Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Thanks for the suggestion Illustrator! I will definitely try this out once I can get a 28/24 AWG usb cable. What is your cable setup exactly? For example, are you using a USB to micro-USB cable in combination with the Apple lightning to micro-USB adapter, or are you using a USB to lightning cable that is rated at 28/24 AWG?

 

Actually, the weird thing is that my iPad connects just fine with the regular cable, it was all of my other USB devices that had issues. I am using just straight USB-to-Micro USB and USB-to-Mini USB 28/24 AWG cables for my non-Apple devices.

Here are a few Lightning-to-USB adapters that you could try. One is 28/24 AWG and one is 28/21 AWG which is even better.

THIS ONE APPEARS TO BE CHARGE ONLY WITH NO DATA CONNECTION:
http://www.amazon.com/PortaPow-Specialised-Charge-Lightning-iPhone/dp/B00NTT2COG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1424994016&sr=8-1&keywords=usb to lightning cable 28/24 AWG

http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-USBLT1MB-Apple-Lightning-iPhone/dp/B00JFQY3R6/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1424994016&sr=8-6&keywords=usb to lightning cable 28/24 AWG

 

I was most likely going to get a USB to micro-USB cable rated at 28/24 AWG, and use that with the lightning to micro-USB adapter that I already have. The regular apple cables that came with my iPhone do not reliably work for me. So I'm wondering if the apple ones are not rated high enough, and I would need to get a better USB cable. But the apple stock cables are always consistently ok for you?

 

So far, yes the regular Apples cables have worked fine for me. They do not show my iPad as being mounted in device manager, but I can sync/backup/restore from iTunes to my iPad and vice versa just fine.

You still may want to give either of our suggestions a try and see if the 28/24 AWG cables work for your iPhone as well.

 

I am deciding between purchasing either a Dell U2415 or Dell U2515H to pair with my M3800. In thinking about this I am pondering how useful would it to be to run an external monitor at the same scale factor as the M3800’s panel vs. using the Per Display Scaling function?
I don’t have the best eyesight and currently run M3800 1920x1080 panel @ 150% (effective dpi=94)

Option 1: My initial plan was to get the U2415 and run it at 100% and M3800 @ 150% using Per Display Scaling with external monitor set as Primary.
The effective dpi on the U2415 would be 94 (24.1 inch, 1920x1200)
That dpi on the U2415 would be fine, but as I understand it I would need to logout every time I connect to display to get the Per Display Scaling to work.

Option 2: Get the U2515H, and run both external display and M3800 display at 125%.
The effective dpi on the U2515H @ 125% would be 94 (25 inch, 2560x1440)
The effective dpi on the M3800 @ 125% would be smaller than I want at 113, but I guess the advantage would be using the same scaling on both displays, which if I understand it means I won’t have to logout every time I connect the external display.

Questions:
1)Have I understood the trade-offs between Per Display Scaling and using one scale factor correctly with Options 1 & 2?
2)From a dpi standpoint the U2415 at 1920x1200 @ 100% would be great, but will it make day to day work easier to get the U2515H and run both panels at 125% scaling, rather than using Per Display Scaling? I should say I expect most of the time I will be using the external panel as my main display with M3800 lid closed. It does seem a little crazy to buy a 2560x1440 monitor and run it at 125%...
3)How will the U2515H (2560x1440) look at 125%? Will the scaling mean it won’t be as sharp as the U2415 at 1920x1200 @ 100%?
4) With Per Display Scaling, if the M3800 goes to Sleep when connected to an external display, would I need to logout/logon after pressing the Power button to get the M3800 to Resume so as to get the image on the external (Primary) monitor to be correct, or is that only necessary after a Restart?

FYI, there is not a massive difference in the list price between the U2415 & U2515H (U2515H is more expensive by about $60 I think in the UK) - maybe a bigger price difference when I get an actual quote next week.

 

Well, now, that was a big mistake, of course...

 

I'd stay on Synaptics as well. I tried older Synaptics drivers, the "official" Dell Touchpad drivers, and the newer Synaptics drivers, and I am sticking with the newer Synaptics drivers. While the new Dell drivers are much improved, they just don't allow the level of customization that the generic Synaptics drivers allow. I was just having way too many frustrating moments with the Dell Touchpad drivers due to settings that I could not turn of or customize because Dell gimped the ability to edit all of those features.

If Dell ever decides to give us full Synaptics control panel options within their proprietary driver, then I'd consider switching over. It would be even better if we could access all of the backend stuff like people on Ubuntu can. I have read that Ubuntu guys have most PC touchpads operating very close to Macbook-like levels with all of the back-end customizations and tweaks they have applied.

 

OK, so mine was delayed to Wednesday but I got it then. I got an Ubuntu pre-installed version and would like to share some initial thoughts / observations.

The first I noticed is that the usb backup failed during initialization. It let me get through but once I was in, the Dell backup software failed for factory restores and system backups. I've put the error messages in a gist: https://gist.github.com/cholcomb/d795b7dffaf401716a40. To quote the author on the failing function "This function is an Ugly Hack™". BTW, the Dell tools don't use Hidpi.

