Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

That just means there haven't been any firmware updates to that SSD since it shipped. The Samsung 512GB SSD doesn't have any firmware updates either -- what's the problem? And fyi, vendor firmware updates won't work on SSDs that ship with Dell systems. I don't know why, but the vendors develop custom firmware for Dell systems to prevent their stock firmware from installing on Dell units and vice versa.

 

Oh ok, good to know. Thanks

No yeah the problem is that I sometimes get BSODs when trying to wake up after hibernate. I can't remember the exact error message, but it has to do with the ssd. Google told me that it happens because the ssd drivers aren't working well with W8. I can post the exact message when it happens again.

 

Now or Wait .....

Question for M3800 owners: First and foremost, thanks to all the contributors. Until I found this resource the M3800 reviews I've read have made just a passing mention of the teething pains (nice way to say it) this new machine has ... I have a 6 year old XPS 1530. Its been reliable and over the years I've given it upgrades (Win7 64bit, added RAM and a SSD and now use an external Bluray drive). I use it exclusively for web browsing, watching DVD's and streaming HD Video. I'm not considering another XPS because I do not want Win8 or the use of a touchscreen.

My question is .... having used the M3800, experiencing the good and the bad, would you recommend I buy one right now, wait until Dell addresses the coil whine and other known issues, or not buy one at all?

Thanks in advance.

 

Oh. Well, if google thinks that's the problem, that must be it.

It's just as likely something else is the cause.


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jphughan, my apologies for not being clear. I greatly appreciate your fair warning note as well as all the additional information about the XPS 15 and the M3800. I meant that I am pondering which laptop (the XPS 15 or M3800) will best fit my computing needs as the two machines are almost equivalent in terms of components, specs, performance, etc. Price may be the deciding factor.

 

SSD don't have drivers. It's possible that the firmware is the culprit (in the early days of SSDs it was common for certain models powered by SandForce controllers to cause BSODs, but that's not typical anymore), but it's by no means a given. Make sure all of your other firmware, BIOS, and drivers are current, of course. I would recommend grabbing the WiFi+BT drivers from Intel and the NVIDIA GPU drivers from NVIDIA. Everything else can come from Dell.

Wait at least until the end of the month when Dell is expected to provide an update to the coil whine issue in the XPS 15 Dell Communities thread running about it. If the update is imminent, you may as well wait to get a proper system from the factory rather than deal with a service appointment later. That said, the coil whine doesn't bother me personally very much. I'll still probably brave a Dell service call to get the fix when it becomes available, but if I were told it would never be fixed, I still wouldn't take any other system over this.

As for W8 and the touchscreen, the M3800 has a touchscreen as well, fyi. And if you've only read bad things about W8 as opposed to having tried it (or only tried 8.0 and not 8.1), I would encourage you to consider taking a look. I tried W8 twice (Consumer Preview and RTM) and both times hated it so much that I got rid of it in less time than it took me to install it -- but I tried 8.1 when it came out and haven't looked back. I have a post earlier in this thread listing several of the improvements that I've come to appreciate, and there are only one or two minor annoyances compared to W7, but the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks for me. Just my 2 cents.

Cool! Yeah, if you don't know for certain that you have apps that would use Quadro-specific functions, then you probably don't, in which case price should be the only real factor, unless again you have to have W7.

 

Yes, thanks for the reminder and I will set that now. I actually almost forgot about metered connections since I had spent so much time just trying to get it to work. Perhaps it would be useful to add that to the rebuild pdf that you customized for M3800 a few pages back? That was a really good checklist to go through - a lot of which I was already doing with my past machines, but also had some things I didn't know about specific to Windows 8 or the M3800. So thank you for the guide as well.

 

It was on the rebuild sheet. But I'm glad it was helpful!

 

That sounds like the best plan .... Thanks very much.

 

I actually meant about the detail to set the wireless adapter setting to "max performance" to prevent losing connection to a hotspot. But I re-read my post and realized that it sounded like I was referring to metered connections, so yes, sorry for the confusion...