I currently have a Dell Precision M6500 with 16 GB RAM, 5.25 TB storage (256GB mSATA, 2TB and 1TB internal, and 2TB in the optical bay).  I've had this for about 6 years, and while I've been happy with it, the Core i7-920XM processor is a bit sluggish compared to newer offerings.  I purchased it used; all of my laptops have been used high end Dells.  This one has been my longest-running system and the one I've been most satisfied with.  I've found these machines are easy to service and upgrade.I run Linux exclusively (openSUSE).  I prefer AMD graphics cards because the free driver is much better at this time than the Nouveau driver; I don't want to use the proprietary graphics driver.  My heaviest load is from photography and sometimes software (Gutenprint test runs in particular -- I've parallelized the test process so it can take advantage of all available cores/threads).The obvious two upgrade choices for me would be a used M6800 or M7710 (the savings that way are quite substantial).  The big stumbling block is the display.  My M6500 has a WUXGA (1920x1200); the newer ones all have 1920x1080 displays, except that the M7710 offers a 3840x2160 option (4K).  I'm currently using very small fonts (6x10 in emacs, 7.5 point in LibreOffice), and I have my Xorg startup lie about the display resolution to convince KDE and other things to let me use fonts small enough for my taste.  I believe I'm limited as much or more by font pixel resolution as by size.  I want to get the most information I can on the screen, which means the smallest fonts I can read.There are plenty of good M6800's on eBay in the $800 range, but unless there's a higher resolution screen I don't know about, that's a problem.  The M4800 offers a 3200x1800 display, but I prefer the 17 screen and the greater capacity for internal components of the 17 machine.The used M7710 systems with UHD screens are all above $2000 on eBay; there are 7710's with FDH screens and i7 processors for $1500 or so, and it appears that there are UHD screens available online for $100 or so.  If it's like other such systems, replacing the screen is a bit fiddly but not really all that difficult.This is not particularly urgent; it's likely something I will do within the next year or two, by which point the M7710 will presumably have fallen in price; processor performance doesn't seem to be increasing as quickly based on Passmark numbers, which I've found to be a good proxy for performance for what I do (comparing against Core 2 Duo E8400 and i7-5820K in desktop-type systems).  However, a >6 year old laptop is something that has to be considered a risk to fail, so I would like opinions on comparisons between these two systems (in addition to anything else I should be looking at that has a similar combination of build quality, horsepower, and internal capacity).Thanks!
Looking for upgrade from Dell Precision M6500 -> M6800 or M7710?
laptop