Dell Precision M3800 - 2013!

If this happens, this is probably my next laptop. Anything beyond September is too much waiting.

 

ditto - they are really dragging this out. I need a laptop stat but can't wait til Nov.

 

I can hold out till Nov, but I'm not in Europe or America.

In all likelihood I'll have to wait a month after release to get it in Asia/Australia.

So hopefully it'll be out by at least mid or end Oct.

 

Strange... I saw this on Dell's France site:

Communiqués de presse | Dell France

The new workstations Dell Precision tower and mobile will be available from September 12 from ³ 975 € for the T3610, € 1,765 for the T5610, € 2,290 for the T7610, € 1,410 for the M4800 and € 1,690 for the M6800. For more information, visit Dell Official Site - The Power To Do More | Dell / Precision tool and see Dell Precision Workstation Advisor for recommended according to your specific applications and environments configurations.

 

Well, here's to hoping the M3800 gets released reasonably soon. As I'm leaning towards the M3800 anyway for its lighter weight (don't need the laptop to be a true Workstation like others do), Dell already took away my only potential selling point for the M4800 over the M3800: Price. Assuming a 3200x1800-equipped M3800 is going to cost $1799 or more in the US ($1699 being the 1920x1080 model), my hope was that I could snag a baseline M4800 with all components stock (i5-4200M, FirePro GPU) except for the upgraded 3200x1800 display, and have it all come in under ~$1500.

Those hopes were, of course, shattered when I discovered the utter load of bull that is locked-in configuration options on vastly-differently-priced models.



I mean come on Dell, get your game together. All I want to do is pay a few hundred dollars over the $1249 base in order to get the QHD+ display. I do not need nor want to pay for an i7-4800MQ CPU or Quadro K2100M GPU on top of that.

 

Wait a minute... what's the difference between M3800 and M4800? I'm getting confused here... aren't they the same thing/model?

 

m3800 is designed to be thin and light, so it is missing an optical drive and LAN, is limited to 16GB RAM and potentially a lower power CPU.

m4800 is thicker and heavier, so it offers an optical drive (can take an HDD caddy as well) up to 32GB RAM and has more cooling options to run the faster i7 quad cores.

So the m3800 goes for the lightest in class while the m4800 goes for the most powerful in class

 

Oh damn, I thought they were the same! lol

Now I'm in a dilemma on whether to get M3800 or M4800.
I'm into internet marketing, therefore I need lot of processing power and RAM. But I also travel a lot.

Should I go for a light-weight but less powerful precision; or a bulky and heavy precision but with extreme power.

Damn, it's like deciding whether to buy a MP-5 submachine gun or a AK-47.

 

given the fact that Dell is going head to head against rMBP 15, i'm expecting no less than $2200 USD for the QHD+ version probably equipped with K1100m, 4702mq, 256G ssd

 

The customizability of the M4800 is currently pretty bad. I would expect it to improve considerably over time. The biggest advantages of the M4800 over the M3800 for me isn't power, it's serviceability. Replacing the battery on the Retina Macbook Pro requires sending the laptop to Apple. Increasing RAM is impossible. There are almost no alternatives for SSD upgrades. Replacing broken keyboards etc is also impossible without essentially replacing the entire machine. We don't yet know if the M3800 will be as bad as the rMBP, but I would expect it to lean further in that direction than towards the M4800. Better connectivity is also a big reason. Non-reflective screen on the M4800 is nice. The port for docking and slice batteries also has its uses.