Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Hey there, the M3800 is my first notebook where I cannot unplug the battery so I was wondering what is the best way to keep it efficient as long as possible? I will use my laptop up to 14 hours a day when I am really not going out or anything. Should I charge it until 95%, then unplug the eletricity and use battery only until it reached 15% or is it better if it stays plugged in at 100%?
Thanks

 

I would definitely let it deep cycle with some good discharges, particularly in the first few months, so it won't develop shallow charge memory. In any event, after reviewing the service manual, the battery would be easy to replace anyway, if ever needed.

 

Define good discharge. Below 10% and even until almost 1% or was 15% a good number?
Thank you

 

I would say down to at least 10%. If you go further than that, you risk the system auto-shutting down on you (or prompting you to shut down).

 

Check this link out: Should I completely drain my laptop battery before recharging it?
The "memory effect" on rechargeable batteries is apparently a problem with the older Ni-Cad batteries. The newer Lithium Ion batteries don't have this issue.

 

This doesn't apply to Li-ion batteries. It's better to occasionally "exercise" the cells by draining them to about 40-50%, which I'd recommend doing every 6 weeks or so for Longevity. That said, this system has adaptive battery management, so if it sees you're constantly plugged into AC (as I am), it will adjust accordingly. For example, I've watched my system gradually fall to 92% battery presumably due to self-discharge while I've been plugged into the wall for the last several days -- which is good, because it means this system knows that it's not good to keep Li-ion batteries constantly topped up to the max.

All that said, even on system with removable batteries, it's inadvisable to run them with the batteries removed. I believe on some laptops that can cause problems for due to circuitry design, but some others actually PULL from the battery even while on AC under extremely heavy load conditions, using the battery as a sort of supplementary power supply, so if it's not available your system would have to throttle instead. And a battery is a nice uninterruptible power supply in case of a power interruption due to a momentary outage or an errant kid/pet or something. Ask me how I know.

I wrote a longer post about Li-ion batteries earlier in this thread, quoted here for reference:

 

Thank you @jphughan! That was really helpful.

 

so guys... what do you think of the lenovo y50?
would it be a better notebook than the m3800?
weight is 4 lb, so the same as the m3800.
and it comes with the new gtx card
processor is the same...

so I ques it depends on what you do with the notebook...

Only thing what bothers me is that it comes out in may...

 

Yes, that $35 adapter is the one I bought. The only catch was they said $0 for overnight shipping but the order says it won't ship for another 10 days. Either way, that's a great price. However, your link to the dongle is what I was looking for since I still have my M4400 and I would rather use the single power adapter for either computer.

Anyway, thanks for finding the connector!

 

And your preference for the ergonomics... Y50 has number-pad and offset keyboard rather than centered.... and your preference for the screen (full 4K... even better, or even worse scaling problems?)