M4800 Owner's Thread

Regard to lights, not sure how it is made on on 4800, but I used electrical tape after disassemble them and work fine for a few place.

ie. the dock big arrow

 

Hi everyone,

This is my first post. I just got my M4800 today with QHD+ display, Intel Core i7 4900MQ, Nvidia Quadro 2100,16 gigs of ram and a 256 GB SSD. Everything is working fine so far and I'm loving it. It came pre-configured with Windows 7 Pro and included a Windows 8 Pro license. I was wondering if anyone here has upgraded to windows 8 though. Are there any drawbacks to upgrading? And is everything compatible? I'm mainly concerned that pre-configurations will be lost (like the power setting profiles which I'm fond of).

In the meantime, I'll keep you posted if I encounter any problems.

 

I haven't had any application compatibility issues. Most compatibility problems involve lower-level software (antivirus, disk utilities, virtual machine solutions, etc.) --- if you use anything like that you will want to check online to see if Windows 8[.1] is supported with the version that you are using.

You can upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8 and keep your existing apps. However, if you want to go directly to Windows 8.1 you'll have to do a clean install which will mean reinstalling all of your apps and drivers. If Dell provided you with a Windows 8.1 license and media, that's the situation you'll be in.

As for other drawbacks from upgrading, the main thing is just the way they've done the new start screen and metro stuff. If you haven't used it before, you might want to check it out first. I find that I have no problems with it after getting used to it, however, Microsoft could have done a much better job in making it easier to learn. Windows 8.1 does include some tutorials that weren't present in the original release.

You can get drivers from support.dell.com. The power manager should include the power profiles you're asking about.
Driver Details | Dell US

 

It actually came with a Windows 8 installation disk (labeled windows 8 recovery disk. I'm guessing if I upgrade I'll be losing my windows 7 license?). I'm thinking to just upgrade to windows 8 (keeping my apps) then update to 8.1. I can get with the metro screen, but I've also heard that I can disable it (seriously considering). I only use mainstream software and pretty much all of them are supported by Windows 8 so that's not really an issue. Anyhow thanks for you help. I'll keep you posted with the results

 

I ordered mine with the HDD and swapped for an SSD so I installed win 8.1 to give it a try. I find it's fine on 8.1 (my disc installed 8 so I had to upgrade it), but imaged the win 7 install just in case.

You should be able to reinstall 7 later and use the license code under the battery (just download a rom from somewhere).


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Windows 8.1 has the option to boot directly to the desktop rather than showing the start screen first. You will need a start menu replacement to completely avoid the start screen though. I looked at Start8 and it worked just fine, however, I'm now used to the start screen (and a couple of metro apps have snuck into my daily workflow) so I just go with that now.

 

How did you image your copy of windows? I'd like to try that as well just in case.

I just looked up start8, it seem very handy. I've used object desktop before and I like their products so I'll probably get it even if I end up keeping the metro start screen.

 

Since it was a WD drive, I downloaded the free WD version of Acronis True Image, and it worked like a charm - I imaged it over eSATA to an external drive.

8.1 lets you set it to boot directly to the desktop, which is all I really need, so I haven't tried any of the utilities that add any of that sort of functionality.

 

Here's a link to the Acronis download: WD Support

 

It turns out I already have it though since I own a couple of WD drives (came with the drives). Thanks anyway! I'll make sure to save a drive image before I upgrade.