Just got my 9300 today

First impressions.

As far as looks go, this thing gets a 5 out of 10. The styling is just bad in my opinion.
But luckily you can't judge a noteBook by it's cover, because everything inside I am quite happy with. The screen is not the best I've seen, but far from bad. It is clear, and I have no major complaints about it. I have the 1920 X 1200 resolution, and it is perfect! I love how much I can fit on the screen, and I reset the text to 96 DPI, and I have absolutely no problem reading text, in fact the text could be even smaller and still be readable to me without squinting.

The keyboard is good (except for no number pad) but I knew about that before I bought it. The keys are firm and quiet. Much better than my Compaq.

I have nothing to say about gaming since I am at work and havant had a chance to install anything yet. I doubt I will be unhappy. And I won't install anything until I do a fresh install of windows. This is my first Dell, and all I have to say is what’s up with the 3 tons of junk software. Talk about bloated! I have no idea how anybody uses a computer with all this extra uneeded crap on it. Luckily it can be fixed [ ]


So far I give it 2 thumbs up!

Tim

 

Yea Dells have just about the ugliest case there are... One thing I really hate, is the ugly black keyboard contrasted with the silver plastic and the white laquer plastic... Why can't they use a WHITE keyboard or something? oh well. heh

Make sure before you format, that you have all the drivers ready -- if you have internet access -- just make sure you have a backup of the ethernet/wifi drivers ready -- everything else can be dled from Dell or elsewhere (for newer vid drivers).

cheers,

yass

 

when i formatted my 9300, i was able to get most of everything i needed from the website itself.
for the vid card drivers, i copied the /dell/drivers/video dir onto a usb card and installed those drivers after i formatted. that seemed to work.

2 devices i cant find the drivers for are as follows:
usb2 drivers
SD slot card

if you happen to find them or know where to get them, i'd appreciate a holler to inform me of where i can get them as well.

thanks, good luck

 

Yeah, I already dowloaded all the drivers off Dell.com and burned them to CD here at work. If Dell had supplied me with the dang Windows CD (as they should IMO) I would have had XP reinstalled aready. Now I have to wait till I get home to use one of my CDs. [ ]

Dell Inspiron 9300, Pentium M 2GHz, 1GB 533MHz DDR2, 256MB nVidia GeForce Go 6800, 17" LG WUXGA+, 60GB HDD (7200rpm), Sony DW-56A DVD+-RW DL

 

I used my other PC to dowload the vid,wifi and chipset drivers onto my usb keychain and then layed down the new install of xp. went smooth, no problems. I went to the nvidia site to get the dvd decoder because I hate that one that ships with it ... bought nero ultimate eom for $20.00 full copy and put that on as well. installed the ALPS driver although not sure if I really needed it. I only have 8 things in my system tray ( i'm anal as heck about what starts up and is running in taskmgr )
Wireless Network connection
Local Area connection
Local Area connection 2
Ad-aware adwatch
norton anti-virus
alps
Intel ProSet wireless

only problem now is that it's still windows - not linux [ ]

Dell 9300 * 2.0ghz sonoma * 1gig ram * 256mg nvidia wuxga * xp media center * dvd dual layer * 80gig 5400 * bluetooth * wireless a/b/g *

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>I only have 8 things in my system tray ( i'm anal as heck about what starts up and is running in taskmgr )
Wireless Network connection
Local Area connection
Local Area connection 2
Ad-aware adwatch
norton anti-virus
alps
Intel ProSet wireless
<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'></font id='quote'></blockquote id='quote'>

bad count, I have the volume icon in there too because i alway mute ... that makes 8 things

Dell 9300 * 2.0ghz sonoma * 1gig ram * 256mg nvidia wuxga * xp media center * dvd dual layer * 80gig 5400 * bluetooth * wireless a/b/g *