Dell 0g558n Battery
2015年3月19日 日常The M3800 ships with Ubuntu, which it works great with. But, as a Linux nerd, I needed to know how well this piece of hardware ran with the other Linux distros I’m likely to use. So I installed openSUSE. And elementary. And Fedora. Every single system ran great with absolutely zero issues. Not once did I need to go hunting on a forum for details on how to get my Wi-Fi (etc.) working. Out of the box this laptop supports Linux, in general, incredibly well.
Which makes me happy.
One (slightly weird) quirk worth mentioning: This unit has no built-in Ethernet port. It ships with a USB-to-Ethernet dongle that worked well when I tested it (admittedly, that test was simply to see if it worked before reverting back to Wi-Fi… which is what I usually use anyway). I’m not sure if I think this is a problem or a great feature. I don’t usually plug into an Ethernet network very often… so I suppose… it’s a good thing?
The Display
Let’s talk a bit more about this display, because it’s fairly ridiculous. In a good way.
It turns out having a full "4K" screen packed into only 15.6 inches makes for some serious pixel density. Which is amazing for all the same reasons that having an Ultra-HD/4K TV is amazing. You can play four 1080p videos, simultaneously, tiled in a grid. How crazy is that?
RESOURCES
WHITE PAPER
Big Data and Analytics: Effective Tools to Enhance Security
VIDEO/WEBCAST
Sponsored
Level the Playing Field: Cloud Productivity for SMBs with Microsoft Azure and Dell
SEE ALL Go
But this resolution, in this size of a screen, also has a major downside: Some stuff just gets too damned small.
I installed a number of different desktop environments in my trials with the M3800 and found that some of them were almost completely unusable due to how astoundingly small the user interface elements were rendered.
MATE (the fork of GNOME 2), for example, was pretty brutal to use. Simply clicking on the items in the status bar was a non-trivial challenge – even the text on the buttons were difficult to read. If I put my face right up against the screen I could see how clear and crisp these elements were displayed, but with your face at a reasonable distance from the screen, the user interface items were downright miniscule.
And don’t even ask me about how maddening it can be to resize a window on an older desktop environment like MATE on this screen. Trying to get your mouse cursor positioned right on the window border is enough to drive a man to the brink of insanity.
That said, I don’t think I’d consider this a failing of the M3800’s screen. More simply, it’s just the fact that many pieces of software (and desktop environments) don’t handle resolution independence as effectively as they could.
Some noteworthy exceptions: Ubuntu’s Unity environment and GNOME Shell. Both handled this ultra-high resolution exceptionally well and provided a great example of how beautiful the rendering can be on both. KDE as well, after a little bit of tweaking, scaled very nicely to this resolution. As did Enlightenment (E19). All four of those environments proved to be great options for a screen like this. MATE, Xfce and LXDE – which are all a bit more "old school" – weren’t really usable at all.
Again, while I don’t consider this a downfall of the M3800 (quite the opposite), it is certainly something to bear in mind if you are considering picking one up. If you’re not happy unless you’re running the Xfce desktop environment... then you need a different laptop.
TOP NEWS
Uber sued for false advertising by California taxi companies
Yahoo exits China, closing R&D center
Mandrill warns attack may have exposed some data about email
The Form Factor
The M3800 is made up of a combination of aluminum and carbon fiber – it’s sturdy, and even the plastic parts have a good feel to them. It’s a bit big and heavy (a hair over 4 lbs) to carry around with you, but not so much so that it feels clunky or cumbersome.
Its lines are sleek and it’s a bit thinner than you’d expect considering the specs. When you pick it up by the sides it doesn’t bend or creak in the slightest. It feels… well made.
But there is a problem.
The trackpad. I don’t love it. It’s big and high-quality feeling… which is good. But it’s not my favorite trackpad ever. Button clicks just didn’t register with a reassuring "click" like I typically like. Luckily, this laptop also has a touchscreen, which helped a little by providing an extra means of clicking. But I didn’t feel that either input method provided me with the accuracy I often needed. Which means I ended up plugging in a USB mouse a lot of the time. Not the end of the world – and certainly not the first laptop to have this issue – but worth noting. The trackpad is good enough for usage here and there, but not for long stretches of precision mouse manipulation. What can I say? I’m picky about my trackpads.
