XPS 15 (Haswell) Owner's Lounge

Re: does it support dual-band? Yes it does. It supports both 2.4ghz and 5ghz Wireless N. It also supports upto the 600mb/s variable of Wireless N.

As far as battery life, I have the middle tier of the computer (without the bigger battery and SSD) and I've been getting about 3 hours. However, if you read my conversations about battery life here (I think they were at around page 193 onward), someone else mentioned that when they use BatteryBar to measure power consumption, they see around 8-12mW/h, but my computer has been consuming around 20mW/h which is very high.
The other poster said he's getting 7-8 hours out of his.

 

I have removed intel rapid start, disabled it in BIOS, and the system still won't sleep.

Is it possible that the timer is not starting?

note: powercfg -energy and powercfg -requests show up nothing.
I believe it has never slept properly since I had it but it's hard to confirm as I didn't formally test sleep at the start

 

It's a false positive. Nothing to worry about.

 

same problem here, hope that someone can help.

 

I don't remember there being a BIOS option for this and I don't have time to check now, but if disable it in the app and remove the Rapid Start partition, that should remove it completely. According to Intel's documentation, the Rapid Start "device" won't expose itself to the OS until certain requirements have been met, one of which is the presence of a properly configured hibernation partition.

This has already been answered three times in the last page or two after you asked it twice. Yes it does. You could also have found that out by looking at the specs for the card on Intel's website. AC devices are REQUIRED to support 5 GHz, and nobody would ship a device these days that didn't have backward compatibility with 2.5 GHz, so therefore any AC device is going to be dual band.

Keyboard reaches that point fairly quickly; I'm not really sure what you're hoping for in terms of a description here. I find the keyboard good to type on. Yes the BIOS can use mSATA as a boot drive as long as you configure the SATA mode as AHCI rather than Smart Response. Otherwise it wouldn't be possible to have configurations that only have mSATA drives, which is how the top spec is.

Battery life is ok for some, disappointing for others, and discussed at length in this thread. I understand it's a long thread, but if you google "XPS 15 Haswell Battery Life", you should be taken to various pages in this thread that discuss it. You didn't think we got to 201 pages without any discussion of battery life, did you?

 

IMO, it isn't as good as it could be. I like the old-style clunky keyboard - and although I realise they can't offer such a thing on a laptop, this is about as far from that as you can get. I'm sure, given time, I'll be able to get used to it - but I'd rather than I didn't have to 'get used to it'.

One thing that will take a LONG time for me to get used to is the fact that home, end, page up and page down are function keys under the direction arrow keys - this is very annoying, especially considering they've got lots of realestate to put these in as seperate keys, but they didn't.

Although, at the end of the day, I'm happy with my purchase, and knew about these keyboard issues before I got the machine - so don't let these small issues put you off an otherwise wonderful machine.

 

I got my top tier XPS yesterday, ordered from costco. Immediately I noticed the cpu whine . It does not happen all the time, usually when the cpu/gpu have some load. But it is continuous when I am in the BIOS.

Did anyone tried the "battery charging configuration", since the whine is only there when the battery is 100% charged, I tried to set the battery charge configuration to "Custom" and have it stop charging at 80%. But it seems this setting is ignored. The battery is always charged to 100%, I also tried other options like "Adaptive" or "Mainly A/C", did not make any difference. Is this a known issue or I just got a faulty one?

 

in person, the Inspiron is a LOT heavier, very noticeable

 

I've messed with disabling things and it seems that disabling devices in Device Manager causes the laptop to draw more power as noticed visually using BatteryBar.

My battery life went from 7-8:30hrs to about 4-5hours after I disabled Bluetooth, NFC and Nvidia devices. My batterylife stayed this way until I reenabled everything that came stock and now my battery life is back to what I expect and I am not using about 10-17W/hr, usually toward the lower end when just surfing.

 

my PC sleeps and wakes fine, Is there any benefit to removing/disabling Rapid Start?

