Dell Inspiron 9300 Review

[ski]

I would like to take the liberty to review this bad boy :)

Specifications

Pentium M 1.6GHz processor
1280 MB DDR2 RAM
60 GB 4500RPM hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Go 256MB
17" WUXGA LCD screen (1920x1200)
6 USB 2.0 ports
VGA out
DVI out
Composite out
8x DVD / 24x CD-RW combo drive
Stereo sound with internal subwoofer


The Good
The 17" widescreen is GORGEOUS. Gaming/video performance is incredible (albeit there's a 256MB graphics card in it), I have playable resolutions of up to max 1920x1200 with 30fps. I thought the internal subwoofer would be a joke or gimmick, but it actually makes using your laptop as a sound source acceptable. You can hardly tell the difference between a pair of cheap speakers and the 9300, so it serves its purpose as a portable player. Does not get too hot. Small thickness for its length, reasonable weight.

The Bad
Battery life is horrendous. I get about 1 hour of juice out of it. SLOW ARSE hard drive. They want you to pay $150 more for the same capacity, higher speed 7200RPM drive, and I just couldn't justify it. It is a major bottleneck for the system. Touchpad is a miss... sometimes non-responsive for 10 seconds.

Would I recommend it?
Not as readily as I wish I could. I used to have a 15.4" widescreen Inspiron 8600, and that was a really well-built machine. Upgrading to the 9300 wasn't all that I had expected. I would not recommend it if you're a road warrior. I am always near power with ANY of my laptops, and I have a power inverter in my car, so battery life is not too big of a deal for me. I would recommend it to anyone that plays games. I will never put money into a desktop gaming system again, when for $1500, you can get a high resolution widescreen monitor (they don't even have them for desktops yet at 17"), 256MB video card, strong processor, etc. plus the ability to not have to sit in the same chair every time you use your computer.

Score: 7/10

[Devhux]

I have the XPS2, which uses the same overall design as the 9300. Here's a few points:

1) The screen is indeed fantastic -- provided you don't get a dud. There are quite a few people who have received screens that seem to "sparkle" and/or have a high amount of light leakage. Not everyone notices this, but those that do tend to raise a big stink over it. I have a Samsung panel with a fair amount of light leakage on the bottom, but I've learned to live with it (for now).

2) That battery life figure seems very low. Are you sure you're using the Max. Battery option in Dell's Quickset utility? Keeping the processor running at the full 2GHz in Max. Performance mode is one way to kill your battery quickly, but even then, 1 hour seems way too low. Another option you might want to consider is getting Dell's 9-cell battery (I'm assuming with that battery life figure, you only have the 6-cell standard battery). As a comparison, I can get about 2 1/2 hours out of my XPS2, which has a more powerful GPU (the Geforce Go 6800 Ultra). This is with the 9-cell though.

3) Gaming on either of these systems is sweet -- the Ultra in my XPS2 simply lets me enable anti-aliasing (though at such high resolutions, the difference in quality isn't too noticeable unless you are really looking for it).

4) I ordered the 7200rpm hard drive, and while it's not as fast as a desktop drive (no notebook drive is currently), it's still fast enough for me. I can understand if you went with the 5400rpm drive though -- that one would probably be noticeably slower).

5) I've never had a problem with the touchpad -- but then again, I hate touchpad drivers so I didn't install them.

6) I personally find my XPS2 to have amazing build quality. Solid hinges, zero keyboard flex, etc. Everyone who sees this machine comments on the build quality in a good way.

Is this the perfect notebook for everybody? Nope (such a machine does not exist). As you stated, this is by no means a notebook for the road warrior -- it's just too big and heavy, and doesn't last long enough for such users. For the gamers however, the 9300 or XPS2 is a solid machine.

[Jeffbx]

$150 is too much for an upgrade to the same sized 7200RPM drive, but BELIVE me you'll want to make that upgrade.

You should be able to get yourself a 60GB 7200RPM drive for about $150 on the street - here's one at Buy.com (http://www.buy.com/prod/Hitachi_TravelStar_7K60_hard_drive_60_GB_ATA_100_7200RPM_08K0939/q/loc/40636/10365526.html).

Then ebay your slow-ass drive to recoup some of the difference. Your current drive is certainly a bottleneck, especially on a high end machine like that.