Inspiron 9300 thread

Lava Lamp Freak said:
I just received my 9300 yesterday. The first thing I did was burn the restore CD and formatted my drive and reinstalled XP. I've downloaded and installed all of the drivers from the Dell website. I'm confused about my CPU speed. CPU-Z says it is 798MHz. I have a 1.6GHz CPU. Everything is correct in the bios, and it shows the current speed is 1.6. But in Windows it shows 798. QuickSet is installed and set to Max Performance. Any ideas?
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Speedstep is enabled, which is good as the mhz will scale with your applications.
 
This may have already been addressed, I just didn't have time right now to read 14 pages. Can anyone recommend a good carrying case for the 9300? I bought an O'gio Manipulator, but it was just slightly too small, so I'm back on the market.
 
Thanks for the replies guys. Do any also have room for school books and the such?
 
Typing on the 9300 right now, this thing is beautiful, keyboard is perfect, the weight is perfect, the screen is amazingly beautiful, i'm satisfied with my $1300 laptop.


And to my surprise, it came with the Hitachi 7200rpm drive, nice.

how do i find out what type of screen i have? LG? Samsung?
 
furie27 said:
Thanks for the replies guys. Do any also have room for school books and the such?
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The targus could probablly fit one book and one notebook, anything beyond that becomes difficult.

And one really thick book won't fit too well either.
 
I received my inspiron 9300 today. Not bad. Haven't tried any games yet.

But Dell did manage to mess up. I ordered the ultrasharp display, but it came with the regular one. My max resolution is 1440x900 :(. So now I have to return it.

Does dell send you a new one, and then you just swap yours out when it arrives, and ship the wrong one back? Or do you have to ship the laptop back right away and wait for them to ship you a new one?
 
st4rk said:
I received my inspiron 9300 today. Not bad. Haven't tried any games yet.

But Dell did manage to mess up. I ordered the ultrasharp display, but it came with the regular one. My max resolution is 1440x900 :(. So now I have to return it.

Does dell send you a new one, and then you just swap yours out when it arrives, and ship the wrong one back? Or do you have to ship the laptop back right away and wait for them to ship you a new one?
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I would assume you would send the entire laptop back to avoid any warranty issues
 
st4rk said:
I received my inspiron 9300 today. Not bad. Haven't tried any games yet.
But Dell did manage to mess up. I ordered the ultrasharp display, but it came with the regular one. My max resolution is 1440x900 :(. So now I have to return it.
Does dell send you a new one, and then you just swap yours out when it arrives, and ship the wrong one back? Or do you have to ship the laptop back right away and wait for them to ship you a new one?
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As the available resolutions are 1680x1050 and 1920x1200...
edit: WTF?! Well that sucks. Who the fuck uses 1440x900?! Thats not a normal display resolution...
1280x800; 1680x050; 1920x1200 are the normal widescreen resolutions...
 
One question, how come the LED's on my battery meter at the bottom of my laptop doesn't turn on or give me a reading on the battery life?
 
GLSauron said:
As the available resolutions are 1680x1050 and 1920x1200...
edit: WTF?! Well that sucks. Who the fuck uses 1440x900?! Thats not a normal display resolution...
1280x800; 1680x050; 1920x1200 are the normal widescreen resolutions...
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I like 1440x900 on my 17" LCD. It's 100dpi, exactly the same as the dpi on my 20" 1600x1200 LCD.

Ever wonder why 1280x800 was chosen for 15.4" widescreen LCDs? Because it's close to 100dpi (actually 98dpi), a very comfortable working resolution.
 
duaLchamber said:
One question, how come the LED's on my battery meter at the bottom of my laptop doesn't turn on or give me a reading on the battery life?
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You have to push the button (the little battery icon) to test the battery. If the battery fails, the LEDs will also give a diagnostic code.
 
I ordered my 9300 last week and according to UPS, it should come today. I'm pretty excited. This will be my first laptop. I will post pics when it arrives. Here's the specs:

Inspiron 9300
Intel® Pentium® M Processor 740 (1.73 GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB)
17 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen UXGA Display with TrueLife™
1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz 2 Dimm
256MB NVIDA® GeForce™ Go 6800
60GB 7200rpm Hard Drive
8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer write capability
Intel® PRO/Wireless 2915 Internal Wireless (802.11 a/b/g, 54Mbps)
9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery (80 WHr)

Altogether it came to $2283 (including a 20% coupon), so originally it was $2800. It's a little more than I expected to pay, but I am sure it will be worth it.
 
pxc said:
I like 1440x900 on my 17" LCD. It's 100dpi, exactly the same as the dpi on my 20" 1600x1200 LCD.

