Dell Precision M3800 mobile workstation - Developer Edition now available!!

@BlugillandLinux

Great to hear!  and thanks for your support!!!

@Finalfantasykid

My pleasure, thanks again for alerting us to the issue!

A quick question regarding the M3800.  Will it have an ubuntu/sputnik  plate on the backside of the laptop or will it still have the (tainted) windows one?  I know the XPS 13 had a special one like in this image.

barton808.files.wordpress.com/.../xps13-baseplateubuntulogo.png

@FinalFantasyKid,

Im pretty sure that it will not have a baseplate neither Windows or Ubuntu :-)

After scouring the web for coupons I can just barely afford the default configuration with the quad hd display. I need a new computer before I can save for more RAM and an SSD, so I'll have to upgrade those myself over the next few months.  

My main concern is the battery.  How long will the 61 whr default battery last under Linux?  Is it fairly easy to obtain and install the 91 whr battery later?

I really like the power and expandability of the m3800, but I might have to opt for the XPS 13 depending on what configurations are available when the Ubuntu versions are available.

I just got my 3800 yesterday and rsynced my data over as soon as I could :-)

I did an un-scientific battery rundown test by unplugging it and using it off and on. As shipped (nVidia proprietary driver installed), I was down to an indicated 16 minutes of battery after somewhere around 4 hours.

I'm going to install an SSD in this machine and will probably go with an mSATA one so that I have the future option of getting the 91 watt hour battery if I feel I need it. Of course, just switching to an SSD should give some improvement in battery life. I would have ordered the 91-watt hour battery, but I didn't want to pay Dell's price for a 128 GB mSata drive that I would just replace anyway. It's cheaper to pay full list price for the battery, rather than the upgrade price. Plus, I probably don't need that much. I'm on line power most of the time, anyway.

@BLUGILLANDLINUX

Thanks!  That sounds like reasonable battery life to me.  I'm a lot more comfortable getting one of these now.

Glad to help! Of course, in continuous use, I'd expect the battery life to be less. In my off-and-on use, it was just sitting, display off, for some of that time. Once, it even suspended (happy to report that suspend works perfectly, out of the box). Battery life could maybe be improved by not using the nVidia GPU (haven't tried that), in addition to installing an SSD (arriving Friday from Amazon).

Overall, I'm thrilled with the machine and very highly recommend it. I'm passing my 2012 HP Envy 15t-3000 to my dad to replace his desktop system (also running Linux). The Envy 15 is a very nice laptop, but the M3800 blows it away.  One thing to watch out for: if it's on your lap and you're wearing shorts, it might pinch your legs when you open it, a side effect of how amazingly thin this laptop is :-)

Do you know what would be really great? If Dell could find a way to cram 32 GB of RAM into one of these things :-)

Solved.

For reasons I don't understand, removing the HDD caused it to boot from the SSD without incident. HDD now goes on my shelf, with a label on it so I don't forget :)

Interesting side effect of removing the HDD: there's now some resonance in the case from the fan that wasn't there before. I may need to fill that empty space up with the larger battery option. Good thing I'm not a conspiracy theorist, or I'd think it was a plot to drive battery sales ;-)

When trying to customise on the UK store if I select Ubuntu i lose the option for a mini-card SSD meaning I cant configure a 2nd HDD (the option is there but i get an error as primary isn't a mini-card). Is this intentional?

Cheers,

David

I would like the higher capacity battery and it looks like you need to have a mini card ssd as it takes up more room. But I get a message saying Ubuntu doesn't support mini card ssds.  Sigh.

My M3800 just arrived today, and it is sweet! But, the first thing I did was try to upgrade to 14.10, and it failed... and now it will only boot to console mode, no graphics. So, um, any tips for reinstalling the OS back to the factory preinstall (14.04)?

But now I've found that it will let me have the higher capacity battery and the full mini card ssd on the US site. But not the UK site. Doesn't make any sense.

@tbranrb

My device was delivered last week, and I've been familiarizing myself since its arrival.  I can answer a couple of your questions.

1.  Yes, 1920 x 1080 display is an option, and it works fine. 

4.  Reverting to the OEM installation of ubuntu is easy; restore to factory settings is an option offered in the grub boot menu.

If you choose to install a different ubuntu, first backup /etc/apt/sources.list and /boot/grub/grub.cfg