Talked to dell 2 day, about the 9300! - Page 3

Can you site any sources where you found this information or on what basis you are making this assessment? If so can you enlighten the rest of us?

At this time, I think it would be foolish of dell NOT to have a low cost graphics options and exclude the large market of 17" non-hardcore gaming long battery life laptops.
Unless they:
1. Get the Go6800 really cheap and tune to be efficient.
2. Keep the 9200 around.

I doubt either will be true for reasons I don’t have time atm elaborate on.

D

Edit: Ok I will elaborate on the obvious one: 9300 = 9200+100. So, just the number alone tells consumers the 9200 is outdated.

I think the 9300 is going to replace the 9200, so there will be no more 9200 around.

Especially after I read this:

In the February 2005 DELL cataloge, the Inspiron 1000, 1150, 8600, 9200, & XPS are all labeled "While Supplies Last"

And in the January catalog, the i9200 was the only laptop labeled in big bold red print "NEW". One month new, next month out the door? Possible but unlikely. Perhaps "While Supplies Last" refered to that specific combo deal offered.

Based on the guess of high end and low end specs posted a few posts up, it puts the i9200 as perfect for middle of the road. It will cost less than the i9300 low end, yet be much faster for gamers. Actually, I see no reason to purchase a low end i9300 because it would cost more and be of lower overall performance. The i9300's real niche market will be it's ability as a high end gaming machine, but at a huge price and battery power premium. All of this leads to the i9200 being around for a long time, as it has what the i9300 will not have. Performance value.

i9300 as an XPS gaming replacement? Yes. XPS dropped from catalog already.
i9200 for Ultimate Multimedia Performance. Yes. That was it's purpose.

I agree entirely. Sounds exactly as what I've always thought about....

Heh, I'd be willing to place a large bet on that one. Let's make a note of it now.

9200:
6 Cell 53 WHr Battery Up to 3.4 hours
9 Cell 80 WHr Battery Up to 5.2 hours

I bet the 9300 will be the same. If they use a glossy type screen, it may be slightly less, but nowhere near less.

So, if a 128MB video card, 1 Gb RAM, 2.0Ghz processor, 60Gb 7200rpm Hard Drive, and a 17" WXGA+ screen are enough for me and all that I intend to do on a laptop AND battery life is very important to me, then I should just order up a 9200 rather than waiting around to see the 9300, right?

Because the waiting is getting to me. I just sit around and troll this board among others, hoping for little bits of information about the 9300, hoping it will suddenly appear on the Dell website any day now, when instead I could be unpacking a brand new 9200 that will be great.

Obviously this board is biased, but everyone with a 9200 and a good screen seems to be thrilled with their choice.

Sorry, seems I am trying to convince myself more than anything.

I don't know why all the 9200 people have to come into these threads and justify their purchases, if you're happy and wouldn't trade yours in fine, but let other people speculate on the new stuff coming out, some of these bogus claims about battery life, perfomance and whether the 9200 is still going to be around are getting old.

Also for the speculation about 64bit windows xp with the sonoma, thats a definite no. Last I heard not even the next generation after sonoma/alviso will not work with 64bit windows xp.

EDIT

Sefton if you're not doing anything graphics intensive go for it, sonoma / alviso isn't worth it unless you're getting a high end graphics card.

huh?
Just because someone explains what makes the most sense does not mean they like their i9200. I've been fighting with Dell for 3 days now, and today (Day 21 to decide) will be requesting a refund for my not so perfect i9200, and will buy from another company. I can just imagine how buggy the i9300 will be when it first comes out. Yippee.

BTW, Dell says based on my needs, I made some bad choices during intial order, so return for refund, then order another unit with specs geared more towards what I want to do. Sure thing I like getting teeth pulled, so let's do it again.....

Hmm, how large are we talking here?

That means that a 9200 burns an average of about 16W. Sonoma will add a couple of watts to that. The go6800 burns something like 35W max. I couldn't find numbers for the MR9700, but it has got to be less than half that.

So, how could you possibly come up with the 9300 getting the same battery life?

Edit: the Sager 9860 uses the go6800 and the P4. The Sager has a 12 cell battery, so lets assume that means 105WHr. Sager rates the 9860 at 90 minutes of battery life, so that means it burns an average of 70W vs 16W for the 9200. Assume the P4 is responsible for 40W more than a P-M, that means that you might expect the 9300 to burn about 30W, giving you about half the battery life of the 9200.

Well, I will be watching DVDs and also doing some gaming, but I'm assuming that a 128MB video card, 1 Gb RAM, 2.0Ghz processor, 60Gb 7200rpm Hard Drive will be able to handle most games that are out now.

