Another 9300 Review! - Page 3

I have the exact same config on this laptop as the OP does, minus the upgrade in RAM. I have to say, this thing rocks! I'm going to change the boot up screen w/ the flaming Dell, thanks Quimicefa!!

Shoot, if I could get a $800-900 off dell coupon I would be in heaven. I really wanna get the 9300 but with my setup + the $750 coupon it comes to just $180 over my budget.

After reading all the great comments about the 9300 I took advantage of the $750 off coupon on 5/24 and purchased one for $847 + tax 10.20= $857.20 with free shipping.
The only extra I added was the upgrade to 60GB hard drive. This will be my first laptop and I have been looking for a deal for a long time and reading this forum helped me tremendously!! Thanks to all of you for the comments and the great review.

That is ridiculously cheap... :P Congrats! I'm guessing you didn't get the 6800 Go at that price, though. A shame (for gamers, that is).

You know, I thought that I'd grown to love and accept Americans a lot more than the average Canadian. But this whole Dell US/Canada disparity is really starting to drive a wedge between us.

Nice review. I just received my 9300 yesterday and have some questions after
reading your post.
How did you control Cleartype? Is it in windows registry?
What program did you use to overclock the GPU and undervolt the Pentium-M?
And finally how did you toggle the subwoofer? Thx

How to enable Cleartype or to change the settings for ClearType? Overclocking the GPU involves the coolbit registry addon

To alter the ClearType settings you can do that on microsoft.com and searching for cleartype.

I just got my 9300 today--- and I'm trying to activate this cleartype thing--- it can't go past step 2---- when i click next, it doesnt do anything. What should I do??

Edit: NEVER MIND- just had to update some media thingy.

Glad to see the keyboard hasn't changed in the 4 years since I've had a Dell laptop. Kinda cool though, I miss that keyboard... I've had a Sony and Toshiba since then... nothing compared to the Dell keyboard (except for the fact that the Dell's "L" key would stick... Typing a message to a friend ended up something like this: "lollllllllllllll" or "lo". All or nothin' I guess. :P) Can't wait for my i9300!

Great review. Ordered my i9300 a few days ago with exact specs, except a 1.6 P-M, 1GB exact 2 dimm, and the default 17" WXGA. Based on this review, looks like I'm getting the bang for my buck, considering it blows away my old Intel Celeron 500 mhz, 32 mb TNT2. Oh, and I blew around $1250 with tax & shipping. Obviously, you know what you were doing with those discounts (even though I had my fair share of discounts as well).

Should be able to run BF2 quite efficiently, and hopefully this laptop will run for the next 5 years, as I'll mainly be juggernauting AC power as well. Aw, the values of being a second-year college student myself.

Need advice

What is everyones take on these specs and pricing?? Total Price $2,310.80 with tax.

Inspiron 9300 Intel® Pentium® M Processor 750 (1.86 GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB)
Operating System Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005
LCD Panel 17 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen XGA+ Display
Memory 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz 2 Dimm
Video Card 256MB NVIDA® GeForce™ Go 6800
Hard Drive 100GB Hard Drive
Network Card Integrated 10/100 Network Card and Modem
Adobe Software Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 6.0
Combo/DVD+RW Drives 8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer write capability
Wireless Networking Cards Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200 Internal Wireless (802.11 b/g, 54Mbps)
Office Productivity Software (Pre-Installed) Microsoft ™ Office ® 2003 Student & Teacher Academic RW
Security Software No Security Subscription
Digital Music Musicmatch® Jukebox Basic
Primary Battery 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery (53 WHr)
Limited Warranty, Services and Support Options 3Yr Ltd Warr,At-Home Service,and Tech Support plus Nights and Weekends
Readyware Readyware
Dial-Up Internet Access 6 Months EarthLink Internet Access Included
Digital Imaging Photo Album™ SE Basic
Financial Software No QuickBooks package selected- Includes limited use trial
Media Center Enhancements TV Tuner w/ Remote Control


**Is there a better way to have the 9300 capable of viewing tv without purchasing the media center enhancements tv tuner and remote control etc.??

**I have the inspiron 7500 but want to upgrade to a newer, more enhanced laptop such as the 9300 for my doctorate degree studies.

Any suggestions welcome.

Thanks to all in advance!

Joey

Yeah, you can get a USB TV Tuner from another company. There are even some PCMCIA TV Tuners I've seen (en eBay).

Try removing the Intel ProSET and using just the drivers and the Windows Wireless Config utility. This dramatically improved my connection on my DLink router. Before removing the Intel software, the connection was crap.

Man, I'm already cringing late at night waiting for it to arrive. I've played most of my computer games on low settings my entire life because the hardware wasn't great enough to play anything on high resolution. This is great to hear though.

Same. The day I got my i8600, with a WSXGA+ display and ATI 9600 Pro Turbo, I entered a new world of computing!

My laptop before that was an i5100, with a P$ 2.8Ghz, XGA screen and 32MB MR7500. Before that, a Toshiba 2750DVD with PIII 600Mhz, SVGA screen and S3 8MB Video!! Before that a Toshiba 200CDS with P100Mhz, SVGA screen (passive!!!) and Chips something-or-other with 1MB!