 

I must be missing something, because nomatter what I've tried, I'm unable to get the machine to boot off the USB drive I just created (to do a fresh install of 8.1). I followed these instructions to create the USB, and near as I can tell, it should be working fine, but no matter what I do to try and boot from the drive (pressing f12 during start up and choosing both options, going into pc settings and choosing to boot from drive in there, etc..), I always end up back in my regular copy of Windows.

What am I doing wrong?

UPDATE: Nevermind - I found the settings to boot using legacy mode with safe boot disabled, and the USB booted instantly

 

Did you try disabling the radios the proper way, i.e. in the Airplane Mode section of the Metro Settings app? Why does everyone insist on using Device Manager when there's a GUI method that's intended to be used purely to turn off the radio without making Windows ignore the device entirely, which may or may not actually turn off the radio?

Benefits of removing it would be regaining some extra storage due to not needing the hibernation partition and a security benefit if you're using encryption (the data written to the hibernation partition is stored unencrypted unless you're using a self-encrypting drive). Otherwise it works. I use Rapid Start even though I've got BitLocker since I don't see myself putting it to sleep with sensitive information still in memory.

 

That tool might not create a UEFI-bootable version of the flash drive (though that would be weird). Try this: How To Make UEFI Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 8 | Next of Windows

 

Don't use legacy mode!!! UEFI allows faster booting and some other benefits. Get your flash drive to boot while you're in UEFI with Secure Boot enabled. You can't switch between legacy and UEFI after installing Windows without having to wipe and reinstall.

 

Judging from the number of people complaining about it, I'd say it's a known issue. I had exactly the same experience: bought it from Costco and noticed right away the motherboard whine under load. Mine also had a pretty bad pressure point on the lower right end of the screen, very noticeable on a light background when moving the lid up and down.

I ended up returning it. But I really like the machine so I might try again in a couple months when hopefully Dell have fixed these issues.

 

Ah, thank you - although I managed to make this work myself (via the use of legacy boot), I think I prefer the idea of using the UEFI boot method, if that is the done thing these days

While I'm here, before I pass beyond the point of no return, can I ask, which (if any) of the partitions should I keep and/or delete? This is obviously kind of a big deal, because once this happens, I'll be able to reset to factory settings (which, of course, is the point - I just wanna get it right first time).

I'm tempted to clear them all, then let windows deal with that side of things itself, but I'm not sure if I need to create a partition for things like rapid start, etc..

Thank you.

 

my laptop came with 1TB 5400 rpm SATA Hard Drive + 32GB mSATA Solid State Drive, are you too?

 

Don't worry, you've caught me in time, and I've switched it back to UEFI.

 

If you don't care about keeping Dell's factory image restore partition or the diagnostics partition, delete everything so the whole disk is unallocated space. Windows will recreate what it needs. Then if you want Rapid Start, shrink your OS partition after it installs. It's better for the hibernation partition to be after the OS partition on the disk than before for flexibility reasons.

Just remember when you create the Rapid Start partition, 1GB = 1024MB, not 1000.

 

That is really odd. I'm sorry I don't have a better suggestion for you. I will check my system for this when it arrives. I feel like there should be something else, but nothing comes to mind. If it were my system, I'd probably nuke the OS and start fresh, but maybe someone has some insight on this.

 

I have a question about this.
If you prevent the touchscreen from going to sleep:
- does that mean the screen won't turn off when in sleep mode ?
- does the screen draw excess power when in sleep mode ?

 

I wouldn't have thought about the BIOS either, but the Intel documentation refers to enabling it in the BIOS and my current laptop (Clevo) and my previous XPS 14 both had that option in the BIOS.

I know - it shouldn't have happened that way, but it did. I had the timer set to an hour before I uninstalled it and I noticed that it hibernated after an hour (after uninstalling) and bypassed BitLocker (mine asks for a password, so it's hard to miss) when I resumed. Really wierd. It didn't happen anymore once I disabled it in the BIOS, which is why I thought I would mention it.