Now, on to something good. The keyboard.
It is fantastic. The key spacing, the feel of the keys themselves, the shape of the keys (they have subtle curves in the tops)… it’s all excellent. I wouldn’t call this the best keyboard I’ve ever used on any computer, but it might be in the running for the best keyboard on a laptop. And that’s saying something (I’m even pickier about my keyboards than I am about my trackpads). In fact, I’d say the high quality of the keyboard more than makes up for the shortcomings of the trackpad.
And there’s one touch on the keyboard that I found to be absolutely awesome.
The font. I don’t normally think much about the font used on keyboards, but this one really jumped out at me. It’s this Sci-Fi-looking, almost pseudo-Star Trek inspired font that makes the system look like it’s from the 23rd century. Opening the lid to reveal this slightly space age-looking keyboard (with nice back lighting) makes for a great first impression. It’s a little touch, but I love it.
The Verdict
This is not a Chromebook. This is, in fact, the polar opposite of a Chromebook.
It is (comparatively) expensive. It’s big. It’s not feather-light (about 4 lbs), though quite a bit lighter than you expect it to be considering the size. It’s powerful as hell. The battery life isn’t anything to write home about (about 4 hours of really intensive use, including gaming) which means you won’t want to be far away from a power outlet.
And… I really dig it. I don’t believe I’ve ever been as impressed with the visual quality of Linux (as a desktop operating system) as I was when I ran GNOME Shell on the M3800. This, right here, is a "show off" machine. If I were to bring this to a Linux conference and set it up on a table… it would draw attention.
Almost two years ago, we closed out our review of Dell’s first Linux-powered Developer Edition laptop with some words of wisdom from my former uber-sysadmin mentor, a fellow named Rick, with whom I worked at Boeing for many, many years. Rick is now retired and living the life of an itinerant world-traveling SCUBA master, but he’s been hacking on Linux since around the time Linus first dropped the kernel on comp.os.minix. I lamented to Rick that I was having a hard time coming up with an angle or hook for the XPS 13 Developer Edition, because it all just worked—Dell got it right, and it was a great piece of kit. It was maybe even a bit boring.
FURTHER READING
IT JUST WORKS: DELL XPS 13 DEVELOPER EDITION LINUX ULTRABOOK REVIEW
Dell’s substantial investment in making a functional Linux Ultrabook pays off.
"Isn’t that what you’re looking for in a mainstream product?" Rick told me over e-mail. "In 1996 it was: ’Wow look at this, I got Linux running on xxxxxxxx.’ Even in 2006 that was at times an accomplishment... When was the last time you turned on an Apple or Windows machine and marveled that it ’just worked?’ It should be boring."
Rick was right—he usually is right, which is why he made such an awesome mentor. His words echoed in my head all over again when I recently lifted up the big M3800’s lid. Dell has expanded its Developer Edition offerings, taking what started out as an internal unofficial side-project of sticking Ubuntu onto the new M3800 workstation laptop and making an actual, official supported configuration that you can purchase. Like the XPS 13 Developer Edition before it, the M3800 Developer Edition comes straight from the factory with an Ubuntu LTS desktop release—14.04 this time around, rather than the previous XPS 13’s 12.04 LTS. Everything "just works."
Well, mostly everything. Unlike the XPS 13, the M3800 has one big optional feature with a bunch of unanswered questions around it: a 15.6" UHD-resolution 4K display. By default, the M3800 ships with a pedestrian 1920x1080 multitouch screen, but for the no-brainer price of $70 you can replace that with a 3840x2160 IGZO2 display that also offers multitouch. This 4K option makes for a great high-DPI display, and while Windows and OS X are coming to terms with scaling and resolution independence, Linux in its various rainbow of distros and display managers and graphical shells represents a whole continuum of variation when it comes to high-DPI scaling.
We expected that the laptop would work great out of the box. Dell delivered last time, even wrangling flawless functionality out of oft-misbehaving peripherals like the trackpad and Wi-Fi. So we weren’t sure what tricks Dell would and wouldn’t be able to make this new dog do.