Ever wonder why 1280x800 was chosen for 15.4" widescreen LCDs? Because it's close to 100dpi (actually 98dpi), a very comfortable working resolution.
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And WUXGA on the 17" is the ~ same as WSXGA+ on the 15.4". ~133 dpi.
*shrug*
I have young eyes that prefer resolution over comfort (?).

56k: nice. But getting the base 256MB of ram and going through (kingston?) for a 1GB stick will get you more ram overall and give you the extra couple bucks to get the standard battery + an extended battery. One of those little tricks you pick up after drooling over a 9300 since it came out...and the -750 would've been a better deal :(
 
How can I get my PowerDVD cdkey so I can reinstall it when I reformat?


edit: nevermind, registry is your friend. :-d
 
GLSauron said:
56k: nice. But getting the base 256MB of ram and going through (kingston?) for a 1GB stick will get you more ram overall and give you the extra couple bucks to get the standard battery + an extended battery. One of those little tricks you pick up after drooling over a 9300 since it came out...and the -750 would've been a better deal :(
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yeah at the time I didnt realize how much more Dell charges for RAM compared to how much it really costs. I just thought the SODIMMs naturally cost more money. oh well...I'll know for next time.

btw I am going through the setup phase on my brand new 9300 right now. so far it seems a little bit slow going through the welcoming screens.
 
ok I just got into windows. jesus...theres so many pop-ups its insane. dell has so much pre-installed shit on this thing it can make your head spin.

is it alright if I format and install my own copy of XP? will I need any special drivers or anything?
 
56k For Life said:
ok I just got into windows. jesus...theres so many pop-ups its insane. dell has so much pre-installed shit on this thing it can make your head spin.

is it alright if I format and install my own copy of XP? will I need any special drivers or anything?
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I had to use the i9200's sound drivers, which work flawlessly, but the 9300 might have them now as I installed them when it was a new product with drivers for just the lan :)

As for video drivers, it's easy to find off of the dell site which would aid your performance greatly

edit for clarity: Don't install the video drivers off of dell's website
 
ScHpAnKy said:
I had to use the i9200's sound drivers, which work flawlessly, but the 9300 might have them now as I installed them when it was a new product with drivers for just the lan :)

As for video drivers, it's easy to find off of the dell site which would aid your performance greatly

edit for clarity: Don't install the video drivers off of dell's website
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so who makes the best drivers then? should I be looking at third-party drivers (sorry for these questions...this is my first time owning an NVIDIA graphics card)

btw I am gonna post pics of my 9300 in a few moments
 
I'm going through that reformatting process, highly recommend, system feels much faster, don't know what it is dell installs on these fuckers.

Anyways, go to http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=74626 to get an idea of what you'll need and want.

I got a list of hardware devices, like chipset, video, audio, wireless 2200bg, ect...and googled for the latest drivers. from the manufactuer.

Works best that way.

Steps I took.....

delete dell hidden 4gb partition
reformat primary partion (quick ntfs)
install operating system
install service pack 2 (before anything else install sp2)
install chipset drivers
install video drivers
install audio drivers
install everything else.....
 
ok heres some pics I just took. the package didnt arrive until 6:59 tonight (the cut-off time is 7 PM or you get your shipping refunded). overall I am satisfied with it, although I really wish Dell had included the XP OS CD since after all I did pay $99 extra for Professional edition. I am pretty surprised at how large this thing in. the screen is huge. almost as large as my 19" CRT.

I will give a more in-depth review once I've gotten settled in

inspiron1.jpg


inspiron2.jpg


inspiron3.jpg

a symbol of quality. honestly I didnt know dell configured their laptops overseas. I always thought they were made here in the USA.

inspiron4.jpg


hardocp.jpg

[H] at 1920x1200 *drool*
 
I am going to have to get BF2 installed and see how it runs...

The game is so buggy I really don't want to go into any testing yet, as it running at 1024x768 on my 6800 Ultra desktop seems to be a challenge especially online.
 
Well I got BF2 running on the Dell 66.77 drivers with all the features still enabled...

Two problems, Dyanmic lighting and shadows...

I just disabled them and turned everything else on high with AA and AF, running fine on 1024x768 right now, but I am sure I can bump it up.

IT stretches pretty well for a 4:3 resolution, but I think we have all figured that out as the 9300 does a good job on a lot of games. I am going to edit the command line when I get some time and try running a true widescreen resolution. Possibly get some benchmark numbers as well.

Overall you can run it without having to "hack" your display drivers to support the new Nvidia drivers, you just lose the dynamic light and shadows.
 
UltimaParadox said:
...
I just disabled them and turned everything else on high with AA and AF, running fine on 1024x768 right now, but I am sure I can bump it up.
...
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slick. I'm going to be getting that game soon. Glad to hear it runs at least as well as I had hoped.

