Impressions of the 9300

Received it yesterday. I hate UPS -- had to go to their office to get it, and what should've been a 10min thing blossomed into an hour and half... Anyway, got it finally.

I really didn't bother with the software at all -- as I'll be reformating the HD later today anyway.

Size:
This laptop is BIG... Well it is 17", so that is to be expected. I've mostly used thin and lights, but I find the weight of the Dell to be surprisingly light, of course the form factor is not very portable, but I can see it not being much of a trouble carrying it in a comfortable backpack.

Appearance:
With the lid closed, it actually is surprisingly attractive for a Dell. lol I wish the keyboard were a lighter color -- maybe an off-white or light grey. Somehow when I open the thing I just keep on looking at the (imo) ugly keys. heh

Construction:
Seems decent so far. I think for a model that obviously will spend more time sitting on your desk than be lugged around, the construction is sturdy enough. The LCD hinge isn't up to the quality of the IBM/Apple, but as good as any other that I've used. (Sony, Toshiba, HP/Compaq, Alvatec). I'm not sure about the case being magnesium -- it just seems to be made of very sturdy plastic to me. The DVD/RW tray has some wiggle room, but that is NORMAL -- I've never used a laptop that doesn't have that -- well, except for the Powerbooks -- who, smartly, doesn't use a tray! My 1997 Latitude CP has that kind of wiggling tray -- after 8 years of heavy use it still wiggles, AND IT STILL WORKS. Which is more than I can say of some other brand's supposely better quality. Again, all those parts are ODM parts, later on I will do a more careful component check of everything -- find out who makes what. Bottom of the case is a solid piece of plastic(?), but it does have a slight metallic ring to it, so it's probably some sort of alloy.

LCD:
Everyone seems to have an opinion on it. I got the WUXGA, and yes it is glossy. The gloss isn't as reflective on the 9300 as on the Sony lines. But as I mentioned earlier I never really liked the extra reflection. I find the Dell's screen gloss to be a pretty good compromise. Yes, the fonts are small on a WUXGA display. However I never have a problem reading it from normal desktop reading distance. I did set the fonts to large, and dpi to 120. LCD have the sharpness advantage, as there will never be an issue with out of focus, and if you use the native resolution, you won't have interpolation issues as well. I find that I can comfortably read size 8 fonts on an LCD screen, whereas everything being equal, the comfotable size will be 10 on most CRTs.
No dead/lit pixels on mine. Yes there is some bleeding at the bottom of the screen, I practically expected that. It's not enough to bother me thou, maybe enough to bother others -- but good luck finding a 17" screen that doesn't exhibit some degree of bleeding. Actually, good luck finding ANY LCD panels that doesn't exhibit some degree of bleeding -- no backlit LCD will have true uniform black levels, simple as that. Mine is very mild. I only notices it when the screen is completely black -- which well -- usually isn't the case.

I'm not familiar with the highly technical term "sparkle", and comparing it to a bunch of HIGH QUALITY LCDs that I have in my home, this one isn't bad at all! It's not as uniform as my 2001FP -- as to be expected. But it's nearly as good as the SGI 1600SW I also use. Not bad at all.

One thing I will do when I go back is measure the XY dimensions of the actual screen, to see if the pixels are square or well, not. If they are not, then this is NOT a good laptop for CAD/CAM work, as you will get a skewed image where accuracy really is important.

Is it bright enough? Yes of course. LCDs are already too bright imo. Because of the way backlit LCDs work, they have the potential to be a lot brighter than even a CRT. Personally I don't enjoy staring at a lightbulb -- which is pretty much what a backlit panel is -- a masked lightbulb. A lot of graphics professionals who work on LCDs, actually turn the brightness down -- WAY down, just so the color representation is better.

The rest of the system will have to wait until I do the proper re-format and re-install. [ ] Hope this helps someone.

oh one more thing: graphics memory = GDDR1 on the Go6800, as suspected.

cheers,

yass

 

Damn, I was hoping the Geforce 6800 Go was going to have GDDR 3 RAM.. So if I wait how long will it take before it comes out? Or will they start rolling out the X800 Radeon's?

 

>Damn, I was hoping the Geforce 6800 Go was going to have GDDR 3 RAM

Then go with the XPS2 with the ultra card , but do you really need so much power ( and does it worth the extra $$$ ) ?

 

The XPS2 is a nice system. Amazing system that still has portability. Only problem is i don't need a "gamer look" laptop and the lowest i could ever get one configured was 2500, i got my I9300 for 1850 with the SB 35% off coupon. Now if it will make its ship date...

*Dell Inspiron 9300, P-M 1.86ghz 533mhz FSB, 1GB DDR2 533mhz ram, 17inch UXGA+ screen with TrueLife, 256mb Nvidia GeForce 6800, 60gb 7200rpm drive, XP Pro SP2, WiFi*

*Sony MDR-G74SL Headphones for music and gaming, best 40 dollar pair i have ever bought!*

 

hey yass, thanks for the feedback. Your feedback on the screen is interesting and good. I agree with the bleeding issue, you can only expect there will be some and how often is the screen all black really anyway? Also, the fact you have several LCDs to compare this to lends credibility to your opinion here, so that's great. Let us know how the reformat goes and the rest of the experience with the i9300 and good luck!

DigitalCameraReview.com | BargainPDA.com | TabletPCReviewSpot.com

 

Well I just expect the 6800 to have the same GDDR 3 RAM as the ultra, in fact on the nvidia.com website, their are only 2 models for the Go 6800 namely, the regular and the ultra and both have GDDR 3 Ram.

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by yassarian

 

and if you're seriously afraid of the UXGA being too small... you can always bump the resolution down to 1440x (still looks wonderful, and you always have the option of going back up)

 

There is some slight skewing of pictures on the wuxga at the Dell supplied 120 dpi, change it back to the standard 96 dpi of windows xp and pictures look fantastic. Text gets a little smaller but still very readable.