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Inspiron 9400 - First impressions - Page 2

post #21 of 33
2/9/06 at 7:15am
Thread Starter 

The Pix are here........

First of all size: a bit thicker than M30, not so much



Now the keyboards: my M30 isn't paradise, but at least it looks well design, apart from having the winkey in the upper part of it
The 9400 really has a poor design. Why did they have to squeeze they keyb with all that space available?

Still about the keyabord: a point for the 9400 here, when you place your wrists on the portable to type the M30 "bends", while the 9400 gives a very robust impression.

Defintely the 9400 isn't stylish....but probably style wasn't Dell's main goal.

Power On!

Remember that pix were taken with a 4mp camera, but scaled down to 800x600 to make reasonable posting, no flash; most of them are out of focus, but the point here is uneven luminosity of the 9400's screen

I've started setting the brightness of the 2 notebooks at 50%, but after a few shots I had to increase the delly's brightness to match Toshy's.


M30 Perfect; ignore the left part of the screen where it's noticeable a glow given by a mirror in front of the notebook with the shape of my shadow taking the pic.

9400 Judge yourself!


The desktop

M309400

M30 sports a clear, crisp image, evenly lighted....can't say the same for the 9400...check out the right side of the screen, the taskbar, especially in the clock area


screen saver:

M30 9400

Web pages (ugly dark areas on 9400)

M30 9400

Google

M30 9400 Notice the absence/flatness of contrast: the web page light blue bars on the Dell are barely visible.....

HDTUNE
Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 on a Toshy's Pentium M 1.6 (Banian)

Fujitsu on Duo Core 1.8Ghz

Unfair comparison here, the Travelstar outperforms the Fujitsu, but would you expect for a turtle when 2000 Euros have slipped out of your pocket?

Also consider that HDTune was run on a 10% free space on the Travelstar and 90% free on the Fujitsu, dunno if thise fact can alter results. As I've said before, boot on the Toshy, fully software bloated is faster than a "virgin" XP install on the 9400

The 9400, in this config has potential guts, but it looks to me an "incomplete" model: the screen is crappy and the disk is slow.

Go for higher options
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post #22 of 33
2/9/06 at 9:56am
That is some MAJOR light leakage!!

This is what pisses me off... How can Dell not tell that one of their lower end laptops has SIGNIFICANTLY less light leakage than one of their top of the line entertainment models which has it's huge screen as a major selling point.

Splitters!
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post #23 of 33
2/9/06 at 10:01am
Thread Starter 
I'm really embarassed now..... shall I send it back and ask for a replacement with the truelife WUXGA + a 7200 sporty HD or shall I just return it and amen?

Anyone that has compared the crappy vs the truelife? any pix
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post #24 of 33
2/9/06 at 12:03pm
Thread Starter 
It's over! I'm sending it back.
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post #25 of 33
2/9/06 at 1:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blutarsky
It's over! I'm sending it back.
Yeah I wouldn't settle for that kind of light leakage. I have the truelife screen and although it does have some leakage at the bottom, nowhere near what your pictures show. I also find a little bit of uneven lighting on black backgrounds but overall i'm still very pleased with the screen. It seems like your light leakage goes halfway up the screen.. not good.
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post #26 of 33
2/9/06 at 1:08pm
Thread Starter 
What hard disk have you got?
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post #27 of 33
2/10/06 at 12:07am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blutarsky
What hard disk have you got?
Well I didn't want to pay the outrageous upgrade to 7200rpm that they offered at the time so I stuck with the 80GB 5400rpm. It is a Hitachi drive, but seems fast enough for me. Since I have 2GB of ram, I turn off my page file to reduce harddisk access.
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post #28 of 33
2/10/06 at 12:25am
7200 drives arent worth the extra heat and power consumption that comes with it. 5400 rpm is plenty fast!
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post #29 of 33
2/10/06 at 12:34am
wow ur screen is horrible, i'd ask for a replacement if i were you.
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post #30 of 33
2/10/06 at 12:35am
I'm also happy with the Hitachi 80GB 5400 drive.....Working great so far
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post #31 of 33
2/10/06 at 6:00am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by ihyln
7200 drives arent worth the extra heat and power consumption that comes with it. 5400 rpm is plenty fast!
Absolutely yes, my friend.

I guarantee there's no extra heat and power consumption is basically the same, have a go on Hitachi's web site and browse the specs.

But performance is impressive, the system benefits like no other solution.... there's no CPU upgrade if your disk susbsystem is slow.

And in these days, even if your doing CPU intensive tasks, you're sitting on disk intensive operating system, so sooner or later you'll have to face your bottleneck anyway.

Compare the performance of the two disks (screenshots I've posted)

Screen refresh looked faster on the Delly, but usability looked faster on the M30. (I'm not consideraing gaming here)

And I was quite happy about Toshy's 4200, reviewed as an excellent disk, but I'd never go back.
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post #32 of 33
2/10/06 at 6:10am
If those pictures are truly representative of your screen, then that is really horrible. I cannot see the light leakage at all on my 9400 anymore, unless it is under a certain type of lighting and only then on an all black screen (such as windows screen saver). I definitely cant see it at all under normal use - you really should get another lcd (imo). If it's not that bad, and it was just the camera, then it's up to you.

If you're not that happy with it, you really should return or exchange it.
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post #33 of 33
2/10/06 at 4:51pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ihyln
7200 drives arent worth the extra heat and power consumption that comes with it. 5400 rpm is plenty fast!
I've now here the best situation to tell it. A 9300 with a 5.400 and a 9400 with a 7.200rpms. Really no heat difference, only this:

i9300 - 5.400 Fujitsu MHV 2080AH IDE:

Timing cached reads: 2892 MB in 2.00 sec = 1445,28 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 100 MB in 3.02 sec = 33,12 MB/sec

i9400 - 7.200 Hitachi HTS72108 (7k100) SATA:
Timing cached reads: 4424 MB in 2.00 sec = 2212,66 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 132 MB in 3.03 sec = 43,59 MB/sec

The first cached reads is more from the mobile chip, but the disk reads says all about the BIG difference and what I've seen here while (re)installing...

Marcus
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