Need Advice on a 9300

I'm bad and didn't do the survey. I already know the majority of what I'm getting, but I have a few small questions before I dig in.

I'm looking at the Dell Inspiron 9300. I'm going mostly stock with the exception of the 6800 and possibly the CPU. I will eventually be replacing the RAM and HD myself (possibly CPU too, read below).

The 6800 is a definite - I game a lot, and this will be what I lug between my house and my boyfriend's (I'm very sick of dragging my desktop PC around constantly).

The default display is the other definite - I don't want the 19x12 display because I'm not interested in gaming at that resolution, nor do I want to deal with microscopic text.

I've only used XP Pro on all of my systems, but I don't really want to invest another $100 in the OS. Is Home or Media Center better for networking, gaming, and school? School stuff consists of running an Oracle db, programming/compiling (Java, C, etc), and of course lots of writing.

With gaming, is a 1.73GHz CPU going to bottleneck the 6800? I'd like enough speed that the GPU can be at or close to it's full potential, unless it isn't worth the price.

Sub-question: I work with computers quite a bit - I'm not afraid to rip them open and replace stuff. How feasible would it be to go with the 1.73GHz CPU now and replace the CPU later?

Any help would be very appreciated. I'm hoping to order by tonight.

 

1) The OS isn't going to matter, home is perfectly fine.
2) The 1.7 CPU is sufficient
3) Yes, but this will void your warranty

 

I ordered it with the 1.73GHz - $982 shipped. It says the ship date is January 2nd, 2006 - hoping that isn't true!

I know replacing the CPU voids the warranty and is a generally bad idea - I was more concerned with whether or not it'll be a huge ordeal or if I should just add the 2GHz cpu to my config and deal with paying the extra $160.

 

I think that would have been a waste of money. You did well.

 

I agree, the PM 1.73 is a great processor. Also, on a side note, just order an i9300 on the 16th, and my ship date (on or before) is 11/28/05. Hopefully they made a mistake on yours...either that or they just got swamped with orders..

good luck
dan

 

Upgrading the hard drive will give you more of a boost than the CPU. Some schools require XP Pro because you have to log into the network which XP Home cannot do. You might want to inquire about that. By the way, nice machine.

 

For now I'm at a community college, then probably going to Umass. It looks like their wired and wireless networks both need XP Pro, so I suppose I'll pick up an OEM copy at some point (I have plenty of time).

First upgrade is definitely the RAM. The Transcend 1GB sticks look like they're a very good price ($76-10MIR).

I'm also thinking of putting in a 7200RPM once they get a bit cheaper on Newegg.. $150 is still pretty steep for a hard drive imo (assuming this laptop is ATA6?).

 

982$??? Did you add the 6800 or not, it looks pretty cheap. anyway, my ship date said Nov 21st but it got delivered yesterday morning, much quicker than what they said.

 

The 60GB 7200RPM drive is going for $130 on ZipZoomFly.

 

I did add the 6800 - the reason it was $982 is I stacked the $500 off with a $50 off any Inspiron purchase coupon from opening my Dell Preferred Account a few months ago (got a 2005FPW.. yummy)!

 

$982 has to be the best price I've ever seen on an Inspiron 9300 with the Go6800.

Nice flat panel - 2005 is beautiful. Thinking of buying one myself.

 

Nice buy on the 9300. How much are the flat panels? And how is Dell in that field (not related to PC or Notebooks)?

The Dell plasma screens I saw were a huge dissapointment and had problems.

 

I paid $500 shipped for mine, but I've heard of deals going as low as $385 shipped (I don't think that's happened for awhile, though).

As a gamer (MMO/FPS), I never paid attention to LCDs because I figured they all sucked. I was wrong - I love this thing. I'm very happy with the size and resolution. Of course there's some slight motion blur, but it doesn't bother me at all. I guess on a notebook forum everybody is used to that by now anyway.

I'm very happy with it - but I've never owned an LCD before so I also have nothing to compare it to. I definitely don't miss having a 70 pound behemoth on my desk.

 

Woohoo, I forgot that as a CS student I have access to MSDNAA (academic software licensing). $16 shipped for a copy of XP Pro!

My i9300 arrives Monday, I'm so excited!

 

1.73 should suit you fine, dont get media center, its xp home with a tivo like application added to it, I would get xp pro, better for networking, its fairly straightforward to upgrade a processor and the memory, dell has online manuals to walk you through these upgrades.

I also went with the WXGA 1400x900 for the same reasons you did and love my screen, its bright, and on the 9300 the wxga panel is an ultrasharp digital lcd panel, games and dvd's look great.

 

I finally got it - I'm quite pleased. The screen doesn't look as vivid compared to my 2005FPW, though. I have to play with the color correction settings a little still. Either way, it plays World of Warcraft perfectly (nearly as good as my desktop).

I'm probably going to just leave XP Home on here - I found a few third-party programs that will allow you to join a domain with the Home edition (when the time comes where I need that).

However, I do have a question about the hard drive. I was under the impression that this had an ATA-6 drive - but when I ran PC Wizard it says the current drive is a Fujitsu SATA. I was going to put a Hitachi 7K100 series drive in here, but I guess I can't! Where do you find 7200rpm SATA notebook drives (that don't cost $300)?

 

A SATA drive in a 9300? I've never heard of that - try running Everest Home Edition to verify!

Well, at the moment, the 100GB 7200's SATA drives are very very expensive, and rare at that. $300 isn't that bad. They used to go for over $500.

 

Maybe it can be SATA while still having an ATA interface or something bizarre. This is what Fujitsu's product specs are for the drive..

http://www.fel.fujitsu.com/home/v3__product.asp?pid=474&inf=fsp&wg=15

I guess what I want to know is will this go into the laptop? I'm not nearly as familiar with notebook hardware as I am with desktop stuff.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822146047