M4800 Owner's Thread

Cool, thanks! Turns out, it's actually the lower frame that's broken, so I may be able to use the lid from his machine as well.

 

I believe it's because the manufacturers are losing focus on what made their products great and what compelled their customers to their products...in addition to the bottomline(making profit), and perhaps following market trends(Apple removed USB A ports, make the ram non-upgradeable, make the battery non-replacelable and every other manufacturer seems to be following suit... yes I get it, if you can't upgrade, you have to throw it away to buy the new model down the line, more sales, more profit, etc....). I've vented on this before, but the reason why I always looked at workstation laptops was because I expected it to be designed and engineered with longer life cycles, with reliability, durability, and upgrade-ability in mind. This not only saves costs, "saves the environment"(less electronics piling up in landfills), but allows for longer life cycles in a well built machine chassis.

I agree that the M4800 and M6800 chassis is somewhat dated, however, if they made both the chassis a long term standard, in which it retained MXM for GPU upgrades, and even made the whole motherboard upgradeable with new generations, while keeping the same foot print to fit in the chassis, they'd really make a "portable desktop" experience(as you can generally keep your case and just keep upgrading your interals). Having said this, yes I know the M4600-M4800 had pretty long run (3 generations). I just think it would be cool to keep it up.

What I've stated is generally my issue with the new Precision 7750, they created minor adjustments in order to make it more slim, but with what purpose? I want a full blown no compromise mobile Workstation that can be upgraded and that has a long service life cycle by design(don't get me wrong, the M4800/M6800 chassis has room for improvement and can be slimmed down and reduced in weight, while being more ergonomic to today's standards, but I'd wish that there was more modular standards for GPU and batteries that will last say at least 2-3 generations, as technological "breakthroughs" come about... vapor chambers are not new, though putting them in laptops are becoming the norm, so I wouldn't mind taking it). If I wanted a small portable lightweight mobile workstation with compromise(in order to make it slimmer and more lightweight), then another product line should be created for that.

Way back in the day, hardware could barely keep up with software... thus the "obsolete the day you bought it" phrase was very relevant... I remember my 486dx2 machine could barely run windows 3.1.... However, today things kind of plateaued.... I still have an 11 year old Thinkpad T500 that runs Linux like a champ for most defined daily tasks....we're at a point in which to an extent software becomes more efficient with each iteration while using the same hardware(I look forward to powerful, reliable, slim, energy efficient ARM laptops become more defined and refined... perhaps with say something like Risc-V when it matures.. but that's going off topic). However, when it comes to more demanding tasks like modelling, video editing, running virtual machines... we're always waiting for something more powerful to munch through the tasks faster.. and for that I ask for a more upgradeable platform.

 

Dell guys should make an M4800 v2 or M4810.
They can keep M4800's keyboard, overall appearance, but they should give us an option to use the latest CPU, battery, GPU, with a bit thinner body maybe.
I'll send an email to Dell.

M4800's keyboard is by far the best Dell ever made. Newer precision laptop keyboards are not necessarily better.
M4800 metal palm rest is indeed protective. I realized all laptops that use plastic body won't last long. They cause some unknown issues at some point. Dell should make something that is an authentic step-up from M4800.

 

...?
Precision 7X10 and 7X20 batteries, motherboards, and GPUs are cross-compatible. Same with the Precision 7X30 and 7X40. In fact, this thing with the 7000 series being able to drop a newer system's motherboard in an older system with the same chassis is new; Precision M4600-M4800 and M6600-M6800 had too many differences inside to upgrade the motherboard from one generation to the next, despite the chassis' similar appearance from the outside.

Now, it would be cool if they kept things "standard" for longer than two generations but claiming that they have ditched upgradeability with newer systems is not exactly genuine.

I've said the same thing recently in the 7550/7750 thread... I understand the desire for a "beefier" system, but their market for such a system would be niche; they would lose sales if they made their 7000 lineup bigger, and the market is not there to offer a separate/special large version of the system. 7000 series still has a metal-framed chassis and aluminum cover as well. There are some drawbacks but each of them understandable ... a single heatsink instead of separate ones for the CPU and GPU makes working inside the system a bit more annoying, but it also allows the entire cooling potential of the system to be put to use for the CPU or GPU if only one of the two is under load. Lack of an MXM card is a bummer, but that's an industry-wide transition — you don't see any Turing GPU cards that use the old "standard" form factor. At least Dell is still making the GPU card separate (unlike nearly all other vendors who have the GPU soldered onto the board), so upgrading from one GPU generation to the next is still possible when Dell doesn't change the form factor. (The one thing I'd say I really miss is a real physical dock port that isn't Thunderbolt-based.) So... I'm sort of wondering, other than those things, what specifically is there about the M4600-M4800/M6600-M68000 series that are really that big a deal to have missing?