My desktop is a few years old. It is a Dimension 8200 with a Petium 4 2.53Ghz, 1 Gb RAM, NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 and I play WoW, Half Life 2, and Battlefield: Vietnam just beautifully.

My assumption is that a 9200 configured as I wrote above would be able to handle those games (maybe with a few settings dialed down).

Even my current laptop, an Inspiron 8200 with 640MB RAM, 1.53Ghz processor, and a crappy 32MB video card can run WoW just fine.

But if I am wrong about that 9200 running the games I want, than I may be in a pickle because battery life is important to me and I was hoping not to have to sacrifice it.

It will handle WoW for sure. I have a friend that plays it on his 9200.

All depends on what "desktop replacement" means to you. I guess, in reality.... I'm curious about how many hours of runtime you are wanting.

So.. how many hours and what features... are you sure Dell doesn't already have something that will work for you?

Doubtful by any style of math.

Sounds almost like your are sour grapes on the 9300 already (for no reason).

The 9860 requires a 180W power source... there's really nothing like it out there and I doubt we'll see anything like it... except for the update coming in Feb with the Go6800 and DDR3.

Let's see what the battery life is... my guess is that it WILL NOT be half that of the 9200 (it'll be same or just slightly less)... maybe we should set up a poll?! I do realize that it may mean that the 9300 has a bigger/badder battery though.. but that's fine.

If they can keep the battery life of the 9300 the same as the 9200 (with the 80 WHr 9-cell), that would be great. Even if it means a "bigger/badder battery" that weighs more in the 9300, it'd still be great.

Sorry for backtracking here.
I agree, The i9200 was designed to
be for "Ultimate Multimedia Performance" but you need to take one other tiny tiny factor. It was designed with parts from way back in summer 2004 so that it would be released in time for the Christmas rush. Its no accident that the first pictures of the i9200 released to the public were on a Red Velvet curtain with snowflakes. i9200 has already served its purpose to Dell. I am sure they sold huge numbers because it was a Shiny new gem in a sea of laptops at Christmas.

Don’t get me wrong, the i9200 is a great machine. Had I purchased one in December and gotten the good screen, I am confident I would be more than happy with it for many years. Four years from now I plan on still using the laptop I will purchase with my tax return this year. In 2 years there will be little difference between the i9200 and i9300. Both will be dated just about the same amount. Only factors that will matter at that time will be Screen(size and quality) and Battery life. Everything else is upgrade able (ie Ram/HD) or not worth it (Mother board/CPU) or available in a USB add on.

My brother has a Dell Latitude from 1998 he purchased when he entered college. It has 2 batteries, a Pentium II 333Mhz and runs windows 98 great. It still gets 6 hours battery life (using both) and browses the internet just fine. No 3D accelerator card so we can’t play 3D games

Sounds like initially it will use the weightier 80 Whr 9 cell like the upgrade for the 9200... and runtime will likely be in the 3 to 3.5 hour range.... which isn't less than half... but it is dangerously close. I wonder if they'll produce a 12 cell for it as an upgrade? Even at 3 to 3.5 hourse, that's pretty good for a DTR. Here's hoping.

I'm just curious what sort of logic you guys are using when you say the 9300 will have the same battery life. This is not sour grapes. Sonoma requires a couple of watts more than the 400MHz version of the P-M. The go6800 requires a lot more watts.

Sure, it's possible that the 9300 will have a bigger battery and weigh more than the 9200. Either way, you'll have to compromise something if you want that kick-ass go6800. Hardcore gamers will have no problem with those compromises. For guys like me, I see no reason to compromise. The 9200 is perfect for me, but I'd probably consider getting a 9300 as a mobile gaming toy if the price were low enough

Nah, I disagree. PCI Express will definitely be around for more than 2 years, so a Sonoma based notebook will last much longer. I'll also point out that Sonoma will let you upgrade to Serial ATA hard drives. So, I think that Sonoma will make a significant enough difference (at least for me).

I'm not using logic, that kind of stuff gives me a headache

I'm just going loosely on what I have observed from Dell, that they usually do well with battery life (from a combination of more efficient batteries and more efficient hardware). As far as actually betting, well I have to back down and say I am not willing to bet a "large" some of money. But I'll bet $20 just for fun if you want, that: the 9300 will have 75% or greater battery life than the 9200. That would be comparing using the standard battery for the 9300 to using the standard battery for the 9200.

Maybe we should set up a pool, where everybody gets a 5 minute battery life slot for $5. I want 200 minutes.