Hands on Dell Precision 7710

Does anyone know when the new Xeon E3-1545 and E3-1575 will be available?

 

That's weird, because I upgraded the Win7Pro on my M6500 no problem. Also did an ASUS N500 (I believe that's the model) that had Win8.0, and an old VAIO that had WinXP, that I replaced the HDD to SSD, loaded my Dell Win7Pro copy, then Win10 over that! But I thought if you bought a new Precision you also receive a Win10 license?

 

It is possible. Take Windows Explorer as an example. Looks nice when you drag an Explorer window from one monitor to another one with different DPI. I seem to remember that Outlook and Word (at least 2016) can do as well but PowerPoint not. But all other apps get blurry, except when you disable hidpi scaling on each exe-file. I can live with 125% DPI on the FullHD internal display and my external 24" 1920x1200 monitors. So I use a tool which restores Windows 8 DPI scaling to avoid scaling on all apps. Just a few UI parts ignore that, like the context menu of the Windows desktop (Win10 10240 was OK, but 10586 is scaled, which means blurry).

Here are some backgrounds: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn469266(v=vs.85).aspx

Your Win32 app needs to be tagged as "True/PM" in the HiDPI aware section of the app manifest and then the app must listen to WM_DPICHANGED notifcations and do all the appropriate scaling or ico/bmp/png selection when drawing images... Complex, but doable.

 

I was referring to the conversion of a Windows 7 product key into a (human readable) Windows 10 product key, which you can enter when you do a clean install of Windows 10, without first performing an upgrade.

Of course, you can always perform an upgrade to Windows 10, as you have done, which activates Windows 10 and stores the activation key in the BIOS (presumably).

Once you perform the upgrade to Windows 10, the activation key is stored in the BIOS and you don't have to activate Windows 10 again when you reinstall it (using a product key).

I don't know about Windows 10, but when I bought an M6800 with Windows 8, it didn't have a COA sticker with a product key. The Windows 8 activation key was already stored in the BIOS, so there was no need to activate Windows 8 after installation.

 

It doesn't get stored in the BIOS as far as I know. Older Windows 7 era machines don't even have a mechanism for keeping the product key in the BIOS.

All machines upgraded from Win7 or Win8 to Windows 10 under the free upgrade offer get the same product key (T44CG-JDJH7-VJ2WF-DY4X9-HCFC6, at least for 10240). When you successfully complete the upgrade and go through activation for the first time, your hardware fingerprint is stored in an online database at Microsoft. If you ever install again (including clean install), they'll remember you and you will be able to activate again without hassle (and without entering a key). You will not be able to successfully activate using the product key if the machine had not previously gone through the upgrade process from an activated Win7 or Win8 (but, as of 10586 you can activate using a Win7 or Win8 key).

All kind of hokey but they're moving towards a point where we won't have to worry about product keys anymore.

 

I wonder what happens when you replace the motherboard, because this will definitely change the system's fingerprint...

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ns-press-release.782179/page-19#post-10124875

 

I haven't done it yet but I imagine it's the same as today: Windows will fail to activate, and you'll have to call the phone number and see if you can convince someone to let you activate anyway.

 

I had the MB replaced on a M6700 two times in a week. System had Win 10 pro that was upgraded from win 8 that I think was upgraded from win 7 (I do not remember).

Both times I did not have to call. Maybe because Win 10 saw the Win 7 key in the bios (if it is there)?

 

I've just chatted with a DELL representative and he told me they don't know if the E3-1545M and/or the E3-1575M will come to the M7710.

Since it has not been mentioned before: He also told me that existing docking stations (E-port II 240W USB3 in my case) are still compatible with M7710 Thunderbolt 3 variant.

Plus the M7710 with Thunderbolt 3 should be compatible with external Thunderbolt 3 GPU solutions like the Razor Core. Has anyone tried this already? How is the performance?