 

In regards to the bolded text, I can understand what Dell did, and to be fair, in theory it is indeed "upgradeable" in the 7550 Chassis, as we all know, however, it is rather proprietary and scarce to find readily available GPU parts at a reasonable price compared to the PC desktop experience as Dell is presumably the only vendor of the GPU(multiple vendors for the same part, making availability and price reasonable make it more comparable to a PC in a mobile platform experience as I alluded to). I was referencing MXM, as it was an attempt to standardize the platform with cross compability, and unfortunately it did not quite survive the long haul. I desire and yearn for this concept to return in the notebook platform... and yes of course it would come with the sacrifice of not being the most thin and lightweight platform, but that's the point of the compromise; longevity in the platform.

The way I see it, we're just venting out and honing in on the industry direction, and reminiscing on what was done right at one point in the industry, only to be scrapped and disregarded. I really do hope that there would be another "era" of reckoning in which true mobile workstation platforms would adhere to these requirements(long service life cycles, an emphasis on modularity, reliability, durability, etc...)

If I had influence on the industry, I would advocate for a type of consortium with vendors, defining the requirements for a standard in an upgradeable platform for mobile laptops that are powerful, much like there are standards for PC desktops(ATX, m-atx, etc.) to keep the chassis, while upgrading a rather static and standardized platform.

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"So... I'm sort of wondering, other than those things, what specifically is there about the M4600-M4800/M6600-M68000 series that are really that big a deal to have missing?"


To answer your question more concisely, coming from me personally, what I missed about the M4800 that I don't get with the 7750/7550:


(Some are trivial and I could do without, like the swappable optical drive bay, though even that is versatile and useful):
-Upgradeable socketed CPU(Yes I understand, the industry is moving away from this, allows for more slimmer profiled systems, it would really have to be a coordinated/planned industry effort to make this have value... such as... keeping the same socket while allowing for next get backward compatibility, much like with AMD's AMX and AMX+ setup )
-Upgradeable socketed GPU (Yes, I know, we've gone through it already, and I acknowledge that it is technically upgradeable in the 7750/7550 series, so I won't beat the horse anymore... but unless I'm mistaken the compability between the 7540 and 7550 does not exist for the GPU's socket? In fact, I recall you were one of the first ones to bring that up when the 7550 was debuting.. though I haven't followed up).
-Swappable Battery(I know most users may not care, but it was rather useful to me, when I was running low on battery power, I could easily turn the system down and pop in a spare battery... not to mention how much easier it is to just replace the battery when the battery cells wear out... I'll say at least with the 7540/50's it is easier to replace the battery compared to say a Mac where they are both soldered and glued)
-Swappable Optical/2.5" ssd bay(Perhaps most don't use this, but it was nice to have that versatility all under one chassis...)
-Hardware switch for the Wifi(a convenient security feature)
-Availability of parts, in part due to the long life cycle of the chassis(M4600>M4800/M6600>M6800), if I'm not mistaken, there are enough minor changes between the 7730, 7740, 7750, in which a lot of parts are not compatible, be it keyboard, battery, or screen(I may be wrong)... whereas with the M4600-M4800, keyboard, battery, and screen was pretty much static and cross-compatible, which I appreciated.

That pretty much sums it up, it's just an honest answer of what I do miss/appreciate about the M4800 compared to the newer Precision 7550. I could go further(like for example, I don't care for the keyboard mapping as much, and I prefer the dedicated volume buttons, as well as having the power button outside of the keyboard frame.. but that's me getting really picky... though I would prefer that in the keyboard).

Btw Cheers and Happy New Years Aaron44126, you've always been an awesome poster and asset to this forum, thanks for all you do on here, and here's to a new year my friend!

 

Do you guys know any other full metal body laptops like M4800?

I liked the new Lenovo Legion 5:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Leg...rentrq:016e325d1770ad4ef59cf9a8ffbd0a6a|iid:1

It has a perfect exterior design. However, it still uses fragile plastic body...
I'm looking for something that has full metal body, powerful CPU & GPU.