Who is returning their 9200?? - Page 2

I'm glad I returned my 9200. To know it was purchased in December and to be discontinued in March is heart renchin'. My 9300 arrives on wednesday and I have no regrets as of yet......Plus I was an owner of the Phillips LG screen.....so don't tell me that wasn't annoying. TrueLife...here I come!

U.N.inspector

I'm waiting to hear more responses on the TrueLife screens (so far seems to be good). Just being glossy won't make up for light leakage (Samsung Y4014) and grayscale problems (LG W4554). I'm hoping it's brighter than the i9200's WUXGAs to make up for the reflectivity, but the Dell webpage gives worse specs on the TrueLife WUXGA compared to the WXGA+ for brightness and viewing angle. Both have 300:1 contrast, which seems to contradict Dell's description of TrueLife:

"A TrueLife display offers a viewing experience that is more crisp and more vivid than lower resolution displays that have anti-glare coatings and lower contrast ratios."

Maybe they are not referring to their lower resolution WXGA+ with anti-glare coatings because it doesn't have a lower contrast ratio. At least the TrueLife might have better color saturation, which on the Y4014 seems to be a bit low. The grain should be completely absent.

i am

i got a killer deal on a refurbed 9200 a few weeks ago.

BUT, i got an even better deal on a new 9300. im getting twice as much video memory, twice as much system memory (2gb), a free printer (pos), a better screen (both had wuxga), 3yr complete care +accidental, and of course its NEW. all for $50 more!

i think my total for the 9300 after $130 MIR, was like $2350.

im sending my 9200 back on monday.

After 5 i9200's Dell said keep the 5th i9200 until my new XPS G2 is here, so the i9200 is gone for sure.LeeU

Nope

Actually,
the really funny thing is, for a similarly configured 9300, I'd be paying more than what I got my 9200 for. I just got my 9200 a few weeks ago, after ordering it towards the end when a ton of discounts were offered. My specs are: centrino 2ghz, 1gb ram, 128mb video, 60gb 7200rpm HD, 17 inch XGA. For all of this, I paid $1850. Ok, if you go to dell.com and price this exact config for the 9300, the total price is $2,007 (with a $400 'instant' discount from $2407 originally).

Considering I got my 9200 for over $150 cheaper (brand new) and the only difference in config between mine and the 9300 I priced above is the front side bus speed (400mhz for mine, 533mhz for the 9300), and also considering that my 9200 gets an extra 1-2 hours of power off the battery than the 9300 and is quieter, I think I'll stick with my 9200, thanks! My only option if I did return my 9200 would be to pay $150 extra for a louder, less efficient machine that only has a slightly faster front side bus, or pay even more than that to get the real benefit of a 9300, which is the 256mb video card (which I can do without anyway).

captain nasty - a couple things

1. Your 9200 price was not bad, but with the 35% off coupon you would have probably spec'd a 9300 for CHEAPER.
2. You mentioned only slight difference in front-side bus. Do you know what speed RAM is in the 9200? 333mhz. 9300? 533mhz! That's a considerable difference.

I've run benchmarks on a Sonoma machine to compare to my 9200. Memory read/write benchmarks were about 20% higher on the Sonoma box, but overall benchmarks weren't very different at all. Since both machines have a 2MB L2 cache, the cache hit rate is incredibly high, and the CPU rarely has to wait for memory, so memory speed really doesn't matter very much.

Illwafer - a couple things

In response:
1. I doubt it. After re-checking the dell website, the price I quoted for the similarly configured 9300 was WITH the coupon, no mail-in rebates or anything. And it was still $150 more.

2. If I really cared that much about memory, I'd get an HP laptop or a dell desktop with an 800mhz frontside bus so that when memory faster than 533mhz becomes more mainstream, I'd be ready for that. Clearly if I'm more interested in battery power (which the 9200 owns the 9300), I must not care as much about the highest performance available, which is why I said I wasn't too concerned about the higher end graphics card or faster FSB/memory. It's not worth the hassle of returning my 9200 and paying an extra $150, for me.

Any new laptop is going to be slightly faster in some way. Eventually, the 9300 will also be replaced. As it is, it might be one of the higher end Dells, but it's certainly not the fastest or nicest laptop on the market, and there are many that outperform it. If all you go by in justifying returning your 9200 for a 9300 is the speed difference, I'd recommend you either get a nice desktop for the same price with your refund (such as the XPS Gen4, which when maxed out would be much faster than the 9300), or spend even more on an even nicer laptop than the 9300.

