Page 1 of Dell - how easy to upgrade ?

My brother is thinking of buying a Dell PC. I not really looking for comments as to if they are good / bad / indifferent , but I would like to know from any Dell owners who have , for instance , installed a new DVD drive. The reason I ask is that the price for including these when you buy is relatively high but I have installed CD /DVD drives in a number of PC`s over the years and occasionally I have found them to be a bit awkward to get the drive in. Is the Dell casing such a beast ? Or not ?

Very easy to install on these models the side panel is quick release ,the facia quickly unclips and you just change the drive like for like.I just did this on my daughter`s Dell bargain recently purchased on one of these deals. I changed the 48x cd rom for a NEC 3250A dvd writer no problem buy with confidence.

This item was edited on Tuesday, 15th March 2005, 15:38

Do you loose your warranty once you open the box?
JC

Yeah. but its really easy to tighten it up.

As far as I am aware a lot of Dell PC`s do not have many expansion slots. I also heard that the power supply connectors to the motherboard are reversed so if the board or power supply goes then you need to buy a new Dell one.

Great prices at the moment though so that probably outweighs the disadvantages.

When I upgraded the SDRAM in my Dell I had to buy official Dell dimms which seemed to cost about twice as much as Crucial`s own brand. Also newer Dell`s (3000 series for example) will only take one internal hard drive unless you go for the top of the range. Not a problem nowadays with big drives and external caddies.

Sam.

Thanks for the comments.
It is a model in the 3000 series that he is looking at , but I wouldn`t be looking to add another hard drive. The only things I would be looking at would be changing the DVD/CDRW combi for a DVD Rewriter and (maybe) adding a graphics and / or sound card later on (I think both of those are on-board at the moment).

I can confirm what speedyman said above about swapping out the CD ROM for DVD/CD RW. It takes no more than five minutes start to finish. Alternatively leave the CD ROM in and add the DVD drive to the second bay (I think the 3000 has a spare one).

Sam.

Talking about Dell I have had a nightmare with them today. I was trying to activate my XP with Microsoft and for some reason the COA was not being recognised, so i decided to call Dell to see what the problem was. 29 minutes later (0870 number of course), and after talking to 3 different guys I had to put the phone down. All very well to get those call centres in India but god are those guys useless or what. They kept asking the same details and passing me on to somebody else after a while. They obviously follow religiously a set of questions/instructions on their screen and can hardly speak or understand English.
I finally called Microsoft and again had to speak to someone in India. The guy made me repeat twice the installation number (it has 54 digits i think) but finally i managed to activate my OS.
My workplace is going to lay off quite of few of us this summer as they have opened an outfit in India, somehow i can`t wait to see the reaction of our clients. Sure the companies are saving money (apparently they pay them 10% of what they pay us) but try to get a good service from them.

Sorry but i had to have my moan
JC

India? The Dell guys I called today are in Ireland. Maybe corporate and home support go to different call centers.