I then went ahead and installed my 1TB mSata and 8gb ram without issue (I did have to play around with `rfkill` because the wireless became locked due to hardware change). I then installed Ubuntu 14.04.2 on the SSD just installed xorg-edgers PPA for the latest nvidia drivers. Thunderbolt -> HDMI works. I attempted to perform a full restore from the other hard-drive by capturing the packages installed and copying keys and sources.list.d and sources.list onto the new hard drive. One thing I noticed was the use of "deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 14.04 _Trusty_ - Build amd64 LIVE Binary 20140620-04:25]/ trusty main" in sources.list.d/dell.list and "deb http://dell.archive.canonical.com/updates/ trusty-dell public; deb-src http://dell.archive.canonical.com/updates/ trusty-dell public" in sources.list.d/trusty-dell.list, as well as some oem debs in trusty-oem.list. Unfortunately, there appears to be around 30 packages that I couldn't find through these or elsewhere. I lost the list but I may go back to this at some point. I also notice there's an "oem" user with some shared files for these packages.

Basically, Dell is tweaking the system in some minor ways that improve the touchpad, touchscreen, power savings, enable some of the "action keys", and they provide some (not working) sysadmin tools. I will try to recreate these effects with tutorials floating around but it would be easier if I could get a factory image (I made some tweaks to the original install trying to get Dell tools to work).

Beyond that the system is fast and sleek and has a great screen but has issues. It runs hot and dies fast. It seems like VLC and the default app can't handle 4k videos greater than around 15fps... The Hidpi works nicely for a single screen Firefox (Auto Hidpi isn't working but about:config's devPixelsPerPxpx and Default Full Zoom Level help). When you have multiple screens you can scale each monitor but it ends up zooming and you need to use Ctrl+- to zoom out for the 1080p screens. One odd issue is that right-clicking in Firefox on the laptop screen showed a zoomed-in menu on a separate screen, and you generally need to plug in extra screens after booting. Chrome's menu/tab text is too large for all screens when you have the laptop setup with a high resolution. One other minor issue - you can pick a 4k image for a wallpaper but will reduce the resolution. Seeing 4k pictures of nature make the screen worth it....

I've got plenty of tweaks to go, but there's an update. I know this reads as a ton of issues but it's actually a testament to the FOSS community that all the essentials work with a base OS install. Hopefully I can make sufficient tweaks for most of these issues but it would be ideal to isolate Dell's tweaks and private packages but I can't imagine trying to call Dell Support for this....

ADDED: It appears that some of the other pre-installed Linux Dell laptops have their manufacturing ISO available online but I can't find the ISO for the m3800 and the drivers page dosen't have Ubuntu drivers. Does anyone know where to get these?

 

I wouldn't get a U2515H just to run a consistent scale factor, particularly if that would cause you to run your built-in panel with less scaling than you really want. I'm actually surprised that a 25" 1440p panel was even created, since that doesn't make sense to me. At least in the case of a 24" 4K panel it can make sense for people whose jobs benefit from having specifically 4K resolution (video editing and such) or photographers using them as reference panels where more pixels are always better and the UI/scaling concerns may not exist.

Anyway, the current per-display scaling implementation isn't an ideal solution, but it's the best that Windows or Mac OS have at the moment, for reasons I explained in an article I wrote on this subject on the XPS 15 Wiki. However, using per-display scaling to bridge between a display at 100% and a display at 150% is very different from the QHD+ built-in panel scenario of bridging between a display at 100% and another at 200%. And to be honest, if your eyesight already has you running a 15" 1080p panel at 150% scaling, you may not even notice the bluriness induced by per-display scaling on the display you designate as secondary compared to how it would look if the OS was truly optimizing for that display's scale factor. I just bought a U2415 for my wife and it's very nice.

However, as you correctly noted, if you want to use the external display as primary, then you'd have to log out every time you connected or disconnected it, since Windows would want to re-optimize its "true" DPI for the new primary display, which would be driven at a different scale factor. Until you do that, every time you connect or disconnect an external display that is treated as primary, Windows will use GPU scaling to sort of emulate the proper size that external display, which of course won't look as good. But personally I'd rather deal with the logout/login inconvenience than permanently run some non-100% scaling all the time (which can create issues even outside of multi-display scenarios) AND drive the built-in panel at a scale factor I don't really want just to harmonize with an external display. The former is some aggravation upfront before getting to work in your new environment, whereas the latter is a persistent detraction of your experience. Still, the value calculation here might shift depending on how many times you'll be connecting and disconnecting an external display each day and how easy it is for you to close out of all of your applications to logoff.

There's also an Option #3: Buy two U2415s and then don't use the built-in panel at all when you've got them attached. You'll still need to do the logoff/logon dance, but that way you're never dealing with two different scale factors at one time, so the UI is always completely optimized for the panel(s) you're using. And in the case of the U2415s in particular, since they support DP 1.2, you can enable that mode in their OSDs (not on by default) and then daisy-chain them together so that you still only have to connect one DisplayPort cable to your system rather than using both DP and HDMI.

 

Many thanks – that makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately in my current space I do not have room for two U2145s.

I understand the need to logout/login the first time I connect up the external monitor each morning to get the Per Display Scaling to work properly.

During the day, if my M3800 goes to Sleep when connected to an external display would I need to logout/logon each time I get it to Resume (by pressing the Power Button on the M3800) to get the image on the external (Primary) monitor to be correct, or is the logout/login procedure only required after a Restart?

I am assuming (and hoping) the answer is the logout/login procedure is only required after a Restart.