Dell Inspiron 9300 Review.
Please leaeve comments on how you feel about my review and what ive said as well... this is my first review and Id like to know what I should and shouldnt include as well. hell the review might be completely useless... if so please tell me heh so I know not to waste my time again. ^_^ anyway onto the review.
Overview and comments
Let me just start off by saying im not a dell fanboy nor do I like dell at all to be honest. I had bought a desktop from them once, and aside from being a crappy desktop the support at the time (phone) was terrible... I was put on the singing answering machine for about 4 hours (yes literally... I had to put the phone on speaker phone and when I finally got through to someone and starting saying my problem, the line was cut. ) since then I became more experienced with desktops and started building my own but still opted never to choose a dell again. However for notebook it came down to dell or abs. My budget was not cheap... it was around 1500 and I basically came around to choosing a dell. The reason was because of warranty (Yes I could have gotten a sager but the problem was with warranty) ... With dell I was able to get a 3 year full coverage. so with this I ordered my dell and prayed. Yes I prayed because of the crappy reviews I heard of the screen and its light leakage and sparkle effect. Anyway on to the actual review.
Ordering Process
The ordering with dell was fairly easy. Navigating around the site was pretty easy but pretty damn clustered. As far as ordering everything went through and got approved within same day (christmas ... go figure) and the estimated ship date was January 3rd. I figured its dell they probably go slow in making the notebook. As I tracked the process (once everyday at nightime) I found that dell didnt even start making the laptop till January 2nd! This boggled me and kinda pissed me off, but when I thought it over it made sense because more people probably ordered before me and first come first serve blah blah blah. So I was fine with it as long as I was getting the notebook at the date forementioned by them. (January 6th-!0th). Then I got the crud email. The email saying there was a delay in the making of my notebook and it wont be shipped until the 10th. I checked online on the status and it was some crap dealing with the boxing of the notebook .... err what the hell. Anyway my first thought was calling up dell... then the flashback of the 4 hour wait kicked in and I opted for a new solution... I found some java chat thing with a dell representative. Within a minute I was connected to a representative and within another 5 minutes the very helpful dell rep offered me a solution I was glad with. (the reason why the delay was unnacceptable was because it would ship to my home and I go back to college on the 10th meaning once it gets home I would have to pay money again to get it shipped to college) She offered me overnight delivery and if the delay had held out to the 10th then the shpping address would change to my college address. I couldnt be happier with the offer and I gladly accepted. Luckily, the next day the boxing delay was fixed and put on the shipping. I recieved my notebook next day. (Jan 6th) So basically the infamous dell support was shunted when I found the online dell support chat. Thank god
.
Parts ordered :
Dell Inspiron 9300
Pentium M 760 2ghz 533 mhzfsb
17 in LCD Display With TrueLife [WUXGA (1920x1600)]
1 Gig DDR2 533 Mhz (2x 512 mb chips)
256 meg Nvidia Geforce go 6800
60 Gig Ultra ATA 7200 rpm (OBviously a hitachi -_-' )
XP Pro SP2
Intel Wireless Pro 2200 With Bluetooth
53 W/hr 6 cell lithium ion battery
8x DVD +/- RW dual layer drive
3 Year full coverage warratny.
Total Price: about 1800 ( Was more than I wanted to budget but I felt it was ok after all it was mainly the warranty that caused this... the warranty being about 250 and the price of 1800 being after taxes etc. [Actual price was 1795.49])
Comment about lcd display
I opted for truelife because I do use a 21 inch ViewSonic LCD (VP210B) and find it to be great just I wish it had a more fluidy feel to it, according to my previous research I found that what I was looking for was the gloss coat put on lcds. So naturally I was willing to pay the extra 100 for the upgrade to true life.
Comment about battery and other parts
I got the standard 6 cell battery because mainly I couldnt afford the extra 100 dollars for jst a 3 cell upgrade. I knew the battery life would be crappy and increasingit by half hour didnt really matter to me. I got bluetooth because my phone is capable of bluetooth and its a hell lot better then having to end up buying a datacable for the phone. I bought 2 ghz processor because I felt 1.86 wouldnt be quite enough however the upgrade for 2.2 was just way to much (300) willthe upgrade to 2 was only 100 (heh only I should word better ^_^) I got the 256 meg geforce 6800 go because I do want this notebook for games and well that was the best choice (well hell it was actaully teh only real choice the other one being ati x300 [I would only choose ati x600 or better)
and Finally on to the actual review
Packaging and build
Attachment 7752 As you can see, not much comes in the box ^^ this is a good thing in my opinion as I dont have to go through much in the packing list to make sure everything was there. And let me say at first I was shocked that they forgot my xp pro disc then I saw what others saw and were probably just as disappointed as I was.
