Sunday, October 20, 2013

Dell Precision M4700 Purchase

I needed a laptop for business use and figured I may as well go with the best. Just bought a new Dell M4700. Dell’s latest is the M4800 but the wait time is unreal and at $1,000 more than this one which I got on sale negates the slight (if any) performance advantage.

I’ll be replacing the 320gig mechanical drive with an Intel 520 240gig SSD, (some time in the future I’ll be adding an MSATA Intel 525 240gig drive so I can go RAID0) & removing the Dell Wireless/Bluetooth in favor of an Intel 6300 solution. The memory will be upgraded to 32gigs and Windows 8.1 Pro will finish it off along with Office 2013, Visio 2010, Microsoft Live Writer, Hamachi VPN and a host of other software. For Anti-Virus I’ll stick with Microsoft Defender (used to be called Security Essentials) along with Malwarebytes Pro.

Dell’s workstation class laptops won’t win any beauty contests but they are built like tanks and military specs. This should last a long long time. The fans are removable and the graphics and CPU can be upgraded down the line plus it comes standard with a 3 year warranty as well. The seller sent me these pictures of the unit, it should be here next week, woot woot!

Here is the current configuration:

320 GB SATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
Wave Systems Software
Integrated HD video webcam and noise reducing array microphones
Dell Wireless 1504 802.11g/n Single Band Wi-Fi Half Mini-card
15.6 INCH UltraSharp FHD (1920x1080) Wide View Anti-Glare, Premium Panel Guarantee
Internal Swipe Fingerprint Reader, USH and Contactless Smartcard Reader
Internal English Dual Point Backlit Keyboard
8GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz
Processor: Intel Core 3rd Generation i7-3740QM Processor (2.7GHz, 6M cache, Upgradable to Intel vPro technology)
Trend Micro 16.6 PC-cillin 30 Day
Microsoft Office 365 - 1 Month Trial
180W A/C Adapter, 3P
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit w/Operating System DVD
AMD FirePro M4000 Mobility Pro Graphics with 1GB GDDR5
Dell Data Protection Access
6 Cell Lithium-Ion Primary Battery
8X DVD ROM Drive
3 Years Warranty (NBD Onsite Service)

1

4

5

2

7

14 comments:

Ronda said...

LOL!!! No really...I am LOL! This went SO far over my head! I'm just like...okay dude..whatever works...we're good to go!! I'm tellin ya...if God forbid you go before me...spiderwebs dude...spiderwebs! ;-)

Erik's RV Blog said...

I should take a picture of what it looks like in the basement behind all of the gear...

Then people would understand the spiderweb comment. :)

Rod Ivers said...

New HF Rig to go with it ?? Oops I didn't suggest that, sorry Ronda...

Erik's RV Blog said...

Rod - :) Great idea! :)

Ronda said...

lol...ok..the spiderweb comment means that I am clueless...and God forbid anything happens to you...all the electronic stuff u have is gonna gain spiderwebs cuz I haven't got a clue. Just sayin! :-p

Big Matt said...

Sounds great, except for Win8.1Pro, as it, like all Windows 8 OSes are not really conducive to productivity.

Kinda like Win2k12 and Win2k12R2, I spent more time readded basic feature functionalities or having to use roundabout methods to access basic functions than what one had to do with Win7 and Win2k8R2.

Erik's RV Blog said...

Big Matt - I use what I have to support bud.. :)

Anonymous said...

Cute computer skit says it all! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Sk7cOqB9Dk&feature=youtu.be

Bruce

Erik's RV Blog said...

Bruce - You come up with some funny stuff! That was a good one!

Big Matt said...

Erik - I work at Intel, we "Support" all of them, but we don't "use" it as a primary OS.

It's like Vista. Intel stayed with XP till Seven came out. ;).

Erik's RV Blog said...

Matt - You can't appreciate the nuances unless you use it a lot, just my 2 cents.

Intel sticking with XP makes sense, they're huge, I'm just one dude. :)

Erik's RV Blog said...

Matt - How about the musical versions of the stupid Bing Bar and Bing Desktop in Windows Update. They really want to push that thing no matter what. Hide one, another version magically appears asking to be installed....

Unknown said...

This is best dell laptop, Call up Pcpatchers dell Toll free number 1-800-730-892 for PC infections, registry, Slow performance of PC, malware and anti spyware protection for the Dell computers/ laptops and attached peripherals. We protect and fix your PC.
dell technical support australia

Erik's RV Blog said...

I still have this laptop in use today as the conference room projector PC and it's still fast, runs windows 10 and will keep running until it no longer can. Everybody who uses it thinks its a new machine because it looks and performs like new.