Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

@Chiane: Well, I wasn't satisfied with the T440s at all. This is my list of likes and dislikes about the T440s, I got the version with no dedicated graphics card, 8GB Dual Channel RAM, i5-4200U CPU and HD4400 iGPU, paired with a Samsung SSD 840 Pro 128GB.

Positive:
- Keyboard is superb. Only mechanical keyboards (especially Cherry MX Blue) are better.
- Display is awesome! Bright, above-average contrast, simply awesome
- Lightweight
- 6 - 7 hours batterylife with low - medium workload
- Linux Support - almost everything is working out of the Box, when using latest Linux Kernel (3.12+)

Negative:
- All plastic case. It simply feels cheap; fairly easy scratchable
- Very thin top. You can easily bend it by opening up the lid.
- Difficult to open up. Easily breakable parts, so you need to be 100% careful.
- Quality problems; e.g. display bezel poorly glued -> this was my T440s: http://s28.postimg.org/6d8wyejy5/IMG_20140120_223335.jpg
- Bad customer service - they don't know anything about any problems. Also, they try to get away with "it's your fault" or "it's not under warranty". Maybe it's only limited to Germany, I don't know.
- Speaker Noise Problem
- Intel Rapid Start Bug, which causes Data Loss and corrupt drives
- BIOS Bug, which randomly causes corrupt SSD drives (you can't do anything with them other than RMA; they're dead!) - especially in conjunction with Samsung SSD 840 Pro and Samsung SSD 840 Basic drives
- TrackPad makes the TrackPoint kinda useless. Clicking on the pad is noisy and gets annoying for some people (I liked it. However, I still prefer a usual Touchpad).

Out of a sudden, my unit got around 50 - 60 defective subpixels in the middle of the screen. Maybe aging; maybe in conjunction with the display bezel - I don't know. http://s17.postimg.org/bey3iksa7/IMG_20140120_223417.jpg. I got my display replaced with an LG, which is SIGNIFICANTLY worse than the AOU. The LG panel got worse viewing angles, less brightness, less contrast and got some rainbow effect on it. Afaik, Lenovo doesn't put AOU screens in their T440s anymore, only LGs. So, "nightmare" does kinda fit to my experience. I used the T440s for about 3 months, until I sold my unit for about 230€ less than what I paid for it. In comparison, the "Coil Whine Issue" is a child's birthday. There is almost nothing in this thread, which could make me regret buying the M3800.

Btw.: Does Hackintosh run on the M3800? Anyone tried out?

 

This may be an exaggeration but it seems as though everyone has coil whine problems. Does anyone not have this or any issues?

 

dats awful! go with HP.

 

On any forum like this you're going to hear more from people with problems than from those who don't. A few of us have noted that we have no coil whine, and other than some design issues that I can put up with (glossy screen, no numeric keypad) I'm very pleased with this computer. It's extremely quiet. I had forgotten how used to the screaming fans on my M6500 I had become until using this for a few weeks. I have had the touchpad be unresponsive on wakeup once but since I seldom use the touchpad I may not notice it at other times.

All in all this is a sweet machine.

 

I do not have it. Mine runs solid. I did downgrade the wifi drivers, the newest are a little flaky on my network.

 

I have mine since December and I'm very happy with it. I use it on a daily base.
Only issues I had:
- unresponsive after waking from sleep about 1 out of 10 times. Don't know what happened but this issue disappeared lately.
- I had to turn off 802.11g in my router because I lost the connection regularly. Still don't know if it's the router or the Wifi card.
No problems since then. It's not a big deal since I mostly use wifi for internet access and don't have a 54Mbit connection anyway..

Coming from a bigger Workstation laptop I really enjoy how light and thin it is. Performance wise it is great as well (mostly Photoshop)

 

My experience with XPS 9530 is that Dell refuses to offer a replacement because of the noise problem. They say that the problem is so widespread that it is likely to be on the replacement machine as well and that's the reason they would not provide a replacement.

 

So far, I really like this machine. My unit got assembled on February 3rd, so it's a relatively fresh unit. It's silent, but also suffers from the coil whine issue. But I must say, it's nowhere near the volume on the videos, it's more silent. I can only hear it, when I put my ears next to the connector. If this is the worst thing on this machine, I can live with it. It's okay as a tradeoff, there are no perfect machines, you've to choose the one, you can live with. And the M3800 Looks fine to me atm; I'll put in my Samsung 840 Pro in a second and install Linux on it. Then it'll prove, if it was worth the Money (I Need excellent or near-excellent Linux Support for my work).

 

I totally agree with you and that is why I thought I would ask. Typically people who are happy have no reason to check the forums. I just wanted to see, of the most likely to be unhappy with their PC group, who is happy hahaha. I am sure it is an awesome computer and look forward to getting it once they finally ship!

Thanks

 

You shouldn't have any issues with the Linux support. My wife and I are using it full time in our XPS 15 with no major issues. Some more information in the XPS 15 wiki (feel free to contribute)

Other than the coil whine (louder in my computer than in my wife's), we have found the following issues:

• An external USB hard drive sometimes disconnects itself. It may be related to the enclosure, even that didn't happen with other laptops. Not sure if it also happens in Windows, it may be a hardware issue or incompatibility.
• An occasional UI hangup has happened to us a couple of times so far, but nothing that prevents us from working. The mouse moves, but you can't click or press any key, beyond ALT-Fx. It sometimes comes back after a while of fiddling with. This is probably related to be using the Ubuntu 14.04 beta.
• There are problems connecting to some wireless networks, but that also happens in Windows.
• Battery life is still worse than in Windows, even using Bumblebee, and with Bluetooth and NFC disabled.