Bought a Dell Precision M4800.

[Colt45ws]

I decided to replace my Thinkpad T500 recently and went shopping for a replacement.
I ended up picking out a refurbished Precision M4800

Its got;
Core i7-4800MQ
16GB DDR3-1600 dual channel
256GB mSATA SSD
1TB Hybrid HDD
nVidia Quadro K2100M 2GB
15.6" Ultrasharp FHD LED panel
Dell Wireless 1550 (802.11ac)

It also had W8 Pro, I wiped that within 5 minutes of opening the package and installed W7 Pro. Its not licensed yet; still working on that.
It's big, heavy and solid. Just the way I like it.
So far I love the led backlit keyboard. I also like the little 'Calc' button over about the numlock key. I pushed it and the Windows calculator opened up. I thought it was the best thing I'd ever seen.
I don't like the slot load DVD rewriter. Its noisy and sounds like its breaking when you insert a disk. I wouldve preferred a regular tray load drive.
Not like I use the disc drive much anyway.

 

[redhat]

Wooh, pretty.

I have always liked a lot of the Dell business laptops. We still have many Latitude D630s that don't want to die just yet.

 

[Subdued]

Looks like a brick, my kind of laptop!

 

[NateDN10]

In my experience, Dell's consumer laptops are just OK in quality & reliability. Their business laptops really seem solid, though.

 

[dishdude]

I've always had great luck with Dell. My oldest Dell laptop is 8 years old and still going strong.

 

[dparm]

Sweet laptop!

 

[itguy08]

Originally Posted By: NateDN10
In my experience, Dell's consumer laptops are just OK in quality & reliability. Their business laptops really seem solid, though.


IME they are all junk. Had 2 of them for work and the plastics are junk. Some reliability issues too.

The latest - a Latitude E6540 is showing visible wear after less than 6 months.

Dell = Junk, always has been, always will be.

To the OP - Good luck!

 

[Hokiefyd]

I'm sure it'll work out great for you. Most of my personal computer purchases have been Dells, and all have worked great for me. My first was back in 1997, I bought an OptiPlex Pro gx180. Then a few Dimension models (a refurb small case desktop, then a new E521 back in 2005). Our latest purchase is an Inspiron 660s we bought last year. I like that Dell has gone back to ATX/ITX motherboards from the BTX that our Dimension E521 had. I'd still have the E521 if I could have put in a newer motherboard and upgraded it myself, but the BTX form factor is not popular in the aftermarket. With our Inspiron 660s, it's a mini-ATX/ITX size, and I can upgrade that one as long as I want to keep the case.

 

[rjundi]

I am hoping its not the laptop we have at work that burns up running Google Hangouts so it bluescreens.

We have cast off a bunch to charity and they are i7's.

 

[Rand]

A few random laptop thoughts.


I have always loved lenovo's I used to use it alot for side work which I'm moving away from.

I did get a lenovo t520 with FHD a few years ago. Has a sandybridge I5, I expect it to be sufficient for at least another 3 years. Then I'll sell it for a premium.

HP's business line is actually quite nice also, but the headphone port on the HP I bought had crazy whine when you moved the mouse cursor.. had to return it. It drove me nuts.(this was pre t520 when I had a t400 C2D)

Dell's custom ordered business laptops are also quite fine, but are very pricy.

My t520 was around 650+200$ FHD upgrade.
I thought it was silly that upgrading to a 128GB ssd was 200$ when I could buy a 128GB for over 50$ cheaper and have the stock 320GB WD black drive also.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Writing this from my Dell Inspiron 1720 that I bought in October 2007. 7 years old, so yeah, Dells are junk

 

[ClutchDisc]

Yea I guess they are.. I'm writing this from my 10 year old Dell..

 

[Colt45ws]

So I played Skyrim on it today on Ultra at 1080P. Only Adjustment I made was to back AA down to 4x instead of 8x.
The Quadro peaked at 66C and the CPU was never over 63C.
No temperature problem. Though I did set the fan profile in the Power control panel to maximum performance mode while on AC.

Had a problem with poor wifi performance. It was only connecting at 64mbps or less. I went into the Advanced properties for the adapter and found it was in Minimum power mode and only allowing 20/40MHz bandwidth on 5GHz. My AP is only 2.4GHz so I set it to 20/40 on both bands and disabled minimum power mode. 244Mbps now.

I have noticed twice now, once while cold booting and another time waking from sleep it didnt recognize the power supply connected to it as Genuine. So it would go into limited power mode. In both cases I simply unplugged it from the laptop and replugged it and it recognized it as the 180W Dell supply again.
I have most of a three year Dell NBD warranty on it (Start date was 6/25), so if it becomes a problem Ill just call them.