Dell M3800 vs E7440 for VM mobile LAB

Hello to everyone on the forum. I've been reading the forum over the past few days and it's been very interesting.
 
I am in quandary which I hope you all can help with.  I am currently using a Dell E6330 and have been asked what machine I would like this to be replaced with.

I believe I have narrowed my choice down the two machines both for different reasons.

My shortlist is the M3800 and the E7440. 1080 screen, 16GB RAM, 256 mSATA SSD.

I need a a machine that I could use while travelling to and from the office on a daily basis as well as at the office with 2 external screens, so I need something pretty portable.  A colleague is going for the M4800, but it's not something I feel I want to carry around everyday.  It needs to have have enough power to do what I need and allow 2 drives (1 mSATA  & 1 2.5 inch).  Most of my time is spent using VM's to test various infrastructure scenarios which can range from 1 or 2 up to 6 VM's depending on what I am trying to achieve. These are mostly RAM and Storage limited.

E7440 

I love the form factor of the E7440 and every aspect of the hardware. It will work with my current E Series dock. The only limiting factor seems to be the i7 4600U processor which is only dual core.  None of the scenarios I generally run are CPU intensive; but I am concerned that this could be a bottleneck going forward.  I've had no such issues with the E6330 thus far with this but still.

M3800

On the other hand the M3800 is quad core, and fits all my requirements but this is larger machine, with no traditional docking port.  I would consider getting the D3000 docking station for the displays, although I'm am not adverse to just pluging the cables in. The other concern is the lack of eSATA which is supplied to the E7440 through the E series docking station but after some research I believe that USB3 should be up to the job of running VM's from an external SSD. Would the M3800 be fine for lap use on the train? Anyone done this themselves?

I have no requirements for real GPU power and am limited to the business class line of machines, namely the Latitudes or the Precisions.

Any advice would be greatly received.

Many thanks





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Any thoughts at all anyone?


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Id go with latitude to be able to reuse dock, old power adaper etc.

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Win8 is not ready for high resolution, the QHD+ screen could be a disaster. M3800/XPS15 is great, but not win8.

ref: XPS 15
My Dell XPS 15 (2013) review | greg pakes web

 

I just got the m3800. Will be running multiple VMs.
For me, 16GB RAM and quad-core CPU were essential, so Latitudes were out of consideration.
USB3 should be just fine for most purposes. Looks like eSATA is going away.
I would not use this or any other laptop on your laps without a pad for prolonged time: it may overheat and throttle.