Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

I can recommend Samsung U28D590 4k/60Hz it is working very well over the displayport, I bought it recently and it is very good with autocad etc.

 

What is working, and what's not?

Does the nvidia gpu work flawlessly with optimus support with the proprietary drivers? And what about hibernation and wake from sleep etc, do they work out of the box?

Regards

 

What is working:

• Almost everything (wifi, webcam, touchpad)
• HiDPI works fine if you use a recent version of a DE. Otherwise you will need some tweaks (see wiki). I'm extremely happy with Cinnamon.
• Sleep and wake up work fine, as long as you use a stable OS (i.e. don't mix a too new version of Gnome with an older OS)

what's not:

• The touch screen works as a mouse (you can click and that), it doesn't have the behaviour one would expect from a touch screen (drag to scroll, pinch to zoom).
• For some reason, battery life is lower than reported in Windows. Which is strange, as in my system most of the battery is consumed by the screen, even if the brightness is decreased.
• Optimus works, but it is not automatic. One has to choose which card to use, either per session (with the official drivers) or via the command line (with Bumblebee). Bumblebee is not very stable in my system when I use the Nvidia card: applications often hang.

No idea:

• I don't use hibernation, so I haven't tested it.

I've added this info to the wiki. Feel free to update it based on your experiences.

 

Hey guys,

I got my M3800 a few days ago and i am extremely pleased with the laptop and the display is a charm. I would like to ask you a couple of questions about it.

1) Do you think it is worth it to open it and re paste it now, I have seen the inside and it seems really easy and straight forward. Will this void my warranty assuming i don't break anything?

2) The display seems so crisp that i can see the detail (pixels) of the word characters also some of the programs shortcuts seem to not have high analysis. Is this to be expected in that kind of display?

3) Could someone recommend a light program to monitor my temperatures

Thanks

 

If someone can give me a hand I would greatly appreciate it...a few months ago, like in February I purchased M3800s for my business which I returned to Dell. Despite EVERY POSSIBLE effort to clear up the situation Dell has not returned any funds to my small business. In fact for the 2nd month in a row they tried to dip into my account and take funds...which I have blocked. They have confirmed to me in writing that I owe nothing and that the machines were returned in good order however, trying to get the original funds they withdrew has been a nightmare - 2 weeks ago I was told that I would be sent a cheque, but of course no cheque came to me and that was followed by this 2nd attempt to withdraw funds from my account. Is there ANY way that one can get help from Dell? or get a Dell human who is not in Phillipines or India????

 

Bloomington-

I'm assuming you purchased with a credit card? If so, I would call the credit card company and tell them what happened. They will usually put you on a three way call with someone at DELL, you, and the CC rep. This may get things moving faster since an actual CC company is contacting them...

Just a thought...

Hope it all gets sorted out.

 

I contacted dell about some dead pixels and to my incredible surprise they're sending a technician to change it out. I also mentioned the coil whine, which neither the support woman or the "tech-team" had ever heard of, but they still said that they'd change out the motherboard. I'm almost positive that that won't change anything because it hasn't worked for anyone else but whatever makes them happy.

One thing that did surprise me though was that they considered the coil whine problem to be an "acceptable fault" and basically wouldn't care about fixing it if they couldn't. Not something you'd wanna hear, that's for sure. I was told to instead contact the retailer about further inquiries. Has anyone else who has gotten that response?

 

I PMed you the last time you posted about issues with this order and never heard back. Please reply via PM if you'd like me to try to help.

 

I've never heard it described as an "acceptable fault", but if it's something for which they don't yet have a fix, then replacing motherboards in the meantime won't achieve anything. Apparently a fix is in the pipeline and the last official update was that it can be expected by mid-July, but someone in the Dell Communities thread claims to have talked to the rep who posted that offline and heard that the fix had been delayed. Still no official confirmation.

 

Has anyone complained about the fact that when using two finger scrolling in chrome, the browser loses focus and you have to click somewhere on it to be able to use hot keys, however only in chrome. Firefox and IE works as you'd expect.

How to reproduce:
1. Open random website in chrome, it doesn't matter if it is scrollable or not.
2. Use two finger scrolling
3. Try to use CTRL+F to search the page.

Expected result:
Open search pane to input search string, just like in FireFox and IE

What happens instead:
Nothing