Some Dell Questions...

[Sumanji]

Hey,

I'm thinking of ordering a workstation (Dimension 5150/9200) and a laptop (Inspiron 6400) for my Dad's business from Dell. Got a few questions about their systems though.

1) I'd like to have RAID-1 in the workstation... they have some special proprietary thing called SecureData. Is this basically just glorified RAID-1 with a bloaty Dell software layer behind it? If I opt to not have this, can I just add in an extra drive myself and run RAID-1 manually?

2) Do the laptops use MXM graphics cards? If so, is it possible to choose onboard Intel GMA900/950 for now and then upgrade later with an MXM card?

More questions later probably!

Cheers,

Suman

[nvening]

You wont be able to upgrade the graphics.

First it probably does not have the slot

Second You have to get the right card to fit your laptops HSF

Third there are barley any cards you can buy

[dave87]

My guess would be for the MXM upgrade card you would need to buy a laptop that already uses it - something with the x1300 for example. Then, you may be able to simply switch out the card in the future. Afaik, GMA graphics are totally inbuilt into the motherboard, and therefore liable to use a different mainboard to those requiring the MXM modules.

Owning an inspiron 6400 myself, I have looked (briefly) into it, and there is great uncertainty over whether Dell use MXM technology (in effect, a mini PCI-e 16x slot) or their own proprietry connection.

Dave