The basics
SPECS AT A GLANCE: DELL M3800 DEVELOPER EDITION
ENTRY LEVELTOP SPECAS REVIEWED
SCREEN1920×1080 15.6" UltraSharp FHD Touch (141 ppi), multitouch3840×2160 15.6" Ultrasharp IGZO UHD Touch (282 ppi), multitouch3840×2160 15.6" Ultrasharp IGZO2 UHD Touch (282 ppi), multitouch
OSUbuntu 14.04 LTS
CPU2.3GHz Intel Core i7-4712HQ
RAM8GB 1600MHz DDR316GB 1600MHz DDR316GB 1600MHz DDR3
GPUNvidia Quadro K1100M, 2GB GDDR5
HDD500GB 2.5" SATA HDD1TB mSATA SSD256GB mSATA SSD
NETWORKINGIntel AC 7260 dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n/ac 2x2, Bluetooth 4.0, gigabit Ethernet (requires USB 3.0-to-Ethernet dongle, included)
PORTSHDMI, Thunderbolt 2.0/mini DisplayPort, 2x USB 3.0 (with PowerShare), 1x USB 2.0 (with PowerShare), 3-in-1 card reader, headphone/microphone dual jack
DIMENSIONS (H×W×D)0.31"-0.71"" (front to back) × 14.65"" × 10.00" / 8mm-18mm (front to back) × 372mm × 254mm
WEIGHT4.15lb / 1.88kg
BATTERY6-cell 61WHr Li-polymer6-cell 91WHr Li-polymer6-cell 91WHr Li-polymer
WARRANTY1 year onsite5 year onsite1 year onsite
PRICE$1,533.50$2,807.50$2,072.50
OTHER PERKS720p webcam
Dell hasn’t done any customization to the "Developer Edition" laptop on the hardware side. This is a standard M3800, same as you could order with Windows on it. The specs are identical. To actually order one, you visit Dell’s store page for the M3800 and tick the "Ubuntu Linux 14.04 SP1" option in the operating system box (an option which actually subtracts $101.50 from the laptop’s price, thanks to not needing to pay for a Windows license). You can do (almost) any of the same customizations to the Developer Edition as you can to the vanilla Windows model, with the one major exception being that the Web store interface won’t let you add a second storage device.
Which brings me to the graphics card. The 2GB Nvidia Quadro. Two gigs of RAM. That’s as much RAM as this, very nice, Nexus 9 Android tablet sitting next to me has… in total.
One of the greatest tests of any video card – in my humble opinion – is to throw a few video games at it. So I loaded up Steam and installed a few games that I had a high level of familiarity with, and I was consistently blown away.
Example: I installed Civilization V (the Linux version, naturally). This is a strategy game, but it’s a very 3D one (and can be rather taxing on a system). I set the resolution to the full "4K" resolution (which I was surprised so many games supported) and set every single graphics setting to the highest level. And it ran… oddly well. I experience the occasional stutter – and a tiny bit of lag – but overall it was damned impressive. Dialing back either a handful of the graphical options or lowering the resolution to something more reasonable (such as a full 1080p) got rid of those stutters entirely.
Now, here’s why that is so great: This testing was done entirely using the, Open Source, Nouveau driver. There are also proprietary Nvidia drivers that the M3800 ships with (or can be obtained from nvidia.com). And you know what? The closed source Nvidia driver definitely provided a noticeable performance improvement – but the performance with the Open Source driver was, already, absolutely fantastic.
See also: Ultimate guide to Linux desktop environments
The Nvidia card isn’t the only part of this system that worked well with Open Source drivers – everything else did as well. Everything. It all worked great, right out of the box, with every Linux distribution I tried.
If you’re a casual user who needs to do some web browsing and word processing, you do not need this machine. You could probably get a machine for 1/5th of the price that will do what you need quite well.
But if you’re doing graphic design or video editing, this laptop is absolutely stellar. Same goes if you are a software developer – the screen is easy on the eyes, the keyboard is great to type on for extended periods of time, and the speed of this rig… holy cow. It’s a great choice for developers.
Or for gaming. If I were to show up at a LAN party, put down this beast of a laptop, and booted up Linux to play, say, DOTA 2 or Team Fortress 2… it would turn heads.
