Dell M3800 vs E7440 for VM mobile LAB

[tris179]

I am in quandary which I hope you all can help with. *I am currently using a Dell E6330 and have been asked what machine I would like this to be replaced with.

I believe I have narrowed my choice down the two machines both for different reasons.

My shortlist is the M3800 and the E7440. 1080 screen, 16GB RAM, 256 mSATA SSD.

I need a a machine that I could use while travelling to and from the office on a daily basis as well as at the office with 2 external screens, so I need something pretty portable. *A colleague is going for the M4800, but it's not something I feel I want to carry around everyday. *It needs to have have enough power to do what I need and allow 2 drives (1 mSATA *& 1 2.5 inch). *Most of my time is spent using VM's to test various infrastructure scenarios which can range from 1 or 2 up to 6 VM's depending on what I am trying to achieve. These are mostly RAM and Storage limited.

E7440*

I love the form factor of the E7440 and every aspect of the hardware. It will work with my current E Series dock. The only limiting factor seems to be the i7 4600U processor which is only dual core. *None of the scenarios I generally run are CPU intensive; but I am concerned that this could be a bottleneck going forward. *I've had no such issues with the E6330 thus far with this but still.

M3800

On the other hand the M3800 is quad core, and fits all my requirements but this is larger machine, with no traditional docking port. *I would consider getting the D3000 docking station for the displays, although I'm am not adverse to just pluging the cables in. The other concern is the lack of eSATA which is supplied to the E7440 through the E series docking station but after some research I believe that USB3 should be up to the job of running VM's from an external SSD. Would the M3800 be fine for lap use on the train? Anyone done this themselves?

I have no requirements for real GPU power and am limited to the business class line of machines, namely the Latitudes or the Precisions.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks

 

[Saundie]

Are you able to buy from the Dell Outlet? I was able to get an E7440 with an i5-4300U, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, WLAN card and the 1080p from there for £760. I added a 500GB hard drive for £40, and upgraded to 16GB for £110, so all in it cost me £910. I have never seen an M3800 on the Dell Outlet, so I could only compare it to the full retail prices, but even the cheapest M3800 is £1400. I realise it's not exactly a fair comparison, as the M3800 has a better screen, processor and graphics adapter. If you don't need much in the way of a GPU then you can save yourself quite a lot of money.

For me, the E7440 pretty much the perfect compromise in terms of laptop technology as it currently stands. 1920 x 1080 on a 14.1" display is just about perfect as far as I am concerned, and having an IPS panel makes it even better. 16GB RAM is sufficient for virtualising a few machines, and as long as you're not virtualising databases or any other CPU intensive processes, the i5 is more than sufficient. With an SSD in the mSATA slot you still have a 2.5" bay for a hard drive. There aren't many laptops this small and light that let you have both an SSD and a hard drive (or two SSDs if you really want them). The fact that you can use the standard E-series docking station is also a big plus - they're readily available and dirt cheap if you get a used one. With the docking station, the E7440 is able to output the full 2560 x 1600 resolution over the DisplayPort connections, so you can use high resolution 30" displays - something that is not possible with the M3800, or most other Ultrabooks for that matter.

The only downside, as far as I am concerned anyway, is the bizarre location of the docking station port. For some reason it's all the way at the rear of the laptop, which means it sits forward of the docking station. It doesn't affect the functionality of the docking station, it just looks stupid. Here is a photograph to illustrate my point;

It's a strange design choice on an otherwise very well thought out laptop.

If you have any further questions about the E7440 feel free to ask, and I shall try to answer them for you.

 

[tris179]

Hi Saundie,

I have just got round to reading and catching up on this thread, many thanks for your response.

I agree with all your points. I have seen the 7440 on the outlet as you describe, but as I am buying this through work I will be going through the usual channels...

We have the 7240 in the office and the docking station port is in the same place. To be honest this is a really weird design and comes across like it was a bit of an after thought which I am sure it wasn't.

I have been rather preoccupied with one thing and another and still need to make a decision on this....

I'd even looked at the M4800 because of the possibility of running 32GB RAM, but its 3.2KG... Decisions Decision....