Precision M3800 OR XPS 15

Simple: One of the little secrets of the industry is that you can buy the exact same parts at different levels of quality (and different price, of course). The marginal stuff goes into consumer laptops, and the right-on-spec-or-better stuff goes into the professional machines. End result: Those business machines will take a lot more beating, and still last a lot longer than the consumer-grade stuff. On average, mind you.

 

I just wonder is 32GB mSATA the same in physical size as 256GN mSATA?

 

I don't know if they are the same size, but either one will fit in the same mSATA slot.

 

They're the same size physically.

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I came across a customer review on Dell website. The customer pointed out that 32GB mSATA does not bring the expected performance improvement when working with 16GB memory. The required SSD size to perform quick start stuff is the size of memory plus another 22GB. If that is true, I would seriously reconsider buying the XPS 15 mid model.

 

That's going to be an issue with Intel Rapid Start on any 16gb machine. I've never seen a lot of value to it; I usually keep machines slept.

 

Reviving an old thread here... 9 months on, can anyone vouch for the earlier advice given in this thread having experienced either the XPS15 or the M3800. Anyone regret their earlier decision?

 

I now own 3 XPS 15 units, all the top tier SSD-only: 2 Win8.1 (one is for my son) and a new one I just got to put Fedora on. The first 2 have been great: no coil whine or other problems except I had Dell out to repaste the GPU on one of them that was throttling badly (much better now). The new one (i7-4712HQ) is even nicer aesthetically, with a glassier touchpad and the slightly textured silione surface (I put ArmorAll on them to prevent the discoloration and dirt attraction) but it does have coil whine so I'm going to see if Dell will agree to replace the M/B -- I hate to return it because I got it for $1660 on Amazon (the price for them has been yoyo-ing recently) but I don't think I can live with the noise.

While I might benefit from the M3800 for some OpenGL based applications I use and develop I don't think it would be a big difference. The XPS were cheaper and let me play some games with my son better than the M3800 would. (Since we built a high end SLI workstation/gaming rig this summer playing on the laptop is not as important now.)

No regrets on the XPS 15 -- not a perfect system (hate the lack of Home and End keys!) but very nice on the whole. Maybe waiting a month or so to make sure the new (whine-free) motherboards are available would make sense at this point. A refresh with a Maxwell GPU would be nice but since that doesn't seem to be happening you could also look at the ASUS NX500 or GX500 that should be rolling out soonish if GPU power and gaming matter to you.

 

Awesome insight EP - thanks v much for your views. Might consider the XPS 15. I was won over by the m3800 add they supposedly use higher quality components.. Not sure how true it is these days. Being the owner of a studio 1558 which occasionally blue screens for no reason apart from what looks to be the GPU.. Better components are something I value right now

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Glad to help. As to the quality, other than Dell marketing types, I think most of us have concluded that they are identical components (other than the different graphics cards) and quality. Perhaps there is some extra QC process on the Precisions but I doubt it. As an owner of many Precisions and Latitudes I can tell you that the XPS is a quality build and mine are holding up well so far.