Attachment 7753
Yep thats right see that dell seemingly looking cd on the peice of paper... its not its a piece of paper stating how you can burn the xp pro disc if ou need to. This ticked me off because that just meant dell was b eing lazy and on top of which it doesnt cost much to burn the cd themselves. This is mainly an exaggerated gripe on my part... its not really a big deal, and luckily my friend (goes to same college as me ) was home and had the universitys xp pro cd with him and brought it over. Within minutes the sucker was reformatted... but ill save more of that later.
The overall build was fairly nice however a TON of plastic. Never seen a notebook look and feel so plastic. There are white surroundings bordering the laptop yes "bumpers" if you will as mentioned in other 9300 reviews. This is not eyepleasing at all but if I was looking for eye candy I would have gotten a notebook other than dell. The screen has a 180 degree tilt and is fluid yet sturdy as I push it it moves easy yet doesnt feell ike its just going to fly off. The notebook came with a "carbon fiber snap on" though I didnt order (lucky ^_^) and just puttin it out there... its not real carbon fiber... its painted on to look like it... just in case if you cant tell by the pictures :P
Attachment 7761
Attachment 7762
Some top and bottom views there, theres a subwoofer on the bottom towards the mid there, as small as it is it packs a pretty big punch. Sound from the notebook is LOUD and this is only half way up on the windows audio and quarter way up on winamp.
Attachment 7751
Attachment 7754
Attachment 7755 Flash was on when I took these pictures.. mainly to see how well it deflected the light.. the screen with true life that is.
Attachment 7760
As you can see from above the back of the insprion is where most of the ports are located here you can find a dvi and analog out which is very handy especially for people who may like to run two monitors at once. Also located here are four usb ports vertically the usb ports are upright and upside down allowing for the best allotment of usb devices as they wont be stuck together going in. (its hard to word it properly but to give an example take two usb wires and hold them upright in the same direction (the white bottom on the bottom of both for instance) and try and put them into adjacent usb ports.
Also located here is the ethernet port and 56 k modem port as well as the ac power input and s-video out... I also have to give it to dell for putting in an Svideo to rca converter.
Attachment 7759
Above is the left hand side of the inspiron. The dvd drive is located here as well as two more usb ports.. This strikes me odd as I would have liked the usb ports on the right hand side for a mouse etc but since I use the mx1000 laser mouse it doesnt really make a difference, I believe dell put those there for external devices such as floppies and what not.
Attachment 7758
Up top is the right hand side of the notebook. Here you can find SD card port firewire and headphone as well as microphone jack. Also extension slot.
Attachment 7757
Above is the front... It is rather interesting to me actually. The speakers are tehre to the left and right if you dont notice that yet :P but the media buttons are what is a nice touch in my opinion. There is a mute volume up volume down played/pause previous forward and stop button. Because of the way they are designed ; they are sticking out from a groove from the straight frame and further more that whole area (speakers and all) are angled in further from the top and bottom so if you put the notebook in a backpack or something unless you have something small pushing against them, they are not going to press... Im sure this wasnt dell's intention but its kinda cool. Another cool thing is when you press them a blue led lights up around the button, I kinda wish they were on all the time... they look pretty cool heh.
Also you can see the mouse pad there, theres two ovals for vertical scrolling and side scrolling, in actuality these are REALLY handy, I never thought they would be but they seriously are. Also I suck with mousepads but I have found this one to be perfect, its grooved in further down so when Im typing I dont move the mouse, this is also do to the fact of all that wrist space available :P . The mousepad is also textured so it helps in the sense that the pointer isnt flying off the screen (yeah I could just mess with the sensitivity in windows but Id rather it just work from open, and its not like dell had anything to do with the sensitivty befcause its a fresh install of xp pro from the uni not from dell. This is strictly due to the mousepad build not to any software. This is why I find the mousepad to excel past others like Ive seen on HP and toshiba (Roomates have those brands and Ive tried all three laptops and I seriously hate typing because of the mouse pad and using the mousepad is even worse on those 3 laptops. )
Anoter miniature gripe is about the keyboard, its kinda small for all the space available.. for instance it could be moved over to the left and a numpad stuck to the right, but this really isnt a big deal as the keyboard is more then big enough to type without making mistakes. I also can see the under of the keyboard (the white which basically if you take off the key youll see the cylndrical thing holding the black key to the white [again hard to explain but people who have taken apart a keyboard should know what Im talking about] anyway it doesnt really matter because unless I actually tried the keys wont come off.
