Thanks to this board

In regards, what is your new look on Dell laptops? Do you like them more, or less than you did before all the new insight?

i wouldn't be too quick to judge...this forum is a very, very, very small snapshop...people either love or hate here. really, posters are not representative of the dell population. moreover, some problems get amplified in here.

i suffered from the short run laptop in the i5000e which pissed me off to no end, especially since windows xp was coming out and everyone knew about it and dell wouldn't support it...but that's the thing about lappies and design, etc. the consumer drives demand...if a product isn't moving, it is not worth it to keep the item in production. so it is understandable...sucks to be in the small population that liked that particular item, but the big picture is that consumer's drive what is selling and what is not.

like the faulty screens, i think it is bad for dell to continue to deploy lappies with the hitachi HD knowing that it's been faulty for a couple years now...but they have been willing to swap them out when people call though.

I think this forum is great too.
Mostly for entertainment purposes. But when I do have a Dell I know I can come here to find answers and be entertained.
Gotta remember as with most forums the vast majority of people who are happy with their product are out using it. By nature forums are a place people with problems go to find answers.

As for the 9200, Dell did pretty good job on it. It was out for Christmas 2004. Its the lightest 17" notebook with the best battery life. With the highest Resolution available too AND its got a video card that was the best anyone could get for a notebook just one year ago(its still the default card on the current XPS).
They probably meant for it to have the Sonoma chip set originally but it was delayed by Intel so you cant blame Dell for that. Which forces Dell to now make it a short life span unit in order to keep up with the Jones’s now that Sonoma IS released.
Dell did botch it with their choice of their first a 17" display. However, I don’t know for sure but it may have been lower power than some others Dell could have chosen and be partially responsible for the superior battery life. (Grasping for something to defend dell here) I really hope Dell has learned something but I would not put money on it.
One thing I don’t understand is why they didn't offer the MR9800 card. Only thing I can think of is that its offering would kill the current XPS sales. Why that’s a bad thing I don’t know. Maybe dell wants to have a big marketing hoopla upon the release of the XPS replacement. But, had they just offered the MR9800 it would give the i9200 owners (even ones with the MR9700 due to association) bragging rights for the most powerful Pentium M based laptop with battery life that runs circles around other DTRs and about 4 lbs lighter to boot.

Edit: Before someone flames i just checked my facts. The current XPS shows MR9700 on "Compare notebooks" page, but on "Configure" page the MR9800 is the only option.

i've said it before, if a computer is going to fail, it's gonna be off the bat...the 5000 series (figured the 5000e was a revised edition), suffered from lid issues (cracked coveres, loose lid frame, eventually the LCD was affected just past the warranty of course). but the problem was that I ordered it and it was clear after I got it that salesperson knew it was being discontinued and dell wasn't going to support it for windows xp release that happened a month later. so i was stuck with a computer that dell wasn't going to update drivers or bios for windows xp...fortunately xp worked, with some work arounds, but it pissed me off.

i had read that the 5000e was a good lappie, but it completely fell apart when used as a traveller and heavily used...it was good to me after it died, as I was able to sell it off for parts.

with that said, duck tape, and being use to the idiosyncracies, the system itself was stable (battery life sucked, and it was heavy)...and so i stayed with dell..i've had dell's every since god knows when, so i'm just use to them.

i will say the 700m has been a great little machine (although i had faulty batteries and the hitachi HD). The HD i could tolerate, b/c i normally reformat the HD anyways, so it wasn't a problem getting a new one. but it pissed me off, nonetheless, after reading the historical problems with the Hitachi drive. i've been literally having my 700m constanly on since i got it. my wife uses her's for work all day (as a desktop no less) as well, so i can say, thus far, the 700m is a very reliable and stable machine...some quirks with some hardware (graphics driver in particular, and the fact that so many other devices are not picked up when installing the OS is troubling), but no system issues or cosmetic issues (i.e. no breaking lids for me...although some people have reported flexy keyboards and floppy mouses, i haven't had those problems).