 

HHmm... OK, so I followed the instructions on the page using Rufus to create the USB - and it doesn't work - I'm back to the USB being ignored and booting into windows as normal. Any ideas? Is there a setting in the BIOS that I'm missing?

 

I am pretty sure the coil whine is known. I am wondering about the "Battery Charging Configuration" in BIOS been ignored (or I do not know how to set it correctly). If this is just my machine, it is potentially a more serious issue than the whine. I probably will contact dell next week to figure it out. Talked to Costco yesterday but the lady on the phone apparrently know little about this model, told me to remove the battery first

 

The touchscreen surface and the display are handled as two separate devices, so preventing one from going to sleep won't keep the other awake. You can actually choose not to output a display signal to the built-in panel and the touchscreen will still keep working. And that setting won't change anything when the entire system is in sleep mode, at which point everything else will be in sleep mode. That setting only controls whether that individual device can be put to sleep when the rest of the machine is awake but that device just isn't being used.

But try it without making changes first; I haven't changed that setting yet and I haven't yet had my touchscreen go unresponsive.

I can think of two options. First, make sure that the Win 8.1 ISO you downloaded actually has the EFI folder in its root. If it doesn't, that ISO can't be used to boot a UEFI machine, though it's a tiny folder that I can email you if you want. If it does, try the manual creation process using Diskpart and copying the files over. If that still fails, maybe try a different USB flash drive? I've seen some devices that just won't boot and I have no idea why, although I admit it's odd that it's bootable when your machine is in legacy mode and not in UEFI mode. I actually have a manually prepared flash drive that has Win8.1, Win7, and the rescue tools for each all bootable on both UEFI and legacy systems.

And incidentally, when you press F12 to show boot options with your Rufus-prepared flash drive, does the USB drive show up as a boot option and then you get a black screen if you select it (or an error message?), or does the flash drive not even appear as a boot device?

 

tricky76, I doubt your XPS 15's hardware is preventing it from recognizing your Galaxy S4. As I recall, you've had it fail to recognize it properly over NFC and USB, correct? What are the odds that both of those systems have failed in your computer? Additionally, you can quickly plug in a different USB device to check that the ports work. If they do, that suggests the hardware is fine and we're really looking at a software or configuration issue. Much harder to diagnose, but swapping out your computer is unlikely to solve it and you could end up getting a machine that has some of the other QC issues that have been documented here (like contaminants under the Gorilla Glass, motherboards with unusually pronounced coil whine, uneven battery endurance, etc.). If you are otherwise okay with your machine, hold on to it and keep trying to find configuration or software solutions.

I have a G4 and I have ordered an XPS 15. I will attempt to synch the two upon receiving the laptop and will report back regarding the experience.

 

Hey guys!
I'm surprised about some benchmark of cnet review of the dell xps 15.
They illustrated that dell xps 15 with gt750 is more capable than razer blame with gtx 765m in Full hd res???? Is it true?
Can we play easily with dell xps 15 in full hd without lots of blur??

I'm focus on gigabyte P35K but if dell is capable too with better workmanship...

BioShock Infinite (1,920x1,080, in fps)
Dell XPS 15- 28.64 fps
Razer Blade 14- 27.31 fps
Acer Aspire V7- 23.23 fps

Dell XPS 15 Review - Watch CNET's Video & Read Our Review - page 2

 

It's plausible. Most GPUs come with DDR3, but the XPS uses GDDR5, which is why the GT750 is keeping up with the GT760 and apparently even the GT765. I don't know the details of the Razer's spec and I have no interest in looking them up, but if it only uses DDR3, that plus potential CPU differences could easily explain it.

 

Razor blade 14 comes with GT765m and 2GB GDDR5, also it has the same cpu of XPS 15, moreover it has a power supply of 150W.