Has anyone tried the new 77.72's yet? what should I do to get these running? Will it really work to just point it to the new .inf? I thought there was more to a new video driver than that.

56k: Congrats on your purchase! I hope you enjoy it.
56k For Life said:
[H] at 1920x1200 *drool*
Try not to drool directly onto the keyboard, this should be on the top of the box before you open this laptop. You may want to get a bib for normal opertaion. Read:Gaming
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i had the basic intel drivers for the wireless adapter and it used to pick up wireless signals like a champ, all of a sudden it stopped picking them up in the "View Wireless Signals" window but still connected to a wireless signal??? :scratch:

So basically, it's picking up a wireless signal, but the wireless signal window isn't showing any networks in my range.

What did I screw up now?

picture of the problem:

http://www.joejimenez.com/802.11.JPG
 
starting from last week my suspend function no longer works! it would suspend and then never snap out of it. I have to hard reboot to get the cpu back on.

is there any way to fix this? It's driving me bonkers.
 
duaLchamber said:
i had the basic intel drivers for the wireless adapter and it used to pick up wireless signals like a champ, all of a sudden it stopped picking them up in the "View Wireless Signals" window but still connected to a wireless signal??? :scratch:

So basically, it's picking up a wireless signal, but the wireless signal window isn't showing any networks in my range.

What did I screw up now?

picture of the problem:

http://www.joejimenez.com/802.11.JPG
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Took me a minute to find the wireless problem there. But it's best to use the Intel ProSet/Wireless program for wireless configuration.
 
furie27 said:
Took me a minute to find the wireless problem there. But it's best to use the Intel ProSet/Wireless program for wireless configuration.
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What's the problem? I'd like to just use the microsoft client there because the Intel software loads up like 10+ services!!!!

But it does get a good range and stable too...
 
Well, I'm running Guild Wars, City of Heros, Star Wars Galaxies and Republic Commando and Call of Duty on mine with maximum resolutions without a hitch so far. Unfortunately, It looks as if the painted Inspiron logo towards the back of it is wearing off from being in my bag :(

Oh, and when transporting large files/amounts of files over the wireless card it seems to shut off! At first I thought it was my router, but I was transferring FROM a wireless card too :confused:
 
Nasty_Savage said:
Well, I'm running Guild Wars, City of Heros, Star Wars Galaxies and Republic Commando and Call of Duty on mine with maximum resolutions without a hitch so far. Unfortunately, It looks as if the painted Inspiron logo towards the back of it is wearing off from being in my bag :(

Oh, and when transporting large files/amounts of files over the wireless card it seems to shut off! At first I thought it was my router, but I was transferring FROM a wireless card too :confused:
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Yeah my inspiron seems to be wearing off as well, but I have not had any troubles with large amount of files over the wireless connections whatsoever.
 
I think I asked this before but no answer.

Can you use the DVI out as the primary screen for fullscreen gaming?
 
GLSauron said:
I think I asked this before but no answer.

Can you use the DVI out as the primary screen for fullscreen gaming?
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Yes. That's part of nview. In fact, i'm using DVI as the only video output now for everything.
 
Glad I found this thread doing a google search.

I just ordered mine about an hour ago 8:00pm:

Specs:

2Ghz Pentium M
512MB of RAM
100GB HD
Geforce go 6800
Windows XP Home
17" WUXGA+ with True life (did alot of researching and decided to go with the true life, I hope it doesn't let me down, as I don't plan on using it outside)
8x DVD Burner

Along with a :
Nylon Case
Blue cover snap-in (just wanted to add some color to it, make it look sorta cool)
4 Year premium warranty service (gotta protect the investment)

= $2580.05 with tax, freeshipping, $750 off coupon code
 
56k For Life said:
so who makes the best drivers then? should I be looking at third-party drivers (sorry for these questions...this is my first time owning an NVIDIA graphics card)

btw I am gonna post pics of my 9300 in a few moments
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Nope, just head to guru3d.com and pick up 77-series drivers and use a custom INF file to install the drivers
 
ScHpAnKy said:
Nope, just head to guru3d.com and pick up 77-series drivers and use a custom INF file to install the drivers
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Installing using the customn INF driver disable power saving featuers? Or is that the point of installing the custom ones?
 
pxc said:
Yes. That's part of nview. In fact, i'm using DVI as the only video output now for everything.
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Do you see a noticable difference?
 
MaMMa said:
Do you see a noticable difference?
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Yeah, I do. The screen screen is now 20" @ 4:3 instead of 17" @ 16:10. :p

I don't understand what you mean, but like usual, DVI output looks perfect on an external LCD.
 
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