Dell Precision M4700 and M6700 - Preliminary Info

Retina needs time to get fully supported. Plus, I don't think anyone could really efficiently use a 15" screen @ FHD+. The 1920x1080 is barely usable IMHO. Anything above that would be a waste.

At this point of waiting for the Mx700's, I'd like to know a few things:

1) Will there be an extra storage bay?

2) Would the price be higher than that of the current gen?

3) Will FirePro equipped systems have a graphics switching or is it Optimus all over again?

4) Will there be a partial CPU overclock for the 3x20QM processors?


Am tempted to jump on the M4600 (base config) and slowly upgrade it down the road.

 

It doesn't look bad at 150% DPI, and you could jack that to 175%. Or 200%+, if you really wanted.

 

I've played with a retina MBP for a few solid hours and while it looked sharp even at high res, I still felt the eye strain. Increasing DPI in windows destroys the whole idea of a high res screen. Do you only need it for pics?

 

in addition to these questions:

5) Will there be integrated LTE-Modems in europe at the release date?

 

Why does increasing DPI destroy the high res idea?

Increasing DPI mostly increases the font size. Fonts can be scaled without quality loss, so you get sharp text on a high res display.

Problematic are pixel based pictures like in toolbars and ribbon which get scaled and hence look small or blurry.

 

The point of high resolution displays is, in large part, so you can have very high DPI (ideally, above 300) where the density of the display starts to approach paper.

Bigger screens are for bigger things, not higher resolution...

 

6) Is Intel SRT supported?

Going to agree with Aikimox on the high-res screen. Windows's DPI scaling works for scaling the fonts but everything else will get fuzzy. Most apps don't seem to support DPI scaling very well, even though it's been around for a long time. That is to say, they'll work but they don't present higher resolution assets so at that point there's no reason to have a higher resolution screen. Maybe support will pick up some if these high-DPI displays start appearing in other PCs.

The situation might be better in Windows 8's metro land where it seems like it would be easier to build apps that are happy with the screen resolution from the very low range to the very high range. (Of course, how well-suited metro is for actual productivity apps is a whole other discussion. ) I'm not aware of any other improvements in Windows 8 for high-DPI displays, the articles on the Windows 8 blog about the topic seem pretty heavily focused on metro.

 

Funny how we live in a 'high dpi' universe, except on computer screen. I remember a time where printing could still be below 300dpi. I am glad we finally have a device where the reading experience is almost as good as paper (New iPad). i just wish the high density print experience finally comes to screen on all devices, not just tablet and phone. I understand that software is not yet ready, but I sincerely hope other manufacturers follow the Apple lead and force software to improve. I could even give up 16x10 if other OEMs come with high dpi 16x9 as suggested by the Windows early documentation, although for now that seems reserved to tablets. Maybe the Precision will do that. At least some messages from Dell_Bill seem to indicate that high DPI screen could show up in the future on their hardware.

 

good question. I've only recently heard about Intel SRT in some of the Sager/Clevo laptops. I don't fully understand it, but from what I've heard it works as cache/buffer for the HDD/SDD in the system? similar to the small SSD cache on an XT Momentus HDD.

 

I'd also be ecstatic to see a Retina-style high-DPI display come to a Precision. I played with one of the new MBP with a retina display and I loved how it handled pictures.
From what I gather, the retina display doesn't make everything look smaller, it makes things look clearer - ideal for pictures. There is some software involved behind that though...
I still hate it because it's still a glossy display.

To be honest, the retina display is awesome to work with (for pictures) and has decent color space.... I might choose a retina display over an ips rgb-led display with larger gamut....