Keep'n it!

I was on the fence... picked up a well equipped refurb 9200 at a good discount, but after checking around more thought I'd be better off with a 9300(w/a little slower, and much cheaper cpu) or Asus Z71V(let face it, the 9#00 chassis is huge!). Anyway, when I called Dell for my RMA they offered a hefty concession to keep it.

It's not perfect, but I really liked my 9200. Now with an extra 250 in my pocket... I love it!

that said, if I where a serious gamer, no amount of money could change my mind... the Go 6800 annihilates my 9700

Enjoy your toys boys!

Dell 9200
2Ghz Dothan/WUXGA/Bluetooth/Intel2200/512MB-1slot(1GB on order)/60GB-7200/9cell

So you're saying you got your refurbished 9200 with 1GB or RAM a few weeks ago for $2300?!?!
Ummm....that's not a killer deal at all.

Col.Wild--u'r original deal was prob just better than mine. I didn't haggle or anything.

Not posting $ out of compassion for those who bought at the start of the 9200's shockingly brief life... I've been there. First adoptors always pay a premium--just go's with the territory. Don't consider myself a savy consumer on this purchase. I just plain couldn't afford to buy at the high end/original prices.

Also, seems everytime I throw something new at this machine I like it better. Was a little worried about multi-media w/the PM, but reencoded and burnt a bunch of old fam vids to dvd yesterday.. plenty fast. Soon as I pop in some more RAM it should be awesome--hitting the swap file too often now. Was happy to see WMV HD at 1080p is flawless w/cpu to spare when running at 2Ghz. Need to toggle off the lappy's screen for best quality output on external DVI.

the price was $1849 for the 9200.

WUXGA, 2.0, 1gb, 60 7200rpm, Intel abg, Bluetooth, Office 2003, clip on Cherrywood.

Overnight shipping, tax, and complete care came out to just shy of $2300.

It was a really good deal as I was pricing the 9200 for the preceeding 2 weeks.

And, I got all that (plus double vid and system memory) with the 9300 (including taxes, shipping, coverage) for $2350

Really? What sort of quality degradation did you see when you ran dual-monitor? I tried it for the first time yesterday, and dual-monitor quality seemed fine to me.

If I had bought an i9200 within the past 21 day it would definitely be going back. As per my post on January 6th http://notebookforums.com/showthread...&page=2&pp=40:

"I suspect the I9200 will have a very short life span i.e. 3 - 6 months. The I9300 is just too similar; but at the same time substantially better. I think DELL knew they needed a 17 inch laptop in time for the holidays to compete with HP, Compaq, Sony, etc. – otherwise they would risk losing customers. They may have originally hoped to have the Somona version of the 17 inch laptop ready for the holidays. However once they realized the Somona laptop was not going to happen due to delays by Intel perhaps they decided to quickly put together the I9200 to fill the gaping (17 inch!) hole in its laptop lineup. If this was done hastily it might explain the UXGA screen debacle and the underpowered GPU. Note that I am not saying the Radeon 9700 is not good, rather I simply expected a more cutting edge GPU to be offered in DELL’s first entry into the 17 inch laptop arena. Of course all of this is simply conjecture."

I will be returning my 9200. When I ordered it on the last day in February, I asked the Dell Sales guy about the possibility of upgrading the GPU, and he said that there wasn't any way that I could get a higher power GPU for the price range that I was looking to spend.

Guess what came out about three days after I made that order. So I'll be returning, and fortunately for me I found this site after trying to do some research. By utilizing one of the $750 off coupons that someone posted I was able to upgrade my GPU to the 256k, upgrade my HD to a 60GB 7200, and upgrade my screen to the truelife all while saving $250 bucks.

I feel pretty good about the situation. Cheers

Hehe, looks like we were both right:

Ended up getting my XPS 2 at $3000 with 3 yr warranty + complete care. 9300's are turning out to be cheaper than 9200's with better options as well, just as predicted.

So, do you amazing predictors of the future have any stock picks for me?

Yes invest in Enron.

i didn't know it was possible to return it and get a new model