To sum all of that up: This is a "no compromise" complete mobile workstation with fantastic Linux support. It’s not cheap, but if this is the type of system you need – and I know many of you do – the price is worth it.
Also the screen is bonkers
Whether you get the Developer Edition or not, the M3800 is the same large but stylish portable. Upon producing it in public, I had a friend comment that it looked "as big as an aircraft carrier," which is an interesting meta-comment on the heavily Ultrabook- and tablet-influenced popular image of portable computing. Things have changed quite a bit from a few years ago, when 15- to 17-inch laptops were more common. This laptop is a bit more than four pounds (1.88kg) of rounded aluminum and soft rubbery silicone, with a glass-fronted 10-point touchscreen and a genuine carbon fiber bottom shell.
It feels solid, which is exactly what you’d expect from a device of this size, and there’s plenty of room in the large body to add stiffness. The display stays exactly where you put it without any wobble, and the soft rubbery palm rest—gloriously free of crapware stickers except for a single Intel Core i7 logo—doesn’t creak even a teeny bit when you put weight on it. Typing on the backlit island-style keys is as pleasant an experience as typing on any island-style keys can be; the keys are well-attached and wiggle-free, and the backlight leaks only minimally around their edges.
If I have one complaint about the M3800’s construction, it’s that the hinge is too stiff to support easy one-handed opening. If you set the thing on a desk and lift on the lid with one finger, the entire laptop lifts; it requires some complex finger-jiggle-gymnastics (or a second hand for the less-stubborn or less-silly) to get the lid to separate from the laptop’s bottom half.
Dell 0g558n Battery
Dell 0h416n Battery
Dell 0j399n Battery
Dell 0j410n Battery
Dell 0k450n Battery
Dell 0k456n Battery
Dell 312-0940 Battery
Dell 312-0941 Battery
Dell f972n Battery
Dell g555n Battery
Dell g558n Battery
Dell h416n Battery
Dell inspiron 1440 Battery
Dell inspiron 1750 Battery
Dell j399n Battery
Dell j414n Battery
That bottom half itself is worth mentioning. The very bottom is encased in a shell of carbon fiber, with a small hinged metal flap in its center, similar to the XPS 13. The flap is engraved with the laptop’s model and incongruously sports a Windows 8 sticker; beneath the flap are all the laptop’s various certification badges, serial numbers, and service tags.
Lee Hutchinson
The M3800, standing by for input.
Which makes me happy.
One (slightly weird) quirk worth mentioning: This unit has no built-in Ethernet port. It ships with a USB-to-Ethernet dongle that worked well when I tested it (admittedly, that test was simply to see if it worked before reverting back to Wi-Fi… which is what I usually use anyway). I’m not sure if I think this is a problem or a great feature. I don’t usually plug into an Ethernet network very often… so I suppose… it’s a good thing?
The Display
Let’s talk a bit more about this display, because it’s fairly ridiculous. In a good way.
It turns out having a full "4K" screen packed into only 15.6 inches makes for some serious pixel density. Which is amazing for all the same reasons that having an Ultra-HD/4K TV is amazing. You can play four 1080p videos, simultaneously, tiled in a grid. How crazy is that?
RESOURCES
WHITE PAPER
Big Data and Analytics: Effective Tools to Enhance Security
VIDEO/WEBCAST
Sponsored
Level the Playing Field: Cloud Productivity for SMBs with Microsoft Azure and Dell
SEE ALL Go
But this resolution, in this size of a screen, also has a major downside: Some stuff just gets too damned small.
I installed a number of different desktop environments in my trials with the M3800 and found that some of them were almost completely unusable due to how astoundingly small the user interface elements were rendered.
MATE (the fork of GNOME 2), for example, was pretty brutal to use. Simply clicking on the items in the status bar was a non-trivial challenge – even the text on the buttons were difficult to read. If I put my face right up against the screen I could see how clear and crisp these elements were displayed, but with your face at a reasonable distance from the screen, the user interface items were downright miniscule.
And don’t even ask me about how maddening it can be to resize a window on an older desktop environment like MATE on this screen. Trying to get your mouse cursor positioned right on the window border is enough to drive a man to the brink of insanity.
That said, I don’t think I’d consider this a failing of the M3800’s screen. More simply, it’s just the fact that many pieces of software (and desktop environments) don’t handle resolution independence as effectively as they could.
