Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Well first off, according to Lenovo's site, the Y50 starts at 5.7 lbs, not 4.1 or 4.4 as the M3800/XPS 15 are rated, which sort of makes it a different class of laptop. But ignoring that, it's honestly too early to compare the two fairly. Most of the niggles people have with the M3800 weren't known until people got their hands on one, so in some ways the M3800 is at a DISadvantage in that now that it's out, everyone knows its imperfections, whereas the Y50 is just being marketed at this point, which is of course going to focus on positives.

In addition to the excellent observations made above, I'll add that the Y50 apparently comes with an optical drive if that's important. But it also only claims "Up to 4 hours" of battery life, which isn't a lot especially as an "up to" figure. Granted the M3800/XPS 15 don't have great battery life either, but since they claim figures a lot higher than that in their marketing, expect the real-world Y50 performance to be noticeably less than 4 hours. But lots of detailed specs are still missing. I still haven't found exactly what CPU and GPU it will ship with, for example, though given that it will weigh a lot more, it probably will indeed have a faster CPU and GPU since you can get more space and cooling into a package of that weight. And yes, if you thought scaling issues (or lack of scaling) was bad on 3200x1800, it will be dreadful on 3840x2160 in the same physical size. Of course that's a temporary problem, but how temporary depends on the apps you'll be using, and knowing that it will be fixed at some point doesn't make any initial inconveniences any less inconvenient.

And then of course as you said, there's the issue of release date. My position is that if you're always willing to wait for something better to come out, you'll never buy anything. 5 months is a LONG time to be looking forward and willing to wait in the laptop industry. And of course if the Y50 turns out NOT to be better for you, then you'd sit there fretting about ordering the Dell machine since "it might be about to be replaced in 5 months". I think you're expanding your horizons a bit too far looking that far ahead, personally. But at some point you have to draw the line and say, "I'm going to buy something by this particular date, no matter what rumors or announcements of potentially better products I may have read about by then." If you don't need to buy just yet and can afford to wait, then by all means do so -- but if you wait for the Y50 and then decide against it, be careful not to repeat the cycle and wait for whatever else might have been announced for future release by May.

 

sorry my bad, I have read on a site it starts from 4 lbs... but i think the lenovo site is right

I think you have some good points there...
My plan was to wait for the CES, because i thought maybe they announce a better notebook...
But I think you are right, next week I want to order a laptop, because my current notebook is a hell ( acer aspire 6930G )
I'm a light and audio engineer ( student )
In the next few months I will use a lot of 3d cad programs for designing light for a stage or something
I also use sometimes video editing software..
so the program's i use are: Grand MA 1 and 2 onPC, Grand MA 3D, cast wysiwyg and adobe....

so what do you guys think? I doubt wether to buy the xps 15:

3200 x 1800 touch screen
i7 processor
gt 750m 2gb
1TB HDD with 32 Gb Msata SSD
16 GB ram.
for €1699 including tax and all the other stuff...

or the m3800:
1920 x 1080 touchscreen
intel i7 proccesor
nvidia k1100M
8 GB ram
500 GB hybrid drive with 8 GB flash
for € 1399 excluding tax - € 1735,14 including tax ( 21% )

the xps 15 is cheaper and it will give me more stuff, but the m3800 has the k1100M.... but what do you guys think?

thanks and have a nice weekend

 

If those are the only two specs you'll be choosing between, this is tough for a few reasons. First, CAD is the type of activity that would benefit from the Quadro, but if you're a student you might not be using it heavily enough for it to make a meaningful difference; you're not billing by the hour after all. Plus I think it's possible (likely, even) that the benefit of having 16GB of RAM in the XPS would outweigh the Quadro benefit of the M3800 for that work. Of course you could always upgrade the M3800 to 16GB, but you can't put a Quadro into the XPS.

The other wildcard is of course the display. If you won't be using an external display and successful use of these apps is critical to your coursework, I would make absolutely sure that the important apps you'll be using will work well on a 3200x1800 display before considering a spec that includes it. If they won't, then I would argue that that alone would disqualify your XPS 15 spec. Yes it's a fabulous display, but if it doesn't allow you to do the work you need to do properly, then that doesn't matter. Since you listed Adobe apps, chances are the 3200x1800 display may not be a good fit for you.

If on the other hand the apps you'll be using would work fine scaled, then the decision becomes more difficult since CAD would arguably benefit at least somewhat from a HiDPI display. At that point you'd be choosing essentially between a high-resolution panel and a more purpose-built GPU, which is a tougher call. But if the apps you're interested in will work on QHD+, then unless your research shows that the apps you would be using run dramatically faster on a Quadro card than a GeForce card, I'd probably go with the XPS.

