Dell Inspiron 9200 Laptop

Sparky

Hows it going, I was recently on the dell.ie website and spotted the new Inspirion 9200 laptop and think it looks cool, I already have an Inspirion 9100 and find it bulky (I know its more of a desktop replacement laptop than anything else). But anyway Im considering getting the 9200 laptop with 1024gb of memory, so does anyone have this laptop to tell me about it, like what its preformance is like and is it weighty. 3.4kg I think it said on the website.
Anyway does anyone think i should go get it.

Thanks

sceptre

I reckon it's as heavy as bedamned and as ugly as sin.

However, it's (13%) lighter than the 9100 and considerably less ugly as well (at least on top, on the bottom they're as bad as each other). Those 9100s are terribly awful (and that's before you even look under the keyboard)

You're not going to get much of a performance increase (if any) though - the graphics card in the 9200 is a 128MB ATI Radeon 9700. Also available in the 9100, though the 9100 also has the option of a 9800 which the 9200 doesn't have. The 9200 comes with a Pentium-M processor (though I'm a big fan of these as they do outperform a twice-as-fast P4 chip on a variety of tasks) while the 9100 comes with a P4. The screen on the 9200 is bigger though.

Put simply, while if I had to choose I'd go for the 9200 (though in a sane state I wouldn't go for either as I like the lighter latitude models like the X300 or D400 (not the 410 as I reckon it's ugly and can't make up its mind about what colour it'd like to be)) I can't see the big advantage for you in switching unless you like shiny things and have more moolah than sensah.

Recommendation: you've already got a 9100, why bother.

If you really feel you need two notebooks and you want both to be Dells, why not make the second one something you can carry without the help of a donkey and a cart.

FuzzyWuzzyWazza

Just a little side note, I have a Laptop with a P4 M, this is the only chip you should choose with you laptop as the reguler P4 was not designed to go in a laptop, drains too much power and produces way too much heat.
I have seen Pentium-M on some laptps but as far as I am aware (you can correct me if I am wrong on this) it is still a 'mobile P4' (ie. what I have)they just badge it a little different

ressem

Re: FuzzyWuzzyWazza

No, P4-M runs with a higher clockspeed and in tests gives substantially worse battery life on machines with roughly the same CPU performance as a P-M.

I'll leave the engineering details to google.

If Dell is your preferred supplier then you might want to wait. There's an upgraded edition of laptops with the newer P-M chipset coming out. See www.dell.com and you'll notice the laptops with 533 FSB support and PCI-E graphics support (though no newcard support so its a useless bragging point). See Latitude D810 in SBE section.
And they actually provide the windows reinstall media. As opposed to their treating home users as pirates.

Shouldn't be any major updates after that till autumn.

What's with this Trusted Platform Module feature that's on the US version of the laptop but not (advertised) on this one though?

jank

Dont Buy it
Wait for the inspiron 9300 which will be an upgraded version of the i9200

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2162

Its not out yet but i think its due out the the end of this month( next week really!) and will probably hopefully be available in ireland next month but you should ring up and ask them to be sure. It looks a good desktop replacement though but its mighty big to be carrying around

Sparky

Ok your points are taken and thanks, but if i had to choose a dell laptop that i dont need a horse and cart to carry what one should i get, im looking for something powerfull, light and lots of battery power.
Any ideas.

ozt9vdujny3srf

I have a dell d505 laptop with 512 megs of ram and a 1.7ghz centrino and tis nice .

Its fairly thin and is great for everything except gaming, but then again slim laptops tend not to be. (onboard gfx)

Battery life works out at about 3 1/2 hours for useage like music playing and web browsing and basically anything that doesnt push the processor past its 600mhz speed.things like playing movies on it takes the batter life down to about 1 1/2 hours.

the only drawback is a slightly flaky mousepad although this doesnt seem to effect many people ( i know a few people with the same laptop and only one other has had the same problems with touchpad)

Sparky

well thats quite slow speed 600mhz, my laptop would be more memory and processor demanding (i know battery life will be crap then), for gaming and video editing, hence 1gb of ram.
if only they done the XPS in laptop form, I suppose something in between bulky and light would be good.

Zascar

Of you want to upgrade get a Lattitude instead of an Inspiron, way better...

ozt9vdujny3srf

Sparky's_snips wrote:

Ok your points are taken and thanks, but if i had to choose a dell laptop that i dont need a horse and cart to carry what one should i get, im looking for something powerfull, light and lots of battery power.
Any ideas.

You can'y have it every way.

Video editing / gaming is going to drain any battery, although i still recommend a pentium m processor as even at full tilt its considerably less power hungry then the p4.

Of course the gfx cardwill suck up power niceley aswell.

If you have money to burn, try www.alienware.co.uk

I really dont understand this whole video editing / gaming on a laptop malarky mind. you pay double the price for a worse machine. vid editing and gaming should be kept to the desktop imo.

sceptre

Sparky's_snips wrote:

if only they done the XPS in laptop form

Hold your breath for that one. It's going to look like a surfboard with flashy lights though so I wouldn't have one in the house. And it's basically just a 9200 with flashy lights and a slightly beefier GPU. If that's what you really want though (and you don't mind needing a trolley to transport it), wait a wee while.

Like Truckle, I'd regard gaming and vid-editing to be more suited to a desktop. No need to run out and spend over a grand every time a game comes out that you simply /must/ play when your current machine isn't good enough. Bigger monitor, better sound, less ****ing about.