Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Agreed on HP products. I pretty much only buy their laser printers now because they still work well (unlike their inkjet printers) and mercifully support the HP Universal Printing Driver, which means you don't have to install 300 MB worth of drivers and other assorted crapware to just, you know, print something. And that's the "Basic" package, in contrast to the "Full" package that weighs in closer to 700 MB. HP's business laptops are indeed better than their consumer line (just as most of Dell's Latitudes and Precisions tend to be better than most of their Inspirons), but you're right that software is the major dealbreaker.

In terms of the X1, I used an X1 non-carbon a while ago and remember its display having an extremely noticeable and irritating screen door effect because apparently the pixels are smaller than typical for that panel's size and resolution, so instead there are just larger gaps between them. The panel may have been changed for the X1 Carbon, and I have no experience with the HiDPI option they seem to offer now, but I'd recommend looking into that before pulling the trigger.

 

Joystick Button (the Thinkpad pointer stick). My previous Dell's all had them and I've become very used to them. I end up using them as often if not more than the touchpad... well except for with the 3800.

 

Yes, absolutely; I have been lurking a bit in the Lenovo Thinkpad forum, and it seems that the screen door issue is gone, although some people are now complaining about the matte film that Lenovo apparently glues on the LCD panel. I'm not sure what to think of that, since a matte screen can have its advantages when glare could be an issue. Plus there's other issues, like a really unusual keyboard layout and those cheap "adaptive" function keys.

Oh well, my impression is that currently I will still have to live with a two-laptop solution: Some Ultrabook for travel, meetings and conferences, and my trusty old M6400 workhorse in the office and at home. Not up to par to an M6800 performance-wise, of course, but it does have that gorgeous 17" 16:10 RGBLED screen. There's nothing on the market, anywhere, that could match that one. I guess I'll just have to hope this lasts a couple more years...

 

I've had good luck with my few HP products but only my Presario 2100 was ever used as my main laptop. Since then I had a DV6000 and an HP DM1Z but both of those were secondary computers. A coworker did have an HP 14" workstation laptop that gave her no trouble. I wouldn't avoid one of their workstation systems. Also as a counter point, I recall many people who have had Dell consumer computers saying less than wonderful things about Dell. I don't think many complain about the business line.

 

For the amusement of all, this picture was taken with my telescope using the M3800 as the new observatory replacement for a D630.

Orion M42 M43 Nikon D800 Takahashi 180ED 15sec ISO 6400 (jerryyyyy) | AstroBin

Cheers

PS Still liking the machine.. but that fancy screen has a lot of glare.

 

Good lord, was the disassembly of your M3800 this difficult like mine? I unscrewed all 10 Torx T5 Screws plus the two screws under the Badge, but I wasn't able to lift the base cover - it simply isn't possible, like something's heavily glued or so. Where do you pull? On the front, middle or back (near the display)? I pulled quite hard at where the USB ports are, but it still didn't come off. It lifted about 2cm, but didn't come off - I feared to break something. According to the manual, the base cover should come off. Is there any hidden / undocumented thing, I've missed?

 

Hi everybody.
I have just received this notebook, and when it comes to build quality and overall fell, this is a great product. also the panel is very nice, and the touch feature Works really well.
however i am having some small problems.

1 the system won't restart. when restarting the system shuts Down, but does not start up Again, i have to hold the powerbutton Down for 4 sec. and then start the system Again. i've updated the bios and that did not help.

2 when running revit the grafics is all wrong, is this a driver question?

best regards
Dan Binderup

 

@slobodan: Did you try the latest Beta drivers? To me, it seems like a driver problem, but I dunno for sure. Try to use other graphics programs, to opt out a hardware issue.

@all: I've managed to open the case using a plastic pry, took me 3 minutes. I didn't know, that there were plastic clips, saw it in a disassembly guide for the XPS 15 9530. The Samsung 840 Pro is now inside and runs very well ! I'm going to tune the system now - Linux runs fine overall, but I need better battery life.

 

Is it possible to install wwan card in this m3800 notebook? The m4800 is too bulky for me.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

 

Not unless you're willing to give up WiFi or you can find a single M.2/NGFF card that offers WiFi and WWAN (and Bluetooth if you want it) on a single board -- but even then you'd have the problem of not having the right antennas since I'm pretty sure the antennas appropriate for WWAN are a different length than those for WiFi/BT due to the frequency difference.

Personally I just use the mobile hotspot feature on my phone since I can have my laptop and any other devices connected simultaneously. Now that basically everyone has smartphones, I just don't see the point of building WWAN functionality into a device that can't (easily) host other devices for connectivity and that you might not always have with you when you might want to tether something else. Plus people pretty reliably buy newer phones (and thus gain support for newer cell data technology as it becomes available) but they aren't necessarily going to upgrade their internal WWAN cards. And even if they were willing to upgrade WWAN cards, there's no guarantee that a card that supports the new cellular standard would be available for the connector in your laptop -- and again, you might have an antenna problem if the new technology uses a significantly different frequency.