Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Hi All,

I thought I would write a little update after a few weeks of use. First of all, battery life is amazing for a PC. I went from 2.5 hours on my Elitebook 8530W to around 8-9 hours on this guy. I am just using the out of box settings at this point. Touch sensitivity is great though I don't like the choice of soft touch for the touch pad. When dust gets on there, as you move around I find it balls up a bit. Not a big deal, but worth the mention. I installed 8.1 from the get go and everything is running smooth. It took a bit to find where all the features were hiding but I have the hang of it now. Coil whine, yes I have it, but its minor, and I am not sure if it is worth changing the motherboard. It is only when at 100% and plugged in so... well we will see. Plus, if they don't have a solution yet, I am unsure if replacing a whole PC is worth it. I also have a whine when I plug in my wireless USB for my logitech mouse, though I don't get this when I plug in my Lacie imakey USB stick... not sure what is going on there. Pixels, I have 2 dead ones. I may mention it, but I am not in a rush to force a screen replacement for 2 pixels. It bugs me, but it isn't life or death. All in all, I love this thing. It is lightning fast, loads windows in seconds, and looks almost as sexy as a Macbook Pro.

 

Hello All,
I know this question have been asked for several times already, but I couldn't find the display color(the splendid mode thing) in my Windows Mobility Center on my M3800.
I've been trying several times. Uninstalled and reinstalled the updated Dell quickset application, rebooted my laptop, and I had no external display connected, but it still didn't work...
I'm not sure why but it just comes out like this
Is there any ways that I can fix this?
Thanks!

 

Do you have the QHD+ screen?

 

Yes, I can verify the battery life. I was amazed it could do a whole cross country plane trip with no problem. I just have the standard battery. Makes it very light IMHO.

 

Yes, unfortunately I have tried lotsa cables. I think the problem is the Apple security software. I believe the Dock and the laptop have different MAC addresses and those are used for security on the iPhone. I think I have to make each MAC address "trusted" by the iPhone, but not clear how to do this. Apple has not responded. I am at second tier support....

 

USB has been fine for a few days and now it disconnects again - grrrrrrhh
any ideas anyone?
or anyone with the same problem?
USB just disconnects the hard drive - running windows 8.1 latest software, drivers, bios etc.

 

After AnandTech published their XPS 15 review, I could tell based on the LCD results that they'd tested with splendid mode on. I reached out to the author and thankfully got a reply back! He was indeed unaware of splendid mode and has just completed re-testing the laptop, the results of which have been published in a new article (also linked in the original): AnandTech | Dell XPS 15 QHD+: Revisiting the LCD Results.

In addition, I've also finally found the right people within Dell to raise this splendid mode issue with, and they're currently revisiting whether splendid mode should be on by default in the XPS 15's factory shipping configuration. As for the M3800, it was apparently supposed to ship with it disabled all along, so that change should be implemented in short order.

 

Hi, mine is the FHD screen. Is it because of this??:O

 

Yep. There is no splendid mode for the FHD screen. Count yourself lucky; that's the more useable screen all around anyway.

 

Hmm, I thought a dock was just a piece of shaped plastic with an electrical passthrough, but maybe not. Typically you're prompted on the device itself (when it's unlocked) about whether you want to trust the device you've connected the phone to. But even if that host isn't trusted, it should still be able to charge -- or does that not even work?

In any case, I once had a similar issue. I didn't have a dock, but I had a device that wouldn't remember a trust setting. Found this and in my case, it was Step 5 that fixed it; somehow (probably through an iTunes update) that driver had gotten messed up: iOS: Device not recognized in iTunes for Windows