The Dell Precision M3800 Laptop

[Omer Zak]

Thanks for the feedback and advice, Shachar.

When I'll have 4K displays, I'll worry about the resolution differences.
At present, I don't care about smartcard/fingerprint readers.

One of the problems, which I worry about, is that Ely Levy was very
unhappy with the M3800 that he got. If no one else was as unhappy with
it, Ely may have gotten a lemon.

Another problem is that according to what I found while googling it, the
docking station mentioned with the laptop (Dell Docking Station USB 3.0
- D3100) is not supported by Linux (or maybe supported using proprietary
drivers limited to some Linux distributions).

I need something to connect 2-3 additional displays to the laptop (3
displays if the laptop's own display is disabled).

--- Omer


On Wed, 2015-12-23 at 19:54 +0200, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
> 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.

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