Maybe that review has wrong data or razor blade 14 has throttling heavier than XPS 15 (but reading review of notebookcheck about Razor Blade 14 there is no throttling on it, while XPS has it).
On paper there is no way that XPS 15 outperforms blade 14.

The review of Razor Blade 14 says that on 3Dmark 11 it hits 3900 points vs 3000 of XPS 15:

http://www.notebookcheck.com/Test-Razer-Blade-14-Zoll-Notebook.104206.0.html

http://www.notebookcheck.com/Test-Dell-XPS-15-9530-Late-2013-Notebook.105963.0.html

 

I've used the metro app to disable Bluetooth and NFC, and made sure to enable everything in Device manager. In both the power saver and my own power profile (with everything turned down), I hover around 17-21mW/h, closer to the high end.

Do you have any other ideas?

I'm returning this one in favor of the bigger battery anyway, but it'd be nice to figure out where the issue is.

 

You're incorrect. You probably think this because the Windows utility that comes installed on the laptop to control Rapid Start doesn't show times greater than two hours unless you change a registry setting. But Rapid Start works just fine with longer times. Just because you don't know how to do it doesn't mean that it can't be done! And remember, not all of us are limited by what you can do in Windows.

You can set it for whatever time you like. If you set it to save to disk immediately you get all of the negatives from hybrid sleep that I pointed out previously. I personally think it makes more sense to set the timer to a longer time (for example 12 hours) so that you can avoid writing to disk overnight. But everyone's tastes are different!

Yes. I could have said that more clearly in my post.

Absolutely true! I guess that's why they call it "Rapid Start."

I'm not so sure about this. 16GB of RAM is a lot, and writing 16GB to an SSD is a lot. If you are someone who likes to keep their computer turned off and therefore suspend and resume several times throughout the day, and you have Rapid Start configured to save immediately every time you suspend (or you use hybrid sleep or regular hibernate) then you are writing a whole heck of a lot to your SSD. I'd guess that for for most users having Rapid Start set to write to disk immediately would increase their disk wear by 20X to 50X versus just using regular sleep.

Most SSDs (including the Samsung in my XPS 15) don't have write lifetimes published in their specs but according to this article at Tech Report manufacturers estimates for SSD lifetimes "usually range from 20-40GB per day for the length of the three- or five-year warranty." If you set Rapid Start to save to disk immediately, you're going to be over that rate with just two or three suspends per day and that's not counting your actual use when you're using your computer! So to me, it doesn't make sense to configure Rapid Start to save to disk quickly / frequently. It's possible that most modern SSDs will last considerably longer than they're warranted but why take the chance with your data (and your money) if you don't have to?

 

I'm well aware that registry settings can be used to manage options that aren't exposed in GUIs, but that's not exactly something that will be apparent to the average user or necessarily within their comfort range. I was simply pointing out that if you're going to use an example, you should use one that will be relevant to the majority of users, which in most cases will be the default settings. No need to get snarky with the "Just because you don't know something" and "Not all of us are limited" attitude. Having worked in various IT capacities for the last 10 years (currently a Systems Engineer), I would hardly call myself one of the "limited" users, but experience has also shown that when discussing topics broadly in front of a larger audience such as this, it's worth keeping average "limitations" in mind, or at the very least mentioning that your example isn't something that would be generally used.

As for SSD wear rate, your example assumes that all 16GB of RAM will be filled every time you hibernate, which I don't think is realistic at all. But you're right, there's a penalty for using this feature. Then again, regular hibernation carries the exact same penalty, so unless you only ever want to sleep or shut down, you're going to pay the price for the convenience. You just have to decide whether you want longer battery life or longer storage lifespan.

On the other hand, that report you linked has some updates at the end that the drives are still running after 300 TB, which at 40GB per day is 20 years, a whole lot longer than the 3-5 year warranty period line you picked from the first page of the article. Given those ACTUAL numbers as opposed to manufacturer estimates and the fact that I've never kept an internal hard drive longer than 4 years anyway, I'd be inclined not to worry about wear due to Rapid Start.

