Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

nice machine
8.1 touchscreen is taking some getting used to!

Couple of points
I searched the archives here but does anyone know how to set the LAN/network adaptor always on. It only comes on when the dongle is docked to USB and an Ethernet cable is attached, I run CAD (creo) which needs to read the network card to activate my license file.
Currently this now means that I can only use my CAD program when I am connected to a network which is just daft.

Another thing this is a work machine, our IT department set it up.
I had to set up the second drive as a primary disk..... other than that my headphone jack is not working or showing up as a device, I tried latest drivers from the dell support site for M3800 but this has no effect.

Any help appreciated?

 

Hi bobson34,

for your LAN adaptor: please check your power save features. Here's a generic tutorial for USB ports:
Prevent Windows from Turning Off USB Devices

Also, check your power settings: Windows 8.1's Power Settings and Sleep - For Dummies
Next to your power plan, there is a underlined hyperlink, which reads "Change plan settings". A new window, including advanced settings will appear. Check this window for any related options and disable power saving for your peripherals there.

As for your headphone jack: afaik, the Dell M3800 uses an Intel HDA audio controller. Simply download the latest Realtek audio drivers for your system from your favourite PC website and install them (I'm downloading from chip.de and computerbase.de, but it's really up to you, they can be found everywhere). Also, check your device manager for any unknown device, check PID / VID, post here or use Google and install missing drivers.

It's kinda strange, that Windows 8.1 users are having more issues than I'm having on (unsupported) Linux. Not even the coil whine issue is bothering me anymore - it's not worth noting it anymore, since it's rarely appearing. Most of the time, I'm charging my Dell M3800 over night, since it's energy saving features got improved (thanks to Linux kernel 3.14), delivering power for up to 9 hours. Other than the small 2px dark spot on my screen, I'm actually not having any note-worthy issues, which are device-specific, like the Intel WLAN AC 7620 chip, which causes issues on EVERY laptop out there and which can be replaced. The display itself is covered by a special 1 year warranty for UltraSharp screens - I could easily get a replacement. However, I will wait for next year and hope it disappears on it's own, since I don't wanna risk, that my shiny, beautiful device gets raped by a Dell technician. Otherwise, I will simply live with it, since it's near the bezel and it's only visible on white backgrounds.

 

For the network card, go into Device Manager, open the Properties for your network card, go to the Power Management tab, and uncheck the option about turning the device off to save power. In Power Options there's a USB Selective Suspend setting, but I would recommend leaving that as-is unless you continue to experience issues after the Device Manager change, because if you disable that, ALL USB devices will be prevented from using power saving, which could cost you some battery life.

For the audio, if you've installed the Dell drivers you should definitely have audio. If you look in Device Manager under Sound, video and game controllers, do you see the audio device listed without any issues? If not, what do you see there? Or if you're saying that you have built-in audio but no headphone jack device listed, the headphone jack doesn't appear as a separate audio output device. When you connect something to the jack, you should get a dialog box asking you what you plugged in. If you select any type of audio output device, the built-in speakers will be disabled and audio will be sent out of the headphone jack instead. There's no way to use both simultaneously or manage the two outputs independently. If you don't get the dialog box when you connect something to the headphone jack, install the latest Dell drivers, go into the Dell Audio app, go to Advanced > Jack Information, and enable the popup dialog option.

 

My notebook sleeve finally arrived yesterday and fits very well! I've already transported the M3800 in a backpack and it seems to be enough. It's Cub-Skinz from Tuff-Luv, either check eBay, Amazon or directly buy it from their website. It's really premium quality and has lifetime warranty (which doesn't include wear & tear):

Tuff-Luv Neoprene protective sleeve case: 15" Laptop / tablets - Blue

 

Still lost on how to make Adobe products usable on this qHD screen.

Anyone have success with Adobe Photoshop CC or Adobe Fireworks 6.0 working with HiDPI?

Should I:
1) change resolution? (not ideal)

2) hack registry for each program (Hack makes Photoshop and Illustrator readable on Surface Pro — Surface Pro Artist)

3) Alternative Option...

m3800 has been here 2 weeks and unable to migrate over yet because I use photoshop multiple times per day. Desperate at this point.

 

Adobe products (most of them) are simply a known issue with respect to QHD+ at this point, unfortunately. Your Options 1 and 2 are basically the only ones available to you, unless you have an external display, in which case you could enable per-display scaling and optimize for the external panel by setting it as primary. That would give you a workable Adobe environment, but your QHD+ display won't look QUITE as good as when everything is actually optimized for it, and of course you need an external display. If none of those work, then I would add your voice to the clamor Adobe is getting for being so late to the game here. And of course Adobe is blaming Microsoft for allegedly not having the right APIs to implement QHD+ support properly in their apps. Whether that's BS or legitimate I can't determine since I'm not a Windows developer.

 

Not expecting much from Adobe. They promised a fix over a year ago in their own forums.

Can anyone confirm the registry hack works for a day to day work environment?



Thanks

 

Hi Folks,

I'm a happy new owner of an M3800. One annoying weirdness: I get audio static/buzzing of some sort every 12 seconds or so when playing music. This happens with any player I use. Any idea what might be happening?

I've tried turning "speaker enhancement" off in Dell Audio, but I still get it.

Thanks for any ideas...

Win 7 Enterprise x64
Realtek HD Audio driver 6.0.1.7023

 

Do you hage hwinfo running in the background? Whenever i have it running i get that on my machine.

Sent from my C1905 using Tapatalk

 

I don't, though I do have speedfan. Turning it off does seem to solve the issue. Any way to get around this? I like having speedfan always running in the background... Thanks for the idea!