News on Haswell based mobile Precision M6800 ?

I agreed 200% until...

If you set up Win8 to act like Win7 then you might find some of the improvements beneficial.
Did the following to an M4700 without using 3rd party apps:

You can make Metro essentially go away by disabling all live tile updating, making desktop IE the only option, turn off app switching in the desktop, etc. and removing everything from the start screen except Desktop - it is admittedly annoying to have to hit the enter key or click the Desktop tile at startup, but direct boot to the desktop is 'fixed' in 8.1.

If shutting down is an issue for you then in the desktop create a custom toolbar menu all the way on the right of the taskbar next to the tray to launch the shutdown command.
You can add restart and other commands and also set up the system to power down by pressing the power button.
I am not sure if 8.1 has done anything to address shutdown complaints - haven't tried it yet.

Finally I replaced the lost 'Start Menu' with a combination of apps pinned to the taskbar, desktop shortcuts and a custom cascading toolbar menu on the left of the taskbar.

So the only daily user experience differences then from Win8 to Win7 are:
- hit enter at startup to go to the desktop (should be fixed in 8.1)
- no blue start button orb to launch a start meny on the left (3rd party apps available if needed - NOT fixed in 8.1)
- custom toolbar menu on the left for some less used apps (should be fixed in 8.1 with a custom start screen)
- showdown button direct access on the right of the taskbar
- if your mouse gets close to the corners the stupid charm menus appear (should be fixed in 8.1)

On my M4700 with a Samsung 840 Pro SSD Win8 still boots faster & resumes faster than Win7, and feels more responsive than ever before.
I wouldn't have tried Win8 except for the initial cheap offer MS had at launch, but after suppressing Metro and configuring it to work like Win7 as much as possible, it's pretty nice.
8.1 should make it even more 'Win7-ish' capable.
And 8.1 should have some nice new features like DPI scaling across multiple monitors.

So I wouldn't recommend paying for a Win8 upgrade, but if it came with a new laptop purchase, you might consider trying it.

 

Gold! I agree 200%. Laptop touchscreen is a very bad joke, it's bio-mechanically and software-wise inefficient. It's a huge marketing gimmick. Will people buy it? Sure! People buy garbage all the time. Cuz we are too dumb to tell right from wrong and bite anything that is half-decently advertised.

Professionals (and not only) who value their time shouldn't be looking the m3800 way IMHO. The only reason I'd buy a slim looking laptop is if it had no compromise on components, performance, upgradeability, cooling, etc (all those things that made Precisions highly desirable tools for engineers and graphics designers in the past).

IMHO, the killer machine would be a 13" IPS RGB LED Matte 1800p beast with a quad core + iris pro 5200 + 32GB ram + 4 pcie ssds. Whoever get there first, gets my money.

If looking at a 15"+ there's no point making it slim, just get all the features, and we will buy!

 

unfortunately no. that announcement in their speed of light page disappeared by that very time.

 

Why time?
Professionals who spend a large % of their time on long-haul travel will likely value light weight and should consider the M3800 if it meets their performance requirements IMHO
If you need more than what the M3800 offers wait for the M4800 or M6800...

Take the 15.6" 3200x1800 screen and turn it into a 14.4" 2880x1800 (16:10) laptop 1.3+ inches narrower with a good keyboard and take my money...

 

Gorilla Glass touchscreen = pointless gimmick. There is nothing professional about a touchscreen on a laptop.

 

What if the laptop touchscreen has good active stylus input?
A stylus is one more thing to carry while traveling and potentially lose, but I wouldn't mind the option.
Will be curious if the M3800 has this.

I am personally very mouse-centric and dislike touchpads and TrackPoint style sticks as I find them both bio-mechanically inefficient compared to a mouse.
But when a mouse dies while traveling or I happen to not have one in a meeting, I find the touchscreen can be easier to use for some activities even on a laptop for professional use.

So there is nothing unprofessional about a touchscreen option on a laptop either.
But nobody should be forced to accept the touchscreen option if they don't want one.
Unfortunately economics may dictate otherwise on low volume 'professional' laptops.

 

As far as I can tell no has released or is planning to release a laptop with a screen resolution even close to 1800p that's matte. Glossiness is the only real disadvantage of touch screens. If you don't like the form of input then there is no reason to use it, even if it's there. The biggest advantage to touch that I can think of is that you can deactivate input methods in or around the keyboard so that you don't accidentally activate them while still having quick access to mouse input. Admittedly that's a very limited use. I think that the reason why glossy displays have been universal in these high resolution displays is that manufacturers have not been able to come up with a matte coating that doesn't completely negate the point of producing a monitor this sharp to begin with. The graininess from coating has ruined monitors with far lower pixel densities. I suspected this back when Apple failed to include a matte option for the rMBP. Everything I've seen since seems to be in agreement on this speculation. There was no real reason to make the m3800 a touch screen if they had access to matte screens, but if glossy screens are the only ones that are viable at this resolution at the moment, then why not?

You can follow this reasoning to argue that no one should buy the m4700, since it has functional compromises compared to the m6700. The m6700 compromises on performance in favour of mobility compared to this laptop: Review Clevo P570WM Barebones Notebook - NotebookCheck.net Reviews

 

Can you really imagine someone lugging around a 17" Precision Mobile Workstation and using their touchscreen to edit video, do super large CAD projects or large format printing projects in Illustrator? Touchscreens have zero value add to productivity. If DELL adds touchscreens to the Workstation laptops I'll be going with an Elitebook.

 

I have multiple designers and engineers in my group who lug M6700's between the US, EMEA & APAC who work on super large CAD projects, surface modeling, animations (mostly in KeyShot) which are edited for presentations, touch up renderings in Photoshop, edit and analyze video data from testing and do FEA and moldflow simulations which are also incorporated into presentations.
The only reason for the M6700 over the M4700 is the GPU.
By 'super large CAD' I am referring to large assemblies which no longer can be opened on a 16GB machine, but this is also partially to blame on the newer versions of the CAD software we use which have bloated over the last few years. Older versions handled large assemblies better in the 'pre-direct-modeling' days.
In the office they use tablets - some Intuos and some Cintiq on a near daily basis but do not travel with them.

Except for a couple of ID guys, mouse is our primary interface.
Wacom style tablets serve their purpose, but Dell is mandated by our IT so no, I have never tried the Lenovo W ThinkPad with a built in Wacom tablet or seen one in person actually.
But an active stylus capable touchscreen would be a great productivity boost especially when working in Economy Class (we have a good travel incentive policy) where mice aren't feasible.
As a secondary / backup input interface I, and others around me in the same line of product development work, rank a touchscreen (even without active stylus input) well above the trackpad or pointing stick.
I personally disable the pointing stick and trackpad since they are of no use to me, but I would leave a touch screen enabled unless it significantly drained the battery or caused other issues.

Touchscreens should be an OPTION on Workstation laptops.
If Dell offers only touchscreens, especially if they don't have anti-reflective coatings, that would suck, and I understand the distaste for paying for something you feel you don't need.
But there are a lot of things on the Precision M's that not everyone needs and Dell has to balance economies of scale.

Maybe in your line of work, but not true for ALL professionals.

Dell has already announced that they will...M3800
It will be in the Precision line and ISV certified with the hardware validated to Dell's workstation spec's.

 

https://tweakers.net/nieuws/90344/dell-brengt-in-september-precision-m4800-en-m6800-laptops-uit.html

Official announcement?

It has the same look and feel, thank the Lord!!

PremierColor is gone though. It does seem like these screens were riddled with problems.