 

I've had the laptop for roughly a month today and I want to say some things.

This is the nicest laptop I've ever seen or used. Every time I pick it up there is a little burst of dopamine just by marvelling at the design. The keyboard and trackpad beg me to use them, they are so enjoyable to use.

There are some preferences that will make your experience better: I changed my scaling to 166% instead of 200%, which would be 1920x1080 instead of 1600x900. I use an app called Dexpot to have a second desktop that actually has the resolution set to 1920x1080 instead of just scaled. This is where I use things like Remote Desktop, Photoshop etc. with "disable high-dpi settings".
Chrome's hidden high-dpi setting works great, though some menus do indeed show up out of place, its not the least bit uncomfortable.

Battery life... of course, about half of what was advertised, not as great as expected, but still absolutely superb. I generally use it on-and-off for about 4 hours of the day and only have to charge it once. I think my battery life would be closer to 5 or 6 hours if I watched no video at all, and less than two hours if I was gaming.


For the down side... I am likely to have my laptop repaired soon... I have had a blue-screen on it almost every single day... often several times a day. Every time I open the lid from sleep or hibernate... theres about a 20% chance it will just work fine, but most of the time, my trackpad and touchscreen click will not work. I will fiddle around trying to fix it and it will bluescreen. Otherwise, it will lock up at the login screen, and then bluescreen shortly after (a multitude of different errors). I am also aware of a slight "whine" coming from the top left of the notebook.

If this thing didn't restart in like 15 seconds, this would be absolutely horrific for a laptop... but I'm just so damn happy with it, that I can even live with it when it crashes on almost every single resume..

 

I'm sorry to say that didn't fix my wake to black screen problem.

 

When I removed intel rapid start the power profiles were all reset. is that normal?

Also there is no option in the shutdown menu to hibernate - is that normal?

Should I put back intel rapid start so at least I can save power on manual sleep?

 

How easy would it be for me to nuke the system and reinstall - would you just shink the partition and reinstall in a new partition? Will I need any CD Keys to install or will it just go? I am keen to try ... but without nuking it ... let's say Alcatraz-ing it

[I am competent in understanding XP Vista 7 bootloaders - I've clean installed these things 100s of times but the last time I did it was 3 years ago and got 3 amazingly stable 7 OSes]

if I wiped the Dell OS partition will the recovery still work? I'd like to keep the recovery partition

 

Sorry. When you wrote "the MAXIMUM time you can set for Rapid Start's wait time is 2 hours, not 12" I thought you meant "the MAXIMUM time you can set for Rapid Start's wait time is 2 hours, not 12." I must have somehow missed your unwritten subtext about what would be apparent to the average user. ;-)

I haven't looked at the specifics of Intel's rapid start implementation, but I suspect that it does indeed need to save all 16GB to disk every time. Remember that Rapid Start is implemented in the firmware and not by the OS. Also remember that modem OSs (including Windows) grab all memory and try very hard to keep 100% of it in use at all times (because to do otherwise would be inefficient). Because the firmware doesn't have any insight into how the OS allocated and is using the memory it can't decide what it needs to save and what it doesn't. So I think it's likely it needs to simply save all of memory. I could certainly envision schemes where the OS communicates information to the firmware about which memory needs to be saved or schemes where the firmware uses compression but I don't think that's the case here. If, however, you can find Intel technical documentation suggesting otherwise then of course I'd defer to that.

No. Because regular hibernation is done by the OS and not by the firmware like Rapid Start, the OS can use its knowledge of what's where in memory to do all sorts of optimizations to minimize the amount of memory it needs to save to disk. For example, the OS can decide whether it wants to save memory that's only being used as in memory disk cache or not save it and invalidate the cache. The OS can decide whether it wants to save memory pages to disk that are already in persistent swap. Etc. Because of all of this the SSD wear penalty for using OS hibernation should be much less than that of Rapid Start. But for multiple reasons we haven't discussed Rapid Start should be faster and more reliable.

