Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Yes if you remove the drive and the sled, you can add the larger battery. You won't find it online since it's not an official "accessory", but the part number was posted a few pages back in the XPS 15 thread, and if you call Dell Spare Parts you can get it. Apparently in the US it's $159.

 

Here's what lithium ion batteries do NOT like:

- Being drained to the very bottom all the time
- Never being discharged (even if they're being maintained at a lower level than full)
- Being discharged only a small amount before charging back up
- Being kept at maximum capacity all the time (usually in laptops, firmware will limit that automatically, showing 100% when it's not 100% on a hardware level)

As you can see, batteries are picky. Obviously some of that behavior will happen in the course of your usage, but that's what you want to minimize. Going from 100 to 0 is a practice for NiMH batteries since they had "memory", but not Li-ion. It's still a good idea to exercise the cells occasionally though by discharging it to maybe 40% before charging it again. This machine also has adaptive battery management so it will watch how you use it and adjust its battery management strategy automatically. That's the theory anyway. You can force a certain mode in the BIOS too, though some are reporting that doesn't work, in which case I imagine a BIOS update will fix it. On some lower-end Dell models there's no adaptive mode, but you can enable "Desktop Mode" and "Longevity Mode", which will prevent your battery from charging if it's between 50-100 or 88-100, respectively, to reduce the time the battery spends totally full and occurrences of quick discharges and then recharges. See here: ftp://ftp.dell.com/manuals/Common/vostro-3360_Setup Guide_en-us.pdf

Unfortunately I can't give an actual numerical estimate for how much of an increase in long-term performance you can expect by avoiding the above behaviors, so I wouldn't go too far out of your way to follow them. Use your battery as you need to, that's why it's there.

 

thank you very much for the information! M3800 workstation will be my first!

 

Has anyone been running Linux on one off these, or on the XPS (I should check that thread more often) -- on quite a few other models, the only mux is on the LVDS to the internal pannel, with the external port or ports hardwired to one GPU or the other (e.g. on most business-line machines, analog VGA to the Intel, and the remaining digital outputs to the Nvidia.)

Windows drivers tend to hide those details.

 

noob question here....I'm getting ready to purchase the M3800 to use with primarily AutoCad and MS Office. Would I benefit from the QHD+ resolution (3200 x 1800) over the FHD resolution (1920 x 1080)? I mostly do my drawing on external monitors at the office, but do have have to draw quite a bit on laptop screen too when home or traveling.

This also brings me to another question...can anyone recommend a good docking station for this unit? The USB 3.0 unit Dell has seems to have terrible reviews. My current computer is a Latitude D630 with a true docking station (with DVI and VGA connections), so this all new to me.

TIA

 

Yes, there are a few people on the XPS thread who are running Linux quite happily on this system, though they didn't discuss Optimus specifically. But the NVIDIA Control Panel shows that all display outputs are attached to the Intel GPU, if that's to be believed -- but that would explain the fact that there are no display resolution/arrangement/orientation management functions in the NVIDIA Control Panel regardless of what mix of internal and external displays you're running.

 

Ubuntu looks slightly better but has the free anti-aliasing,too. Weird. When you use the fabulous windows 8.1. per monitor DPI scaling it uses the algorithm which produces the 1:4 Pixel scaling. So Microsoft has realized that this way thing look sharper but Intel didn't.

I guess i'll head over to the MacBook community and start discussing the heat issues I've been running some stress test and the m3800 never get's to hot to touch. Highest Temps i got using Furmark and Prime95 at the same time was 91° But after reading that there was thermal shutdown during notebookcheck testing i didnt had ther nerves to test longer than 10 Minutes.

 

Have you notice any GPU throttling, while performing stress test?

Inviato dal mio GT-I9100 con Tapatalk 2

 

Don't know how AutoCAD handles QHD (try their forums or contact their support), but Office works great. QHD looks awesome, especially with text and high-res photos -- definitely not a necessity but very nice, just like Retina displays on Apple's products. But being an early adopter can have some inconveniences, so prepare for that if you want it while the software catches up.

Dell's USB 3.0 dock is based on a DisplayLink chip, like basically every other USB dock that has video outputs. I think the negative reviews are based more on confusion over how it works (no charging the laptop over USB, needing to buy a second AC adapter for your laptop if you want to replicate a true docking station setup) than actual performance issues. I suspect other docks with similar connectivity would use the same DisplayLink chip and thus perform basically the same. But if you want to keep docking station level convenience, buy a second AC adapter, though of course you'll be connecting 2 cables to "dock" rather than 1.

 

It looks like Dell has these at 30% off right now...is that the normal price or is this truly a special? Thanks.