Some noteworthy exceptions: Ubuntu’s Unity environment and GNOME Shell. Both handled this ultra-high resolution exceptionally well and provided a great example of how beautiful the rendering can be on both. KDE as well, after a little bit of tweaking, scaled very nicely to this resolution. As did Enlightenment (E19). All four of those environments proved to be great options for a screen like this. MATE, Xfce and LXDE – which are all a bit more "old school" – weren’t really usable at all.
Again, while I don’t consider this a downfall of the M3800 (quite the opposite), it is certainly something to bear in mind if you are considering picking one up. If you’re not happy unless you’re running the Xfce desktop environment... then you need a different laptop.
TOP NEWS
Uber sued for false advertising by California taxi companies
Yahoo exits China, closing R&D center
Mandrill warns attack may have exposed some data about email
The Form Factor
The M3800 is made up of a combination of aluminum and carbon fiber – it’s sturdy, and even the plastic parts have a good feel to them. It’s a bit big and heavy (a hair over 4 lbs) to carry around with you, but not so much so that it feels clunky or cumbersome.
Its lines are sleek and it’s a bit thinner than you’d expect considering the specs. When you pick it up by the sides it doesn’t bend or creak in the slightest. It feels… well made.
But there is a problem.
The trackpad. I don’t love it. It’s big and high-quality feeling… which is good. But it’s not my favorite trackpad ever. Button clicks just didn’t register with a reassuring "click" like I typically like. Luckily, this laptop also has a touchscreen, which helped a little by providing an extra means of clicking. But I didn’t feel that either input method provided me with the accuracy I often needed. Which means I ended up plugging in a USB mouse a lot of the time. Not the end of the world – and certainly not the first laptop to have this issue – but worth noting. The trackpad is good enough for usage here and there, but not for long stretches of precision mouse manipulation. What can I say? I’m picky about my trackpads.
Now, on to something good. The keyboard.
It is fantastic. The key spacing, the feel of the keys themselves, the shape of the keys (they have subtle curves in the tops)… it’s all excellent. I wouldn’t call this the best keyboard I’ve ever used on any computer, but it might be in the running for the best keyboard on a laptop. And that’s saying something (I’m even pickier about my keyboards than I am about my trackpads). In fact, I’d say the high quality of the keyboard more than makes up for the shortcomings of the trackpad.
And there’s one touch on the keyboard that I found to be absolutely awesome.
The font. I don’t normally think much about the font used on keyboards, but this one really jumped out at me. It’s this Sci-Fi-looking, almost pseudo-Star Trek inspired font that makes the system look like it’s from the 23rd century. Opening the lid to reveal this slightly space age-looking keyboard (with nice back lighting) makes for a great first impression. It’s a little touch, but I love it.
The Verdict
This is not a Chromebook. This is, in fact, the polar opposite of a Chromebook.
It is (comparatively) expensive. It’s big. It’s not feather-light (about 4 lbs), though quite a bit lighter than you expect it to be considering the size. It’s powerful as hell. The battery life isn’t anything to write home about (about 4 hours of really intensive use, including gaming) which means you won’t want to be far away from a power outlet.
And… I really dig it. I don’t believe I’ve ever been as impressed with the visual quality of Linux (as a desktop operating system) as I was when I ran GNOME Shell on the M3800. This, right here, is a "show off" machine. If I were to bring this to a Linux conference and set it up on a table… it would draw attention.
Almost two years ago, we closed out our review of Dell’s first Linux-powered Developer Edition laptop with some words of wisdom from my former uber-sysadmin mentor, a fellow named Rick, with whom I worked at Boeing for many, many years. Rick is now retired and living the life of an itinerant world-traveling SCUBA master, but he’s been hacking on Linux since around the time Linus first dropped the kernel on comp.os.minix. I lamented to Rick that I was having a hard time coming up with an angle or hook for the XPS 13 Developer Edition, because it all just worked—Dell got it right, and it was a great piece of kit. It was maybe even a bit boring.
FURTHER READING
IT JUST WORKS: DELL XPS 13 DEVELOPER EDITION LINUX ULTRABOOK REVIEW
Dell’s substantial investment in making a functional Linux Ultrabook pays off.