And lastly, the XPS storage might be faster since its spinning drive is twice as large (which means higher data density) and its performance will be boosted by the 32GB mSATA cache, which provides a larger amount of faster flash storage than the 8GB flash incorporated into the 500GB drive on the M3800. Still, if you'll be doing CAD, whichever of these systems you buy, I'd buy either a full-capacity mSATA SSD (to add into the vacant slot of the M3800 or replace the cache unit on the XPS 15) and use that for your OS, applications, and CAD files you're actively working on, and then use the spinning drive only for bulk data (music, photos, CAD files you're not working on, etc). Or you could replace the spinning drive with a 2.5" SSD, in which case you should remove the mSATA cache unit if you buy the XPS. Or you could of course do both. Hopefully you're comfortable wiping your system and reinstalling Windows from scratch to do that.

 

Here is a quote from the Wysiwyg website:
" please do not choose a workstation-level video card for WYSIWYG use because it will not provide the performance you might expect, despite its (much) higher price tag"
from the linki CAST Software

So for that program, XPS seems better, also for Grand MA 3d they sem to recommend cards which are for gaming as well...

 

Thanks for your reaction! I appreciate it !

those are indeed the only configs I will choose between, because i don't have that much money for a notebook... that's the only down side for being a student

and I think I don't use cad programs on a daily basis, because i will work mostly in the field, or a theater...
The thing is, I don't know if my programs work on hi res displays. I will contact the help desk next week.
I will use a external display especially when i use 2 program to design a light show... one for the lighting control software and one for the 3d program.

But one thing, you say if the programs scale right, choose the m3800 and use the savings for another 8Gb of ram...
But the m3800 is €36 more expensiver than the xps 15... and I didn't mention the VIP coupon I have... 10% of consumer products...

I will definitively buy a samsung 840 evo msata ssd, probably a 128GB or a 250 GB. Or do you know a better option?

cheers!

 

I have read the info, but the information on the cast website is from 1 year ago.... and in that time there were a lot of updates for the program...
and Grand ma gives a lot of information, but they say the nvidia geforce 9600M perfoms good with their software...
well i can decline that... i have the geforce 9600M GS in my notebook... but with a small light show it gives me 5 FPS.... way to low...

but thanks for your thoughts

 

Placed order on Jan 8. Just received shipping notice for Jan 15 delivery (in Toronto, Canada)

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

I think that's a reference to the flash on the Hybrid Hard Drive (which was a "Seagate Laptop Thin SSHD" in mine rather than a branded Momentus XT, but *shrug*) rather than a user-accessible minicard. Adding his own larger minicard and keeping the SSHD might be better than replacing the SSHD, although the cost will be a little higher for a given size.

Except in this case, the workstation card is 300 Euros cheaper.

----

And on my own, I'm pretty happy with the M3800... I tried Windows 7, and then restored Windows 8.1 from backup. The biggest problem -- high CPU usage when idle -- seems to be better, although not gone (there's still a bit more CPU activity from the Synaptics driver and Windows itself -- particularly the Antimalwar service -- than I'd like)... but the "windows audio device graph isolation" no longer seems to be stuck at a constant 5-10%. It may have been fixed by getting rid of some extra processes set by the sound card driver, or this may be a coincidence:

Most of the other issues are just a matter of not wanting to have to learn something new that's different without any obvious benefit (example: the new, much busier, task manager. Still doesn't do as much as process explorer does, but is much heavier both visually and on CPU than the old one. Plus it doesn't confirm on some actions like ending processes.)

The biggest, and AFAICT unresolvable one is the awful ribbonification of the file explorer. Harmless in theory, but for someone with 22 years of muscle memory on File Manager and then Windows Explorer, getting rid of the menus -- and changing many of the non-menu keyboard shortcuts -- is a HUGE minus. (At least when they put the ribbon in Office 2007, they kept the old shortcuts invisible -- even in 2010, "Alt-D, S" brings up "Sort" in Excel.)

 

You're absolutely right, I totally forgot about that. In that case at least you'd have an available mSATA slot if you wished to buy a full-capacity SSD to use for the OS and applications and then simply keep the spinning drive for bulk storage, and/or you could still replace the 500GB drive with a 2.5" SSD. I've edited my post above to reflect this.

 

Question and advisory for M3800 owners: Since the M3800 ships with Windows 7, is your default BIOS configuration set to Legacy mode, or UEFI mode with Load Legacy Option ROMs enabled?

And for any of you who have installed Windows 8/8.1 instead, if your system is already in UEFI mode, I'd recommend disabling Load Legacy Option ROMs. Windows 8/8.1 doesn't require it, and turning it off will speed up your boot time somewhat since loading those option ROMs takes some time. It would also allow you to enable Secure Boot. If you're currently in Legacy mode though, switching to UEFI mode would require either reinstalling the OS or jumping through some rather technical hoops to convert it (more details in subsequent posts). Sorry!

Note: If you're already in UEFI mode running Windows 8/8.1 and you find that disabling Legacy Option ROMs or enabling Secure Boot causes your OS to no longer boot successfully, it means that when you originally installed Windows, you booted your installation media in Legacy mode rather than UEFI mode, and as a result Windows installed in Legacy mode. In that case your installation can't take advantage of UEFI mode and can't work with Legacy Option ROMs disabled. That too would require an OS reinstall or technical hoops.