Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

As you are the only person I've seen talk about the battery management feature I figured I would ask you.
I'm very happy that this computer has the battery management features. I have been using them with good effect on my Thinkpad X120e. I always regretted that the battery in my M4400 had no such features. Having previously worked for a battery manufacture I do understand the value of these systems.

OK, so the question. I went into the BIOS and found the management feature. I did a custom set with a peak charge of 90% and a start charge at no sooner than 80%. However, I haven't seen this reflected in the computer's fuel gauge as it was with my Thinkpad. Should I see these settings in the fuel gauge (ie charging stops at 90%) or does the fuel gauge see 90% as the new 100%? How did you check that your settings were working?

Thanks

 

Multiple people have seen that the manual battery settings in the BIOS have no apparent effect; the battery still seems to charge up to 100% even if you configure it not to do so, and it will charge even if the current level is above what you've configured. Theoretically the former could be caused by the battery changing its reporting parameters to Windows (i.e. 80% physical charge would still be reported as 100% in Windows), but people have said that even when they configure their battery not to resume charging until it drops to 50%, it will charge if it's at 95%, which doesn't seem like it could be caused by a reporting parameter shift.

That said, the adaptive mode seems to work, though I question its thresholds. Apparently for adaptive mode to disable charging while connected to AC, you need to leave your machine plugged into AC for two weeks uninterrupted. I actually did that, and after a while I noticed that my battery had dropped to around 90% without ever having been disconnected from AC. I haven't personally experimented with the other modes that are neither full auto nor full manual, i.e. Primarily AC use, etc.

 

That is unfortunate as I do frequently move the computer but it typically goes back to being plugged in again. So it might be on the battery for say 5% of it's charge. Also, a few times a week I do use the battery for 2 or so hours. This is why I would rather just hard set thresholds. The system might think I want that last 30 minutes of battery life but no, I would rather have the battery be in good shape after 3 years (unlike that of my M20 or M4400).

 

Has there been any more ground made on the whole coil whine issue? Is it still basically luck of the draw with no real discernible rhyme or reason as to why it happens and how to fix it? Has anyone been updated from Dell to see if they have fixed the issue on their end? I may try calling them myself when I get some free time to see if I can get any info on if Dell has fixed the issue on their end.

 

Might want to keep an eye on these Dell Community threads seeing as there's a rep engaged in each one that has committed to sharing updates from Engineering as they become available:

XPS 13: New XPS 13 (9333) Constant Noise - Laptop General Hardware Forum - Laptop - Dell Community

XPS 15: XPS 15 9530 - Noise problem? - Laptop General Hardware Forum - Laptop - Dell Community

 

A coworker of mine will soon be getting an M3800 similar to mine. I wonder if he will have the coil issue. I've not noticed it with mine. I don't think my hearing is lacking.

 

I've had horrible coil whine on one of the E6540's that I have been through and after they replaced the cpu with no change and then a motherboard it was better, but still somewhat present.

 

i am the almost proud happy owner of a M3800
The USB ports keep disconnecting my external hard drives, at any time - very unpredictable
It did it for awhile early January when i first got the laptop and then it stopped but now it is back and i cant work
I have tried the obvious google solution of disabling the Power settings for "USB selective suspend" made them disable
made sure all windows and drivers are up to date
have not done any other tweaks - i see some of you disable the keyboard mouse - i like an external mouse so maybe i must do that?
any other suggestions would be really appreciated
thanks

 

If you're running Windows 7, get the latest USB 3.0 drivers from Intel (they're separate from the chipset drivers). On Win8, USB 3.0 drivers are built in. Also get the latest BIOS if you haven't already.

 

I recently ran into an issue where my small RAID backup box (Guardian Maximus; just 2 drives mirrored) can't be written to over the usb3 ports. I can read from the drive, and create folders, but can't copy any files to it. The single USB2 port (right side, rearmost) works fine though.

Windows reports it as a USB attached SCSI when connected. I'm thinking it's a usb3 driver issue, but not sure.