The Dell Precision M3800 Laptop

[Shachar Shemesh]

On 23/12/15 10:54, E.S. Rosenberg wrote:
> 2015-12-22 21:48 GMT+02:00 Omer Zak <w1 at zak.co.il>:
>> As I said few weeks ago, I am considering the purchase of a new laptop
>> to replace my current desktop PC and also serve me on the road.
>>
>> It was suggested to me to consider purchasing the Dell Precision M3800
>> laptop.
>>
>> Before ordering it, I'd like to know if anyone else bought it and if
>> yes, what is his/her experience. Specific questions appear below.
>>
>> From the reviews that I read, the laptop suffers from a battery life
>> deficiency (which does not bother me). Also, the 4K display option
>> causes a lot of software to display too small graphical elements.
>> (see, for example:
>> http://www.networkworld.com/article/2897199/opensource-subnet/review-dells-ubuntu-powered-m3800-mobile-workstation-is-a-desktop-destroyer.html).
> Usually the DE has somewhere where you can tell it how high the DPI is
> for your screen and it will scale elements accordingly, however this
> usually won't work across the board.
Make sure not to have different displays on the same desktop with
drastically different DPIs. I've had a laptop with a fairly high
resolution, and connected a monitor that was both bigger and had lower
resolution. The result was that the DPI of the laptop display was almost
twice that of the external monitor. Things did not look good. Things
were either too small on the built-in display or too big on the external
one.

Also, in my previous email on the subject I said that almost everything
works with Linux, but was then hard pressed to say what didn't. I have,
since, remembered. Some Dell laptops have a built in
smartcard/fingerprint reader. That one is completely and hopelessly
unsupported on Linux. That was the only hardware component I failed to
make work.

Shachar
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