Another interesting thing found on the top of the notebook, are the two exhausts next to the keyboard and the indicators for bluetooth and the battery etc. I heard in some reviews about a wifi button being somewherethat didnt work.... I can't find it -_-' so maybe dell took it out.
Well now that im done ranting about the build on to actually turning the sucket on !
Turning on for first time
Turning the notebook on for the first time took me to the xp pro setup (of an acccount etc) [Yeah I skipped lookin into the bios for now] as soon as the setup was done with and it took me to the actaull xp pro user interface, I was half astonished and half freaked out... the load time wasnt bad... but not great but when I found the dell signature of a billion programs loaded up including googletoolbar and what not (dont get me wrong I dont mind google toolbar but I dont use IE I use firefox and google toolbar isnt needied in firefox)
Attachment 7756
If you look at the taskbar my reaction to that is
How can anyone manage to load up that much crap on startup. Right after seeing this, I continued to task manager to see how many processes were going on. 56. What the hell. This is when I quickly called my friend up and asked him to bring over the universitys xp pro. I quickly went to the dell site (though it wasnt quick all the programs starting up for the first time kept bring up stupid crap like registration and what not) and I downloaded all the drivers then went to the actual makers sites to see which drivers I could get that were more updated. After that I burned a cd with the drivers and by that time my friend had come over so I had proceeded to reformatting the comp with a fresh non dell copy of xp pro. after deleting the partions dell made and making my own set I proceeeded to install xp pro... hte format took about 15 minutes on ntfs normal (not quick) I was pretty happy with this as Ive never seen this happen not even on my desktop (which is pretty freaking good mind you though its amd fx 53 and now they are at lke 57 or somethin) the whole xp setup finished within about an hour. Now I installed all the missing drivers to get rid of all those annoying question marks in the hardware manager. I then continued to install my select programs like avg adaware trillian sygatefirewall (I was pissed norton bought out sygate -_-' ) and when all that was done I went to msconfig and made sure nothing not needed was not running. When I rebooted after installing everything and updating xp sp2 to the latest updates and what not I went back to task manager and checked the running processes and the total was now cut down to 22. Still a little to much in my opinion but since I have bluetooth on and wireless on etc I felt it was ok. Oh yeah if anyone is wondering the startup time from pressing the button to getting to the xp logon screen is about 15 seconds. So after all those startup programs and trillian was installed I went on to install guild wars to see how well it would play. I must say im impressed. I played guild wars at 1920 x 1600 res at highest settings with 2 x anti aliasing flawless. This actually amazed me even though it should be like this considering its an mmorpg and not an fps so not as many dynamics to worry about. the fps was around 40-50(not to great but when you consider the res and antialiasing and texture settings etc... thats pretty nuts since its no 7800 with sli ). I have yet to see how an fps will handle since I left ut2k4 and hl2 at campus and Im to lazy to download hl2 from steam for free. I then continued to running 3dmark 2005 at 1920 x 1600 res with 2 AA and the test ran REAL shitty like 9 fps or something I was pissed in the end the benchmarks came to around 1887. CPU marks about 4697. I then changed the res to the 1024 widescreen res (forget height and to lazy to check heh^_^) the marks were 5786 for 3dmarks and cpu marks were about the same. It strikes me odd to see such a difference in marks by switching res but whatever. Maybe I ran the program wrong or something 
. After this I went on to install my graphics apps. Photoshop mainly I wanted to install 3ds max but I think I left the cd at campus (its probably lost 
)I also installed the office 2003 suite. (dont have xp suite didnt opt to buy it with the delleither) In case youre wondering Im VERY VERY impressed in the load time of photoshop... literally less than two seconds. its amazing in my opinion.
Sound quality & Battery life
As I felt I couldnt afford to pay 100 dollars extra on getting the soundblaster audigy card installed into the notebook I stuck to the onboard audio. Its actually very good. Much better than say motherboard onboard audio I have foudn in asus and abit. Even at max volume (which is very loud I can hear it with teh door closed and standing 5 feet from it on other side with the notebook on the opposite side of the room) there is slight distortion and not much of that annoying hum you hear in the onboard audio. This is blasting everything from Jay Z to Tupac to Linkin Park to Van Halen.
