Dell Precision M6300 laptop: huge, powerful

My company bought me a 6300 and I hate it -- I'm a big footballer, so the weight and size is not issue, but the thing is put together by Dell, who wouldn't know how to engineer a pasta salad. It crashes constantly (yes, the "Blue Screen of Death"), the built-in keyboard stops working intermittantly (the control key, usually), when I am attached to a projector the applications won't scroll correctly and browser windows are instantly zoomed down to microscopic (despite trying avey setting change in the monitor configuration possible, and removing the complicated drivers for the mouse and going as generic as possible). This nightmare is nowhere near as sweet as my personal HP9300, which has the same screen size, a 10-key pad, a touchpad that is proportionately dimensioned to the screen, lighter, with all of the same specs: except I have the AMD dual-core, chosen because, as an applicaiton PC, a seperate-cache architecture makes more sence that Intel's shared-cache.

I'm really disappointed to find out how much my company spent on this; my HP was half the price and infinately less frustrating to use.

I received my m6300 a month ago and all I get is BSOD's. I installed Vista 64 ultimate. I agree with first poster that this this is JUNK!

The first time that i tried to play a dvd i encountered a memory issue with it going into a loop, then failing. Had to restart. I tried a 2nd dvd and encountered the same failure. This unit is brand new out of the box from dell. : (

Mine's a M6300 with 4gigs of ram and 2.2Ghz dual core. I have fedora 8 on it and it works real good. No problem and performance for grid generation, cfd post processing and CAD is real good!
I am happy with it!

Just curious, could the difference in problems in the above posters be vista vs. xp?

I own a Precision 6300 and I've been having my power supply (Ac converter?) fail every couple months since I bought it. I've been told to suspect the motherboard, but they replaced everything that wasn't plastic. To boot, WAVE systems (the geniuses behing the fingerprint and security software) said that they can't fix the havoc that swapping all that hardware played on my registry, and said go pay 1 900 MS help $60/hr so you can fix OUR Fup.

I may never come back to this post, but buyer beware, Don't buy Dell without the FULL replacement and service plan, you'll loose more than your memory, you'll lose your shirt!

I have had one for several months and not had any problems with it. I don't know what other posters are doing to make it crash so much but I've not had any problems opening and using dozens of large photoshop files at once; it's never crashed, it's sturdy and comfortable to use - I couldn't be happier with it.

I own a Precision M6300 with a Core 2 Duo T9300, 2.5 Ghz processor, 2GB RAM, 7200RPM hard drive. Vista Business installed. I also run WinXp on a Virtual Machine. I used it for 3 months now, installed lots of softwares, used it extensively for mostly software and graphic work and had no problems with it whatsoever. Battery life is just unbelivable for the power and size of the screen! Mine lasts for 3.5 hours when set to maximize battery life. So anyway, I guess there must be something wrong with the Extreme Core platforms or sort as I see two posts above reporting issues with configurations that include Intel Core 2 Extreme processors. Me, I'm just soo happy I choosed this. Only one set back. The speakers are lame. But who cares, really? Great job Dell!!!

I've had the M6300 for 3 months. No problems. I got this one because it has the big high res 17 inch widescreen, but does not have the keyboard off set to one side to accomodate a num pad, like most others. Thanks Dell for putting the keyboard in the middle.
This is a rock solid built chassis and the 2.6 gig duel core flies. In powersave mode I get excellent 4+ hours surfin the Web.
Yes, the speakers are lame, but this is a business machine, not an entertainment device. Dell has other models for that.

My company has given me the M6300 monster. I don't like to carry it around a lot because of its weight and size but it's a nice, robust, powerful machine

I bought about 40 M6300's for my developers and about half of them get BSOD's at least once a day. We are runing Windows XP. Some people get 5 or more crashes per day.

I've had my precision m6300 for 12 months now (vista installed) and it crashes now about 6 times a day. 2 on boot up, then periodically through the day. Sometimes without warning. Its a real pain in the ar$e. Cant install xp because 1st it wont be supported by dell and 2nd half my apps dont work dvd writer etc, which I've been told is becuase of the bios. If you want my opinion ... use an iphone ... more stable, lol,.... just make sure you have XP and not vista.

I have had my M6300 for about 4 months now and I have absolutely no complaints about it. Not sure about why some of the machines are crashing but I use mine as a desktop so it is on almost as long and I have no problems with it. And I use Vista on it too...

I have had my Dell M6300 for about 2 months and I was never a Dell Fan, but this thing is great.
I can't understand what these other guys are talking about, I have never saw a BSOD and the grafics are great.
The battery life is fantastic about 4 hours and I don't mind the weight. Nice one Dell!

Mallyda1

I have also had the dreaded Blue Screen failure. My 4 year old budget laptop from Dell outpeformed the 6300 before the BSOD. At this point all I have to show for over 2 grand is a large headache.

Dell's position on this is "Call tech support, good luck".

Will never buy another Dell product. I have been buying computers since the early 80's and this is the worst experience I have ever had.

I have had my 6300 since August 2008 and the very first day I turned it on I got the BSOD. Should have returned it right away. It happens about 1-3 times per day sometimes more. Dell attempted installing a new BIOS (not that tech savvy so don't ask what that means) and it did not work.

I have 2 of these and they are both junk-I have run vista and xp. this is by 6th and last dell-they are both being used for CAD and CAM work