hardware.
> > 
> > Screens; a choice between
> > 1920x1080 WLED
> > 1920x1080 RGBLED IPS
> > 
> > The IPS screen only comes with an NVIDIA Quadro 2000M with 2GB
> > GDDR3, The regular screen comes with these choices of video
> > card:
> > 
> > AMD FirePro M5950 Mobility Pro with 1GB GDDR5 dedicated memory
> > NVIDIA Quadro 1000M with 2GB GDDR3 dedicated memory
> > NVIDIA Quadro 2000M with 2GB GDDR3 dedicated memory
> > 
> > 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 don't think it is.  When I bought my XPS (a year and a half ago)
> the RGBLED screen was c. £150 on top of what was a rather expensive
> machine by my affordability standards.
> 
> Perhaps it was an early version back then, but although it was
> claimed by those who bought it that the RGBLED has somewhat
> superior picture quality, it also had 2 more drawbacks besides the
> price:

I *can* see a difference with the RGBLED screen (see why answer to 
Stroller where someone in the office got one today), but its not a 
compelling difference and not big enough to make me go Wow! yet

> 1. You need to calibrate the monitor to get best picture and may
> need to repeat that every now and then.

I will likely never do this :-)
Mostly coz I'm lazy...

> 2. It will suck your battery dry (much?) faster than the WLED.
> 
> If you're always on mains then the latter may be less of a problem.

Mostly on mains, but I'd like to stay at more than 2 hours battery 
life from a full charge for 2.5 years

> A word of warning:  the 1920x1080 resolution on a 16" monitor is
> *small*. Trying to read a typical website or even the content of my
> desktop menu would cause eye strain!  Ha!  Fantastic picture if you
> just want to watch videos in full 1080p HD, but if you are also
> thinking of productivity you may need to readjust your desktop
> settings to make reading comfortable.  On e17 I had to change the
> Scaling setting to 80 DPI.

Currently I have 1920x1200, 96dpi and konsole fonts set at 8pt. I'm 
used to people looking over my shoulder saying "how the blazes do you 
read those tiny letters?"

> A final note about Dell's build quality:  This is meant to be a top
> of the range laptop.  However, there are no substantial rubber
> stops to keep the screen surface away from the keyboard.  Even with
> 3 additional self-adhesive rubber stops that I added, the keyboard
> is still touching and scratching the screen.  For the sort of money
> I paid to buy it I would expect some more thought to have gone into
> the design and build of it.  I guess all laptops these days are
> being churned out of some Chinese sweat shop, but for the money I
> expect a better product.

I can't honestly fault this XPS's build quality. The palm rest area 
has warped, but it does run hot almost 24/7. The keyboard always felt 
a tad lower quality than it should have been, but did take 2.5 years 
for the legends to start wearing through.

From what I've seen, the Precisions are better (there's quite a lot in 
the office of varying ages). They are almost as good as ThinkPads - 
not as good, but close.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] new notebook

[Thanasis]

on 07/20/2011 07:06 PM Alan McKinnon wrote the following:

> now to google how good the linux driver support is (my last ATI GPU 
> was 6 years ago)
> 

I would choose nvidia, just for the driver support, but also make sure
the thing doesn't suffer overheating...

Re: [gentoo-user] new notebook

[Michael Mol]

On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 12:06 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday 20 July 2011 16:09:58 Stroller did opine thusly:

> It's true that the IPS does have a fantastic viewing angle. I only
> started seeing bothersome colour shifts at about a 70degree angle
> viewed from the 10 o'clock position. Which is all great except that
> no-one in their right mind looks at a notebook from that acute angle.

It's good for pair programming scenarios, really. Although if you
don't need to worry about that kind of scenario, having only a narrow
accurate view angle might be a kind of privacy benefit. :)

-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] new notebook

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 20 July 2011 12:28:49 Michael Mol did opine thusly:
> On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 12:06 PM, Alan McKinnon 
<alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Wednesday 20 July 2011 16:09:58 Stroller did opine thusly:
> > 
> > It's true that the IPS does have a fantastic viewing angle. I
> > only started seeing bothersome colour shifts at about a
> > 70degree angle viewed from the 10 o'clock position. Which is
> > all great except that no-one in their right mind looks at a
> > notebook from that acute angle.
> 
> It's good for pair programming scenarios, really. Although if you
> don't need to worry about that kind of scenario, having only a
> narrow accurate view angle might be a kind of privacy benefit. :)

We all have 24" Samsung flat panels for pair programming :-) 
From 2 feet away at that size viewing angle isn't an issue.


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] new notebook

[Michael Mol]

On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 12:46 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday 20 July 2011 12:28:49 Michael Mol did opine thusly:
>> It's good for pair programming scenarios, really. Although if you
>> don't need to worry about that kind of scenario, having only a
>> narrow accurate view angle might be a kind of privacy benefit. :)
>
> We all have 24" Samsung flat panels for pair programming :-)
> From 2 feet away at that size viewing angle isn't an issue.

I think I need a better desk; three 23" CRTs at 1600x1200, and my
coworkers can't get close enough to read any but the one furthest from
me.
-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] new notebook

[kashani]

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

Re: [gentoo-user] new notebook

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 20 July 2011 10:39:00 kashani did opine thusly:
> 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. 

Google confirms :-) Apparently the nVidia GPU has two DACs so although 
it may have more than 2 output sockets, it's "pick any two display 
ports"

> 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.

Agreed. Macs have infested our techie areas, the things seem to breed 
under the desks overnight. Macs use DisplayPort and our techies can 
have their pick of just about any display device they feel like having 
(within reason). No-one has a native DisplayPort device, everyone has 
converter dongles (usual to VGA!)

> 	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.

This XPS M1530 gave me 2.5 hours when new with extended battery. A 
colleague with a one-year old Precision gets 4 on a standard battery!

> 	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.

Ummm, I'm an Internets sysadmin. I long ago forgot what that exploding 
ball of hydrogen in the sky looks like in real life :-)





-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com