The battery life is very crappy, but what do you expect it is supposed to be a desktop replacement. The battery life when I got it the battery was at 78 percent within 5 minutes (not sure why) but the rest of the time on the battery was about 1.5 hours when I charged it up fully and let it go again it was about 2.5 hours total playing winamp and anime in wmp. not bad at all but wont be enough for my flight back to college, so Im hoping theres an inflight movie to kill the other 2 hours ^^.
LCD DISPLAY
Ive seen many and I mean MANY rants about the lcd on the inspiron 9300 mainly about its "Light leakage" and "Sparkle Effect" and though I can't completely speak for everone (hell I cant at all) I can say these people played a really big part in my hesitation for buying this laptop. And if their laptops were like mine, let me say,these people that complain about it being a huge problem are exagerating drama queens. BY FAR. I do notice a sparkling effectg but barely and only on super bright colors, and I have to really put my face close to really notice it (about 2-3 inches away from screen) so I can only think these people are blind or something. The light leakage is there but its not "HUGE" as stated in a cnet review about how bad dell is etc. the light leakage could be compared to about the standard size of the taskbar but not as long (Height wise its about that) on top and on bottom of lcd display. This leakage is highly noticeable on dark colors but Ill be honest even when playing a dvd I do notice it at first but as I get into the dvd (actaully interested in it) then that goes away... same way I can watch a widescreen movie on a letterbox tv.. the problem of caringabout it just goes away. and on bright colors and anycolor except black actaully its barely noticeable... again from what I have seen on my notebook an exagerated problem. The display itself is very sharp... my eyes are generally attuned to a 1600 x 1200 res on 21 inch screen but I dont have to squint at 1920 x 1600 res on this 17 inch screen and I did not up the size of the text or icons either... its all standard as windows comes when it installs. My eyes are about 1.75 bottoms of the laptop away from the display( by bottoms I mean from the bottom of the lcd display to where the media buttons are in the front. The LCD could be brighter I guess but put it this way... at max brightness I kinda feel its a bit to much. I lowered it from the max brightness by one level.
Overheating & noise
The notebook so far has been left on about 6 hours no elevation above to let the bottom ventilate sitting directly on a flat table. its not very hot at all. Ive felt my roomates hp and my next door roomates toshiba and they are much much hotter than this. Keep in mind this after playing guild wars for a bit and playing winamp and wmp for a while to etc. not to mention typing this review @_@. The bottom of the laptop is hot dont get me wrong but not enough to bug you if it was on your lap. And normally I elevate my laptop with some books along the edges to let some air underneath so its really not a big deal at all. Another good note is that the notebook is big enough so that you dont have to squeeze your legs together to keep the notebook balanced. I can keep my legs the way I normally sit and the laptop balances perfect further moer it allows more ventilation to ^_^. The noise on the laptop is litterally not noticeable. I dont notice the fans at all... sometimes I wonder if the fans are even on but I do feel some air being pushed around so I guess they are. As far as other noises go the cd drive makes the spin up noise but I figure thats inavoidable also it makes these funky beeps to when its loading the cd its not annoying though....yet. The harddrive is quiet as hell though even loading up guild wars and photoshop at the same time (sorry can't load much more extensive progs -_-') or while running 3dmark I didnt hear the harddrive spin up faster or whatever it does to make that annoying sounds other notebooks make.
Conclusion Bottom Line and Reccomendation
In conclusion Im very happy with the overall design quality of the notebook. I honestly feel I cant' have gotten much better for my money. (Yes I know many of you will argue this but this is what I as in ME not you feel. ) My only gripes are not major ones and im really happy with the mousepad which I really have gripes about on other notebooks, and I fidn the problems associated with the lcd display to be apparent but COMPLETELY overexaggerated by far. If most notebooks are like mine then I find that the people complaining are just being extremely picky and retarded.
If someone would ask me if I would recomend the 9300 I would reccomend it handsdown. REasoning behind it being the warranty can't be beat and furthermore I foudn that the notebook itself is very good. This may change over time and I will be updating this review later on as I get to campus and am able to run more comprehensive tests. however as of now I am EXTREMELY pleased with this notebook and am 96 percent sure that it will perform well with my fps games back at campus (UT2k4 , HL2 , CS , BF2).