That's why I wrote " It's possible that most modern SSDs will last considerably longer than they're warranted but why take the chance with your data (and your money) if you don't have to?"

 

Not sure about the first. Mine were unaffected when I uninstalled.

The second question: I think that is the default. You can add hibernation to the CTRL-ALT-DEL screen in the power options. I remember having to turn this on. It's close to the same place where you can disable/enable fast boot (not Rapid Start).

I personally don't think Rapid Start is worth the lost storage space. Just my opinion though.

For reinstalling, if you can wait, you can ask dell to send you media:

https://www.dell.com/support/diagno...id=4803075&DoNotRedirect=y&redirect=1

If not, I think there is a utility in windows to make recovery disks that you could use to make reinstall discs. In the past, this has wanted to use multiple disks, when the OS should fit on one disk just fine (it did the last time they shipped me recovery media).

There might be a place online where you could find a windows 8 ISO and then you could later upgrade to 8.1, but I'm not sure. It would be nice if what Dell provides is 8.1 and not 8.0. I really don't know though.

I hope this helps somewhat. You are more patient with it than I would be I think.

 

Didn't know that Dexpot could have alternate resolutions on other desktops, I'll be reinstalling that app immediately to cure my RDP woes. Thanks!

As for the blue screens, try wiping and reinstalling Windows if you're comfortable with it. BSoDs are more commonly software-caused than hardware, and it might save you the service appointment and all the risk that seems to entail these days with incompetent techs. In the middle of a pretty nasty experience with that on another laptop right now....

There's a powercfg command to re-enable hibernate. Can't remember it but a quick Google search should turn it up. Wouldn't have guessed that uninstalling would have changed ALL of your power settings, but that's not terribly surprising.

Reinstalling is easy. If you want to keep the recovery partition, just format the OS partition in the installer and leave everything else. No CD key required since it's in the BIOS, but there are utilities that will show your current key if you want to back it up, which is always a good idea.

Again with the unnecessary snark....

Rapid Start has a driver component, so it's not outside the realm of possibility that at the very least empty pages won't get copied to the SSD. It's an easy test though. Try sleeping when nothing is running and time the hibernate phase, then try again when you've got a few VMs or whatever running and eating most of your available RAM, then test again. But when my system is just running with no foreground apps open I'm seeing about 2GB in use, so Windows doesn't try to eat 100% of your RAM all the time.

As for the SSD life, it's not "risking" your data. It's accepting a reduction in storage longevity for a battery life benefit, like overclocking can add performance but with a possible longevity penalty. It just depends on your priorities, but with that test showing that SSDs are going strong after 300 TB, I think the benefits outweigh the costs/risks here.

 

Cool Dexpot sounds very promising--I'm expecting my top tier unit shortly and I use RDP a lot as well--it would be nice to set a Dextop desktop to 1920x1080 for RDP and another desktop to full resolution 3200x1800 for my regular use. Let me know how this software works for you jphughan.

N123

 

Yes, you are correct about this aspect of Rapid Start. I found this page on Intel's site which confirms that Rapid Start does indeed work with the OS to reduce the amount that needs to be written to disk:

During the transition to the Sleep state, the software service flushes the standby and modified memory pages to reduce the amount of memory reported as “in-use.” This can considerably reduce the amount of data that needs to be transferred to the SSD, resulting in improved resume time.

Another function provided by the service is optimizing the amount of active pages that need to be written to the SSD. The service will flush the non-critical active pages during the Sleep transition. Again, this improves resume performance but also reduces the required SSD partition size.​

 

I've used it in the past and loved it. It's basically a Windows version of Mac's Expose and Spaces with some extra power features. I may not be using the QHD+ panel for a while so I won't know about that specific aspect of it, but I highly recommend the app for any power user who's chronically low on display real estate.

