Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

No discoloration on mine. I do clean it about once a week with Windex and a cloth.

Keep in mind that some hand lotions, cigarette smoking, and food can also cause major issues with discoloration.

 

There is a rubber coating on the palm rest, right? Generally, I have very bad experience with any kind of rubber coating that is touched by skin over long periods of time. On the skin there's always aggressive substances (albeit salts and sweat), which after a couple of years make the rubber disintegrate. There is also an image of disintegrating rubber coating in the parallel XPS 15 thread somewhere.

 

For me, I find that the generic synaptic driver works much better than the dell and I don't have any problems with unwanted clicks. It has some slight discolouration after 1.5 years of use but no more than has happened on my other machines in a similar timeframe. Personally I like the rubber feel of the surface and it avoids fingerprints and hides scratches. The PC is well travelled and seems pretty robust. As an XPS 15 user, I can also confirm that I've been very happy with the machine.

 

Are you running Win8 or 7? I've tried both in Win7 and didn't find either did better. It might just be due to how hard we each press on the track pad. I tend to have a very light touch on the thing.

 

(Synaptics) For me, this was true also until the January update of the Dell drivers (17.0.15.85) came out. I find that they are better than or just as good as the stock Synaptics ones (17.0.19) which cannot be installed in a straight-forward way. 2-finger scroll is much improved and the drivers don't seem to hog as much CPU. I was pleasantly surprised when I decided to give them a try. The touchpad is nowhere near as responsive as a MacBook... :-( I'm missing part of middle finger and so 2-finger scroll works literally 0% of the time using index and middle finger, whereas on a MacBook it is 100%- no joke. Using a different pinky or something it works about 75% of the time. Not great, but bearable. Using a MacBook touchpad is always a revelation for me. They are just downright amazing.

 

I CAN NOT believe that one has to fiddle with poor touch pad drivers/features on a 2k$ world class workstation. Hogs CPU? Don't recognize clicks? That is pathetic.

For example, my 5yrs old $400 Acer 1810TZ netbook has a wonderful touchpad with multi-touch and pointer momentum!

 

Guys, just a two quick questions

1. my laptop recently runs really hot, when editing video in adobe premiere - cpu at 94degrees (seen in dell diagnostic). Called support, they had replaced fans and heating pipes - however technician was concerned if it helps, because heating and fans were not dirty, and cpu thermal paste was there also. How hot your laptop runns when using demanding programs , like photoshop, premiere or autocad?
2. i do currently own m3800 with i7-4702HQ procesor and QHD display. Is it reasonable to upgrade to M3800 with UHD display, and almost same specs as my current one (except i7-4712HQ), will I get any gains? From my point of you, I should rather wait for refresh with broadwell cpus.

Thank you very much
David

 

Win 8. Actually, I remember - I turned off tap-to-click so that's one way of solving the problem I just use the clicking mechanism of the touchpad.

 

I've turned off tap to click... but I really miss it.

 

Some people used to say that by replacing the thermal paste that Dell uses with a more advance one could skim some degrees. Also, I have found my 4712HQ to run a few degrees cooler than my 4702HQ.

Still, 94 degrees sounds like a lot. Is your environment too hot? Are the air input and output unobstructed?