News on Haswell based mobile Precision M6800 ?

I was disappointed that the m4800 didn't get more of a refresh and include a better solution for the drives. Certainly, DELL could have gone down the same path as what Apple have done with their Haswell laptops. Using PCIe SSD technology would have shown customers some commitment to their flagship line.

However, given what we have I think Krane is correct and that SATA 2 for the OS drive isn't going to hurt performance too much. I think a faster SSD is still going to perform better in this slot than a slower SSD. I doubt we are going to see saturation of the path very often, especially when the pagefile and apps can be accessed on the main SATA 3 SSD, which for me will be a 512GB 840 Pro.

The laptop will be shipping with the 750GB 7200rpm HDD and this will go into an optical bay caddy.

Still, the m4800 does seem like the last of the line and that the m3800 style will define the successor to the m4800, albeit in a bulkier chassis to handle heat.

 

I beg to differ on the style, if you look at the upcoming thin inspirons, the resemblance with the M3800 is uncanny. I would venture that both chassis are quite close to save on engineering costs on those first gen devices. I wouldn't be surprised to see a XPS sport a similar chassis as well. I'd bet on the M3900 gaining a different albeit similar chassis to the M3800 and the M4900 retaining the Precision aesthetics.

 

Tijo, my thoughts exactly and thought that I said as much in my post. Something about the next iteration of the m4800 borrowing design cues from the m3800 chassis...

I had expected the m4800 to have adopted the new chassis design this time and was honestly pretty disappointed that it did not. I like the look m3800 design a lot, including the large touchpad. If I didn't need 32GB RAM and could have waited till November I would have grabbed the m3800 for sure.

 

Well actually I'd prefer if form followed function--not the calender. At least then consumers would know they're getting something evolutionary and not the same thing in a different package.

When the change does come, I hope it will be with the technology to handle the next 5 years, and not just a cosmetic change because of a calender date. If there one thing Apple does right (at least with their computers), this is it.

My suggestion to Dell--modular design. Whatever manufacturer does this best, will be the ones that gets my business next.

 

Actually, I may have worded my post ambiguously, but my thoughts were:
M3900 will look more like a Precision, but will retain design cues from the M3800
M4900 will retain design from the M4800, what I call Precision aesthetics. I expect to see some minor changed, but not a major chassis redesign. As long as they don't pull what HP did with their worstations, the Z Book 15 and 17 are among the ugliest notebooks I have seen in a long while. The previous Elitebooks may have been bricks, but they had a classy look to them with the brushed metal, the choice of colors and the angles felt "right" in my opinion. The new ones look some big lump of plastic and metal tacked together.

 

The appearances leave something to be desired, but if the manuals are any indication, they are solid. More screws than before, and they are better-designed in some ways than the Elitebooks.

The exteriors of the lids look like they will fall apart quickly. Maybe HP should have retained one-piece aluminum lids with the soft-touch tips.

 

I have just put in an order for my M6800 last Friday, ordered over the phone as minimal customization was available online. Details of the customisation are as below.
Core i7-4800MQ
17.3" Ultrasharp FHD Multi-touch screen
16GB DDR3L
256Gb SSD Primary Drive
750Gb 7200RPM HDD Secondary Drive
Quadro K3100M Graphics Card
97w Express Charge Battery with 3yr warranty (last 2 Precisions I have had the batteries died after 18 months)
Backlit Keyboard
Win 7 Pro 64 Bit
Office 2013 Pro

Everything else is pretty much standard (I think), so looking forward t getting it. ETA is about the 16th of October.

 

My M4800 arrived yesterday. Very similar in size (despite having a 15" display vs the 17" display on my M6300 which it replaces).

Runs nice and cool. The case, keyboard and hinge are nice upgrades. The screen resolution is not supported very well on windows 7, with a number of applications now requiring fighter pilot eyesight to read the tiny fonts, despite setting the font scaling to 175% which works for most stuff.

I don't suppose windows 8 will help?

Cheers

Brian

 

I don't think win8 will help softwares that don't scale. Only thing it do better probably is scale lower resolution up.

 

Windows 8.1 might help though.