I've got about 1 year on this Dell i9300, and it's a trooper!
Picked it up refurbished via the Dell Outlet for $1247 shipped next day air. I priced it in Dell Home, and it came to $2200 or $2400
I don't know why it was returned, but it was 1 month old and had zero problems upon arrival. The CD burner/DVD reader stopped burning CDs correctly when I was in Kuwait... other than that it hasn't failed (well, except I broke the headphone jack!).
It's a decent rig, and a great gamer. The nearly-straight-out-of-a-desktop video card helps a lot.
Here's the specs on mine:
1.6GHz Pentium M 170 (533MHz FSB)
2GB "G Skill" PC4200 RAM
256MB Nvidia Geforce go6800 (upgradeable so far to a 7800GTX via MXM socket)
17" WXSGA 1440x900 matte finish LCD
Intel 2200BG B/G wirless
Dell 350 Bluetooth
Extra high capacity battery (so 2 batteries)
It's pretty good... has powerful built in speakers with a tiny 1" sub that actually works (does more midrange than lows, though).
The downside to this behemoth is the fact that they used the same keyboard as the 15.4" 6000. Means there is no numpad and a lot of wasted space on each side of the keyboard, but I dunno... maybe the keys would be smaller if they did the numpad like all the other 17s I've seen.
That and this thing SUCKS HARDCORE on a plane! Being 17", there is not enough room between you and the seat in front of you to get a good viewing angle with it... especially if the dudes in front reclined their seat!
I got lucky on the flight across the Atlantic... I got the 2nd row back on the right side (looking towards cockpit)... The way the aisles were designed, there were 2 seats facing the bulkhead, then 3 seats behind that one... so I had no seat in front of me!
Kinda like this:
Code:
---- ---
XX XX
XX OXX
XX XXX
XX XXX
The "O" was my seat... ahhh... plenty of legroom!
ANYWAY... They have replaced the 9300 with the E1705 in North America and the 9400 in Europe. They use the newer Core Duo processors and have a 5-in-one card reader instead of my SD only. Otherwise they're essentially the same. Oh, and they come with 7800go video cards as a replacement for my 6800go in mine.
Or if you want an Alienware-beating system, the 17" XPS laptop is pretty nice. Has a glossy high-res screen, gimmicky-but-cool leds in the grills and back of LCD cover, and standard with either the 6800 Ultra or 7800GTX depending on how new it is... They used to be called the "XPS Generation 2" and are now called "XPS M170" and are supposed to be getting renamed again when they put dual core processors in. Other than the black trim, LEDs, gigabit, and highest of the high end video cards, the XPS is almost the same as a 9300.
You could order a used, low end 9300 for like $800-$1000 with the 64MB ATI, yank that out and throw in the 7800GTX, get a 400MHz Pentium M, pinmod that to around 2.5GHz, throw 2GB Ram in it, and be faster than a new XPS... maybe even $1000-$1200 cheaper, depending on if you shop around for the parts.
Anyway... enough of my Dell rant! And no, I don't love Dell or hate Alienware... I just use whatever is best in my budget at the moment. And Alienware lovers will tell you that Dells are junk, but they're just sore that a cheap Dell outperforms their boutique laptop! I think it's pretty funny! Especially since Dell owns Alienware now... heh
Nobody besides Dell and the boutique systems offer the highest end video cards... and it sucks! 
