Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Can anyone (or the op) post a picture of the keyboard/screen? I'd like to see the keyboard for any functional keys that changed from the previous models.

Haven't received my unit yet.

Thanks!

 

Look at the XPS 15 on Dell's site. One of the images in the slideshow at the top of the page is a top-down view of the laptop. You can even zoom in two levels by clicking: http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-15-9530/pd?~ck=mn

 

Thx. Is there any difference in the perfomance between mSATA and normal size SSD?

 

Not if you're testing the same model in each case, though the only one I know of that has both 2.5" and mSATA variants is the Crucial M500. Otherwise mSATA is literally just a smaller SATA connector, like Mini-DisplayPort vs DisplayPort or microUSB vs USB. Dell seems to be shipping LiteOn units for the non-self-encrypting 256GB mSATA SSDs and the (awesome) Samsung SM841 for the 512GB unit. This is the first mention I've seen of an mSATA self-encrypting drive being available with this system, though.

Out of curiosity how are you getting the option to build your own? Dell seems to be phasing this option out in favor of pre-configured SKUs.

 

Business (and government, academic institutions, etc.) accounts get freely configurable SKUs as part of the Dell Premier program. However, those are more expensive than the pre-configured ones for identical configs.

 

I did the same thing on release day. They seemed to have changed a few things:

-3yr basic warranty NBD was removed
-WIndows 8.1 is now select-able (30 dollars cheaper)

 

Exactly, I am member of a University in UK so i do get that option. I am just not sure if it worth's purchasing it with the SSD which I do not need atm. i am thinking purchasing the 1 TB HDD and then after 1-2 years when SSD technology will be more mature remove the internal HDD keep it as external back up and then place the SSD of my choice. I thing that someone mentioned that this is fairly easy to do in XPS 15.

 

Yes, this is fairly easy to do, though you'd end up with the smaller battery, whereas if you could use the 512GB mSATA SSD now, you could upgrade it to 1TB when they become available and keep the larger battery all the while. Out of curiosity what's the maturity concern with SSDs? I've usually heard people say they want to wait for cost to come down especially if they have high storage requirements like 1TB, but not usually maturity. Samsung and Intel drives in particular have proven to be very reliable (as has Crucial) as opposed to models from people like OCZ that were indeed not mature and suffered all kinds of problems, mostly due to the SandForce controller they used.

 

The Main think is that the price will be lower. I believe that it is mature enough for the market but in 2 years times maybe othe manufacturers apart from Samsung and Intel will be able to provide reliable SSDs. To tell you the truth I do not really need it atm anyway. Sure it is going to be better but paying 250 pounds extra is not an option when in 2 years I might be able to get the same thing, with whatever technological improvements might come, with half the price.

 

That's perfectly understandable, but having used SSDs for 3 years now, if you don't have experience with them, I can tell you that they are the single best performance per dollar improvement you can make for your machine by an enormous margin. Most people's workload just isn't limited by CPU or RAM, which becomes obvious if you keep Task Manager open while you work. Most people's machines feel slow because of slow storage (loading Windows, launching applications, saving files, etc), and that in turn means that an SSD essentially singlehandedly makes your computer literally 2-3x faster. I have an ancient Precision M6300 at the moment that I'm still using 6 years later (!!!) because in 2010 I put an SSD in there and it got a whole new lease on life. And ironically, my new job gave me a new Latitude E6430 with good CPU and RAM specs but a regular hard drive, and it's absolutely painful to use compared to my dinosaur M6300 as a result. I'm actually considering paying out of pocket to put an SSD into this machine.

If there's any way you can swing it, I guarantee you that you won't feel the money on an SSD was ill-spent for the 2 years of blazing fast performance you'll get out of it until you upgrade to something else later. It is absolutely a paradigm shift and makes far more of an impact than going from single-core to quad-core or even 4GB to 16GB of RAM, again unless your type of work keeps those resources constantly pegged. The only downside is that it will absolutely spoil you for ever using a regular hard drive again.