M4800 Owner's Thread

Well, that is the big concern that the down the line which could be in 6 months or a year from now the Thunderbolt controller can become standard. You risk being stuck with an expensive machine that supposed to last you a very long time in tech terms. I've been using a M6400 for over 4 years because all possible future connections where implemented. Certain connections I use now which I didn't when I bought the machine. Personally I wouldn't mind paying an extra $100 for a thunderbolt port. The fact that you can connect 4 monitors without using a docking station should be enough reason to turn a blind eye on production costs. Just saying

 

With the dock and the expresscard options, the Precision M4800 has nearly any type of port you would need to use. I don't see thunderbolt replacing usb 3.0 anytime soon, so I think the M4800 should be good to go for the future.

The display daisychain is nice. I used it on my previous macbook air with two thunderbolt displays, although both of them didn't work in windows, only mac os x. It's not the end of the world if you don't have that option though.

Do you have anything that requires thunderbolt that you would need to use with the precision? Even with thunderbolt 2 out, you can see not very many people implement it in the pc sector.

 

M4700/M4800 and M6700/M6800 already support DisplayPort daisy-chain. You just need a display that supports DisplayPort 1.2 with separate DisplayPort "out" connector for the second screen. (Not the same as Thunderbolt, I don't think Apple's displays will work with daisy-chaining without Thunderbolt.)

 

I forgot all about the displayport daisy-chain on these computers. And you're correct about apple's thunderbolt display daisy-chaining. It only works with thunderbolt ports. I tried using mini displayport on my pc, but it didn't work. At the time, there was only one motherboard that had a thunderbolt port that supported the apple thunderbolt displays.

 

Thunderbolt is toast - burnt toast at that.

 

How's the acoustics/noise on these M4800's? Notebookcheck reports up to 52dBa, which is quite loud under load! Did they fix this with newer bios revisions or would you guys say that the M4800 is still pretty obnoxious with cycles of silence and then bursts of fan speed noise?


I ordered the M4700, lol, but thought about switching it for an M4800 since it's significantly cooler than the M4700 according to tests from notebookcheck... as well as some other slight tradeoff's for a couple hundred more...whereas the M4700 is proven and slightly thinner, lighter, cheaper, etc.

 

I've seen a few claims in the thread that the m4800 comes with no installation media.

Fortunately, that was not the case for me. My m4800, which I ordered directly from Dell a month ago, came with two DVDs. One containing Windows 7 Professional and the other one with all the necessary drivers.

I have no premier Dell account or anything. I just ordered as a normal consumer through their online shop (in Europe). The order page said nothing about the DVDs though.

 

Mine came with Win 7 installed, and Win 8 on a DVD and drivers on another (in the US).


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The D5000 dock seems to work pretty well. At this point it's still very much a novelty that almost makes me giggle, and I haven't had a chance to test all the features, but I'm definitely happy with it. I can't get the audio out to work yet, but I think I will eventually use it with HDMI, so it may not matter.

Granted, I got it for very cheap so my bar is somewhat lower, but it seems to work well if you aren't expecting to constantly move your laptop around. It does seem to lose connection if something is placed on top of the machine in just the wrong place - I am assuming this is because of where the antenna is located, maybe?

I have yet to test the Ethernet (just moved, no Internet yet :'( ), or the USB ports for anything more than a wireless mouse, but let me know if you are curious about anything.


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Have Internet now, and the dock still seems to be working well (I got the audio out working too).

Just a heads up to others - it looks like a number of new drivers were released by Dell earlier this month. BIOS is also now up to A05.


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