Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Interesting, AnandTech just posted an article about the refresh too: AnandTech | Dell Updates Ultrabook Thin M3800 Mobile Workstation With 4K Display. I'm surprised there were enough people with an ecosystem of Thunderbolt accessories to compel Dell include it. The feedback about offering specifically Intel SSDs is also interesting, although I don't see a way to request that on the build page.

 

Yes, I also like that the they now offer Ubuntu 14.04 out of the box so that you don't have to tweak settings for the touchpad, hidpi display and audio etc.
It seems like Dell sometimes listen to feedback from their customers. That I like!

 

WOW, what an AWESOME suggestion! I was so excited to go try this.... However, I could not find any BIOS setting to enable/disable the Audio on my M3800. Do you know where it is hiding?

 

Booting Ubuntu 12 from USB didn't work. Even after installing the latest FireFox version and the Flash plugin, all I get is the visual part of the YouTube videos, but no sound.
Time to invest in a H/W warranty from Dell, it looks like. Bummed!

 

I think I may give one of these a try again. I was hoping for an updated touchpad as well (I use the touchpad a lot), but it doesn't look like that was updated.

The ship times don't look too bad either, so now is probably a good time to go for it.

 

Where is that roadmap located does anyone have a link?

 

The touchpad may have been updated. The one on the new XPS 13 is getting all kinds of praise, even to the point of being equated to Apple trackpads. Of course there's no way to know if that was implemented on the new M3800 until someone tries it, but I have no trouble imagining that a touchpad update could have occurred without being mentioned on the product page. In general the only things mentioned about touchpads are glass and multi-touch, and the M3800 already had both, so I doubt they'd just post, "Better feel/responsiveness than last time!"

I do, but I haven't posted it for the reason I gave when I was first asked this question in the XPS 15 thread:

 

Good point. If the touchpad is even 50% better than before then I am 100% SOLD! All of my other apps have finally been updated for hi-dpi, so the spotty touchpad is the only thing that I am really worried about.

I just made the purchase. I'm coming back home, lol. Hopefully I will be here to stay this time!

 

Got my UP2414Q today and happy to say that both the M3800 and E7440 can handle 4K@60Hz. Looks like the MST display setup works just fine with E7440's Intel 4400 GPU. I updated the Intel drivers to the latest on both (using the Have Disk option as recommended here). Haven't played around with the monitor too much yet, so I'll see how it behaves over time. I did get the A01 revision, which I was happy to see, so hopefully this one is a keeper.

 

Sorry, I only checked that it should be in my BIOS. While our machines differ, I didn’t expect they would differ in this respect—BIOS seems to have a lot in common among business Dells. If it were in yours, it would be found near USB configuration and other similar options.