I guess I could help people with unlimited resources (aka company) make decisions.

The reason I bought this laptop was because it's the first one in NZ with super high def screen that was Haswell that was light.

Specs: 2kg
- 16GB RAM
- 3200x1800 pixel 15.6 screen
- 500GB Samsung SSD
- Backlit keyboard
- Large touchpad
- Windows 8.1 Pro

Price: you don't want to know

Delivery: Took about 11 days to arrive

Unboxing: You don't get anything other than a box a charger and the laptop. No discs or sleeve.

First impression: Looks like a MacBook pro but half the weight. The palm rest is some rubbery stuff which looks like it could melt anytime. Not sure. The underside is also covered in this stuff. The heat vent in underneath it. SO you can't put this thing on fabric like the duvet for example. I don't wear shorts so I don't know how hot it gets but I bet it can burn you if you play crisis* (see 5).

Screen: Way over saturated. Wrong hue. Surprisingly easy to calibrate with intel HD4600 program. Unfortunately I am not allowed to install latest Intel driver. It also comes with Nvidia 750M with Optimus. Optimus lets you help decide whether the laptop uses Intel graphics (low power consumption) or Nvidia (unleash the power baby!). On about 40% brightness I can see everything in daylight. I am not sure about bright sunshine but it should be ok.

Touch screen - extremely smooth and precise. FOr some reason sometimes it wants to zoom when I only use one finger. But I have discovered multi gesture where I can scroll with the track pad. So no need to use the touch screen much. Unless you need some deltoid exercise.

Touch pad - a let down. very imprecise compared to my 5 year old entry level Vaio. However with some playing around with the settings I have found a reasonable setting. Satisfied. BUT the left and right click require force to work. Multi gesture is good, but you need to turn up the touch sensitivity otherwise you end up clicking on everything. Multi gesture is really good. you can change screens, scroll, right click, bring out the charm (yes I don't know why it's called that) and probably does the dinner. SOrry my old laptop is 3 years old, so I am rather amused.

Keyboard - quite chunky. loud. Not buttery smooth like my other XPS dell. Not sure if I like it or not but if it lasts then i'm happy. It is missing a few keys like pause/break which apparently is a windows 8 shortkey which I will never get to use. There is no separate media and other buttons so you have to press Fn to do anything including change songs, volume, home, page up etc. WHat was dell thinking?! Also for some reason backspace and delete is very close and I kept deleting files! The backlit feature is extremely useful and really should be standard nowadays.

Battery life: THis thing weighs 2kg. that's all. it lasts 8 hours* (see 1). with me doing all kinds of things including plugging in external drives, charging my usb DAC.

One issue is it doesn't have an optical drive. I don't know when i'll need one'. Let's hope not.

The other is - I don't know why but there is a certain lag. I have a 1st gen i7 laptop with Sata 2 SSD and that one is super fast and responsive. Maybe there are other bloat I need to get rid of.

Oh talking about bloat. I ordered extra adobe stuff and office. THe office key came on a piece of paper in the box. THe adobes needed to be downloaded by Dell. It didn't. I had to delete a hidden file, tweak the services.msc to get the thing going. Not impressed.

And nothing works well when McAfee was running. Uninstalling it should be the first thing you do. The second thing would be to use another antimalware (I used avast 2014 free with ONLY file shield, web shield slows everything down).

I can see how photo and video editing on the go would be awesome on this thing, so would games be.

There are however lots of stuff I haven't figured out ... like SKydrive, whether to use a desktop program or a metro app to open videos, photos, music, email, etc. I don't know why they didn't bring back the start menu of old. I find that needing to go to metro to find my programs a bit tedious.

Would I recommend this laptop? As of today yes, since it has no competition in NZ for QHD screen. It's not too bad but there are quirks and annoyances. Apart from that it's ok. (You could buy a car with this money!)


*****
Extra knowledge discovered:
1) with SSD it comes with 91Wh battery which is a lot more than the 61Wh battery with the other models
2) If your rig has a 91Wh battery it won't fit a sata spinning drive (not that you'd want one, but ...)
3) this is the same thing as a precision M3800 except for the GPU
4) I emailed them for an Ethernet dongle and they gave me one for free (I said why did my extravagant not have Ethernet bla bla bla) + install media (haven't arrived yet)
5) there are reports that the GPU overheats when playing games so if you are getting this for games you have been warned