Well...after reading and researching here about the DELL Inspiron 9200, I was set to buy it. The unit I was after had the MR9700, P-M 1.8, 60 gig 7200 RPM, 512 RAM, Wireless, and the standard WXGA 17" Widescreen. The price was about $1600 shipped...with 3 months of no interest from Dell...for well-qualified consumers.
Before I ordered, I wanted to hit my local brick and mortar stores to check the differences between UltraBrite Screens and standard screens. I walked around a bit and decided I would be able to live with the standard screen and went home to order.
I jumped on the Dell site, and decided to run through the app for the Preferred Account. There was a piece of info that the process couldn't verify...so it asked me a few questions, like the last car I owned, etc. Then it told me to call. The rep on the other end said they couldn't extend the offer, and that I would get a letter explaining why. I had a Dell account when I bought a desktop a few years back, and paid it on time and off early. I also have a credit score in the high 700's. Also, I bought a home about 8 months ago, and had my credit report cleaned by the loan officer, so there are no problems at all. I even checked it myself afterwards....
So, Dell was now out of the picture...though I had my fiance run her info through and she was approved without issue...I still wanted to steer clear of a company who would decline the "perfect" customer.
So, I went back into Best Buy and started poking around again. Then I saw the 7422GX, with an instant $150 off, with a price of $1249. The processor was a 64 bit, the screen was an Ultrabrite, the RAM was double, the thing had a Dual-Layer DVD burner...but it had the Mobile 9550...which is contested to be the 9600 anyway. The main focus for me on this machine was gaming...so I was really worried about this GPU. However, Best Buy is offering 12 months with no interest, and they were foolish enough to give me a finance card 3 years ago, on which I have spent more than I care to share.
I had some Gift Cards laying around too, so I decided to buy the 7422GX after reading this huge thread.
The Good:
The screen is fantastic. I really like the look of the UltraBrite a bunch.
The processor is really fast in combination with the 1 gig of RAM. I am typing this while running a game and listening to Windows Media Player.
The Wireless jumped on my network 5 seconds in...so that was a breeze.
The Almost Good:
No on the fly screen brightness control.EDIT..FOUND THAT...SORRY!
Games look "Scrunched" on the Widescreen...4:3 to 16:9...they look stretched.
The speakers aren't loud enough when used somewhere with a higher ambient noise floor.
Gaming:
This gets it's own section. I have only tried Star Wars Galaxies so far..which is my main game anyway. The game includes an on-screen FPS monitor, and in heavily populated areas, this will drop to 2-3 FPS, and spike into the high teens, low 20's. My desktop with a 256mb Radeon X800XT PE watercooled obviously tears this apart...but....can I play this game on the laptop? Yes!
In most areas the game runs the same in my eyes, so all in all...
I give this laptop a 9/10.
I have tried to burn the recovery with a DVDRW+ only to get a error stating the disk was not empty ? Atleast nero will burn the DVDRW+ though... Would some of you with 4X media that are having issues please check the media code with nero info tool Im sure that this drive HL-DT-ST DVD-RW GCA-4080N is puking with this popular media.
we were all comparing which one got the highest between each map... the highest was a 7405GX running at 800x600 (stretching to fullscreen) getting over 600 FPS on the loading screen 