"Isn’t that what you’re looking for in a mainstream product?" Rick told me over e-mail. "In 1996 it was: ’Wow look at this, I got Linux running on xxxxxxxx.’ Even in 2006 that was at times an accomplishment... When was the last time you turned on an Apple or Windows machine and marveled that it ’just worked?’ It should be boring."
Rick was right—he usually is right, which is why he made such an awesome mentor. His words echoed in my head all over again when I recently lifted up the big M3800’s lid. Dell has expanded its Developer Edition offerings, taking what started out as an internal unofficial side-project of sticking Ubuntu onto the new M3800 workstation laptop and making an actual, official supported configuration that you can purchase. Like the XPS 13 Developer Edition before it, the M3800 Developer Edition comes straight from the factory with an Ubuntu LTS desktop release—14.04 this time around, rather than the previous XPS 13’s 12.04 LTS. Everything "just works."
Well, mostly everything. Unlike the XPS 13, the M3800 has one big optional feature with a bunch of unanswered questions around it: a 15.6" UHD-resolution 4K display. By default, the M3800 ships with a pedestrian 1920x1080 multitouch screen, but for the no-brainer price of $70 you can replace that with a 3840x2160 IGZO2 display that also offers multitouch. This 4K option makes for a great high-DPI display, and while Windows and OS X are coming to terms with scaling and resolution independence, Linux in its various rainbow of distros and display managers and graphical shells represents a whole continuum of variation when it comes to high-DPI scaling.
We expected that the laptop would work great out of the box. Dell delivered last time, even wrangling flawless functionality out of oft-misbehaving peripherals like the trackpad and Wi-Fi. So we weren’t sure what tricks Dell would and wouldn’t be able to make this new dog do.
The basics
SPECS AT A GLANCE: DELL M3800 DEVELOPER EDITION
ENTRY LEVELTOP SPECAS REVIEWED
SCREEN1920×1080 15.6" UltraSharp FHD Touch (141 ppi), multitouch3840×2160 15.6" Ultrasharp IGZO UHD Touch (282 ppi), multitouch3840×2160 15.6" Ultrasharp IGZO2 UHD Touch (282 ppi), multitouch
OSUbuntu 14.04 LTS
CPU2.3GHz Intel Core i7-4712HQ
RAM8GB 1600MHz DDR316GB 1600MHz DDR316GB 1600MHz DDR3
GPUNvidia Quadro K1100M, 2GB GDDR5
HDD500GB 2.5" SATA HDD1TB mSATA SSD256GB mSATA SSD
NETWORKINGIntel AC 7260 dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n/ac 2x2, Bluetooth 4.0, gigabit Ethernet (requires USB 3.0-to-Ethernet dongle, included)
PORTSHDMI, Thunderbolt 2.0/mini DisplayPort, 2x USB 3.0 (with PowerShare), 1x USB 2.0 (with PowerShare), 3-in-1 card reader, headphone/microphone dual jack
DIMENSIONS (H×W×D)0.31"-0.71"" (front to back) × 14.65"" × 10.00" / 8mm-18mm (front to back) × 372mm × 254mm
WEIGHT4.15lb / 1.88kg
BATTERY6-cell 61WHr Li-polymer6-cell 91WHr Li-polymer6-cell 91WHr Li-polymer
WARRANTY1 year onsite5 year onsite1 year onsite
PRICE$1,533.50$2,807.50$2,072.50
OTHER PERKS720p webcam
Dell hasn’t done any customization to the "Developer Edition" laptop on the hardware side. This is a standard M3800, same as you could order with Windows on it. The specs are identical. To actually order one, you visit Dell’s store page for the M3800 and tick the "Ubuntu Linux 14.04 SP1" option in the operating system box (an option which actually subtracts $101.50 from the laptop’s price, thanks to not needing to pay for a Windows license). You can do (almost) any of the same customizations to the Developer Edition as you can to the vanilla Windows model, with the one major exception being that the Web store interface won’t let you add a second storage device.
Which brings me to the graphics card. The 2GB Nvidia Quadro. Two gigs of RAM. That’s as much RAM as this, very nice, Nexus 9 Android tablet sitting next to me has… in total.
