M4800 Owner's Thread

1. Optimus works as well as it does on other laptops. It's a bit kludgy, but it works. As noted by others, QHD means no Optimus, just straight NV. You can disable Optimus for a quicker and easier setup and better performance, at the cost of greatly reduced battery life.

2. The Dell-branded stuff is mostly Broadcom, works pretty well. Intel stuff is an option. I switched out my 7260AC for a trusty 6300 for a while, Dell doesn't do whitelists, so any WLAN card should work. This is one of the main things that keeps me with Dell. HP, Lenovo, etc, all whitelist just a few WLAN cards, makes Linux life more complicated than it needs to be.

 

I just wanted to give an update to my problem in case someone else has the same...

I discovered that the Bluetooth light was on just before I got a blue screen, so I disabled it in device manager. Since then (a few weeks ago) I have not had any blue screens or system interupts. I should probably update the Bluetooth driver, but since I'm not using it anyway I have not bothered.

 

How can we know which manufacture whitelist wlan card?

 

Only lenovo do that now afaik, haven't heard /read update that they stop whitelisting cards.

 

I'm having an issue with our 3-week-old M4800 in that the touchpad--although disabled in software (we use the pointing stick exclusively)--will turn itself back on. I assume it somehow gets turned back on by the pressure of palms resting on the touchpad or maybe too many accidental swipes on the touchpad while typing. It's an annoyance. Is this something that could be permanently disabled in bios--without affecting the functionality of the pointing stick? Appreciate any guidance before I start messing around in the bios.

 

Maybe see if you can disable it in the device manager?


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I had looked at device manager, and as I only saw one item under there (Alps touchpad), I just assumed the point stick and its buttons were integrated with that. I may try disabling it just to see what happens.

 

Did you install the correct Dell touchpad driver?

 

Can the 1366x768 display be swapped out without issue for a 1920x1080 display? I bought an Outlet m4800 and I thought I had gotten the FHD screen, but when it showed up it was only the WXGA screen.

It seems straightforward enough to change the screen, but when I looked here Screen for Dell PRECISION M4800. Replacement Laptop LCD Screens the site made a big deal about ensuring the same resolution on both screens. My assumption is that this is a standard disclaimer to avoid getting the wrong screen for an underpowered laptop, but the i7 integrated graphics alone should be able to drive a 1920x1080 no problem, to say nothing of the discrete card.

For that matter, can you swap in the QHD screen if you wanted to?

Also, this is the first notebook I have worked with that was so easy to swap out a graphics card on; are there consumer cards available that are optimized for DirectX if I were so inclined?

 

The QHD screen uses a different motherboard (display signals bypass the integrated GPU), so I am pretty sure it's not possible.

I think upgrading to the 1080p screen should be doable, but you may need a new/different display cable - I am not really sure.