Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

On October 22 Dell has announced the "availability date".
And the date is November 14.
I am surprised they haven't started taking pre-orders though.

 

Interacting with other people is IMO the only time a touchscreen is gonna be of any use on a laptop at present, but I've become so used to tablets and smartphones that I often find myself touching my laptop screen in front of others. For some tasks, touching the screen is a lot quicker than moving/clicking a mouse/pad and if the software is designed right then touchscreens could even become a faster way of interacting with some software than keyboard shortcuts. So although we're not used to this now I think touchscreens have a lot to offer in the future. Will they replace keyboards and mice/pads? No, probably not IMO. But that's not to say they don't have some advantages. Do I wish Dell offered its high-res M3800 screen in non-touch? Yes, but I'm sure I'll have fun with the touch version if I buy one.

And therein lies the problem... the software has to be designed right. OS-X is not really optimized for touch input the same way Win8 is. I suspect it soon will be as OS-X and iOS converge. I wonder what Steve Jobs thought of touchscreens on laptops?!

 

Hehe, my syster-son, he is 1 year and 9 months old, behaves the same way. He is used to his brothers ipad 2, and when he wants to see some youtube-videos on my laptop he touches the one he likes to see on the display and scream 'dahh, daah'.


Anyway, the important question is, will dell provide drivers for win7 for this model? I.e, will the m3800 be win8-only laptop, or is it possible that you can order one with win7 preinstalled or install win7 on your own and then find drivers for it on dells website?

For even if I dont have anything against win8, or win8.1, I will install and use win7 on this one if its possible.

 

Agree, however, the m3800 lid doesn't appear to open flat on a table like the m4700. Then it would be a great presentation tool. You'd open it up, and share your screen to everyone around a table.

Having a touchscreen is bound to attract some "beating". Is there any hint the hinges have been upgraded to stand the extra stress?

 

Huh? Is this a trick question? This is a Precision, and like all Dell Precision and Latitude laptops, and indeed all professional laptops from all manufacturers, you will be able to order it with Windows 7 installed.

 

Probably November 14 is the day you can order one, the actual availability will be a little later.

 

The product overview page does mention Windows 7 explicitly:

"Work efficiently between multiple programs using Windows 8.1 Pro or Windows 7 Professional."

 

One day, Apple will market a MacBook with a touchscreen. it''ll say it is revolutionizing the computer industry, just like Siri changed the life of all humans and martians.
They'll probably call it MacBook with Retina(C)(R)(TM) Fingerina (C)(R)(TM).
Just like when they went from PowerPC to Intel. Intel were always s..t processors but when they began to use them suddenly Intel Macs were 2x faster as the PowerPC Macs.

Seriously though some people don't use touchscreens, others do. Many applications will use them when innovators find better ways to do things.
For example already for music makers touch is absolutely great when rightly implemented. You can do the same as what you used to do with super super expensive control surfaces.
Also don't underestimate touch as a really intuitive way of using computers for many people.

 

" you will be able to order it with Windows 7 installed. "

7 do not support high resolution.

 

Windows 7 supports the high resolution just fine. You may have to manually set the scaling ratio. Windows 8.1 has some tweaks to the DPI scaling, but it won't make much difference for single-display use.