just got a dell 9300

Well I broke down and got the dell 9300 with all of the goodies last night with the 35% off coupon. It still was 1600 with tax...I will be in debt for a little bit but I should get some good use out of it.

One thing I didn't get was an upgraded processor. I left that at stock at the Pentium M 740. Can I upgrade that by myself in the future? I just remember opening up a friends older laptop and seeing the processor soldered to the motherboard.

The rest of the specs are as follows if you care.
1 gig of ddr2 ram
17inch UXGA screen.
7200 60gb HD.
geforce 6800 256mb.
9cell battery.

Will the warrantee still be valid if I reformat and put gentoo and xp back on?

Yes.

Here is what i would do. Open up the lappy and take out the 740.(Search this forum for "pin mod link") Sell the 740. Buy a 7x5(400 fsb). Follow the pin mod which you will find if you search with the terms i gave you. I pinmodded my 735(I sold the 730) and it runs at 2.13 very nicely.

I also run BF\2 maxed out but i have 2 gigs of ram. I recommend upgrading that whenever you can.