Ill be doing some gamming, movies, internet through BT phone, and butt-load of coding in flash and debugging asp files an unix files. Also Eye-balling battery life. Which of the 2 would be better choice? Thanks.

<i><font color=red>Only an overclocker can make a computer into a convectional oven.</i></font color=red>

Between those 2 I would definatly get the inspiron 9200. Mainly because it has a more reputable manufacturer and has a dothan core processor. You really can't beat a dothan in a laptop, they simply own all. And it will probably give you around 5hrs of battery life.

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

Countin on that. Did some futher research and found that the a64 notebooks can barely keep up with the PM notebooks and use much more juice. Just with Dell made a 15.4" version of that 9200.

<i><font color=red>Only an overclocker can make a computer into a convectional oven.</i></font color=red>

The 9200 will only give you that much battery life with the 9-Cell battery (the standard is a 6-cell which will only give you around 3.5hrs).

With the introduction of the low-voltage Athlon 64, things should become a little more interesting in the notebook arena.

Regards,
RaPTuRe

Who's General Failure and why's he reading my disk?

I have to agree, I wouldnt but a G3(uniwill N258KA0), but also disagree, I wouldnt buy a 9200 either. I've had Dell notebooks at work and home for the past 4 years; during which I've seen a steady decline in quality, i.e. receiving an new 8600 that wont even boot and very flimsy displays!
I'd buy a barebones uniwill system, pick up a AMD Athlon Mobile 64 3200+(62W model), get the 16mb buffer toshiba 60GB disk and Corsaid XMS memory. Processing with this system will blow away a comprable 9200 while having the same or better battery life.

Good luck!

if you're gonna be a bear, be a GRIZZLY!!

i have never heard of uniwill!!! tell me more.

K8T Neo FIS2R
Athlon 64 bit 3400
2 X 256 Corsaire
Maxtor 40, 120
Western Digital Raptor 74 Gig
ATI AIW Radeon 9700 Pro
NEC LCD Monitor 1760NX
Antec Tru Power 550
Windows XP

Uniwill 258KAO: http://uniwill.com/products/perfor [...] p?HL=1&P=2
is what ABS uses to build the Mayhem G3's. You can buy a barebones system and build it better and cheaper than the G3
Check this link out:
http://amd64notebooks.com/reviews/uniwill/index.php


if you're gonna be a bear, be a GRIZZLY!!

You call the Dell notebooks flimsy, and not the ABS (Uniwill) chassis? I would have to disagree. What are the warantees like on these systems? And are they adequate for non-technical pc users?

RaPTuRe

Who's General Failure and why's he reading my disk?

The nature of building bare bones systems wouldn't be mainstream for non-tech users. There are links, such as the one I've previously provided, that detail build instructions for these systems.

As for Dell, I currently own 3 Dell Notebooks, in chronological order:
Inspiron 7000 - assembled in USA, best built of the 3- if I didn't purchase the 3 year extended warranty, it would have been thrown away because it fell apart!
Latitude CPXJ - replaced keyboard twice, display once, cd-rom once, hard drive once, graphics chipset stopped working.
Inspiron 8000 - this is my favorite, after 1 year battery stopped charging, could not recognize second dimm - crashed while booting, display frame and hinges are shot, DVD rom only recognized as cd-rom no matter the OS, built in LAN died. The best part about this is after searching Dell's forum, these problems have occurred in several other Inspiron 8000's, after swapping boards for people without resolution, Dell gave up on fixing them.

Why did I keep buying Dell, because I received a significant discount through work.

if you're gonna be a bear, be a GRIZZLY!!

Heh, the more I read, the more I like my 4y old Thinkpad. Everything as it were in the beginning, well, except the faster drive ;o)

..this is very useful and helpful place for information...

Wow man, you just had a serious stroke of bad luck!

I've owned an Inspiron 2500, Inspiron 600m, and an Inspiron 8600 which I'm currently using and I've NEVER had a single problem which required a warranty visit, save me sending the laptop out for plastics replacement due to normal wear and tear to increase the resale value whenever I felt like it was time to upgrade.

I'd say!

I've owned four Dells
Latitude XPi P133ST - Pentium 133MHz
Latitude CPx H500GT - PIII 500MHz
Inspiron 8200 - Pentium4-m 1.7GHz
Latitude D800 - Pentium-M 1.6GHz

Problems encoutered:
Latitude XPi encountered the floor quite heavily - resulting in non-functional FDD. Battery still works perfectly today (2-3hours).
Latitude CPx got slow - added 256MB RAM (tot: 512MB)(was a little bit tricky as it only takes single layer modules). Added 7200rpm HDD - Now runs as quick as lightning.
Inspiron 8200 - CD-R/RW stopped working after it slid out of the modular bay.
Latitude D800 - LCD replaced as it had a residual capacitative charge (burn-in) which was due to a batch of faulty smsung panels.
All problems were sorted by Dell within a day at no charge. And still run perfectly today.

Perhaps I am just lucky,

Regards,
RaPTuRe

Who's General Failure and why's he reading my disk?