Dell XPS m1330 upgrading?

I've just specced a fairly cheap Dell XPS m1330. With my student discounts, I got down to about $1850. However, the things that I sacrificed were things that I think I should be able to upgrade fairly easily on my own, except for the premium on the processor (stuck with the Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T7300 (2.0GHz/800Mhz FSB, 4MB Cache)).

Meaning, I took the 1 GB RAM, thinking I could easily buy some cheaper RAM online like at NewEgg for 2 GB or 4 GB should I ever need it. I'm pretty sure that should be easy to upgrade.

The thing I fear might not work out so well is upgrading the hard drive. I took the cheapest one (120GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)), hoping that I could upgrade that on my own as well. So does anyone know if this is possible/plausible/smart? I'll take a better hard drive from Dell if it seems too risky or difficult to upgrade it myself.

 

yah you can upgrade it just fine

 

HDD upgrade is one of the simplest. Shouldn't be a problem. You should be fine for a while with a 5400RPM 120GB anyway. Good trade-off between speed and battery life.

You can probably hold off upgrade until cheap SSD drives become available.

 

Thanks so much for the advice! You guys have just saved me over $100 And I definitely didn't know that I'd get a boost in battery life with a slower hard drive (or am I interpretting that wrong?).

Anyway, thanks again!

 

Unless you do a lot with large files (many sequential reads), then 7200RPM is not as important. Also note that SSD is typically worse than a 7200RPM drive for such use because SSD does not have any advantage with sequential reads.

 

There should be a battery life and palm rest heat impact going from 5400 RPM to 7200 RPM, I can't tell you how significant it will be though. Even with the 5400RPM reviewers thought the palm rest was getting warm.