Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

I am looking at the M3800 as a replacement laptop. I have a few queries and would be very grateful for help on these.
I use my laptop for general use and photo editing and intend to add a desk monitor to help with the latter. I know more than one will work from the M3800 but will be interested to see is if the problems of maintaining calibration are sorted.
In my current laptop I have a 500Mb Crucial M500 SSD fitted. I know the replacement of the HD looks straight forward but in practice how easy is it to disconnect the battery (and do you really need to actually remove it as after disconnecting it). I have built a number of tower PC’s over the years and changed memory/HD’s on laptops.

 

Apologies if questions are a bit basic – I am not a tech expert.

1. I typically use my laptop with a wired Gigabit Ethernet connection. How will the performance of the “USB to Ethernet adapter” compare with that of a direct Gigabit Ethernet connection?

2. How does the Dell D3000 USB 3.0 dock compare to a Dell E-Port Plus Advanced Port Replicator you might use with M4800/Latitude model? I know it does not supply power, but aside from that in real world use is there a difference in performance when feeding external monitors, peripherals, wired internet speeds, etc?

Obviously I could remove these questions by buying Latitude/M4800, but having used Win 8.1 on other devices I like the idea of the touchscreen on the M3800 (and cannot defer purchase until Latitude/M4800 get touchscreens, assuming they ever do).

 

With my Spyder there is a profile chooser. On our desk PC with three user accounts sometimes it changes with the wrong profile and the right one is easy to load from the profile chooser.
Does your calibrater have something like this? Not ideal but easy to use.

 

I have just realized how useless the USB device is and have likely given up with the Dell. Its unable to handle most proper monitor sizes.

 

You could set the F keys to default to their Function key function rather than their Multimedia key function (setting is in the BIOS or Windows Mobility Center if you have QuickSet installed), in which case you wouldn't need to hold the Fn key to use F1, etc. Otherwise I can't check that behavior on my own system at the moment, sorry!

Go to support.dell.com and read the Owner's Manual for either the M3800 or XPS 15, which will give you a very clear pictorial guide for how to make these swaps and let you see how easy it is. But yes, it's easy.

1. The included USB adapter is USB 2.0-only, so it will not compare favorably to a built-in NIC. But USB 3.0 to Gigabit adapters perform identically to built-in NICs. I have one made by StarTech that even has a USB 3.0 passthrough port so that I don't lose a USB port while the NIC is connected.

2. The major difference between the regular Dell docking stations and the D3000 other than power is how the displays are handled. Pushing display data over USB means that there are resolution limitations on each display that are lower than you'd have if you were direct-connecting the displays to the system (or going through a regular dock, which does the same thing), and it's POSSIBLE that if you do high-refresh display activity such as gaming, you might see some lag or compression artifacts. But I haven't tested the D3000 or any USB 3.0 dock, so I don't know whether that's an actual risk or just a theoretical one. But if you do research on any other USB 3.0 port replicator with dual video outputs that uses the DisplayLink chipset (pretty much all of them do), the results should be comparable to the D3000. Peripheral performance should be the same with the POSSIBLE exception that the USB 3.0 chip in the dock might not support UASP; I haven't been able to get concrete information on that one way or the other, but the built-in USB 3.0 ports do. Then again if you don't have any UASP devices (or aren't running Windows 8 or above), then that's moot.

Which "USB device"? The dock? Yes, it maxes out at 1200p bandwidth (confirmed by user reviews, but which I figured since the bandwidth required by the max resolution they claim is more than 1920x1200 would require). If that resolution isn't "proper" for you, then ok, but fyi it might have been nice for you to explain how you define that term in your original post for the benefit of others.

 

The USB I looked at, M9D06, is said to have “The video ports deliver HD video and graphics with up to 2048 x 1152 resolution.” ( Dell SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Docking Station : PC Accessories for Tablets, Laptops & Desktops | Dell UK )
Is there a better one as the monitor is 1920 x 1200.

As I have seen else where now these USB devices are of little use for work stations where even many Dell monitors can't be used.

 

2048x1152 requires more bandwidth than 1920x1200, so the latter will definitely work. 2048x1152 is from the spec of the DisplayLink chipset it's using, and if you look at reviews of other equivalent products (such as the Targus USB 3.0 with Dual Video Docking Station), you'll find a) the same 2048x1152 spec, and b) customer reviews that confirm 1920x1200 works.

 

1. The included USB adapter is USB 2.0-only, so it will not compare favorably to a built-in NIC. But USB 3.0 to Gigabit adapters perform identically to built-in NICs. I have one made by StarTech that even has a USB 3.0 passthrough port so that I don't lose a USB port while the NIC is connected.

2. The major difference between the regular Dell docking stations and the D3000 other than power is how the displays are handled. Pushing display data over USB means that there are resolution limitations on each display that are lower than you'd have if you were direct-connecting the displays to the system (or going through a regular dock, which does the same thing), and it's POSSIBLE that if you do high-refresh display activity such as gaming, you might see some lag or compression artifacts. But I haven't tested the D3000 or any USB 3.0 dock, so I don't know whether that's an actual risk or just a theoretical one. But if you do research on any other USB 3.0 port replicator with dual video outputs that uses the DisplayLink chipset (pretty much all of them do), the results should be comparable to the D3000. Peripheral performance should be the same with the POSSIBLE exception that the USB 3.0 chip in the dock might not support UASP; I haven't been able to get concrete information on that one way or the other, but the built-in USB 3.0 ports do. Then again if you don't have any UASP devices (or aren't running Windows 8 or above), then that's moot.


Many thanks jphughan.

1. Can you think of a reason why Dell would include a USB 2 to Ethernet adapter rather than a USB 3 one, i.e. are there any downsides to the USB 3 to Ethernet adapter you use?

2. If anyone has any practical experience of the Dell D3000 USB 3.0 dock (or other similar docks) regarding lag or compression artifacts that would be much appreciated.

 

Thanks, I was felling more than a bit p***d off after thinking I had a solution only to find it go again. Its only the one monitor I will be using, so it sounds unlike those using higher spec monitors I will be OK.

 

The included USB dongle supports PXE booting, which is important for enterprise customers ordering these who want to image them over the network. My guess is that Dell simply hasn't gotten around to developing a PXE-compatible adapter with a USB 3.0 chipset, which is somewhat understandable since this is one of the first, if not THE first, enterprise laptop they've shipped that has both USB 3.0 and no built-in NIC. Another possibility is that since PXE environments are extremely unlikely to have USB 3.0 support (I don't think even Windows 7's boot environment has it natively), USB 3.0 ports would either only run at 2.0 speeds in that environment or wouldn't work at all -- which could be partly why Dell left a single USB 2.0 port on this system. Of course if they developed a PXE-compatible USB 3.0 to Gigabit adapter and USB 3.0 ports didn't work at all in a PXE environment, they could include a note saying something like, "You can use this to get 3.0 speeds most of the time, but if you're doing PXE, you have to connect this 3.0 adapter to a 2.0 port for it to work" -- but that would likely result in a lot of support calls from people who didn't read that note and simply assumed that you shouldn't ever plug a 3.0 device into a 2.0 port if you can avoid it.

The only downside to using an aftermarket USB 3.0 to Gigabit adapter is that it's extremely unlikely to support PXE since PXE booting off of a USB adapter requires that the BIOS support the exact USB adapter you're using -- hence the reason Dell includes their own adapter for this purpose.