9300 owners please rack up your 'pinions

I'd like to know what 9300 owners buy now to replace this once very fine specimen...

In the last few months I have acquire my first laptop(s). The 1525 came first and without a doubt it is a lovely running machine. Nice looking too. Last week I couldn't pass up a chance on a 17" Dell - granted it's older, and pretty banged up but I wanted to see if I could extend a little TLC and maybe re-sell it.

It's a 9300 and I have to say that I think I like it better. It's not just the screen size, although once you have a bigger screen (desk or lap) it's hard to to think smaller. When I took this one apart to clean it I was amazed at how much more insightful the design is over the 1525 (and the dv9000, v2000 and mx6710 I've recently acquired).

The metal base of the case, the open layout, the absolute ease with which it can be disassembled to access the important things without a major tear down.

The sound is amazing for a laptop - it seemed not to go very high on its own and yet when I put in a DVD to watch and used the Windows media player volume to up it further it was easily 1000% better than the 1525, which unfortunately is like listening through a tin can on a string so headphones or external are a must. I bet a decent sound driver and this thing would kick-butt!

It is an ugly, ugly machine - 40 lashes to the art department, but it is totally possible to beautify it - as can be seen right here on the forum in the mods thread.

I so wish this machine could be upgraded to today's specs with at least 4gb of ram and a dual core - and that's why I posted...

For all those who have owned these and with far more experience than I, what did you upgrade to? Any opinions on who measures up these days?

 

The 9300... can't be upgraded much. It's a Pentium M-based machine, and it'll only take Pentium M, the fastest being the Pentium M 780. It's not supposed to take more than 2GB of memory, either.

You might be able to grab a 9 400 motherboard and stuff it in there, and thereby get up to a Socket M CD/C2D... but even that might not take 4GB, and it definitely may not work in the first place.

 

oops - my bad, I didn't phrase that clearly - what I meant is, what did previous owner's of 9300's switch to when they bought new laptops? I want to start watching for something equal to the quality of the 93's build and design with more recent components.

For example, my 1525 can go the 4gb ram and faster proc but the chassis design - imo - is awful. The charging port is on the wrong side, the sound is abysmal, the bottom case is plastic - components and access are poorly laid out. But the lid is pretty...

Because of this it's a good bet the 1725 is just a bigger screen version of the 1525 and I wouldn't want to spend the money on it. I figure those who know/knew the 9300 would be a good bunch of opinions to take into account when shopping for a newer laptop since I'm hoping for a lead on a comparable model to persue

 

The Inspiron 9400, XPS M1710, Precision M90, and Precision M6300 all share the same (or similar) chassis with the Insprion 9300. The most recent of those machines is the M6300, which is based on the Santa Rosa platform.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4423