Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Thanks JP i will reply to your PM but what you should know is that I have now spoken to 8 people at Dell Financial Services thus far..each of whom has promissed to resolve my matter. In fact today I have heard from yet ANOTHER person from the "resolution" team promissing that they will "research" my situation and solve it. What they are researching I have no idea since I have a trail of emails from Dell personnel including Customer Care, Pro Support Managers and support as well as now 8 yes 8!!! Representatives from Dell Financial to resolve the matter. The bottom line is this...I purchased my M3800 through the financing option. Due to problems Dell Pro Support replaced it with another one which also was defective. I returned both within the alotted 30 days that Dell offers Canadian business to return machines. EVERYONE has confirmed that EVERYTHING is in good standing. Machines received in good order. Dell financing contract has been disposed of (closed). But here is the problem...1st, they took a payment from me in June, and also attempted to take a payment in July which I had my bank block since I had long returned the machines prior to July and I have yet NO guarantee that Dell will not try to withdraw funds in August, however they will be again blocked if they attempt to. They also have an oustanding balance owing to me for that first payment that they took in error - and I am told its because of the processing time that the frist payment went through - fine, that works as an excuse for June...but 4 weeks later they attempted again..therefor this is now pure garbage and again, no confirmation that this will not be attempted in August. Furthermore , Dell tellls me they sent me a cheque for the amount owing weeks ago - obviously I have not recieved it or their accounting dept would know immediately whether a cheque written by Dell has been cashed. So when you replied to me until now NOTHING has been done. The situation is as much a disaster now as it was then. I didnt want to trouble you because I have been speaking to Team Leads, the Resolution Team, Pro Support, Customer Care etc and it all sounds nice when someone tells you "I will resolve your issue" but then u wait and wait and wait until u realize that - hey i have received no money, they continue to attempt to withdraw funds from my account and they are in the process of showing the Credit Bureau that hey - this guy owes as money and is not paying thus my credit is being hit. Not to mention the time and effort and opportunity cost of having to spend hours will Dell rather than spending those same hours making $$$. Who will compensate me for that? The fact is - based on my experience - that if you are going to purchase ANY product from Dell - you should think long and hard. Maybe spend small money for a small item to test the waters. But their "unwillingness" to DO anything vs their willing to SAY anything is remarkable. If I cannot get my issue resolved by the end of the business day today, I will continue to work my way up the corporate structure until SOMEONE who has the authority to make things happen in an expedient manner takes action. This is without a doubt the worst experience at trying to purchase a computer(s) that I have ever had and the UNWILLINGNESS to DO anything just proves to me without any doubt why Michael Dell took the company pvt. People make mistakes all the time, but the unwillingness to fix things when u do, raises questions about your corporate policies and corporate ethics. And so if you are thinking about purchasing from Dell and have not done so...my vote is a resounding NO - stay away - far away. Its so bad that I have in writing from Dell via email that everything is in good order and all accounts have been closed - but still they are doing what they are doing. Whats my recourse? Going to court? Is that reasonable? Not with the money involved and they know this. Instead it appears based on their actions Dell is hoping that I will simply go away and they will have effectively "stolen" my firm's funds. JP unless you know someone with some authority within the corporate structure, the rest of the Dell personnel I have found to be only good at one thing...making false promises. At this pointt, MONTHS after this ordeal began you would think Dell might actually say to themselves - whatever has happened, we should solve this today in an expedient manner - nope..its more " I will look into it sir, and i will research and find out what has happened with your account" same story I have been hearing from Day 1!! My opiinoin, owning a Lenovo product, Apple, and attempted Dell purchase...you know which one I put at the bottom. PS - I hope those who have the coil whine have had that problem fixed because Dell cares right?

