Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

I purchased the M500 mSATA SSD for my M3800 and it works very well. You might as well get the mSATA version, as opposed to the SATA version, because then you can keep the HDD that comes with the laptop and use it for storage.

Watch out for the price fluctuations, though. At least on Amazon the price fluctuates a LOT. Checkout this site:

LEXAR MEDIA INC Crucial M500 480GB SATA mSATA 2.5-Inch Internal Solid State Drive CT480M500SSD3 – PriceWombat

The 480GB version, for example, was $324.99 on 1/26 and today (2/17) it's $260.99. That's a $64 difference.

 

Awoke today to the wonderful news that my M3800 has shipped 3 weeks sooner than estimated and is due to arrive tonight (1-day shipping - nice!). It was listed as "in production" for less than a week - not sure if that is typical, but perhaps that will give others of you still waiting some hope.

I ordered the top configuration with the 512GB SSD. I think it is coming with Win 7, but I plan on updating immediately to Win 8.1 to take better advantage of touch screen features and enjoy some favorite Win 8 apps. For those who already have their M3800s, I'd love to hear any setup tips you have - configuration tweaks, installing Win 8.1, helpful apps, anything else. Thanks!

 

Likewise ^

Also, what have been the snags or problems that have come up after upgrading to 8.1?

Thanks

 

Mine has arrived! A month earlier than listed on the production website. It is not yet unboxed.

Experience? With the Win 7 pro build, which I will keep, how clean an install is this? Did you reformat? For those who did not, any wish that you had?

thanks,
Erin C-H

 

My M3800 arrived Feb 5, the same date originally estimated by Dell. I have the version with the 512GB SSD and the larger battery. I kept Win 7 and did not reformat. My experience with Dell Precisions (this is my fourth) is that their Windows installations are pretty clean. Being an Autocad user I'm a little conservative with new versions of Windows, particular since I may be using various versions of Autocad depending on the project.

My biggest gripe is the location of the power button. Using Autocad, I hit the escape button frequently, and that power button is right in striking distance. Using Win 7 I did not expect the touch screen to be of any use. I was surprised to find that it works in a number of programs including Autocad 2012.

John

 

Clean install is kind of a nightmare. You have to contact Dell and ask them to send you a Win7 installation disk (you CANNOT use a normal retail or OEM retail disk, it HAS to be a special disk provided by Dell).

Some of the needed drivers are not shown on the product page on the Dell website, so you have to find them elsewhere (specifically USB 3.0 drivers and an accelerometer driver).

Win7 is not working well for me on this machine. The computer often freezes when waking up from sleep (more often than not), sometimes freezes when shutting down, and has had some other issues I can't recall at the moment.

Also, it's worth noting that you CANNOT use the recovery partition to "restore" Win7 to a new hard drive of a different size. For some reason the recovery software will only work if the drive is exactly the same size as the original.

If I could start over I would either have imaged the Win7 installation on the HDD and put that onto the SSD I added, or installed Win8 since I suspect the machine was really designed to work with that.

 

What Nvidia global profile should I use for autocad?

 

To be honest I haven't played with the Nvidia settings and am still using the base profile. This machine is so far beyond my M6500 with it's Firepro card that I'm quite satisfied with the speed. I do a mix of 2d and 3d work and I can rotate a shaded model without textures with no degradation and no hesitation. A shaded model with textures will degrade to wireframe but with no hesitation (either degrading and retexturing or in rotating). The two models I tested were a 6,000 sq. ft. residence and the heavy timber frame for that residence. This is in ACA 2012 and typical of what I work on.

John

 

Multi Monitors question:
Does anyone know how many monitors can be connected to the M3800 without using the docking station?
I was hoping for 2 monitors plus the laptop screen to be active at the same time. Is this possible?
Thanks,
Jatz

 

You can do that without the need of a docking station, just using HDMI and mDP.