I recently ventured into the notebook world, knowing what I wanted, and knowing what I wanted to pay, made it a little more difficult than expect. I saw notebooks from Sager that looked promising, but no incentive to buy. I saw a $750 off coupon from dell and decided to look at their notebooks, for gaming and portability reasons.

I came along the Inspiron 9300, 17" WideScreen WXUGA w/ TrueLife ( glossy ). I fell in love with it and configured to purchase and used the incentive ($750 off coupon), and bought it.

Here is my review and specs:

Inspiron 9300
1.6Ghz Pentium-M 2MB L2 cache
1.25GB PC2 DDR 4300
256MB Nvidia 6800Go
60GB 7.2K HDD
IntelPro 2200b/g WiFi
CDRW/DVD-Rom
17" WUXGA w/ TrueLife

Weight: Very light-weight for the size of the notebook, weighted at around 7 lbs, which is very good. 10/10

Size: It's big, but very easy to haul with you. As long as size isn't an issue with laptop, this sucker is big but light-weight to easily carry around. 9/10

Keyboard: Beautiful keyboard layout. Sturdy, responsive, very well put together by Dell. Easy to type on, and very easy to get used to. 9/10

TouchPad: Pretty good touch-pad, though it could be more exciting, it's functional and works wonderfully. 8.5/10

Performance: 1.6Ghz P-M 2MB L2 cache ain't nothing to laugh about. I run Adobe Photoshop CS and multi-task between Photoshop CS and Dreamweaver MX and it doesn't flinch! 9/10

Gaming: WOW! This is where the 9300 shines! I've got the 6800Go 256MB DDR 16x PCI-E, beautiful graphics card. I run Half-Life 2 at 1920x1200 and maintain a good 75FPS. I run Counter-Strike: Source at 1920x1200 with a good 80FPS. I run Need For Speed Underground 2 at 1600x1200 with 70FPS. Very good gaming machine, video card is overclockable. My 3dMark 05 score is 4600+ on a laptop! INSANE! 9.5/10

Screen: Definitely get the 17" w/ TrueLife WUXGA. I have an LG screen and the screen is beautiful! I love my screen, wouldn't trade it for the world. Though, if you plan on using the notebook outside constantly in sunny conditions, then glare will be a problem. highly suggest you make your decision based on what conditions you plan to use the laptop in. 9.5/10

Price: With the discount $750 off coupon, I ended up paying $1303 w/ tax for the above system! AMAZING PRICE!!!!

Final Words

If you're short on money, and want performance and a very well built laptop that rivals toshiba/ibm in build-quality but at the fraction of the cost, go with the Inspiron 9300 or XPS Gen2

-Joe

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by SVTRanger edited by fire100
last modified: 2005-08-24 05:48:43