SvenC

I read about less SSD performance and less battery time somewhere and could measure that back in the days when I switched from Win 10 to 11 - first with dual boot to go back to 10 in case of issues and I checked SSD speeds of my data drive (m.2 NVMe - lower numbers with 11, same hardware, only 10 and 11 on two other drives. Shorter battery time on Win 11. From then on I read about some perf updates which came with "feature updates" and from time to time Win 11 seems to get faster drive speeds and more battery time than in the beginning of Win 11. Biggest SSD slow down is our company policy which forces another virus scanner on our systems so real time scanning slows down and DevDrive cannot use async file scanning... I understand your point of stability of features and behaviour and the choice when to upgrade to next H1 or H2 to avoid surprises after a forced Windows Update 😉

Understood. Thank you for the clarification!

How is the Enterprise LTSC version faster as 11 Pro (or other Enterprise flavours) ? Is there any bloatware on the none LTSC version which we cannot uninstall (either through settings UI or PowerShell cmdlets)? To my understanding any LTSC version (...24H2, 25H2...) does only receive security fixes. So, I believe that I could miss performance improvement updates on any current LTSC version, compared to Windows 11 Enterprise Insiders (Beta or Release Preview channels) which sometimes get performance improvements. Like kernel improvements to get SSD speeds up again, better battery performance due to some ACPI enhancements, faster Windows Update installs and/or less reboots and so on. I believe I would have to wait for 26H2 to get those performance feature improvements - is that a false expectation? If I uninstalled bloatware once, I'd expect Windows Update to not install that again with any future update package (if it does I'd just uninstall it again).

Absolutely agree! Hard to tell if my system with iGPU only causes less stress and systems with dGPU add complexity and sometimes two much load. If you have Dell support you might want to go the "swap some components way" until it behaves or argue for a system swap as early as possible. (I did not follow if you reported your Dell support conditions already). That machine is too professional and expensive and should not cause any kind of work hassle.

Is that the Dell installed Windows or did you do a clean install from a standard Windows install image? Could be that Dell preinstalled cares about clean Event Viewers - maybe not 😉 Could be that a clean Windows install by yourself and Windows Update for "standard" drivers and only then install missing Dell drivers might keep Event Viewer less red. I stopped caring because some finger print, smart card and Office errors are always there which could be influenced by company policies and a non native Windows virus scanner. As long as my PMP18 works I stopped caring about Application and System event log errors - I tried before and just wasted time. Just my two cents 😉

In addition: if your are patient enough and wait for the automatic reboot after the BSOD you might find a memory.dmp in c:\windows or c:\windows\temp (too long ago for me as well to know the exact steps and location to get the memory dump). If you find the dump file, try the windbg steps Aaron described above. If it is your dGPU, you might find someone to give advice which version of the nvidia drivers (from dell or nvidia driver downloads?) you could try with which version of the iGPU driver (from Dell or Intel downloads?) Some combinations might work better than others. DDU might be your friend to start all over if your installed versions of the graphics drivers are in a messed up state.

Actually I would have preferred 1920 x 1200 which would be a better DPI fit for my two additional displays 27" 2560 x 1440 (could not find a reasonable 16:10 2560 x 1600) plus 24" 1920 x 1200. Now I have to play tricks with the advanced font tool on Windows to set the font sizes of windows title, icon, toolbars and so on and replace the Segoe UI font, because the default DPI bases multi monitor scalings do not behave well with several older apps which are kind of blurry bitmap scaled instead of vector scaling only the fonts.

I use 2x Kingston CSODIMM 32 GB DDR5-6400 with no problems - bought them for about 110€ per stick, now 180€. But still cheaper than buying from Dell. 64GB is enough for me. Not sure how many sellers are offering 2x 64 GB CSoDimm - IIRC Crucial announced that.

I have the 18" with iGPU only and love it. Great display indoors and outdoors. Mobility is good for me. Worked in a train, Hotel no problem. WLAN and WWAN are great. Keyboard and touchpad good. Old Dock wd 19 dc works flawlessly with keyboard, LAN and two external displays plus internal display. No regrets 😀

Typically, Dell specs to the max available capacity they can test with and larger sticks which appear later will work as well, same with SSDs.

The WD19DC has two USB-C plugs and allows up to 210W. I guess the WD19S can only provide 130W, which is not even enough for the iGPU-only PMP18. I would expect it to work if you connect your power adapter and the WD19S - so, periphery from the Dock and power from your power adapter.

Yes, it is shown as compatible here dell_docking_compatibility_guide.pdf.external I have the Pro Max 18 Plus with iGPU only and that works flawlessly with my old WD19DC.

Nevertheless the keyboard works great for me, no problem with the given size.

On the 18 the keyboard width without numpad is 25,5cm. With all keys its 32,5cm. See screenshots to compare with a standard Cherry keyboard size, aligned on the left side.

I have one Kingston skc3000 4TB and one Adata SX8200 2TB - both without troubles. Kingston is of course faster due to PCIe 4: CrytalDiskMark 6800 MB/s read and 6200 MB/s write sequential and 540 read 490 write random.

I took the smallest RAM (CSoDimm) and SSD option to upgrade that myself. It came with hynix RAM and SSD. Screen is great - I would have chosen 1920x1200 even on 18" to have a better scaling fit with my external displays. So 2560x1600 is enough for me.

With light work the machine stays totally cool. With 65% battery and about 30% brightness Windows claims that it will last another 4 hours 40 minutes. Idling it goes up to 6h. Pretty nice.

Yeah, dock and power supply together should work.

My Max Pro Plus 18 arrived today and I just completed the SSD switch from my old 7680 - a few driver updates and reboots later I am up and running again. The Pro Max came with Raid On enabled, had to activate Advanced Settings to find the option to switch to AHCI/NVMe - otherwise my Win11 would not find the boot device. Screen is amazing. Works flawlessly with my WD19DC to connect 2 additional displays, USB mouse, keyboard and LAN - no extra power supply needed - guess that would be a different story for those with a dGPU where you might need to switch to the new SD25TB5 to get 280W.

My Pro Max Plus 18 shipped on 24th August from China to Germany - might arrive next week 🙂 RAM is already waiting 2x Kingston CSoDimm 32GB

How long does it run on battery on low use? Does it get hot on medium or high load?

Still no review from the new Dell Pro Max Plus 16/18. We'll order a Pro Max Plus 18" tomorrow. 265HX, iGPU only, CSoDimm (1x 16GB to upgrade myself to 2x 32GB). Should be delivered in 3 weeks, according to our sales rep.

CSoDimm 64 GB 418€ - thats the first time that the upgrade price from Dell from 16 to 64GB is not that much of an issue with 474€ - maybe a step in the right direction. We'll see how Dell behaves if the CSoDimm prices drop - SO-DIMM 64 GB is around 160€ and less.

Problem now is, that its not good old SODIMM but CSoDIMM which is not as widely available. Potentially this will fit That would be roughly the same price as SODIMM - 200€ for 64GB.

Dell Pro Max Plus is online in Australia: Dell Pro Max Plus 18 Inch Mobile Workstation Laptop | Dell Australia Now in germany as well: Dell Pro Max Plus 18 Zoll-Workstation – Leistung durch großes Display | Dell Deutschland