 

I don't have that problem with Chrome. But I'm using the synaptics driver rather than the dell one (which I found kept missing clicks)

 

So I am going to publicly note what is happening in my attempts to recover my funds from Dell so everyone can see just what it takes to get your refund from Dell. My lease was closed and disposed of as at May 23, 2014. Dell's contractual obligations note that the company will refund a cheque to you within 7-10 business days - so early June. Today we are July 10th. Delll has not refunded me. Despite reaching the escalation area - I am told a Manager will call me within 24-48 hours and Dell will stop payment on the cheque they say they issued (but never recieved) several weeks later. I explained to Dell that the escalation dept is giving me the same solution that the customer care tried and failed with. So until now, I see no difference with the Escalation Team vs Customer Care other then what is written on their business cards. I am told Dell "cannot" send me my money electronically to my account although thats how they took it. I am told Dell "cannot" cut a physical cheque and courier it to me same day or next day delivery. NO - the only solution again from the "ecalation team" is to cut a cheuqe and send it within 7-14 more business days. ; This is Dell's standard procedure and if you think reaching the Escalation Dept means anything it does not - because this is the exact same thing attempted by the Customer Care. Furthermore, attempts to access my account have not stopped and I am TOLD that Dell will contact the Credit Bureau to fix what looks like missed payments even though I owe nothing. I was told I would be sent a copy of the email sent to the credit bureau so i could have a copy incase there is a problem the next time i go to get a loan. I havent received that either. Today I was told, despite having an email from Dell on June 23 telling me the refund cheque was sent at that time, today I am told it was sent July 3. On and on and on. This is what my situation is now. I am writing this so everyone can take this into consideration in decisions dealing with Dell and to learn from my problems. I have decided to contact the Better Business Bureau as of today because maybe just maybe they can do something. I have also decided to contact the Consumer Protection Agency in Canada although Im a business I dont know what if anything they can do. This company simply has no intention of making the extra effort to fix their mistake. I can say one thing, if I put one of my clients through hell, I would damn make sure I would do everything possible to fix things even if I knew they were already done with me. Dell on the other hand....no effort at all. Escalation?? gimmie a break. How you respond to your mistakes speaks volumes as to the type of person and organization you are.

 

TL;DR.

Seriously, ignoring the matter whether the post is offtopic or not, do you know know what line breaks are?

 

Hi, I got the M3800 FHD and 61Whr battery, running single boot Arch Linux x64 Linux Kernel 3.15 and latest packages. Everything pretty much works out of the box; touchscreen (behaviour is configurable), wifi, special keys and display brightness control. Increasing batterylife needs a bit of configuration - you need to enable various power-saving features (example SATA power-management) and disable various server- and desktop-specific options (example NMI watchdog). The Intel tool powertop and the Arch Wiki (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Power_saving) will greatly help you. After optimizing your system for power-saving, you will get around 5 - 10 hrs of batterylife - depending on your workload. In its current state, batterylife can be considered as on par with Windows.

Hibernation, Sleep, Resume - everything is working right out of the box.

The only thing, that was not working right out of the box was Nvidia Optimus support. It's a pain in the *ehem* - time-consuming to setup. Once setup, it's working without any flaw. I'm using bumblebee in conjunction with the latest proprietary Nvidia drivers; I had to add a kernel parameter, in order to make it work: "rcutree.rcu_idle_gp_delay=1". This is due to some recent kernel changes (API used by Nvidia got deprecated) and probably gets fixed in near future.

Bumblebee is imho very good in a mobile environment, as you are able to choose, whether you want to run an application on your discrete GPU or not. For example, I can choose, whether I want to run Blender on the HD4600 or on the K1100M. It gives you maximum control over your laptop.

Compared to Windows, some drivers are even superior on Linux, like the touchpad driver. No weird gestures support, just a plain, simple, solid working touchpad as you would expect it work. There is a 2-finger scroll function working out of the box - the rest is highly customizable, like the scrolling area, click area and what not.

Thanks to the latest Intel 7260 Wireless-AC firmware (released about 3 weeks ago), the connection drops disappeared on my device and I'm able to use my Wireless-N again.

If you need a powerful laptop, which is able to run Linux mostly out-of-the-box featuring solid hardware, this might be your best bet. In terms of Linux-support you won't regret it, I guarantee.

 

Hello, gentlemen need information on this laptop model M3800 looked through many reviews but did not find them satisfactory answers.

1 Is the coil whine is a common problem? And if revealed after some time?
2 Do LCD FullHD have some excessive disadvantages? A lot of bad / sub / hot pixel?
3 Is the material which is coated with a laptop is pleasant to the touch?
4 Do you have any objections to the touch pad?

Is there anything else I should know before buying this Dell?