One of the greatest tests of any video card – in my humble opinion – is to throw a few video games at it. So I loaded up Steam and installed a few games that I had a high level of familiarity with, and I was consistently blown away.
Example: I installed Civilization V (the Linux version, naturally). This is a strategy game, but it’s a very 3D one (and can be rather taxing on a system). I set the resolution to the full "4K" resolution (which I was surprised so many games supported) and set every single graphics setting to the highest level. And it ran… oddly well. I experience the occasional stutter – and a tiny bit of lag – but overall it was damned impressive. Dialing back either a handful of the graphical options or lowering the resolution to something more reasonable (such as a full 1080p) got rid of those stutters entirely.
Now, here’s why that is so great: This testing was done entirely using the, Open Source, Nouveau driver. There are also proprietary Nvidia drivers that the M3800 ships with (or can be obtained from nvidia.com). And you know what? The closed source Nvidia driver definitely provided a noticeable performance improvement – but the performance with the Open Source driver was, already, absolutely fantastic.
See also: Ultimate guide to Linux desktop environments
The Nvidia card isn’t the only part of this system that worked well with Open Source drivers – everything else did as well. Everything. It all worked great, right out of the box, with every Linux distribution I tried.
If you’re a casual user who needs to do some web browsing and word processing, you do not need this machine. You could probably get a machine for 1/5th of the price that will do what you need quite well.
But if you’re doing graphic design or video editing, this laptop is absolutely stellar. Same goes if you are a software developer – the screen is easy on the eyes, the keyboard is great to type on for extended periods of time, and the speed of this rig… holy cow. It’s a great choice for developers.
Or for gaming. If I were to show up at a LAN party, put down this beast of a laptop, and booted up Linux to play, say, DOTA 2 or Team Fortress 2… it would turn heads.
To sum all of that up: This is a "no compromise" complete mobile workstation with fantastic Linux support. It’s not cheap, but if this is the type of system you need – and I know many of you do – the price is worth it.
Also the screen is bonkers
Whether you get the Developer Edition or not, the M3800 is the same large but stylish portable. Upon producing it in public, I had a friend comment that it looked "as big as an aircraft carrier," which is an interesting meta-comment on the heavily Ultrabook- and tablet-influenced popular image of portable computing. Things have changed quite a bit from a few years ago, when 15- to 17-inch laptops were more common. This laptop is a bit more than four pounds (1.88kg) of rounded aluminum and soft rubbery silicone, with a glass-fronted 10-point touchscreen and a genuine carbon fiber bottom shell.
It feels solid, which is exactly what you’d expect from a device of this size, and there’s plenty of room in the large body to add stiffness. The display stays exactly where you put it without any wobble, and the soft rubbery palm rest—gloriously free of crapware stickers except for a single Intel Core i7 logo—doesn’t creak even a teeny bit when you put weight on it. Typing on the backlit island-style keys is as pleasant an experience as typing on any island-style keys can be; the keys are well-attached and wiggle-free, and the backlight leaks only minimally around their edges.
If I have one complaint about the M3800’s construction, it’s that the hinge is too stiff to support easy one-handed opening. If you set the thing on a desk and lift on the lid with one finger, the entire laptop lifts; it requires some complex finger-jiggle-gymnastics (or a second hand for the less-stubborn or less-silly) to get the lid to separate from the laptop’s bottom half.
Dell 0g558n Battery
Dell 0h416n Battery
Dell 0j399n Battery
Dell 0j410n Battery
Dell 0k450n Battery
Dell 0k456n Battery
Dell 312-0940 Battery
Dell 312-0941 Battery
Dell f972n Battery
Dell g555n Battery
Dell g558n Battery
Dell h416n Battery
Dell inspiron 1440 Battery
Dell inspiron 1750 Battery
Dell j399n Battery
Dell j414n Battery
That bottom half itself is worth mentioning. The very bottom is encased in a shell of carbon fiber, with a small hinged metal flap in its center, similar to the XPS 13. The flap is engraved with the laptop’s model and incongruously sports a Windows 8 sticker; beneath the flap are all the laptop’s various certification badges, serial numbers, and service tags.
Lee Hutchinson
The M3800, standing by for input.
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