Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Quite a few of us waiting on orders, but I hope a few will be able to answer.

FWIW, look closely at the XPS 15, and the pricing/configuration on what you'd want for those two.

I've had some time to try both, and they are the Exact.Same.Machine for the vast majority of all users' needs. Very serious gamers may care about the GPU clock uptick on the XPS 15(*), and people using applications that require ISV-certified drivers for support (or specific sorts of OpenGL support only available on the Quadro) will need to get the M3800.

For everyone else, it's indistinguishable, and the prices are close enough that you are going to have to look at the individual promotions in place on each when you're ready to buy before knowing which will be cheaper.

(* although honestly there are much better dedicated gaming PCs -- if they really want someting portable, Razer Blade 14" is a much better choice for many of them -- 765M, same CPU, similar price. )

 

Yes, I used the Nikon cable too.
Sometimes it connects , sometimes not.
I tried Capture One and Lightroom 4&5. Capture seems to hold it somewhat better with the 3m cable.
But also not consistently enough.
I'm using W8.1, the Thinkpad was a W7 machine.

I ordered an active USB extension from Amazon. Will report if that helps.
If that doesn't work it'd be a disappointment.

 

I don't have experience with that camera, but try compatibility mode (as mentioned) if that doesn't work I'm going to guess its a windows 8.1 issue. If you try it on another windows 8.1 machine I'm going to guess you will find the same problems.

 

Hello,

I am an engineering student on my master's in nano technology. Due to the nature of my program I have to move from country to country every 5-6 months. Thus I need a good, portable system with good battery life, good portability ( since I take my laptop almost every day to the university ) and memory computational power as running simulations is a big part of my day. All in all, I need a strong portable system that doesn't overheat and can replace a desktop system for the next couple of years. Do you think M3800 is a safe option from your experience so far ?

Thanks in advance,
Mario

 

Definitely. The issues people are reporting as implementation issues with their specific units, not design issues. It's possible you may have issues with the unit you order (just like any other laptop), but from a design and feature set standpoint this is an awfully tough laptop to beat.

 

I could narrow down the problem a bit:

I got a USB 3 repeater cable (5m) and Capture One is fine with it.
Lightroom 4&5 however work after a fresh start, however it doesnt detect the camera anymore after you either disconnect it or turn it off.... (sometimes "no camera detected", other times showing the camera but not performing the transfer)

Also tried Win7 compatibility modes- no luck.

Hope this helps photographers who are setting it up..

 

It also depends on your definition of portability and desktop system replacement, namely CPU and GPU performance requirements, RAM quantity, etc. Depending on how you stretch those, M6800 could also be considered portable and offer much higher GPU performance.

 

Seconded.

I think it depends on how heavy of a machine you're comfortable carrying around every day, and whether you prize battery life over horsepower - the M3800 will definitely be lightest, but the M4800/6800 will have much more horsepower, but significantly less battery life.

 

Good to know, thanks for the updates. So Capture One is stable now?

My guess is that it could be a Nikon software issue with 8.1 and Lightroom may rely on their code for connections. I'm not sure if Capture One still relies on their SDK for tethering - they used to, but it was a source of problems whose time to fix depended on Nikon.

 

Capture One is running stable 80% of the time now with the repeater cable attached.
At some points it got stuck but I couldn't reproduce the problem.
LR on the other hand is unusable no matter what cable or mode I use.
I was planning to switch to C1 anyway, so it's not a big deal.

Capture One does use the Nikon SDK a rep told me.