Precision 7530 & Precision 7730 owner's thread

Please don't use Furmark if you want your laptop to live...

 

I called Support as I have the same issue. They claimed they aren't seeing this much and passed me to a support group closer to Engineering, specifically for new products. I have to wonder if the problem is only the dock, though, as I took the Thunderbolt dock from my XPS15 (TB15), and it had exactly the same issues. I think the real culprit might be the Thunderbolt controller/drivers on the 7730.

 

Been working on my new 7730 the past few days, and there is a lot to love. Screen is fantastic (4K version), power to spare and a great keyboard. Super easy to upgrade, too. Filled up all four sticks of RAM and an extra SSD, piece of cake.

Not a fan of this trackpad, though. Coming from Macs and XPS models to this is like taking a time machine to 2005 and pulling out my Thinkpad 42p. I assume there is a good reason for having six buttons, three of which are duplicates?

At least use force touch and Windows Precision drivers instead of these Alps drivers. Even Linux barely uses the middle button anymore.

 

Enable/disable graphics switching. If graphics switching is turned off, the Intel GPU will not be used.

 

The top three buttons are to be used in concert with the TrackPoint in the middle of the keyboard.

According to @Div033 in his reply here, the 7530's trackpad does use Windows Precision drivers.

 

Which apps use those? My 7730 has Alps drivers loaded for the trackpad.

Interesting. I haven't found anything significantly easier with all these buttons than with a standard XPS or Mac trackpad, even for precision work on pixel-by-pixel stuff.

I wonder why the 7530 uses a different trackpad than the 7730, it uses the same keyboard. I just checked Driver Manager, the 7730 definitely uses Alps. Driver version 10.3201.101.208, dated 3/16/2018.

 

I take it back, Windows says it is a precision trackpad, despite the drivers loaded. Apparently Alps now conforms to the spec. In any case, it is particularly hard to do some of the gestures, like four-finger swipe to a new desktop, on this trackpad. Just too small. I have to be, well, more precise. The biggest difference, though, is that pressing hard doesn't equate to a mouse hold, like on the XPS/Mac. That's a hard one to switch between. It would be nice to have an option to swap out this trackpad with something more modern.

Back to things I love: the battery life is unexpectedly good. When I am not doing serious work (during which I am always plugged in to a system with lots of monitors/accessories), I can get almost 4.5 hours on battery. I was actually doing some light coding for over 4 hours, with an IDE open, browsers, and a VM with Postgres running on it, while streaming music. Most impressive, considering the battery is no larger than an XPS 15, which has similar battery life. And never did it feel like the system was unresponsive or lagging, even with Dell's fairly extreme battery saver mode. Kudos.

 

Have you guys got any recommendations and wishlists for benchmarks?

Also, any ideas for thermal interface material? I was thinking of trying the soft PGS graphite pad stuff, or the CM Master Gel Maker Nano... Preferably the former, because it's reuseable.

 

People were testing the PGS pad a while back, it's terrible for higher wattage loads compared to a normal TIM let alone LM, so it kinda died off. The CM paste is good but LM is king .

 

4.5 hours for this powerful workstation is pretty good.