Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Alright Bokeh, if you're up for testing the wifi, here's how i would go about it:

1) Get another laptop that is known to have good wifi.
2) Disable 5 GHz wifi if you have it (whether on the router, or on the laptop if that's possible.
3) Test from two locations using speedtest.net. At each location, alternate laptops, testing each one three times, and average the results (retesting any crazy outliers). Ideally, put the laptop that's not being tested at the time to sleep.
4) Have one test be near your router, in the same room and the other in a less ideal location, ideally through multiple walls and floors.
5) Post the results! Thanks!

It's no big deal, though; I have an XPS 15 on order and I'll test it as soon as I get it.

 

Look the same: I can only get advanced desktop graphics back if I buy software for that. Features: Added some I have no interest in, and took a lot away that, again, I now have to pay money for to get back. Awesome deal. There is no difference in performance; that's a fairytale.

 

Was the question about two external monitors ever answered? That's kind of critical for me. I have a 30" and a 24" monitor I want to drive with this, along with the laptop screen.

 

Bokeh,

Many thanks for the previous replies.

With time, the battery is likely to loose its ability to hold charge. How easy is it to replace the m3800 battery pack? Is it user serviceable?

Thanks

 

Bokeh, can you take a picture of the keyboard and the touchpad? Thank you.

 

At least hibernate and resume is faster with Windows 8.1 compared to 7.

And you get Hyper-V which is a good platform for running VMs.

But I think that the metro start screen is lacking usability when it comes to show all installed applications when you have lots installed or when an app introduces many program shortcuts. So even the show all apps which shows the app icons grouped by app gets confusing when you install several Visual Studio and SDK versions along with a GUI lib which adds an icon per sample project. The good old cascading menus just show a samples folder which you can open if you want but with metro start your screen is always filled up.

The live tiles and lock screen info icons are nice features to add some information if you only have some of those icons.
But for larger lists of apps I would at least like an option for the classic cascading menus.

 

Zooming out with ctrl + mouse wheel ont the all apps screen helps with the clutter, but it's not as good as the good ol' start menu. This is kinda off topic from the thread though.

Also, given that this thread isn't even about Windows 7 vs Windows 8, any flaming on that particular topic will not be tolerated. I already had to delete a post because of that, so please avoid taking this thread where Windows 8 threads in the Windows forum usually end up.

 

Hey Bokah

It seems that the wifi is working well. I had problems with the intel 6235 so I'm excited to try this out. Mind telling me which router you have? (Some suspected that the 6235 woes were tied to the router)

 

I have an Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6235 in my 5 year old Fujitsu and it works great.
I bought it directly from Amazon.com

I use various routers with open source firmware. Some routers I use are the Linksys E3000 and the Asus RT-N12.

 

On older hardware, yes; on newer hardware, that supports Intel's Rapid Start Technology, there's no difference. My 18-months-old Win7 Ultrabook boots in 7 seconds.