Please leaeve comments on how you feel about my review and what ive said as well... this is my first review and Id like to know what I should and shouldnt include as well. hell the review might be completely useless... if so please tell me heh so I know not to waste my time again. ^_^ anyway onto the review.
Overview and comments
Let me just start off by saying im not a dell fanboy nor do I like dell at all to be honest. I had bought a desktop from them once, and aside from being a crappy desktop the support at the time (phone) was terrible... I was put on the singing answering machine for about 4 hours (yes literally... I had to put the phone on speaker phone and when I finally got through to someone and starting saying my problem, the line was cut. ) since then I became more experienced with desktops and started building my own but still opted never to choose a dell again. However for notebook it came down to dell or abs. My budget was not cheap... it was around 1500 and I basically came around to choosing a dell. The reason was because of warranty (Yes I could have gotten a sager but the problem was with warranty) ... With dell I was able to get a 3 year full coverage. so with this I ordered my dell and prayed. Yes I prayed because of the crappy reviews I heard of the screen and its light leakage and sparkle effect. Anyway on to the actual review.
Ordering Process
The ordering with dell was fairly easy. Navigating around the site was pretty easy but pretty damn clustered. As far as ordering everything went through and got approved within same day (christmas ... go figure) and the estimated ship date was January 3rd. I figured its dell they probably go slow in making the notebook. As I tracked the process (once everyday at nightime) I found that dell didnt even start making the laptop till January 2nd! This boggled me and kinda pissed me off, but when I thought it over it made sense because more people probably ordered before me and first come first serve blah blah blah. So I was fine with it as long as I was getting the notebook at the date forementioned by them. (January 6th-!0th). Then I got the crud email. The email saying there was a delay in the making of my notebook and it wont be shipped until the 10th. I checked online on the status and it was some crap dealing with the boxing of the notebook .... err what the hell. Anyway my first thought was calling up dell... then the flashback of the 4 hour wait kicked in and I opted for a new solution... I found some java chat thing with a dell representative. Within a minute I was connected to a representative and within another 5 minutes the very helpful dell rep offered me a solution I was glad with. (the reason why the delay was unnacceptable was because it would ship to my home and I go back to college on the 10th meaning once it gets home I would have to pay money again to get it shipped to college) She offered me overnight delivery and if the delay had held out to the 10th then the shpping address would change to my college address. I couldnt be happier with the offer and I gladly accepted. Luckily, the next day the boxing delay was fixed and put on the shipping. I recieved my notebook next day. (Jan 6th) So basically the infamous dell support was shunted when I found the online dell support chat. Thank god
. Parts ordered :
Dell Inspiron 9300
Pentium M 760 2ghz 533 mhzfsb
17 in LCD Display With TrueLife [WUXGA (1920x1600)]
1 Gig DDR2 533 Mhz (2x 512 mb chips)
256 meg Nvidia Geforce go 6800
60 Gig Ultra ATA 7200 rpm (OBviously a hitachi -_-' )
XP Pro SP2
Intel Wireless Pro 2200 With Bluetooth
53 W/hr 6 cell lithium ion battery
8x DVD +/- RW dual layer drive
3 Year full coverage warratny.
Total Price: about 1800 ( Was more than I wanted to budget but I felt it was ok after all it was mainly the warranty that caused this... the warranty being about 250 and the price of 1800 being after taxes etc. [Actual price was 1795.49])
Comment about lcd display
I opted for truelife because I do use a 21 inch ViewSonic LCD (VP210B) and find it to be great just I wish it had a more fluidy feel to it, according to my previous research I found that what I was looking for was the gloss coat put on lcds. So naturally I was willing to pay the extra 100 for the upgrade to true life.
Comment about battery and other parts
I got the standard 6 cell battery because mainly I couldnt afford the extra 100 dollars for jst a 3 cell upgrade. I knew the battery life would be crappy and increasingit by half hour didnt really matter to me. I got bluetooth because my phone is capable of bluetooth and its a hell lot better then having to end up buying a datacable for the phone. I bought 2 ghz processor because I felt 1.86 wouldnt be quite enough however the upgrade for 2.2 was just way to much (300) willthe upgrade to 2 was only 100 (heh only I should word better ^_^) I got the 256 meg geforce 6800 go because I do want this notebook for games and well that was the best choice (well hell it was actaully teh only real choice the other one being ati x300 [I would only choose ati x600 or better)
and Finally on to the actual review
Packaging and build
Attachment 7752 As you can see, not much comes in the box ^^ this is a good thing in my opinion as I dont have to go through much in the packing list to make sure everything was there. And let me say at first I was shocked that they forgot my xp pro disc then I saw what others saw and were probably just as disappointed as I was.
