Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

That's a great news for me! Thank you so much!

 

I would disagree. Yes, the QHD does cause some issues for some of my programs. However, while my 1920x1200 screen sometimes wasn't quite wide enough, the QHD is great. Two full page PDFs side by side and readable!

 

For anyone who's been following my situation with my M3800, I thought I'd post an update. For those of you who haven't, here's a short recap:

Doing a fresh install on the M3800 was a total nightmare, because I didn't realize that Dell puts the W7 product key in the BIOS and you have to use a special W7 disk from them in order for Windows to activate. In a sense this was my fault, but I really feel like Dell should have included a W7 disk with the computer, especially since a standard W7 disc won't work.

My M3800's (plural) have had a TON of hardware and software issues, which I'll list below:

1st M3800:

* Lots of dead pixels, including a cluster of dead pixels that was very visible
* No USB ports working on some startups (happened maybe 1 in 6 startups -- going to device manager showed warning icons for the USB devices and said something about a hub not being installed)
* Trackpad going nuts sometimes (cursor jumping everywhere, becoming completely unusable for a while, windows mysteriously lose focus when I'm scrolling quite often)
* Windows freezing on the blue shutting down screen (happened quite a few times -- I let it sit for almost half an hour once, but always had to crash it..)
* On waking up from sleep, the cursor was the rotating wait icon and nothing is clickable (I had to use ctrl+alt+delete to restart the computer). Sometimes it wouldn't wake up from sleep at all (just a black screen and I had to crash it)
* Sometimes there was an annoying buzzing noise coming through my headphones when connected to the computer. It was weird because it was inconsistent, though, and it seemed somewhat random
* Some of the keys on the keyboard squeaked sometimes when I typed fast
* The power brick made an annoying buzzing/screaching sound when plugged in (not coil whine, it was the power brick)
* Had problems staying connected to WiFi, both my WiFi and at other places. None of my other laptops have any issues on my WiFi, but the M3800 regularly had an issue where the warning triangle showed up on the WiFi icon and the internet stopped working. "Troubleshooting" the connection usually fixed the problem
* Slow WiFi speeds

I contacted Dell about all of the problems, as the 21-day return period was almost up, and they agreed to send me a replacement (now I really wish I had just returned it..). This leads us to:

2nd M3800:

* Had a foreign object underneath the screen large enough to be pretty annoying (pic: http://imageshack.com/a/img819/549/ieyu.jpg)
* In addition to the foreign object under the screen (whatever it was..), the new screen had a LOT of dead pixels scattered throughout (not the end of the world, but still kind of annoying..)
* USB ports had issues until I installed a USB 3.0 driver not on the product page on the Dell website
* Had the same issue with the rotating wait icon and not being able to click anything when waking up, except I think it actually happened on waking up from hibernating, not sleeping (I always just closed the lid, putting it to sleep, but I think the computer would switch over to hibernate after a while). Someone in this thread discovered that vigorously swiping several fingers across the trackpad for a few seconds would make the rotating wait icon go away (and make stuff clickable), but I got so fed up with it that I eventually just disabled hibernate altogether (which is disappointing)
* M3800 regularly crashed when put to sleep. Quite often I would put it to sleep (usually by just closing the lid) and when turned on later, Windows would say it crashed (blue screen)
* COIL WHINE. The first machine had a buzzing/screeching power brick, but not coil whine. The second machine had the infamous coil whine issue
* Similar issues with WiFi

Not Dell's fault, but I dropped the computer (it was in a lightly padded case) and the corner of the lid bend in pretty badly. BE WARNED, the lid on this machine is made out of very thin aluminum and it does not take much to bend it. If you don't believe me, try taking flexing the corner with one of your hands -- it flexes like crazy. Aluminum cans are made out of aluminum (duh), and think about how easily you can bend/smash those. When I contacted Dell about all of the issues with the replacement laptop, they said they couldn't replace it again, but would send a technician out to service it. He ended up replacing the whole lid/screen assembly instead of just the screen, but didn't seem to care at all that the corner of the lid was bent (I'm still expecting Dell to charge me for it at some point, though..).

So, the Dell service tech swaps out the screen assembly and some board in the computer (not the motherboard -- it was about the same width, but maybe half the height), and what changes? ...

2nd M3800 after being serviced:

* ... Not much. Still has all of the same issues as before, with the only difference being that the new screen has a stuck bright pixel and a small scratch (as well as some dead pixels).

Maybe I'm just incredibly unlucky, but many other people in this thread have posted the same issues I have. I think it's pretty clear that Dell's quality control for this laptop line is abysmal right now, so the bottom line is that if you buy this laptop, don't be surprised if you have issues with it.

The one shining light here is that Dell's technical support has been extremely professional and courteous. I've heard terrible things about their consumer support, but their business support is top-notch. I didn't pay a dime for the replacement laptop, or for the service (although both of them failed to fix the issues), and Dell has told me that I can send the M3800 in to a repair depot where they will try once again to fix the issues the current computer has. I don't know if they will charge me for the repair depot, but since they didn't charge anything for when the service technician came out I'm hoping they won't.

