Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

The hardware is the same except that the M3800 has a Quadro GPU rather than the equivalent GeForce and lacks an NFC reader that the XPS 15 has. Other than that, I'm not sure if it's different in the Outlet (and I know at least some of this is different outside the US), but at least when purchased new in the US, the M3800 comes with a USB (2.0) to Gigabit Ethernet dongle as well as an adapter to use Dell AC adapters with the full-size tip on this system with its smaller tip. Both accessories can be purchased separately through Dell, perhaps on the Accessories tab of the order page you'd see on the Outlet. The M3800 also comes with a Win8.1 installation flash drive (even when ordered with Win7), which apparently Dell will send XPS owners for free if you call them and which owners can of course create themselves if they have a Win8.1 ISO.

On the software and warranty side, the M3800 always comes with either Win7 Pro or Win8.1 Pro, whereas the XPS 15 usually comes with Win8.1 Core, though if it's ordered in a Business store, it would come with Win8.1 Pro (but never any version of Win7). The same logic applies to the warranty: the M3800 gets ProSupport, whereas the XPS 15 gets Premium At-Home service unless ordered through the Business store. For an individual user, they will be essentially identical, but for a company ordering several laptops, there are benefits to having ProSupport on your entire PC population. If you're curious, click the Help Me Choose option for ProSupport on a system configurator.

 

It's confusing, but the M3800 can only be found on the workstation inventory page. The M3800 page takes you to the laptop inventory page, in which there will never be availability since it's not really listed there. When you're viewing the inventory, switch to workstations, and the M3800 should come up (assuming availability which there is checking now).

 

Using Cinnamon 2.2 as my main DE. Most things work perfectly in HiDPI. I also have installed GNOME 3.10, which also works pretty well. But I really love the edge-snapping of Cinnamon in combination of the HiDPI screen: it's a huge productivity boost.

Only non-Gnome apps show tiny text here and there with HiDPI (such as Picasa and DigiKam). I haven't tried IntelliJ IDEA, as I am using NetBeans at the moment.

 

Thanks for your reply. If you say Netbeans is handling HiDPI fine, that's pretty promising - it's the same Swing technology behind. (I guess you meant that it's running fine, right? ). Still, if you could give IDEA Community Edition a try, I would be very grateful (and who knows, you might even like it..

 

lol dell? thanks for the heads up.

and jphughan, I appreciate the advice! I just looked at the notebook check reviews for both and they suggest the precision is 2mm thicker but has much lower run temps... is that due to different measuring schemes + "stronger" vid card, or is there an actual chassis difference?

if they are the same I might just get whichever one comes with the qhd+ screen for the lowest price hah

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

The M3800 and XPS 15 chassis are identical. Any difference in reported thickness would be due to different measurement standards; maybe one included the height generated by the rubber feet on the bottom or something. The Dell site still shows different weights between the two systems too, but again, configured with identical hardware, they will weigh exactly the same. I can't account for the run temp differences for certain. People have speculated (maybe proven by now?) that the Quadro is actually clocked LOWER than the GeForce, perhaps because that lower clock speed cancels out any extra heat that might be generated when using an app that takes advantage of the Quadro-exclusive features. If the test they ran did NOT do that, then that could explain the difference -- but that's purely a guess on my part.

 

Yes, NetBeans runs almost perfectly. Only the toolbar icons are small, but I can live with that.

Oracle added HiDPI support in Swing some releases ago, for JDK 6 and 7 (with 8 it came out of the box). Note that images do not automatically scale (and you will see that if your own programs use Swing and have images).

I don't have much time for tests these days... Is IDEA in the Ubuntu repo?

 

If that is the case, I am down to waiting to see what new comes up. Excited like no other right now!

 

@kjozsa: I'm also an Arch Linux user, but went for the FHD screen instead of QHD. With the FHD screen, you will have a better overall experience and most of the stuff (dpi-related) works directly out-of-the-box. The M3800 is a great machine for Linux, especially Arch Linux, which gives you a rolling-release distro and latest packages. You don't need a single AUR package - I haven't tried getting the shock indicator to work, since I replaced the SSHD. You need to disable Wireless N via modprobe, since you will encounter wireless connection drops (this is confirmed on many other Ultrabooks featuring the Intel Wireless-N 7260 - the problem is OS- and M3800-unspecific). Also, at the moment you need to add a kernel paramter (https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/39092) in order to get the Nvidia GPU running (caused by an API change in latest kernel, it's fixed upstream). But that's all. If you go for the QHD, you will need to mess around with font sizes, dpi options, incompatible apps (some will work, others will present you super tiny fonts - resulting in a mixed experience).

Just go for the FHD, you don't lose anything (and probably even save some money, which you can spend on a bigger SSD e.g.). It's still sharp enough and a great display overall. It's always the same with new stuff: either you go for something old but solid / approved or you take the risk by beeing an early adopter and live with the illnesses. Your choice. I'm using my Dell M3800 for production, so I've went for stable & solid.

 

Installed the 91Whr battery a few weeks ago. Also rebuilt my W8.1 image and disabled all of the unneeded background apps and services. Really liking the extended battery life option in the Dell quickset drivers. Just wish there was a low power option in the Dell DPP optimizer software.

Anyhow, this is what I am seeing at a conference with Web, Outlook, Pidgin, and Notepad running for about 80 minutes -



Not bad in my opinion.