Attachment 7753
Yep thats right see that dell seemingly looking cd on the peice of paper... its not its a piece of paper stating how you can burn the xp pro disc if ou need to. This ticked me off because that just meant dell was b eing lazy and on top of which it doesnt cost much to burn the cd themselves. This is mainly an exaggerated gripe on my part... its not really a big deal, and luckily my friend (goes to same college as me ) was home and had the universitys xp pro cd with him and brought it over. Within minutes the sucker was reformatted... but ill save more of that later.
The overall build was fairly nice however a TON of plastic. Never seen a notebook look and feel so plastic. There are white surroundings bordering the laptop yes "bumpers" if you will as mentioned in other 9300 reviews. This is not eyepleasing at all but if I was looking for eye candy I would have gotten a notebook other than dell. The screen has a 180 degree tilt and is fluid yet sturdy as I push it it moves easy yet doesnt feell ike its just going to fly off. The notebook came with a "carbon fiber snap on" though I didnt order (lucky ^_^) and just puttin it out there... its not real carbon fiber... its painted on to look like it... just in case if you cant tell by the pictures :P
Attachment 7761
Attachment 7762
Some top and bottom views there, theres a subwoofer on the bottom towards the mid there, as small as it is it packs a pretty big punch. Sound from the notebook is LOUD and this is only half way up on the windows audio and quarter way up on winamp.
Attachment 7751
Attachment 7754
Attachment 7755 Flash was on when I took these pictures.. mainly to see how well it deflected the light.. the screen with true life that is.
Attachment 7760
As you can see from above the back of the insprion is where most of the ports are located here you can find a dvi and analog out which is very handy especially for people who may like to run two monitors at once. Also located here are four usb ports vertically the usb ports are upright and upside down allowing for the best allotment of usb devices as they wont be stuck together going in. (its hard to word it properly but to give an example take two usb wires and hold them upright in the same direction (the white bottom on the bottom of both for instance) and try and put them into adjacent usb ports.
Also located here is the ethernet port and 56 k modem port as well as the ac power input and s-video out... I also have to give it to dell for putting in an Svideo to rca converter.
Attachment 7759
Above is the left hand side of the inspiron. The dvd drive is located here as well as two more usb ports.. This strikes me odd as I would have liked the usb ports on the right hand side for a mouse etc but since I use the mx1000 laser mouse it doesnt really make a difference, I believe dell put those there for external devices such as floppies and what not.
Attachment 7758
Up top is the right hand side of the notebook. Here you can find SD card port firewire and headphone as well as microphone jack. Also extension slot.
Attachment 7757
Above is the front... It is rather interesting to me actually. The speakers are tehre to the left and right if you dont notice that yet :P but the media buttons are what is a nice touch in my opinion. There is a mute volume up volume down played/pause previous forward and stop button. Because of the way they are designed ; they are sticking out from a groove from the straight frame and further more that whole area (speakers and all) are angled in further from the top and bottom so if you put the notebook in a backpack or something unless you have something small pushing against them, they are not going to press... Im sure this wasnt dell's intention but its kinda cool. Another cool thing is when you press them a blue led lights up around the button, I kinda wish they were on all the time... they look pretty cool heh.
Also you can see the mouse pad there, theres two ovals for vertical scrolling and side scrolling, in actuality these are REALLY handy, I never thought they would be but they seriously are. Also I suck with mousepads but I have found this one to be perfect, its grooved in further down so when Im typing I dont move the mouse, this is also do to the fact of all that wrist space available :P . The mousepad is also textured so it helps in the sense that the pointer isnt flying off the screen (yeah I could just mess with the sensitivity in windows but Id rather it just work from open, and its not like dell had anything to do with the sensitivty befcause its a fresh install of xp pro from the uni not from dell. This is strictly due to the mousepad build not to any software. This is why I find the mousepad to excel past others like Ive seen on HP and toshiba (Roomates have those brands and Ive tried all three laptops and I seriously hate typing because of the mouse pad and using the mousepad is even worse on those 3 laptops. )
Anoter miniature gripe is about the keyboard, its kinda small for all the space available.. for instance it could be moved over to the left and a numpad stuck to the right, but this really isnt a big deal as the keyboard is more then big enough to type without making mistakes. I also can see the under of the keyboard (the white which basically if you take off the key youll see the cylndrical thing holding the black key to the white [again hard to explain but people who have taken apart a keyboard should know what Im talking about] anyway it doesnt really matter because unless I actually tried the keys wont come off.
