Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

That's an interesting point: speed sacrificed for PXE compatibility. Perhaps. Hopefully the docking station doesn't have this limitation though.

That's the thing: I don't see the backlit keyboard mentioned anywhere for the M3800. Not on on the Summary page, not in the Details, not in the Overview not in the Tech Specs. It is mentioned for XPS 15 though.

But I am not worried. I am pretty sure this is just one of many omissions and inconsistencies on the M3800 website, like the system weight, 9 vs. 6 cells, the omission of the second drive in the dual-drive configuration, etc.

 

Hmm, hadn't thought about the D3000 dock. But if they got PXE supported there on a dock NIC connected through a USB 3.0 port, I'd have expected the USB NIC to be 3.0 as well -- but then again bigger head scratchers have happened in product development. I'm betting the dock NIC won't work for booting (probably another reason the USB NIC is included with the Precision), but report back if you test!

I initially thought it was odd that a premium laptop still had one of its USB ports only using 2.0 until I realized the boot limitation on 3.0 ports with NICs or flash drives. Without that 2.0 port, since there's no optical drive either, installing Win7 would have been impossible. I'm also betting that there's a 4-port USB 3.0 hub circuit built into the motherboard, and the fourth 3.0 port would be wired into the M.2 slot.

 

There is a common belief that Macs have the best touchpad. How does the touchpad of the m3800 compare withe the one of the MacBook Pro?

Thanks for a great review

 

This is discussed in the XPS 15 thread, but the general consensus is that it's good (and large) but not quite as good as the MBP, especially with respect to the click action, which can be a bit finicky in the extreme corners. Although using the generic Synaptics driver rather than Dell's seems to be curing some of that click sensitivity, as well as opening up more configuration options. You do lose some other features only found in the Dell drivers, but they seem to be more esoteric things like gestures; apparently the benefits outweigh the losses on Synaptics. Maybe a future Dell driver update will bring the best of both worlds; it's early yet, after all.

 

Thanks! I am going through the XPS 15 thread and I see several complaints and people thinking of returning their XPS for trouchpad related issues. Your summary is clear, as is the comparison between the MBP and hte XPS 15 touchpad here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/735403-xps-15-haswell-owners-lounge-99.html

 

Returning a laptop over touchpad issues seems like an overreaction especially considering there's still plenty of time for driver updates, and there's also nothing else like the XPS 15 on the market, not that I've found anyway. I won't worry much because I'll use it most of the time with external peripherals attached, but I'd hardly consider touchpad issues a deal breaker -- more like additional incentive to learn keyboard shortcuts, as if the HUGE efficiency gains weren't enough by themselves.

My friends, family, and colleagues when they watch me use a computer are always amazed at how quickly I can navigate through UIs and that I do so without ever touching the mouse. I keep telling them that I'm so fast BECAUSE I don't use the mouse. You lose a ton of time moving your right hand between the keyboard and mouse/touchpad, and moving the mouse to click an object you want takes far more time than pressing a key or key combination, especially if what you need to click on first requires you to bring up a menu and then possibly select a sub-menu beyond that.

 

'glossy' if it doesn't have a light scattering AG layer, 'matte' if it does.
If it has great contrast and color gamut reproduction then 'expensive but worth it'

Has anyone done a side-by-side comparison of the M4800 vs. M3800 QHD+ screens yet?

I know I am in the minority, but I would like to see Dell implement a Precision screen option similar to the Cintiq Companion with EMR stylus, touch, and IPS AR/AG screen.
But when you look at what Wacom had to sacrifice in brightness, contrast and color gamut in a portable solution they are probably still a few years away of being viable to a larger market.

 

I was reading about how the Dell drivers instead of Synaptics for the touchpad could make the CPU go to 5% when used on the XPS 15. Is this an issue?

 

Click on View Details of, say, the mid-tier configuration. Scroll down. Between "Chassis" and "Recommended Accessories" is this:

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The "backlit" detail is not shown the Detail tab of the order, which shows simply "US keyboard" or something like that.

Why spend close to $3000 on a notebook and then wait for touchpad driver updates (note plural)?

Similar touchpad concerns have been raised with practically every single XPS model of 2011/2012. Me no beta tester. YMMV.

 

Because I want everything else about this machine and no other PC I've found is anything like it. I honestly don't care at all about the touchscreen because I doubt the built-in panel will be my primary display very often, but more importantly I can't see a touchscreen on a laptop that isn't a convertible tablet as being very ergonomic. It would get tiresome to hold your arm in the air to reach out to the display IMHO.

But I get your point about being a beta tester. Then again, if you need a laptop now, what else would you buy that would give you the XPS 15's feature set other than a MacBook Pro? But that isn't an ideal option for PC users and doesn't include a touchscreen anyway.

Found this post in the XPS 12 thread, may be useful to those with touchscreen issues and other quirks: http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/693432-xps-12-owners-lounge-141.html#post9247801

Looks like whoever thought it was a device sleep state problem might have been right. Fwiw, since the touchscreen note pertains to a completely separate model, the note about applying that setting to the first USB Input device listed may not apply to the M3800, so a bit of trial and error may be in order unless you want to apply that setting to every device, but that could cost you some battery life. Easiest way I could think of to identify the touchscreen would be disabling the devices one at a time and seeing when the touchscreen turns off, though if you disable your mouse accidentally and don't know how to navigate with your keyboard, you may have a problem -- or just keep an external mouse handy in addition to the trackpad.

If anyone does this, when you identify which listing is your touchscreen, head over to the Details tab and choose the "Hardware IDs" property from the dropdown, then take a note of the 4-charater strings after "VID" and "PID". Those should be unique to the touchscreen in the system and identical for all touchscreens in all owners' systems, unless maybe Dell has another touchscreen supplier already. In any case, that would at least help save some trial and error for other owners looking to attempt the same fix.