M4800 Owner's Thread

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I can't get anyone at Dell to tell me if there is a hard drive caddy for the m4800. Does anyone know and where would I find it online?

 

You cannot buy the original drive caddy, don't know why.. But I've heard several people who bought this one http://www.newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=543 it should have a good quality.. I'm going to buy it too!

 

I plan on buying one of those as well - the drive I plan on using is packed in a box since I am moving in a week or two, but I will probably order it early next month.

 

Awesome, thanks!

 

Which mouse do you use? My touchpad and my pointstick don't have this problem (tested both in W7 Pro and W8.1 Pro).. Have you properly installed the driver from the Dell Support site?

 

I think the issue was BiOS related. I was using A01 because my machine wouldn't wake from sleep with A03. I later realized my SSD firmware was out of date, so I tried A03 again after updating the firmware, and that took care of the mouse issue, the optical drive noise, and the wake from sleep issue.

 

Finally received my m4800! I should be getting the caddy from newmodeus soon too. I will say using the QHD+ screen @ 100% scaling setting is nearly impossible. I have good eyesight and it's a pain. Right now I'm using it @ 150% dpi. Everything looks nice. It's not too small and it's not that big, but if any program is DPI aware, it looks nice. That's the next issue.

Half of my programs are optimized for high dpi screens while the other half are not. Photoshop is an example of a non high-dpi optimized app. Everything is microscopic. I'm using the latest version too. As for gaming, I have been able to play a few not too demanding games @ 1920x1080 with 4xAA fine. It's not razer sharp at that resolution, but isn't too bad either. The quadro K2100M is better than I thought. My planetarium software runs @ 60fps constant (uses OpenGL). I never have experienced it so smoothly on a laptop before (Desktop has a GeForce Titan so runs fine).

The keyboard feels great! The numberpad is very useful for entering in numbers all day in excel. The backlight is also nice, although I haven't had the chance to use it at night yet (I will tonight).

First thing I did was install my SSD and install Windows 8 (8.1 now). It runs very fast. I installed with UEFI enabled and the sata controller set to AHCI. After I get my caddy I'll use the 750GB 7,200rpm drive as well for data storage. That brings up the disc drive issue. For some reason, my disk drive will randomly try to read (the same sound it makes when the computer initially turns on). This isn't much of an issue, but can be annoying sometimes. I noticed it happens mainly when I disconnect my USB hard drive. I'll be replacing it anyway with a caddy. My laptop already came with the A03 bios so I don't know if it is bios related or what.

I also had bought the D5000 wireless dock. I bought it "new" from ebay, although it was obviously used. I'm not complaining much since it works and I got it at 33% less than it would cost if I bought it with the laptop. Getting the initial connection was a huge pain. I spent literally 35-40 minutes trying to get it to work. I highly recommend connecting it through the software and entering the pin, instead of using the WPS method because that didn't work for me. Range sucks. I can get maybe 15 feet if I'm in direct line of sight. Otherwise if it's off-axis, I can get around 5-6 feet. That isn't too bad since it is wireless. I was able to control my camera through the dock, so it seems the dock is better than a usb hub. The camera seemed to be detected as if it was connected directly, very nice!

Speakers sound good! Compared to my Latitude E6500, these speakers are very nice! I tweaked a few settings in the Maxx software suite and it sounds nice! Nearly no distortion even at 100% volume! It can get decently loud!

The screen is amazing! Everything looks nice! It has a very nice contrast ratio! Brightness is very nice too! It can get bright enough to be used outdoors nicely, even with the sun out! The color gamut is definitely higher than the average laptop. Blues and reds are rich! Definitely not on the level of my U3011, but for a laptop display, this is probably the best or 2nd best screen in terms of color gamut (I had a Studio 17 with the RGB display before). I'm finally able to fit all four of my astronomy related programs on the screen without having to minimize/maximize them. That is extremely useful to me. Fitting two programs at once with windows snap is amazing. There's plenty of real estate.

I haven't been able to test battery life yet, although optimus is obviously not available for this display so I'm expecting 2-3 hours. As far as temperature goes. I haven't been able to test CPU load, although at idle/light usage it seems to be around 40-50C. For the GPU I gamed a bit yesterday and got around 59C max. Very nice to see temperatures like that on a laptop.

Build quality is nice! The touchpad is very nice. A huge improvement from my Latitude E6500, but not on the same level as Mac's latest touch-pads. The pointstick is well....a dell pointstick. Not the greatest, but works!

I'm probably forgetting some things, but hope this much helps! If you made it this far, thanks for reading!

 

Hmmm, weird that you are still getting the optical drive seek noises - I think everyone else complaining of that said it went away with BIOS A03. Maybe re-flash to A03 and see if that helps?

Battery-wise, I get a pretty consistent 4 hours of use with no effort, so I may be able to get closer to 5 with no wifi and some additional effort.

 

It looks like the optical drive makes the sound when I connect any hard drive, whether eSATA or USB. Connecting or disconnecting the drive will cause it.

As for the battery, I finally got to use it tonight. I got about three full hours before the battery died. That was at 50% brightness most of the time, wi-fi on, with around 45 minutes of heavy cpu/gpu usage. The rest being light usage (web browsing/music/etc).