M4800 Owner's Thread

Hi all from Italy! I'm going to receive my new M4800 with QHD+ display.

Now the hot boiling question: is it better to install Window 8.1 Pro or Windows 7 SP1 Pro? I use engineering-simulation softwares (such as Comsol/Spice/Pro Engineer) that should be fully compatible on both systems.

Grazie

Giorgio

 

Yes. Fortunately, here in India, no retail version of m4800 is available. Only customizable order via dell sales.

Intel AC-7260(would have preferred this over DELL 1550 card) card was not yet available here. If the WiGig display back does not have the necessary antennas, it will be a problem . Also I have been reading that DELL 1550 has been facing driver issues.

Can anyone give a confirmation whether the necessary antennas are available?

Although I have been very happy with the configuration I got, A mobile Broadband option would have been great.

Does anyone know is there a slot available where in I can add a Mobile broadband card?

 

Just found the spec-sheet : http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/...Documents/Dell_Precision_M4800_Spec_Sheet.pdf

It has Mobile Broadband & GPS options listed.They are full mini card.

Since the Dell Wireless 1550 is a 2x2 half Mini-Card. The full mini card slot should be free to add a mobile broad band card?

 

How is the QHD+ display?
I am torn between this and the M6800 1920x1080.
I will not do any gaming, just work, programming, web, usual stuff, in linux.

Is the QHD+ display good for productivity?

 

I did not work on qhd. But even full hd on 15" strains my eyes after prolonged use, while my gf is fine with it. Qhd offers more screen real estate but i dont think its usable in the long run due to screen size. Then again you can use scalling but that then i dont see why you got qhd in the first place.

Sent from my HUAWEI Y300-0100 using Tapatalk

 

Yeah, to get any kind of useful configuration you have to do that in Germany as well. But even then they don't want to configure the DELL 1550 or Intel AC-7260.
Or an Mobile Broadband card.

I agree, if they are missing it is the reason not to buy the machine.
The missing Optimus support is already a low blow, missing antennas would be a direct knock out.

I wasn't aware of the driver issues, but I'll be running the machine with Linux (Debian) anyway. I might perhaps put a virtual machine with Windows on it, so Windows driver issues a not a topic for me.

That is the interesting question indeed.

Yes, there is. It is a shared with the mSATA card, so you have to decide: either mSATA SSD or MB card.
I'm personally planning to add it myself as Dell doesn't want to sell it with the machine.
If I just knew that the antennas for the Intel AC-7260/DELL 1550 are available, I'd order the machine today and just rip out the stupid 1601 and replace it with an Intel AC-7260 myself.

 

Only if you don't have a mSATA SSD configured. They share the slot.

 

That's exactly what I am thinking.
Unfortunately, 1366x768 is not yet available in my country.
Buying qHD+ and running 200% scaling does not justify the extra cost in my opinion.
Of course, the better viewing angle and color does have some value.

 

That is the whole point. No-one expects you to use a 15" >WQHD display at 100%. I have almost exclusively used the Retina Crapbooks at 100% in OS X particularly because they aren't productive at the Retina 200% scaling and the off-Retina scaling is pretty abymal - worse than the way Windows handles text in similar scaling modes. While it strains my eye less than the 'like 1920' mode it is still a strain. The Dell panel is better since it gives you a virtual 1600 x 900 display at 200%, but for me that's still borderline for productivity.

In all honesty I really don't see the concrete benefit from a productivity standpoint as I pointed out above. FHD @ 100% is a better prospect IMO. The quality's excellent (at least on a Dreamcolor display), and the pixel density's comfortable for me, as well as being a more productive resolution and there's less pixels being pushed around - some of the reasons I decided not to bother going the all-M4800 route after eval of the one machine I got, and instead decided to nix all my Dell mobile workstations and kept all my HP's as my actual work-on machines.

Now if you're in the Apple camp and you do use your flagship hardware primarily as a Pinterest machine, then the story is different - a low virtual resolution isn't a factor and you would probably appreciate the scaled graphics and sharp text more. I just don't see it being as beneficial to hardcore production machines, at least not until actual 4K screens show up to give is 1920 x 1080 @ 200%, and GPU's can handle moving this around with more headroom.

 

Thanks guys for the feedback. I will stick with the bigger M6800 1920x1080.
I have a 18" 1920x1080 HP DV8 laptop, and the text is very sharp.

If they had a QHD+ screen for 17.3" laptops, I might have chosen it though...