Recently, I posted to advise that I purchased a Dell 9300 notebook, sporting a 2GHz Pentium-M, 1GB RAM, and 6800 Go video card. To date, I have been very impressed with its performance in FS9, to the extent that it rivals my desktop A64 3700+ with 6800 Ultra in performance and visual beauty.As most of you know, notebooks are fairly non-upgradable once purchased vs their desktop counterparts. Being an overclocker at heart, I am always on the lookout for ways to boost performance of any system that I own. A visit from my parents this weekend, bringing their Dell 510M notebook, gave me just the right opportunity for tweaking. :-sae A few notebook enthusiasts have found that the Dothan Pentium-M (400MHz) can be pin-modded to run at Sonoma bus speed (533MHz). As such, I was able to swap the 1.7GHz Dothan from my parent's system with the 2GHz Sonoma from mine. A little pin-mod later and I now have a 2.26GHz Sonoma-equivalent CPU in my 9300, whereas my parent's system has stepped back to 1.5GHz (400MHz bus). You may be thinking that this is a bit jack on my parents, but they only use their notebook for boring, non-gaming stuff and the swap to the Sonoma core, which can be undervolted further than their Dothan could, has actually resulted in longer battery life and cooler system operation. A win-win situation all round. Of relevance to this forum is that my efforts have resulted in about a 10% boost in frame rates in FS9 and bragging rights to one of the fastest notebooks on the planet at this time. :-hahWarning and disclaimer - dis/reassembly of the 9300 and associated pin-mod is NOT for the inexperienced or faint-hearted. Having said that, there are great online guides from Dell (on 9300 dis/reassembly) and from enthusiasts (on how to do the pin mod) at places like notebookforums.comGary

Hi, My name is Don and I live in Sydney Australia and like you I also run Flight Simulator on a Dell Inspiron laptop (8100). I am thinking of buying an Inspiron 9300 with the same specs as yours except maybee with a 60GB 7200rpm hard drive, and I was hoping you might be able to answer a few questions I have regarding running FS9 on that machine. I'm refering to the 9300 in its standard form before you hotted it up. My first query is to do with the screen which on mine would be either a 1440x900 or a 1920x1200 res 17" Ultrasharp Widescreen UXGA. With that resolution do you get a full screen when flying FS9 or is it like some DVDs where there is a black band on top and bottom ? Second is can you fly it smoothly with all the settings maxed out and then what sort of framerates do you get when flying past buildings and then over countryside scenery and does it stutter in turns, especially fast turns ? And last of all what do you think of Saiteck Hardware ? I'm looking for a sensitive Joystick/Throttle combination to fly the helicopters with. By the way I'm not sure what the @ 350/750 after the 256M 6800 Go card means and I've just looked at the specs again on the units available out here and they are an Intel Centrino Mobile Technology with Intel Pentium M Processor 760 ( 2,00Ghz, 2MBCache, 533MHz FSB ). Much as I've learnt to hate Dell and their lousy Indian support centres they're still the fastest notebooks around for flying FS that I can find so I guess I'm stuck with them. If you're wondering why I don't get a powerfull desktop instead the reason is I live on a Boat and power is limited to running off 12v batterys. Hope you can help. Regards, Don Hartley. [email protected]