News on Haswell based mobile Precision M6800 ?

It's obviously not an official announcement, but tweakers did leak the M3800. It's looking like the M4800 will be my next machine, assuming that the price is right. I guess I was right about the M6800 not having the 3200x1800 display. Do you think they will keep the Premier Color on the M6800? I would be very surprised if they didn't.

 

This is an article from nearly two weeks ago. Obviously the bit about an official announcement "next week" didn't pan out.
Also a few of us are skeptical that they will really drop the IPS display (on the 17" model anyway). Maybe it will not be there initially, but turn up later in the covet model.

Don't get too excited about the picture in the article. It's the same one Dell posted in their original M4700/M6700 announcement.

No 3200x1800 display for the 17" version is disappointing but probably no one wants to build these displays because the market for 17" laptops is already pretty tiny. Lenovo and Apple completely dropped their 17" offerings due to lack of sales.

 

DELL is unbelievably unorganized right now and their medium to large business accounts unit are basically in free fall with little to no management. Trying to get any info or documentation from them is proving impossible. Don't look for any updates to their Precision Mobile Workstation line until October or November.

 

Great answers, except you addressed a statement I never made... maybe some remedial reading classes are in order?

I never said PMW's aren't good for CAD, etc, I said no one would ever use a touch screen to do CAD/large format printing/etc on a PMW...

Touch screens on laptops are stupid. Period.

 

Flynace takes the time and thoroughly explains why both him and many of his colleagues find touchscreens more useful than touchpads while working on mobile workstations and your best answer is pretend he did not address your statements.

Well, he just did. Period.

 

There is already a 10 Finger Multi-Touch option for the M6700.

 

Thanks

And so...what?

Not really

Great answer - I agree, except you are addressing a statement I never made...that seems to be important to you for some reason

First, you might want to edit your original post and remove the 'or'.
Second, you might want to explicitly state if you are referring to ONLY using a touchscreen for these types of applications or as supplemental interfaces.

If the touchscreen is your ONLY available interface, the applications you noted can be difficult to use, but not impossible.
The same can be said for a touchpad and a pointing stick being less than ideal for those types of applications, but not impossible.

The three most common scenarios we have when a mouse is not available or feasible:
1) attending a meeting without a mouse
2) economy class air travel
3) dead mouse while traveling

Further, if you are considering a supplemental interface, of the three (touchpad, pointing stick, touchscreen), which I consider the most common interfaces built into laptops today other than the keyboard, in my opinion, the touchscreen can be the more productive choice.

And for professional applications, if the touchscreen was extended to include active stylus input, pressure sensitivity, and/or tilt recognition, productivity while traveling for those who benefit from such capabilities would be increased if they currently make the choice to not travel with a digitizing tablet for whatever reason (weight, bulk, etc.).

Prove it
A touchscreen is just an interface to an OS, the same as a mouse, touchpad, pointing stick, digitizer tablet, Spaceball, MicroScribe, Xbox Kinect, keyboard, etc.
To say an interface on a platform like a laptop is 'stupid' is a meaningless statement.

I am going to guess, based on your statements, that you want Dell to offer next generation Precision M's for sale WITHOUT touchscreens.
And I agree that they should offer configurations without touchscreens...but I also want Dell to offer next generation Precision M's WITH touchscreens, at least as an option.
In reality, their launch configurations have probably already been set by now, since they need to go through their DV&T processes and certifications, but can't know for sure since the launch dates haven't been publicly confirmed that I am aware of.
Trying to convince Dell that they should NOT offer touchscreen options based on an argument that they do not offer productivity benefits is a nice try, and I am sure it is true in your reality, but it isn't true for everyone...period.

 

Funny, that reminds me, when the mouse first appeared as a user interface device, many people thought it was stupid and that no professional would ever use it. Light pens and joysticks were the preferred devices at that time.

 

Careful not to turn this into a flamewar guys. It hasn't happened yet (no one has done anything wrong yet), but I'm starting to see some potential for one, so I'm leaving a warning.

Anyways, back on topic.

I wouldn't say a touchscreen is stupid, but it is pretty much dead last in my list of priorities. I would also personally put digitizer/pen and touchscreen into two different categories. The pen requires extra hardware and behaves much more like a mouse. Now, if we could get a matte touch display, Panasonic does it, so technically, Dell could too; more people might consider it. I slapped an anti-glare screen protector on my tablet for a reason. The AG coating is a bit aggressive, but at least, I can kiss glare and fingerprints goodbye.

 

A touchscreen on a tablet/smartphone is fine but on a laptop?? Has anyone actually tried doing any prolong work on it? It's bio-mechanically inefficient. Your shoulders get tired quickly. Unless it's a hybrid machine (transformer), I don't see how a touchscreen can add any efficiency there.... What I do see is that vendors are trying to add extra selling points to their systems regardless of whether the features are gimmicks or real deal.