Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

This was mentioned either in this thread or the XPS 15 thread. The GUESS is that the 4.15 lbs would be if you had an mSATA drive, the smaller battery, and no 2.5" drive -- a configuration you can't order online but which someone apparently managed to order over the phone in Germany (can't remember if it was an XPS or Precision). Note that all Precision specs show 4.15 and all XPSes show 4.44 even though the different specs couldn't all weigh exactly the same. It's also possible that the specs for each were written up at different stages in the engineering process and some revisions prior to final production spec raised or lowered the weight but only one model's "paper specs" got updated.

To my knowledge nobody here has put either model on a scale, but I got to see both of them side by side and they felt exactly the same weight to me -- and I got confirmation from a Dell employee that the only hardware difference is the GPU, which couldn't possibly account for any real weight difference at all, certainly not this much.

 

I've asked around about the overheating, but no one seems to have any problems with that. As a matter of fact, everyone loves their Macbook Pro so it's virtually impossible to get an unbiased review of the machine.

And another thing to consider also is the m4800, which is only 1 kg heavier and a bit thicker than the m3800, but has all the specs you come to expect from a workstation and the high resolution screen at a cheaper price. I hope to see one day these three machines side by side.

 

1.Touch screen intermittently stops working until reboot.
2.Sound from USB port when computer is plugged in.
3.touchscreen doesn't work sometimes.

These are three general issue for XPS15. As I know, m3800 is the same as XPS 15 except the GPU, Bokeh, Would you please test you machine and see whether it has the above issue?

 

The weight thing is confusing (the 4.15 was updated only recently and after the XPS was released, previously it stated 4.44), but the top spec XPS is a 6 cell, 91WHr battery. Why are XPS owners being screwed - are 9 cell 91WHr batteries better than 6 cell 91WHr?

 

That's almost certainly another typo. There's only a 61WHr battery and a 91WHr battery. For some reason the XPS lists both as 6-cell and the Precision lists the larger unit as 9-cell, but there's absolutely no reason they wouldn't be identical, especially since they even look identical in photos. I have no idea whether the larger one just has 6 larger cells or does in fact have 9, but it shouldn't matter from a battery life standpoint.

 

I wonder what you could even possibly mean by this. You bought an XPS, and that's what you got. If you want an M3800, then buy that one. Where's the problem?

 

Yes, it's difficult to get an unbiased comparison.

But I think the main advantage the Dell machines have over the Apple machines is, that you can repair them.
I cannot understand why Apple build machines, that you can virtually dump, if anything brakes...

The problems of the MacBooks are:
1. Unrepairable (see iFixIt).
2. Throttling, if used long time with full load.
3. Machine uses power from battery if needed, because the power-adapter is too weak.
4. Thunderbold does not work in Windows or Linux (only in MacOS/X), because they implemented it in the wrong way. (The APCI routines are completly missing).
5. Insufficient support of the secure extension of UEFI.
6. Nvidia Optimus is unsupported. Apple implemented their own method, called GMux, which is unsupported or bad supported under Windows and Linux.

I hoped that Dell offers the m3800 (as a professional workstation) with an Anti-Glare option, which would be THE real advantage over the MacBooks, because you cannot get them with a matte screen.
But the designers (thanks to Intel) must put an Touch-Screen in the laptop, which forces them to use the Gorilla-Glas.

 

I talked to support a lot trying to get 8.1 preinstalled and it just isn't something they can do. I'd have to buy an external DVD drive to install 8.1. I find it completely ridiculous that there isn't a configuration option to have the latest OS. Win8 has been out for over a year and this is a new computer!

 

You don't need an external optical drive. There's a Microsoft utility that lets you take an ISO file and make a bootable USB flash drive from it. The ISO can be downloaded from Microsoft using your included Win8 key. Or apparently Dell will send installer flash drives. In any case, you may have to use the USB 2.0 port since the Win8 WinPE environment may not have USB 3.0 drivers. The Win7 WinPE environment definitely doesn't if you ever reinstall that, which I imagine is why Dell kept a 2.0 port. That and the fourth 3.0 port on the internal hub chip is probably devoted to the M.2 slot.

Lack of a Win8 preinstall is indeed odd especially given the high-DPI panel, but it's all apparently part of minimizing the number of orderable configurations to reduce manufacturing complexity and chance of error, I guess, and the business customers that the Precision is aimed at are still mostly on 7. You can get an XPS with 8.1 though, and probably for less cash -- or do you need the Quadro?

 

Maybe others find this useful too. Some direct contradictions here to my previous chat...