The Inspiron 9100 is probably one of the best notebooks around that can truly replace the desktop PC, offering speed and excellent 3D graphics performance.Dell's largest notebook to date, the Inspiron 9100, comes with just about everything you can expect to find on a reasonably high-end desktop system. Our test unit features a top-of-the-line Pentium 4 processor with Hyper-Threading, a generous serving of fast DDR400 memory, a DVD writer, and onboard wired and wireless LAN options. The icing on the cake for this notebook, however, is the onboard ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 card which is one of the fastest mobile graphics chipset currently available in the market. The only gripes we have are its bulky size and sub-2hour battery life, but the Inspiron 9100 remains one of our top recommendations for desktop users aiming to upgrade to a notebook, without sacrificing performance.
As with most desktop replacement notebooks, the Inspiron 9100 is not designed with the mobile user in mind. Its 50.8mm chassis is almost as thick as a stack of 500-sheet 80gsm A4 paper. Add to that a 5.2kg travel weight (including AC adapter) and most people will think twice before bringing the notebook out of the house. Surprisingly, the Inspiron fits easily into most notebook carriers, thanks to its 359 x 274mm footprint which is pretty standard among 15.4-inch widescreen models.
The Inspiron features a solid and well-spaced keyboard which is comfortable to type on even for long hours. Desktop users will find the keyboard layout user-friendly, too, as the positioning of the keys is similar to that of the desktops and most functions can be accessed directly, rather than through the "Function" key. The Inspiron 9100 is also one of the rare laptops to offer both touchpad and pointer input, so users now have two more options besides using an external mouse.
Like Dell's other notebook offerings, the Inspiron 9100 comes in various user-customizable configurations. You can choose to equip the machine with 3GHz or 3.2GHz Pentium 4 processors, up to 2,048MB of memory and, different 15.4-inch widescreen resolutions ranging from WSXGA (1,680 x 1,050) to WUXGA (1,920 x 1,200). The maximum hard drive capacity is 80GB, though only the 60GB version comes with 7,200rpm option. You can also choose between the 64MB and 128MB version of the ATI Mobility 9700 graphics card.
The optical drive bay for the Inspiron is swappable and comes with various options such as a DVD/CD-RW combo drive and DVD+R/RW writer. Dell, however, does not offer any hard drive or battery options for the bay.
Standard ports on the Inspiron 9100 include four USB 2.0, FireWire, RJ11 (modem) and RJ45 (Ethernet). Wireless LAN is offered only as an option but Bluetooth is bundled as an integrated feature. Users who want to connect to an external display can choose the VGA, S-Video or DVI port. With all that real estate on the notebook, we expected to find onboard flash memory card readers, but this increasingly popular feature seems to have been left out. What's also missing in this notebook is an infrared remote control for music and video playback.
Our test unit came fully loaded with top-of-the-line components: A 3.2GHz processor, 2,048MB of DDR400 memory and a 128MB ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 card. Thus, it came as no surprise to see the benchmark scores fly off the charts when we put the notebook through the full test run.
Most impressive of all was perhaps the 3DMark2003 score which averaged 3,358, one of the best scores we have gotten from a notebook. This should be of particular interest to gamers and multimedia mavens who have long been complaining of how slow 3D graphics speeds are on laptops. (The ATI Radeon 9800 Pro in our Labs scored average of 5,000 to 6,000 points in 3DMark 2003.). Scores of 193 and 297 for MobileMark2002 and SysMark2002, respectively, also ranked the Inspiron among the fastest mobile machines tested in our Labs.
What's disappointing, though, was the BatteryMark2002 score which saw the notebook's fully charged 6,450mAh battery drain out in just 130 minutes. However, considering that there were three dedicated fans to cool the desktop P4 processor, this was not totally unexpected. One thing for sure, the fans did a good job keeping the entire notebook cool, even after we ran it for 6 hours consecutively.
During our tests, we found the 15.4-inch screen sharp but somehow lacking in colour vibrancy unlike the BenQ Joybook 8100. The display did, however, offer a pretty good viewing angle which should be useful for those intending to watch DVD movies and mini presentations. Audio quality from the Inspiron was also one of the best we encountered in a notebook, thanks to the integrated subwoofer in the battery.
In addition to Windows XP Professional, our Inspiron 9100 test system came pre-installed with a comprehensive multimedia software bundle which includes PowerDVD, Sonic MyDVD, Sonic DLA and Sonic RecordNow!. Users can also choose to install either Microsoft Works or upgrade to one of the Microsoft Office suites.
Dell offers a standard one-year limited warranty for its Inspiron notebooks which includes next business day onsite response, phone support (during office hours) and regional coverage (within Asia Pacific). You can extend the warranty by upgrading to a three-year complete package for an additional fee. As with most vendors, you can find a useful archive of FAQs, documentation and driver updates on Dell's Web site.
Dell Inspiron 9100
Company: Dell
Price: From AU$2,698
Distributor: Dell
Phone: 1800 812 393
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Re: Inspiron 9100
Is it possible to install the
"ATI MOBILITY™ RADEON™ 9700 8X AGP 3D Graphics Accelerator with 256MB EMBEDDED DDR Memory"
as dell do not offer this card?
See: ITC Millennia 7200