Unlimited long distance $24.99/mo
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CNET editors' rating:
4.0 stars
Excellent
Detailed editors' rating - Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 128 reviews
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Product summary
We recommend the Dell Inspiron 9200 to home users who want an awesome, relatively portable, desktop-replacement laptop with cutting-edge features and solid performance.
Specifications: Processor: Intel Pentium M (2 GHz); RAM installed: 1 GB DDR SDRAM; Weight: 9.3 lbs; See full specs
CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 12/10/2004
- Released on: 10/26/2004
Like all of Dell's laptops, the Inspiron 9200 is extremely configurable. Its pièce de résistance is its bright, expansive, 17-inch wide-screen display, which ships with one of two native resolutions: WXGA+ (1,440x900) or WUXGA (1,900x1,200). Either way, you'll get more pixels than with the standard XGA (1,024x768) native resolution. We should note that the antiglare coating on WUXGA screens creates a somewhat sparkly effect that's most noticeable against white backgrounds. Dell was unable to provide us with an evaluation model that included a WXGA+ display for comparison.
There's no graphics chip flexibility, but you're in good hands with the ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics chip, with its ample 128MB of dedicated video RAM. However, you can customize the other components by choosing a CPU speed between 1.6GHz and 2.1GHz and anywhere from a standard 256MB to a whopping 2GB of memory. Dell offers a range of hard drives with the Inspiron 9200, from a smallish 40GB, which will store several years' worth of files created by the typical user, up to a massive 100GB for multimedia addicts who rip as many movies and MP3s as possible. Each drive comes with a somewhat slow 4,200rpm speed, except for the 60GB, 7,200rpm option, which only gamers and graphics pros would truly appreciate.
The Inspiron 9200 ships with one of three secondary optical-storage drives: a DVD drive, which lets you play but not record DVDs; a DVD/CD-RW drive, for DVD play and CD play or burning; and a bleeding-edge DVD burner, which conveniently supports both the DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW formats, as well as the spanking-new, double-layer DVD recordables, which store up to 8.5GB of data on a single disc. Do yourself a favor and get one of the burners, since almost everyone wants to save a picture, a song, or a document to disc at some point. If your wish list of burnable material includes movies, go with the DVD burner.
Every laptop in the series includes a Wi-Fi 802.11 mini-PCI card, but you get to choose whether your card will be based on the 802.11b/g or the 802.11a/b/g standard. If you don't know what 802.11a is, chances are, you don't need it, so stick with the b/g option. Though it's still struggling to get off the ground in the United States, the Bluetooth technology, which is loved across Europe, is also an option.
Where software's concerned, the Inspiron 9200 ships with Microsoft's Windows XP Home or Professional operating system, both of which include Service Pack 2. You'll want to choose the slightly more expensive XP Pro if you plan to network your laptop with other systems or you're concerned about data security. Dell took the extremely cheap route with the laptop's productivity applications, including only Corel's WordPerfect 12.0 word-processing app. You can get more full-featured suites, such as Microsoft Office, but you'll have to pay up to $300 extra for them.
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User reviews
- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 128 reviews
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9 out of 11 people found this review helpful
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3 out of 3 people found this review helpful
"Good desktop replacement, and very portable considdering size"
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