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
