Dell ships Precision M6500 laptop with 32GB of RAM: drill, baby, drill
By Darren Murph 
posted July 21st 2010 9:28AM
posted July 21st 2010 9:28AM
Nah, that's not us yelling to dig deeper into oceanic unknowns -- it's a megaphone originating from Dell's campus in Round Rock. As the story goes, Dell's "oil and gas" consumers have been clamoring for more system memory on their mobile workstations, with the revamped Precision M6500 -- which allows them to "review larger slices of the earth to find oil, enabling faster and more accurate drilling to find oil and gas reserves." We say all that to mention the 32GB of system RAM that's now shipping on fully loaded M6500s, but with four RAM slots, that's not as difficult to accomplish as you might expect. Still, having 32GB in a single laptop is a rare sight these days, and if you aren't into coughing up a fistful of Benjamins for that, Dell's Precision M4500 is now available with 16GB of memory. You know, for running Maya with less lag... or something.
You know, for doing real, actual work... or something.
@Leindurstit
Say "Thank You, Schlumberger."
(AFAIK, they are the big customer that pushed for this)
@Leindurstit
4chan loads like crazy now!
@Leindurstit
I was concerned that their copy of Maya lags. How many polygons are they using at once?!
@Leindurstit
Well the real question is; Will it play cri........
never-mind...........
@GenericMessage
LOL
@owen66 I fail to see how RAM could be you're limiting factor. This isn't gonna speed up your access to trannys any faster, unless you're trying to edit the video.
@owen66 Anonymous, UNITE!
32GB!! :o
@ad
Shit just got real
@archkron
I believe someone motioned the other day to remove that phrase from the blog world and it was seconded, if only i could find that post....
@archkron : Na shit just got stupidly unnecessary for this day and age lol. But I'll gladly stuff 32gb in my next laptop
@SlaterGS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUH3JQjcweM
Nice
@finishhim27
That was your reaction? Mine was "THIRTY-TWO GIGS OF RAM? HOLY SHIT!"
Just dont sell it to BP
@rstoplabe14 Yes please do. Maybe that gives them the power to calculate how not to spill oil.
@rstoplabe14 - Why? Do you think it will break like the American built oil rig and safety gear. lol.
@thomassnielsen
I'd say that they're safety policies on the ground had more to do with the disaster than miscalculations. The power of this rig (I'm referring to the laptop here) is of no use if the people on the ground don't follow the scientist's recommendations.
@thomassnielsen
Well, I guess you are right.
@Den
The rig wasn't American, it was made in S. Korea by Hyundai, but thats not really the reason of the disaster, it was the way they operated the thing. The had really no care for safety, actually the blowout preventer was leaking days before the accident and from reports it had not been inspected in years.
@ashwinkn
Yup, it was the execs. wanting more oil faster, with no regard for safety, only profits.
@rstoplabe14
NO ONE knows the cause of the disaster yet. Most of what you read on the net is random unsubstantiated speculation. Wait for the results of the investigation to be published.
@Ducman69
Its not random stuff from the net, and by the actions of a company, plus the history of how they've acted before, added to the leaked employee testimonies on the media all equals to a pretty good assumption of what happened. Are we going to assume that they were a good company looking out for the people in the gulf? If we are, this is going to become another Exxon disaster like the one in Alaska, where the people's land was destroyed and they are still in court battling out the compensation (and that happened before I was born)
@rstoplabe14
And btw, before spreading more misinformation from that Houston Chronicle journalist who was just trying to make a name for himself, the leaky hydraulics on the blowout preventer could NOT have affected it from functioning, nor would it have any impact on the backup system. It was already ruled out.
And yes, companies are all about money and the bottom line, and such a disaster is financially ruinous and all big companies understand risk mitigation. There are time deadlines that surely puts a lot of stress on rig management, but in no way would the company want to risk such huge investment. BP has suffered a $1.25 billion loss to date from this IIRC.
This is the first disaster like this, hence the total inexperience with dealing with the catastrophe, as it had simply never happened before.
As NASA knows, even the best safety culture in your organization can't prevent things like the Challenger disaster when pushing the technological envelope.
@rstoplabe14
In short, no we are not to ASSUME anything. Wait for the facts, its not that much to ask.
There is an extremely detailed investigation as well as $500 million awarded to independent scientific communities within the field to research this to better understand the risks to avoid and/or deal with a "next time".
