Precision 7530 & Precision 7730 owner's thread

What is your configuration?

 

Um that's how MacBook Pros used to work. Go over to 'macrumors' forum to see how they work now: an engineering / design train wreck. The keyboard will die, it's just a matter of when. The display will become defective because of the flex cable design. Then there are the units with T2 chip lock-up and crackling speakers. As all of these problems require replacement of almost the entire computer, so hope that they occur during the warranty period. I might add that no MacBook Pro undergoes Mil Spec testing and none have keyboard spill resistance.

Lenovo P series Thinkpads have had a lot of problems. I had to eventually get a refund for my P51 which, in addition to its BSOD issues, had the worst screen ever to grace a laptop.

In the end I went for the HP ZBook 17 G5 which still has no complaints on the HP forum except for things like the USB ports only along the left side, and that it is really, really big.

Congrats on your purchase, though. I had only good experiences with Dell's Precision M6600 and M6800.

 

E-2186M / 64GB ECC / P4200 / 4K IGZO/ 512GB class 40. I have a 2TB Samsung 960 gumstick, and I'm weighing what to do with the other NVME slots. If I ditch the 512GB SSD and boot off the 960, I could add 3 2TB TLCs, attach them to a FreeNAS VM, RAIDZ them and create eight 500GB iSCSI targets that could host VMs and still afford one drive failure.

 

The last MacBook Pro I owned, I actually spilled Chicken Noodle soup into the keyboard, so I can personally confirm your note about keyboard spill resistance (basically, instant doorstop). It's too bad the quality slacked off, since with 6-cores and 32GB RAM it might be possible to do real work on them, now. I do see my HP EliteBook having many years of life in it. When I get the 7730 though, I'll write more about it.

 

I beg to differ here; MacBooks are the definition of form above function. As another user has put succinctly, Apple's quality control for their Macs has noticeably worsened over the past half-decade or so. The 'butterfly' keyboard is highly prone to failure, so much so that Apple had to add a membrane to (only partially) fix it; the MacBooks have such poor thermals that performance is often 25-30% behind the competition, at ridiculously high temperatures, to boot... And most here would claim that your second sentence is a severe problem for repairability, and in no way a pro. For instance:

You couldn't do that ^ with the MacBook Pros.

MacBooks have two good things going for them: their displays, and their trackpads.

 

Here's the thing. I've owned at least 4-5 Apple notebooks over the years, and actually I haven't had a single problem with them aside from the time I spilled soup on one. The 2015 MacBook is still something I use daily, and the keyboard still works flawlessly. Now, how many people have purchased one of the latest Precision laptops and had to immediately call ProSupport to fix something? I can relate to the posts in this forum because it matches a lot of my own experience that it seems that the highest end workstation configurations are released with significant problems that prevent them from being used as workstations. Figuring this stuff out has a real cost in money and time, whereas I've found that the Apples I've used never needed that effort - not a single one of my Apple laptops ever had light bleed or dead pixels. That same inflexibility is also their strength: by having tight control over all the variables, they can make a single product that ships in a fully working condition, the first time.

 

Fair enough. Then again, it all depends on perspective; there are plenty of people with problematic Macs. At the same time, there are people here with perfect, problem-less Precisions.

Your MacBooks haven't had light bleed because the displays have—for a while now—been tucked in behind a flat glass panel, whereas the Precisions' displays are exposed (while simultaneously making them trivially easy to replace or upgrade). However, it does not need to be a tradeoff, and locked-down components can be problematic in other ways—if, say, you had to repair them if you unintentionally damage them.

 

Does anyone here have a Precision 7730 with a P3200? Could you use nvflash to extract your VBIOS? I'm going to try and flash it on my 7530's P3200...

 

"Glossy" displays are a strict no-go for me and that rules out a MacBook by itself. I had a glossy display in a prior system and I quickly got tired of having to adjust the angle or my seating position in order to avoid glare from overhead lights, windows, etc.

(Nevermind the fact that they've all but done away with modular/removable components in these systems, making them impossible to upgrade and difficult to repair; MacBooks weren't like this a decade ago.)

Remember that people who receive bad systems are much more likely to come online and post about it than people who receive good systems; as such, what you read in threads like this would be disproportionately weighted. I believe that most of these systems are shipping without major problems and we just don't hear from many of those people. Anyway, reading through the thread is a good way to find out what sorts of things you should be on the lookout for.

I'll throw out there that my personal Precision M6700 is still going strong at nearly seven years old and I'm thinking that I'll be able to run it for another two or three years yet; no major issues (except a few self-inflicted) in all this time. I did have the screen replaced immediately after I received it, there was some dust or some defect underneath the outer layer. Dell didn't give me any grief about this.

 

The worst part, IMO, is current MacBook Pro displays are probably the least reflective of any glossy display. They had a few issues early on with their glossy anti glare coating, but they seem to have ironed them out since then. It's still glossy, though.

On the far side of the spectrum is Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon glossy. At max brightness, indoors, I can still see my face (and some details) in the display. At min brightness, indoors, I can use it as a decent mirror. Sure, the medium level of brightness (500nits) helps outdoors, but there is no replacement for anti-glare.