 

I half expected a problem when I ordered. I am good at attracting issues. Used to be that I broke things like performing a service pack update and flipping the screen and forgetting that it sleeps the system and had to do full reinstall at 10 past midnight

but I didn't expect this ...

my plan of attack -

partition the ssd and clean install on the new partition. when I'm happy i'll use something like acronis or easeus and delete the other partitions and fill up the ssd

 

Is the 1080p version of the machine an IPS panel or IGZO like the QHD models?

 

I don't think it's either one. If it were IPS, I think Dell would mention that because it's a selling point, and I've never seen IGZO used for a display that wasn't HiDPI, probably because HiDPI is the main benefit that IGZO provides, and it might be too expensive to use it in an implementation that doesn't take advantage of that capability.

 

Most likely it's the same panel of previous XPS 15 L521x so it's a TN with wide angles view.

 

Hi everyone,

I'm just about to pull the trigger and buy the highest spec xps 15. There are stilll a couple of things that I would like to know before purchasing it. I've looked through this thread, but at 200+ pages I've probably missed something so my apologies if this was already answered. So here goes!

- Is the IGZO screen an IPS screen? I would like my new laptop to not suffer from the same viewing angle problems that my current laptop has (TN panel). In other words, do the colors change when you look at it off-center? How about the brightness of the screen?

- How bad are the reflections on the screen? I've never had a reflective display (all my LCDs are matt), and am worried that the reflections will be very annoying, especially in bright light.

- Anyone running linux on this thing? Has the experience been good?

Last but not least: I would like to order from costco since the price is $200 cheaper (I'm in Canada). On the costco.ca site, it says that the wait is something like 3 weeks to process the order. Is this accurate? I would like to receive the laptop before the holiday break. Thanks!

 

The reflections are mildly annoying, but not a showstopper, I'd say.

As far as Costco, I'm in the same boat as you (ordered top spec yesterday), but I noticed somewhere in one of these threads, someone mentioned that they got theirs in like 3 days after it shipped, so it might just be possible to get it before the holidays. But personally, I'm on counting on it (I'm expecting to get it somewhere around new years, probably right after).
Did you get charged tax on your Costco order? Mine had no taxes charged onto it which I found weird.

 

There is a thread of configuring Linux on the m3800, which is almost the same machine:

Ubuntu on the Precision M3800 - Dell TechCenter - TechCenter - Dell Community

Follow-up: Ubuntu on the Precision M3800 - Dell TechCenter - TechCenter - Dell Community

Apparently it should run pretty well, with a couple of minor issues. I'll get to try it in a couple of weeks...

 

All we know is that it's an IGZO panel, which only describes the transistor technology, not the display technology. But I would say this panel has the color accuracy of a (very high-end) IPS panel. The viewing angles are good -- not as good as IPS but drastically better than TN. There is some color shift above around maybe 70 degrees off-axis in either direction horizontally (so ~140-degree "true" viewing angle overall). But even when you see color shift it's not nearly as horrible as some crappy TN panels where the colors go completely inverted or tie-dye. Brightness seems consistent within the same range and then drops slightly beyond that angle, but not nearly enough to make the panel unviewable.

The reflections aren't bad. I mentioned this twice in the last few pages I believe, but the only time reflections became an issue was when I was at the airport on a sunny day and I had my back to the enormous bay windows looking out to the runways -- and even then it was more of an irritation than a showstopper. In general use you'll see reflections if you force yourself to see them, but they're in a different focal plane than the actual display content, so when you're focusing on content your brain will naturally tune out the reflections.

My laptop was in production for a week and a half, but people who ordered the M3800 recently are now seeing delays of a month or more. I think it's a combination of Black Friday sales and the expected Christmas rush, so I would by no means consider it certain that you'd get it before the holidays. You might, but don't count on it. Sorry!