Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

The PALMREST was delayed and then production was stopped? Given that this is coming from a Dell rep I'm taking it with a grain of salt, but assuming it's true, I really wonder what caused them to start production of a new palmrest revision. If anything I'd have expected the touchpad to get a revision to resist discoloration a bit longer....

 

The M3800 is not an Ultrabook. It doesn't meet the CPU TDP requirement.

 

Hey quick question on that. So being that the m3800 has an AC wifi card... IF I were to get an AC router such as RT-AC68, would that really be a big difference to the N66U?

 

If you had any other AC clients or wired clients, were pushing massive amounts of data between them, and all AC wireless clients were close enough to the router with sufficiently little physical interference to have a good 5 GHz signal (required for AC speeds), then sure there'd be a difference. Range might be a bit better, but honestly the N66U is already so incredible that I don't think that would be a major factor. But as for throughput, there are several reviews of both models if you want to compare benchmarks; try to find one website that has reviewed both models since they're more likely to have used the same testing methodology and conditions, so the results will be more comparable. I think SmallNetBuilder has done a review of each and they're known to be extremely thorough and consistent.

Otherwise the only perks of an AC68U are the USB 3.0 ports with a dual-core processor (so that USB 3.0 disks can actually run noticeably faster rather than being bottlenecked by the CPU), and the AC68U seems to have faster WAN to LAN throughput. The N66U seems to max out at "only" 780 Mbps on its WAN port, whereas the AC68U gets closer to 950 if memory serves. Obviously that won't matter to most, but since I live in Austin and hope to be getting Google Fiber soon, that could be a factor. Hopefully by then Google will let people use their own damn router or will at least have revised their own Network Box to provide AC rather than N Wifi....

 

By two displays you mean the internal display alongside the external monitor. Correct?
I really hope this will be possible. I wouldn't need two external monitors with 4K resolution. Just one would be enough, but I hope it will not require shutting down the laptop's internal display.

 

Actually I had been thinking about two external displays since that's how I run most of the time, but with the built-in panel connected via DisplayPort (it would have to be for that resolution @ 60 Hz), that panel plus an external 4K panel would require even more bandwidth than running one 4K @ 60 Hz and another @ 30 Hz. I can't even make an educated guess as to whether the setup you're hoping for will be possible, and I wouldn't count on Dell support reps to give the correct answer on something like this (even if they sound completely confident as they give it ), so there may be only one way to find out for this one. Let us know if you get your hands on a 4K display and can test!

Oddly though, I can't find any information anywhere about even whether desktop graphics cards with multiple DisplayPort outputs can support dual 4K displays....

 

Just for fun:

16K-Wide Windows 8 Multi-Mon Desktop with the Sharp PN-K321 4K Display

 

I'm writing his from my m3800 I got today. I think it is going to go back to Dell for a refund !! My old laptop is 13 inch vaio Z series I the keyboad is bigger than the m3800 one !!! what the heck it's a 15,6 laptop with the keyboard if an iPhone !!!!!!! And most important is the lack of the fingerprint reader !!!!!!!!! I didn't check this one and thought it would be there as this is an enterprise class laptop !!!!!!! but the keboard kills me :-( The Enter buton is so tiny !!! I'm either going for a Thinkpad 5400 or a MacBookPro !

 

Do you have sausage fingers or something? The keys themselves don't look that small.

 

Lack of fingerprint reader is a feature you may need. The MBP will not have it. The Thinkpad 540 has it, but so does the M4800 that better competes with (and exceeds) it.

The keyboard is a personal preference mixed with what you are used to typing on. It is certainly not as constrained as an iPhone, but I will have to do some research to see if it is smaller than a 13" Sony. I type on an M6700 notebook and a Razer BlackWidow desktop keyboard. I have zero issues with the M3800's keyboard.

Will go back over your older posts to see if I am missing anything.