One last comment: I think the W7 drivers for this machine have pretty serious issues. At this point, I'm assuming that the constant freezing and crashing are caused by bad drivers, not hardware, but who knows.. My M3800 crashes multiple times per day, just from closing the lid, which is obviously a pretty big problem.

 

Just a thought, have you tried disabling link power management? I was getting some freezes and blue screens on my m4800, and disabling LPM seemed to help. I'm hoping future drivers will fix this issue, but for now, I'll take the added system stability over the potential power savings.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

This is common practice. I always download the latest chipset / graphics / audio / usb / wifi drivers at their original websites and most of the time don't have any problems at all. There are only few drivers, I would download from dell.com, like the touchpad or touchscreen drivers. But most of the time, you're better off getting the drivers from intel.com, nvidia.com and realtek.com.tw. Besides, this seems to be a software / driver issue and could easily be fixed. I wouldn't count that one as an M3800 specific issue, as such problems could occur on other devices with wrong / no drivers installed.

Is the Touchscreen Firmware and BIOS up-to-date? I didn't notice any issues after upgrading the Touchscreen Firmware. Also, this seems to be a Windows-only problem, because with the latest Linux 3.13, I didn't had any similar problems. This is fixable.

I haven't read about Intel Rapid Start or Intel Smart Connect on this Notebook until now, but they may be hidden and activated. Usually, such errors are related to these kind of stuff. Does someone know how to check whether it's enabled or not?

This is a widespread (I almost wanted to call it "mainstream" xD), M3800 specific, annoying issue, which can't be fixed without touching the hardware - whether it's something on the mainboard or the power brick itself (increasing / decreasing power). For me, it's a minor issue - but I understand that it also might be a major issue for some others. If you can't live with it, try to sell your unit and get some other device. My experiences showed me, that human are not perfect and non-perfect individuals can't make perfect devices. You will always find screwed up things (constant noise speaker issue on current Lenovo ThinkPads), missing features (like the dock port), DOA issues and tons more. So, you have to judge for yourself, which issues are critical and which are not. As I said, the coil whine issue is a small issue and shouldn't play a role for making up your decisions (though it's worth noting) - plus it's only occuring, when the device is plugged in to a power source AND it's on 100% AND there is load on the GPU.

Again, this is not M3800 specific, but can be found on a variety of devices featuring Intel Wireless 7260 cards (N and AC) - it's currently unknown, whether it's a hardware or a software issue. Some users reported, that updating to the latest stable drivers directly from intel.com fixed their issues, some others reported incompabilities with their routers (without any difference between driver versions). I had identical issues on both of my laptops - Lenovo ThinkPad T440s and Dell M3800; in both cases, I was able to fix it by disabling Wireless N support via modprobe (in Linux). If you can't find a way to fix it under Windows, an option might be swapping out your WiFi card for an Atheros or Broadway or an older Intel WiFi card (6230) - prices for these cards are around 20€ - 30€. Dunno about warranty though (and I don't have any information about BIOS whitelisting).

 

I had a few Win7 issues and decided to use Win8 in hopes that the drivers would be better. With Classic Shell the computer is almost the same as using Win7 but with the updated touchscreen bios I have basically no issues now. The computer works really well.

 

Well, to just focus on this one remark: If I buy a new laptop, I can expect it to work out of the box. I don't give a rat's behind if stuff is fixable: When I paid good money for the merchandise I get, I paid for a product that works as advertised, period. If it doesn't, I'll send it back. I won't spend my own, extremely valuable, time to fix things that shouldn't need fixing to begin with.

Imagine you buy a car, and it turns out that it will suddenly stall just so (well, turns out there are such cars...). You go to the dealer and they tell you that it's no problem, you can fix this yourself. Just crawl under your car and futz around with stuff for a couple of hours, and everything will be fine. Will you accept that? No? So why should anybody be willing to take this kind of crap from a laptop manufacturer?

 

I agree with you in principle, but if my options are either a) return an otherwise great system except for a few niggles that I can fix, b) deal with Dell customer service reps and/or repair techs and have them spend more time trying to fix it for me than it would probably take me, or c) invest a bit of time getting said system to work just right, chances are I'll pick C. Of course it depends on the severity of the issue(s) and how much effort it takes to address everything, but even in your car example, if I'd found a car that was a perfect fit for my needs/desires except for a couple aggravating issues that could be fixed with a little time spent on my part, then if I felt confident performing the fix, chances are I'll suck it up and put in the time. Should I have to? Certainly not. Does that mean I'll return an otherwise great product on principle, particularly if the alternative products that work better out of the box aren't as good a match for my needs/desire? Probably not.

There's no such thing as a perfect laptop. But if I had the choice between a laptop that worked perfectly out of the box but wasn't exactly what I wanted, or a laptop that could be EXACTLY what I wanted if I invested a bit of time into it, that's a no-brainer to me.

 

Well, my M3800 (FHD) is perfect!
I was prepared to send it back as many times as it takes and then this: First time perfect straight out of the box and without a scratch, no dead pixel, no coil whine, no dropping off, no issues whatsoever. I even like the font on the keys. I ordered it mid January, had it delivered three weeks later, been using it all day every day and have found absolutely nothing wrong with it so far.

 

Hah, now that's what I like to hear!