Dell Inspiron 9300 Review

Posted this in another forum but nobody seemed intersted. Will try this one instead

Hello everybody. Well as i found these notebook forums MORE than helpful for making a decision on what laptop to buy I have decided to post a review of my a laptop as I have now received it.

Order and Stages

Order Date:
The laptop was ordered on 27th of June

Projected Arrival date:
The date the laptop would supposedly arrive was the 6th of July

Actual Arrival Date:
The date the laptop arrived was the 5th of July

Using the australia Dell website I was able to check the process of my laptop. However it is still in the second stage but I have my laptop already. Overall i'm totally impressed with the amount of time it took for my laptop to arrive. Well done Dell.

Machine and Final Price

Machine Specifications:
Dell Inspiron(TM) 9300 Intel(R) Pentium M 760/770 Notebook
2.0 GHz, 2MB Cache, 533 MHz FSB
Integrated Stereo Sound with Subwoofer
Integrated 10/100 Fast Ethernet
17" UltraSharp(TM) Wide Screen UXGA Display with 1
TrueLife(TM): 1920x1200
3Yrs Next Business Day Premium Support Plan with 1
Theft Cover
-Includes Upgrade to 3Yrs CompleteCover Guard accidental damage & theft protect.
Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2915 Dual Band 802.11a/b/g
1024MB (2 X 512MB) 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM
256MB NVIDIA(R) GeForce(TM) Go 6800 (DDR1)
100GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive
Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Professional
Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Combination Drive
A922 All In One Inkjet Printer Driver
9-Cell 80Whr Lithium Ion Primary Battery
Dell(TM) Large Backpack
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Total Price
3,619.70 AU
2,691.99 US
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I was stoked at the price considering there was a backpack and printer/scanner/photocopier included too.

If anybody wants any other stats then just ask and i'll see if i can get them for you.

Screen

Well I felt it was important to post a section on the screen as this has been one of the largest complaints.

The screen I got suffered from a small amount of sparkle effect as most people say its really is only visible on greens or greys maybe. However if it wasn't for this forums I would not have known what it was and would not have looked for it at all. So for me and I do graphic work It does not bother me and really I don't even see it because its that minimal.

There is also a small amount of light leakage down the bottom of the screen but once again if it wasn't for this forum probably would not have looked for it. Since i've got it out of the box it already seems to have improved and I've heard of other people saying it completely disappeared for them so I will just have to wait and see. Overall though the monitor is awesome its very clear and sharp and the colours are vibrant. I love the resolution although i did change the DPI back to 96 as I was getting jagged icons within my start bar/icon tray.


Games and 3DMark05

Many people have asked about how the games play on and some graphic driver problems they have.

Firstly my 3DMark05 score out of the box was 2935. I'm yet to overclock the GPU yet but i shall post later if people are interested in what i get.

Regardless of the scores games run beautifully and i'm very impressed.

Half Life 2/Counter Strike: Source:
Resolution
- 1920 x 1200
Model Detail
- High
Water Detail
- Simple Reflection
Shadow Detail
- High
Antialiasing node
- 4X
Filter mode
- Anisotropic 8x
Shader Detail
- High
Wait for vertical sync
- Disabled

Grand Theft Auto:
Drawing distance was on full
3x Antialiasing
Very high graphics detail

Both of these games ran with no lag and was a smooth game playing experience. The graphics really do look awesome. I have not yet changed any of the antialiasing or other settings around yet to see how they run. These are just standard settings as created when installed.

Photos
Finally i've posted some images of how it arrived. Some of the unpacking stages and some pages on my desk.

I'm positive i've forgotton some things to write in this review so please don't hesitate contact me and ask me further questions or post some.

One more thing battery life i'm testing as we speak. Get back to me if you want me to find out some results for you.

I'm glad it was helpful everybody, the computer really is sweet and dell was nothing other than outstanding in its customer service

Bluetooth

This thread has had some sort of revival in the past few days which is great to see. I'm not sure exactly but i think i've had this laptop close to a month now. Hmmm. Still going brilliantly.

I do have some advice however. I did not get the bluetooth module on customization i later regretted this as i then had a little bluetooth light next to the power button that was never ever going to come on.

On the positive side of things though i ordered a bluetooth card which arrived today. I think it took about a week to get here maybe less. I installed it with little problems except for some driver issues (installed windows default bluetooth instead of drivers off dell site and therefore was getting no light turn on to begin with). Also this was i think 77 dollars australia to configure on dell website and only 27 dollars or something with 20 dollars shipping seperately (go figure!) so i actually got it cheaper than if i'd got it with the system.

I'm not sure if any of you have had this same problem too but the resolution is HUGGE!!Unless you are one of those people that just like to put photos from a digital camera as your wallpaper or you don't mind having stretched or small images that do not fill the required space then do not worry about what i have to say.

However if you don't like having any of the above like myself then i recommend www.gamewallpapers.com its very cheap to get membership and you get awesome 1920 x 1200 sized wallpapers and a massive amount of wallpapers.

Just a thought took me a while to find a decent site when i got this laptop. Its never been a problem in the past

Ok well today was the first time i tried overclocking my GPU in my I9300. It was my first time overclocking anything but it went well. I can now get over 4000 in 3dMark04 which is a bit better than my previous 2900 on stock!I'd imagine i could prolly get more however i did not give a clean install when my laptop arrived. However i guess you might add on about another 300 if i had done that.

My current overclock settings i'm still being safe with it as its my first time. Tomorrow i think i'll try to push it a bit harder and see what happens. Also was only using stock drivers on this benchmark. Will keep everybody posted with future benchmarks!

Thats awesome to hear. I'm in the process of getting some money together to get battlefield 2 so i will post my results when i get them, I have 1 gig of ram so hopefully this will only do good things for me.

Would love to hear what specs you got for your system so we can all be impressed. Hopefully dell will be great to you as they were to me and ship it to you earlier than they first said.