Another interesting thing found on the top of the notebook, are the two exhausts next to the keyboard and the indicators for bluetooth and the battery etc. I heard in some reviews about a wifi button being somewherethat didnt work.... I can't find it -_-' so maybe dell took it out.
Well now that im done ranting about the build on to actually turning the sucket on !
Turning on for first time
Turning the notebook on for the first time took me to the xp pro setup (of an acccount etc) [Yeah I skipped lookin into the bios for now] as soon as the setup was done with and it took me to the actaull xp pro user interface, I was half astonished and half freaked out... the load time wasnt bad... but not great but when I found the dell signature of a billion programs loaded up including googletoolbar and what not (dont get me wrong I dont mind google toolbar but I dont use IE I use firefox and google toolbar isnt needied in firefox)
Attachment 7756
If you look at the taskbar my reaction to that is
How can anyone manage to load up that much crap on startup. Right after seeing this, I continued to task manager to see how many processes were going on. 56. What the hell. This is when I quickly called my friend up and asked him to bring over the universitys xp pro. I quickly went to the dell site (though it wasnt quick all the programs starting up for the first time kept bring up stupid crap like registration and what not) and I downloaded all the drivers then went to the actual makers sites to see which drivers I could get that were more updated. After that I burned a cd with the drivers and by that time my friend had come over so I had proceeded to reformatting the comp with a fresh non dell copy of xp pro. after deleting the partions dell made and making my own set I proceeeded to install xp pro... hte format took about 15 minutes on ntfs normal (not quick) I was pretty happy with this as Ive never seen this happen not even on my desktop (which is pretty freaking good mind you though its amd fx 53 and now they are at lke 57 or somethin) the whole xp setup finished within about an hour. Now I installed all the missing drivers to get rid of all those annoying question marks in the hardware manager. I then continued to install my select programs like avg adaware trillian sygatefirewall (I was pissed norton bought out sygate -_-' ) and when all that was done I went to msconfig and made sure nothing not needed was not running. When I rebooted after installing everything and updating xp sp2 to the latest updates and what not I went back to task manager and checked the running processes and the total was now cut down to 22. Still a little to much in my opinion but since I have bluetooth on and wireless on etc I felt it was ok. Oh yeah if anyone is wondering the startup time from pressing the button to getting to the xp logon screen is about 15 seconds. So after all those startup programs and trillian was installed I went on to install guild wars to see how well it would play. I must say im impressed. I played guild wars at 1920 x 1600 res at highest settings with 2 x anti aliasing flawless. This actually amazed me even though it should be like this considering its an mmorpg and not an fps so not as many dynamics to worry about. the fps was around 40-50(not to great but when you consider the res and antialiasing and texture settings etc... thats pretty nuts since its no 7800 with sli ). I have yet to see how an fps will handle since I left ut2k4 and hl2 at campus and Im to lazy to download hl2 from steam for free. I then continued to running 3dmark 2005 at 1920 x 1600 res with 2 AA and the test ran REAL shitty like 9 fps or something I was pissed in the end the benchmarks came to around 1887. CPU marks about 4697. I then changed the res to the 1024 widescreen res (forget height and to lazy to check heh^_^) the marks were 5786 for 3dmarks and cpu marks were about the same. It strikes me odd to see such a difference in marks by switching res but whatever. Maybe I ran the program wrong or something . After this I went on to install my graphics apps. Photoshop mainly I wanted to install 3ds max but I think I left the cd at campus (its probably lost )I also installed the office 2003 suite. (dont have xp suite didnt opt to buy it with the delleither) In case youre wondering Im VERY VERY impressed in the load time of photoshop... literally less than two seconds. its amazing in my opinion. Sound quality & Battery life
As I felt I couldnt afford to pay 100 dollars extra on getting the soundblaster audigy card installed into the notebook I stuck to the onboard audio. Its actually very good. Much better than say motherboard onboard audio I have foudn in asus and abit. Even at max volume (which is very loud I can hear it with teh door closed and standing 5 feet from it on other side with the notebook on the opposite side of the room) there is slight distortion and not much of that annoying hum you hear in the onboard audio. This is blasting everything from Jay Z to Tupac to Linkin Park to Van Halen.
