Dell Inspiron 9300 Review

[fbrdphreak]

Link

The page I linked you to is our news item for the 9300 review. If you liked/disliked the review, please post some comments on the news page! Unfortunately you can only add a User Review at the end of the review itself, so please go back to the news page to leave comments! Or better, post it in our forums! We'd love to hear any feedback, good or bad!

 

[hemiram]

Great review, no important disagreements with anything. I like the touchpad though, a lot more than the one on a friend's Gateway and an HP I was looking at locally in a store. I'm sure glad I didn't buy the HP, too slow... Gotta play games..

I wish Dell had a more sane price on a ram upgrade from 512 to 1024, 200 bucks is almost enough to buy 2 gigs on line someplace! That's not counting the 512 they are trading you. I guess they are trying to get the companies buying them without looking at prices much, and companies buy stuff at prices that amaze me..

I worked at a place that used to by ram modules by the gross, back in the days when PC100 was top of the line. They paid twice what I could buy it for from many places, same thing went for hard drives and other parts. I tried to get them to let me supply all the stuff for 25% less than they got it for, and they turned me down! I would have saved them 10's of thousands a year. They STILL pay insane prices for parts and laptops, etc. I bet I could save them 250K company wide and put the same amount in my pocket.

 

[hemiram]

One thing I did discover a few minutes ago. I got the base 40 Gig HD and it's not a 4200 RPM drive, it's a Fujitsu MHT-AH MHT2040AH 40GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache drive. I recommend getting at least a 60 Gig, if possible.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: hemiram
I wish Dell had a more sane price on a ram upgrade from 512 to 1024, 200 bucks is almost enough to buy 2 gigs on line someplace! That's not counting the 512 they are trading you. I guess they are trying to get the companies buying them without looking at prices much, and companies buy stuff at prices that amaze me..

I worked at a place that used to by ram modules by the gross, back in the days when PC100 was top of the line. They paid twice what I could buy it for from many places, same thing went for hard drives and other parts. I tried to get them to let me supply all the stuff for 25% less than they got it for, and they turned me down! I would have saved them 10's of thousands a year. They STILL pay insane prices for parts and laptops, etc. I bet I could save them 250K company wide and put the same amount in my pocket.

LOL, I know. I do IT work for a university and they order all Dell. Some of the prices they pay........too bad they can't use the $750 coupons

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: hemiram
One thing I did discover a few minutes ago. I got the base 40 Gig HD and it's not a 4200 RPM drive, it's a Fujitsu MHT-AH MHT2040AH 40GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache drive. I recommend getting at least a 60 Gig, if possible.

Thanks for the heads up. I've heard of other customers getting 5400RPM drives in lieu of 4200RPM's, but it seems to be a case-by-case basis depending on what Dell has stock of. If you check out Dell's site, under the "Learn More" for Hard Drives they list the only drive options for the 9300's as either 4200RPM or the 60GB 7200RPM. You got lucky

And thanks for leaving a comment under the news! That is what need

 

[furie27]

I ordered mine with the standard 40gb drive, but it reads as a Toshiba MK4026GAX, 5400 rpm and a 16mb buffer, quite a nice surprise from the expected 4200 rpm. Also, does anyone have links or information on upgrading the processors in these machines?

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: furie27
I ordered mine with the standard 40gb drive, but it reads as a Toshiba MK4026GAX, 5400 rpm and a 16mb buffer, quite a nice surprise from the expected 4200 rpm. Also, does anyone have links or information on upgrading the processors in these machines?

Wow, that's a big change from the standard 4200RPM! :Q

 

[hemiram]

Nice, I'd like to see the difference between the drives with 8 and 16 meg buffers. I wonder if it's anything like the desktop 2 and 8 meg difference?

 

[hemiram]

Originally posted by: fbrdphreak

Originally posted by: hemiram
I wish Dell had a more sane price on a ram upgrade from 512 to 1024, 200 bucks is almost enough to buy 2 gigs on line someplace! That's not counting the 512 they are trading you. I guess they are trying to get the companies buying them without looking at prices much, and companies buy stuff at prices that amaze me..

I worked at a place that used to by ram modules by the gross, back in the days when PC100 was top of the line. They paid twice what I could buy it for from many places, same thing went for hard drives and other parts. I tried to get them to let me supply all the stuff for 25% less than they got it for, and they turned me down! I would have saved them 10's of thousands a year. They STILL pay insane prices for parts and laptops, etc. I bet I could save them 250K company wide and put the same amount in my pocket.

LOL, I know. I do IT work for a university and they order all Dell. Some of the prices they pay........too bad they can't use the $750 coupons

Thing is, IF they used a little common sense, they could "buy in bulk" and save huge bucks. The place I worked at originally was all Compaq, back when Compaq was hugely overpriced, then they went to HP and/or COMPAQ (This was long before they merged), then someone talked them into a few Dells and that was the end for the other makes of PC's, but they cntinued to buy all the parts and monitors/printers (Always HP, pretty much) from one of those places that gets twice the street price, way over list sometimes. They were buying Inkjet Cartridges for list price by the hundreds a WEEK. Crazy.

Management seems to be clueless in general about any kind of deal at all. One guy insisted that the ram they bought wasn't the same as they sold at XXXXX by mail order. I shot iced tea out my nose....jeez.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: hemiram
Nice, I'd like to see the difference between the drives with 8 and 16 meg buffers. I wonder if it's anything like the desktop 2 and 8 meg difference?

If we ever get a 16MB drive in the labs I'll be sure to do an article on it. There are articles on the desktop drives, as there are a number of drives using 16MB now. From my understanding it helps a little, but you can only boost performance so much by caching more data while waiting for the drive to do its job

 

[AmigaMan]

Originally posted by: furie27
I ordered mine with the standard 40gb drive, but it reads as a Toshiba MK4026GAX, 5400 rpm and a 16mb buffer, quite a nice surprise from the expected 4200 rpm. Also, does anyone have links or information on upgrading the processors in these machines?

Yup, my Inspiron9200 came with a 5400RPM 40GB drive, but I'm not sure if it's the 16MB cache or not. I didn't upgrade it explicitly, I thought I was getting a 4200RPM drive.

 

[furie27]

Originally posted by: fbrdphreak

Originally posted by: hemiram
Nice, I'd like to see the difference between the drives with 8 and 16 meg buffers. I wonder if it's anything like the desktop 2 and 8 meg difference?

If we ever get a 16MB drive in the labs I'll be sure to do an article on it. There are articles on the desktop drives, as there are a number of drives using 16MB now. From my understanding it helps a little, but you can only boost performance so much by caching more data while waiting for the drive to do its job

If you'd like me to run some benches with it for your data I'd be happy to do what I can, just message me with what tests you want.