 

1. Yes, it's a common problem. Some people notice it, some don't. It depends on your age, your ears, how loud your environment is, what workload your laptop is working at, if the charger is plugged in,... It happens during some specific loads (power consumption), which makes the coil vibrate, resulting in these annoying noises. This is common in most electronic devices. Many vendors fix these issues during the manufacturing process by glueing down the coils to eliminate / soften vibrations.
I have noticed the coil whine issue after 2 months of use. This is probably due to the fact, that I'm usually wearing headphones during work.

2. Excessive disadvantages? To be honest, I think that the FullHD is superior (in terms of comfort) to the QHD screen, due to the fact, that there are many compatibility problems. You have to mess around with DPI, mess around with software-specific hacks, mess around with incompatible software. Why go through all that mess, when you could just save some bucks and go for the FullHD screen? Its resolution is perfect for my 40cm - 60cm distance to the screen. Eventhough I'm generally a fan of high-dpi screens (I have the Nexus 5 sitting next to me, featuring FullHD on a 5-inch screen), FullHD works perfectly well on 15,6-inch. I don't have a direct comparison to the QHD+ screen, but from what I've seen so far, the M3800's screen is superior to the Lenovo T440's screen and to my HP ZR22W IPS and ZR2240W screens. I don't know, what you mean by hot pixels, but other than a small dust particle covering 2 pixels on the middle-left border under the screen (which is a shame), my screen doesn't have any faults / defects. Nevertheless, Dell offers an extra 1-year guarantee on UltraSharp Displays (and this is one!). You're able to change your screen, if you spot a single fault. Personally, I have learned to live with it for now, since I'm very pleased with the device otherwise and the small dust particle is nearly invisible (I'm not even able to shoot a photo of it - my cameras don't catch it).

3. Yes. Just like the Razer DeathAdder's or Roccat Kone[+]'s coating. I have very dry hands, so the surface keeps very clean and I didn't had to clean it once until now. It just feels great imho. Downsides: you can feel almost every single dust-particle under your wrists. Get's annoying sometimes. Your experience may be different, depending on how dry / wet / sweaty your hands are.

4. Well, the touchpad itself is okay. Nothing spectacular, but definitely useful. You can't click on about the upper 1/4 of the touchpad due to its construction. You have a seperator, indicating where your left-click and right-click areas are (this might sound stupid and self-evident, but the new Lenovos did make me hint that, it's very essential). The click is very crisp and has a good feedback, I really like it. It's sometimes a bit loud, but this is my personal opinion and changes, depending on the environment you're working in.
Other than the hardware aspects, there seems to be major differencies in drivers. I'm not a Windows expert, but there seems to be problems with the latest, official Synaptics drivers. You have to get the drivers directly from Dell's website, eventhough they might be a bit outdated. On the other hand, Linux's open-source Synaptics drivers are working like a dream, including 2-finger scroll support and what not. A very pleasing experience.

If you are able to make compromises, you wll probably get the best MacBook-rival out there (even my Apple-pals were surprised).

 

Thank you very much for your answer, bothering me one more thing, of course I am aware that the coil whine harder once again less in electronics, I wonder if dell M3800 is more susceptible to this phenomenon than other laptops? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoWKzrn3pGI recommend wear headphones) People claim that the replacement motherboard, power supply and power cable does not work. Are all laptops manufactured M3800 coil whine? Whether it is a rather marginal phenomenon shown in the video youtube, M3800 are there that are perfectly quiet and nothing squeaks? I do not hide I'm pretty sensitive hearing.

 

I went through 4 M3800s documented at various points in this thread ..every single one of them had coil whine. Note 2 of those 4 were replacements by the Pro Support area which I understood hold some additional inventory that is supposed to be defect free. However I am in Canada so I cannot speak to any other region.

Cheers,

 

I dont mind if people ignore my problem with Dell and I apologize for no line breaks however it does not change the reality of what I have been though. So if you want to make disparaging remarks that's fine. I just hope you dont experience the problems I have in the future. The fact is I purchased machines from Dell, returned them, was supposed to receive my refund several weeks ago and have not. As I said I hope it does not happen to anyone here, but maybe rather than making disparaging remarks, you may wish to know how i eventually solve my issues so that you can learn from my experience should you ever have something similar happen to you.

Is this off topic? I owned 4 M3800s, and returned them. If you only want the forum to be restricted to all the gleeful comments about how wonderful the product is you may not get the full story of all issues and potential pitfalls one may have in dealing with Dell and the purchase/return of an M3800. To each his own.