@Ducman69
You bring up the challenger to prove your point, an accident that could have been avoided. The Shuttle exploded after O-rings that sealed the SRBs failed during launch because of usually low temps in the cape, the manufacturer of the seals warned NASA management against launching the spacecraft, but since the shuttle was launched before at temps below 32F, and a high ranking member of the Russian government was visiting DC, they decided to push the envelope again. Then the O-Rings failed, and the flame that escaped through the failure point burned through the external tank, igniting the highly volatile fuel, and causing the disaster 1 minute and 13 seconds after launch.
BTW, Joe Barton (R-TX), is that you??
@Ducman69
Its been 93 days, with all the stuff going on, i can pretty much paint a picture of what happened in the meantime, with all testimonies of workers, etc.
Scientific Community?, not if BP puts them on their payroll first. They were trying to hire scientists of the area, sometimes entire university dept. and pay them to shut up and testify on their side on the gov investigation.
@rstoplabe14
You can paint a pretty good picture, and yet you are spreading misinformation from a very old article that has already been completely debunked... yes, clearly you should be running the investigation. *rolleyes*
I'm not a British citizen and I don't work for BP, but that doesn't mean that I like brainless kneejerk reactions, unsubstantiated assumptions, and spread of misinformation. Yes, people should be angry, I am too, but that doesn't mean that I grab my pitchfork and start yelling RARRARRAR with the brainless mob to find someone to lynch right away.
I dont think nasa is the best example to use. Both times they lost shuttles were because the higher ups refused to listen the concerns voiced by their engineers...
@Ducman69
Well, im not saying that I should be running the show, and im not the type to go out with pitch forks to link people (i dont wear tea bags in my hat). And while the investigation will take a while to complete, the new I see every day from reputable sources (not fake websites), leads me to assume the things that I said, therefore I am assuming from facts gathered from reputable journalists (not the Huston Chronicle). Added to all the madness, im sure BP will not pay all it will owe the people. But for now, on day 93, its safe to assume from the facts that BP was at fault, and that their practices played a cause on this disaster, and that other companies follow in their footsteps, by having the same lax standards. For now my words are an ASSUMPTION that I've reached from the known facts. When the investigation is finished (in a long, long time), and after it get battled in court for decades, then we will still probably be left with very little of the actual facts.
@ashwinkn Sarcasm. Learn it. Love it. Live it.
@rstoplabe14 have you gone off oil, now? Good luck with your wooden wheeled bicycle and your fancy flickbook TV replacement.
@drspain
As you can see from my avatar, I haven't left oil, its just that the irresponsible way that these big companies act have left me wishing that we were not so dependent on it, and hoping for a push for alternative energy. Also, they way that some like senator Joe Barton (R-TX) act towards such companies just drive me nuts.
I'm more surprised that they have 8gb sodimm's available. I guess we're not that far from 16gb in normal laptops then?
@ashwinkn Not that we need 16GB of RAM, unless you plan on playing 5 different games at once, or sloppy developers reckon they don't need to optimise and leave memory leaks all over the place. :/
@The Madman
Computing power always grows only as fast as the apps that need them. It was not that long ago that we thought 4 GB was a ridiculous amount of RAM, an amount that I imagine most visitors to Engadget would consider bare minimum today. By the time they could afford to put 16 GB of RAM in a thousand dollar laptop I could very well imagine there would be the application that demands it (a future version of Photoshop, Maya, or Final Cut Pro, etc.)
In your face Steve Jobs
@TheMuffinMan420
Not that Steve really cares that he is beat in a market that he doesn't really compete in.
@TheMuffinMan420
32 GB modules up Steve's ass
@ashwinkn
32Gb, that's iPad's whole HD space.
Let the flame wars begin!!!
Oh wait. Not an Apple store.
store = story
me = dunt speel good
@oupoliscigrad Upvote for making me chuckle.
@oupoliscigrad You seem to be pretty good at math, though.
I actually think things like this are bad...it just allows Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Game writers,etc to be really lazy and not make their code efficient
@zepfloyd Yeah, let's get rid of Aspirin so people stop drinking too much. ?!?!
HAHAHAHA!!!!
You seem to belong to my tribe and I will let you marry my sister if you bring 20 camels...
@zepfloyd
Trust me, there is little incentive for them to do that right now. As long as iPhones/Droids are limited in resources, developers have every reason to make their code more efficient.
@zepfloyd I know right, same with those damn 3TB harddrives!
Stupid technology advances. >:|