The battery life is very crappy, but what do you expect it is supposed to be a desktop replacement. The battery life when I got it the battery was at 78 percent within 5 minutes (not sure why) but the rest of the time on the battery was about 1.5 hours when I charged it up fully and let it go again it was about 2.5 hours total playing winamp and anime in wmp. not bad at all but wont be enough for my flight back to college, so Im hoping theres an inflight movie to kill the other 2 hours ^^.
LCD DISPLAY
Ive seen many and I mean MANY rants about the lcd on the inspiron 9300 mainly about its "Light leakage" and "Sparkle Effect" and though I can't completely speak for everone (hell I cant at all) I can say these people played a really big part in my hesitation for buying this laptop. And if their laptops were like mine, let me say,these people that complain about it being a huge problem are exagerating drama queens. BY FAR. I do notice a sparkling effectg but barely and only on super bright colors, and I have to really put my face close to really notice it (about 2-3 inches away from screen) so I can only think these people are blind or something. The light leakage is there but its not "HUGE" as stated in a cnet review about how bad dell is etc. the light leakage could be compared to about the standard size of the taskbar but not as long (Height wise its about that) on top and on bottom of lcd display. This leakage is highly noticeable on dark colors but Ill be honest even when playing a dvd I do notice it at first but as I get into the dvd (actaully interested in it) then that goes away... same way I can watch a widescreen movie on a letterbox tv.. the problem of caringabout it just goes away. and on bright colors and anycolor except black actaully its barely noticeable... again from what I have seen on my notebook an exagerated problem. The display itself is very sharp... my eyes are generally attuned to a 1600 x 1200 res on 21 inch screen but I dont have to squint at 1920 x 1600 res on this 17 inch screen and I did not up the size of the text or icons either... its all standard as windows comes when it installs. My eyes are about 1.75 bottoms of the laptop away from the display( by bottoms I mean from the bottom of the lcd display to where the media buttons are in the front. The LCD could be brighter I guess but put it this way... at max brightness I kinda feel its a bit to much. I lowered it from the max brightness by one level.
Overheating & noise
The notebook so far has been left on about 6 hours no elevation above to let the bottom ventilate sitting directly on a flat table. its not very hot at all. Ive felt my roomates hp and my next door roomates toshiba and they are much much hotter than this. Keep in mind this after playing guild wars for a bit and playing winamp and wmp for a while to etc. not to mention typing this review @_@. The bottom of the laptop is hot dont get me wrong but not enough to bug you if it was on your lap. And normally I elevate my laptop with some books along the edges to let some air underneath so its really not a big deal at all. Another good note is that the notebook is big enough so that you dont have to squeeze your legs together to keep the notebook balanced. I can keep my legs the way I normally sit and the laptop balances perfect further moer it allows more ventilation to ^_^. The noise on the laptop is litterally not noticeable. I dont notice the fans at all... sometimes I wonder if the fans are even on but I do feel some air being pushed around so I guess they are. As far as other noises go the cd drive makes the spin up noise but I figure thats inavoidable also it makes these funky beeps to when its loading the cd its not annoying though....yet. The harddrive is quiet as hell though even loading up guild wars and photoshop at the same time (sorry can't load much more extensive progs -_-') or while running 3dmark I didnt hear the harddrive spin up faster or whatever it does to make that annoying sounds other notebooks make.
Conclusion Bottom Line and Reccomendation
In conclusion Im very happy with the overall design quality of the notebook. I honestly feel I cant' have gotten much better for my money. (Yes I know many of you will argue this but this is what I as in ME not you feel. ) My only gripes are not major ones and im really happy with the mousepad which I really have gripes about on other notebooks, and I fidn the problems associated with the lcd display to be apparent but COMPLETELY overexaggerated by far. If most notebooks are like mine then I find that the people complaining are just being extremely picky and retarded.
If someone would ask me if I would recomend the 9300 I would reccomend it handsdown. REasoning behind it being the warranty can't be beat and furthermore I foudn that the notebook itself is very good. This may change over time and I will be updating this review later on as I get to campus and am able to run more comprehensive tests. however as of now I am EXTREMELY pleased with this notebook and am 96 percent sure that it will perform well with my fps games back at campus (UT2k4 , HL2 , CS , BF2).
lol
