I just upgraded from a Dell Inspiron 8600 to the 9300. I got the 8600 shortly after leaving the Macintosh Business Unit, just a little over a year ago. I was switching from a 15" TiBook. If I'd still been doing Macintosh development I would have definitely been looking at the 17" PowerBooks. I looked at the 17" PC laptops at the time, and didn't really like any of them. However, Dell recently released the 9300, which is quite nice. I love having a 1920x1200 screen. It's also got a bigger hard drive (100 GB), it's faster (2.0 GHz P4 mobile), DVI output, 6(!) USB ports, and a better video card (Nvidia GeForce Go 6800). It's a reasonable weight for a machine of its size, and the battery life is good. The screen is very shiny. It looks nice, but I'm not sure if the glare is going to be a problem. It hasn't been for the couple weeks I've had the machine, but that might just be because there hasn't been any sun for the last couple of weeks. I'm doing most of my development work and the big screen is great. Overall, I'm quite happy with it.

I'd actually checked out the XPS 2, which is almost an identical form factor, but is slightly faster, has a slightly better video card, and has fancy lights that you can control. It was a little too pimped out for me though. It also has a much bigger power supply and shorter battery life. It is a nice machine though - much nicer than the monsterous original XPS.