Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Points taken, I have never run either a System, HDD, or Admin password, Admin makes the most sense, and I'll be looking into Bitlocker. I just went with it and used the Dell "Recovery Media" to install Windows 8 however Dell intended it to; to my surprise the recovery media is basically just a usb drive with Win8 loaded on it. Nothing Dell branded was really installed anywhere besides putting the Dell logo on the boot screen; drivers were omitted as well and I had to manually install. UEFI seems to have slashed my boot times though.

After thinking about it, I noticed that Flicks worked with the Windows 7 install; on 8 it seems to have been discontinued on capacitive screens.

 

Yeah, the USB key is a pure Windows 8.1 installer, nothing Dell apparently. The Dell logo on the boot screen is because you're in UEFI mode, and that's how it looks now. That's what I have even though I did a clean install with regular Microsoft media. Enjoy! :thumbsup:

 

I finally made a decision: I bought the XPS 15 with the 3200x1800 screen.
delivery date is 25-3-2014..... so I ques I have to be patient....

 

March? ouch....

 

I've skimmed through much of this thread but haven't seen anything about fan noise. Does anyone know how loud the fan on the M3800 is?

I've always been embarrassed to use the old Dell Inspiron I have in the quiet study room at my uni because the fan kicks on every few minutes (even when not doing anything) and is super loud.

 

I'd be worried if one did that that you would end up without the 2.5" drive bracket or cable. If planning to upgrade, I'd get the cheapest 2.5" option, with or without the mSATA drive.

Mind is fairly quiet, and it is definitely multi-speed. It comes on at a very low level, almost inaudibly, very frequently; even at higher speed it is fairly quiet -- better than my E6430 by a long shot -- but definitely audible when doing video encoding or code compilation. Running games on the NVidia card, even older stuff I would not expect to be stressing the GPU has the fan on full time, but it's not loud enough to be bothersome. For older games, sticking to Intel seems to do better on heat and noise.

There are two fans; the manual refers to one as the CPU fan and one as the GPU fan. It is not clear from outside the case which is running when.

 

Sometimes I have a weird continious noise, not loud, but it sounds like...when you heat up extremely thin glass too fast so it bursts a little^^ Anything one should worry about?

To the fan noise: Normally there´s absolutely none. Using 3D features in Photoshop or playing games it gets quite loud, but still not as loud as my old SXPS 1645.

 

Well I've been using one of these for a week. Dual drive model, upgraded the SSHD to a 1TB 840 Evo SSD. 16GB RAM and the QHD screen.

I have to say it's a mixed bag. Screen is impressive when put against "normal" dell laptop screens but has *horrific* backlit bleed - black levels are dreadful. I also have a 2012 Retina Macbook Pro and the screen on this is better for colour accuracy (I've calibrated both) and black levels. As discussed Windows programs deal very inconsistently with the very high resolution, it rarely renders it unusable but it's not a slick experience as with OS-X. The remote desktop client is probably my biggest bugbear. I actually find myself using the touchscreen functionality to scroll, but mainly because the two finger scroll on the touchpad is so and unreliable.

Keyboard is OK, too stiff thought and lots of missed keystrokes. The touchpad is rather poor I find - it often doesn't respond to tap clicks and double finger "right" clicks, and if you physically click the buttons too close to the corners it ignores it. I'm finding it to be quite frustrating.

The machine is fast, quiet and cool and the carbon fibre base feels great. Build is generally great and very nearly up there with the unibody Mac, except for this nasty and cheap feeling "flat" on the bottom that covers up the service tag details.

Battery life is not brilliant, I'd say 3 - 4 hours with the smaller battery that mine has to facilitate the 2nd drive. A better choice, I feel, would be a 512GB mSATA drive and the larger battery as Dell UK offer on the (identical) XPS15. As a precision M3800 however they only offer 256GB mSATA options and the SSHD. I have complained to my Dell rep about this crap new "smart selection" scheme they have and the rubbish configurations they offer.

In summary - mostly excellent hardware, but the scaling issues in Windows really make the high resolution a bit of a curse as much of a blessing. Go in with your eyes wide open if you get one of these, and unless you are tied to Windows I feel OS-X offers a much better experience in the high res field.

 

Well in general use they are quiet but if you stress the CPU and GPU they can become quite loud. Nothing like an old Inspiron though, and you really have to torment it to make them go fast. Worth noting that the carbon fibre base means it never gets uncomfortable on your lap!

 

Hmm, I know that the QHD+ displays have had some QC issues, but I have no complaints at all about backlight bleed or black levels. Did you disable splendid mode? Turning that off might help with black levels, but probably not backlight bleed -- you'll definitely need to recalibrate after that though. What brightness level are you using most of the time? I find myself only using 60% on this display because at 100% it's just too bright, even though on every other laptop I've used I always max out brightness.

Have you tried the new touchpad drivers that Dell released about a week ago? I'm told they improve responsiveness and reduce inaccuracies. I'm still on the reference Synaptics drivers though.