dell 9300 notebook review
I will keep it short, simple and about what i would have cared about if i was still thinking about buying..
Ordered on Dec. 16th around 8pm.
9300 1.8ghz
non-ultra bright 17" widescreen
gig of ram
60gig 7200 rpm
6800go
DVD+-rw
a/b/g wireless
6 cell
extra 9 cell
3 years of McAfee
XP MCE with install CD
dell back pack carry case
1 year warranty.
$1588 shipped with 2 day delivery (after $750 coupon, and free upgrades)
Estimated ship date wasn't until sometime in the first week of Jan, don't remember exactly. Was happy to see they got it built fast, and updated shipping to overnight for free. Got it on Dec 23 as a nice Christmas surprise. Considering i ordered it so late in the day on the 16Th, i thought that was fast.
Having never seen a 17" wide screen in person i was a little shocked when i took this beast out of the box and turned it on. I did notice some light leakage at first but for some reason it has diminished to the point where its almost totally gone and i even use a black background. It's a samsung screen. No dead pixels. I am totally satisfied with the screen. The keyboard took a few days to get used to, but now im typing at full speed again.
Did a format within the first 10 minutes of turning it on and seeing 65 processes running. No problem at all finding and obtaining drivers needed, and burning them to CD before i started.
Since then i have also overclocked the 6800 to 390/790 and played hl2 for a few hours just to see if it was stable and then set it back to default because it was certainly good enough for me. Nice to know when its more outdated i can squeeze a little more out of her though. No 3d scores because it would take to long to DL. But it plays games good enough for me..and when it doesn't I might consider upgrading to a 7800 gtx card ;)
It is a really quiet machine (with the exception of the optical drive). The fan spins up to medium speed every so often when gaming, but its almost silent doing anything else.
Letting the bios control the fans i get temps of about 50 for both CPU and GPU while surfing and listening to music. About 55 cpu and 60 gpu is the highest Ive seen it go after gaming for a few hours. If i let fangui control the fans it would be cooler and also make more noise. I prefer it quiet.
The Intel a/b/g wireless works great. I can steal my dads wireless from down the block with it if i stand in front of the window (great transmission range for internal IMO). I ordered a range extender to extend coverage to the rest of my house.
Haven't bought any DVDs to try the DVD aspect of the burner. I have watched DVD's and they looked good.
I'm very pleased with it, and the price i paid. I've tried re-configuring the same options over the last few weeks to see if its any cheaper and it always comes out to about 2g's with the best coupon codes i can find. I did not use the epp. I would buy it again in a heart beat. If you watch the coupon codes i don't think you can find this powerful of a machine anywhere for even close to the price of a 9300.
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by Phoenix Gold  edited by fire100
last modified: 2006-01-11 06:00:54 |
