M4800 Owner's Thread

Yes it is, I am hoping it is just a rare occurrence or can be fixed by an BIOS update. I haven't been this eager for a BIOS update since the original i7 920 came out with all the RAM and SATA bugs on early motherboards...

 

I bet I was not the only one that googled that battery!

Completely off topic, though I am enjoying reading this thread.

As for the weight of the M4800, It is not such a big deal. My M6600 gets moved around in a roller bag most of the time, but it is also acceptable in a backpack or regular laptop bag. Small sacrifice for build quality and performance.

 

The weight isn't bad. I used to carry an Alienware M18xR2 (12lbs?) in my shoulder bag back and forth every-time I went to work. Also had to deal with the 330w ac adapter so I think the M4800 will be perfect for me.

@changt34x Have you tried to see if there are updated drivers for the wi-fi card? My laptop will have the same card, but I'm going to run Windows 8.1.

 

Weight will end up no problem for me, I just believe it could have been a *bit* lighter.

I've checked, the newest drivers are from back in September, so that's a no go. IIRC on the lenovo it was not a wifi card issue but a pci bus issue as the entire bus disappeared. I hope that is not the case as it will be much harder to fix.

Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

 

What you could do is go to device manager, go to network adapters, right-click on the wireless card and click uninstall. Then you can scan for hardware changes and install the driver again.

 

Thanks, but I have tried that already already with no avail. It also won't show in device manager after returning from sleep.

After giving it more thought, I think I just have a defective wifi card. Since the symptoms were so much like the T430 I assumed it was the PCI bus, but now I just realized the wifi and bluetooth card are on the same chip (unlike the T430 which had wifi and bluetooth on separate adapters). Bluetooth still appears as an available network connection even after the wifi disappears, so hopefully it is not the main computer itself. I will try to get Dell to ship me another wifi card and see what happens.

 

I actually had something similar happen to me: the wifi card failed after installing windows 8. Going back to windows 7 did not bring wifi back on and had to get a replacement wifi card from dell. If the wifi card is functional then drivers from dell website would work.

 

Which wifi card did you have? I am actually able to get the wifi part of the wifi card back by shutting down and then turning back on (hibernate also works, but the restart function does not). I hope just a new wifi card fixes this issue.

 

Dell/Atheros 1601. Seems my case may not be isolated. Interesting

 

Dell/Atheros 1601. Seems my case may not be isolated. Interesting