HP 8510P DVD Drive Question

Hello,

need some help from 8510P owners an/or notebook guru`s .
I am thinking of getting myself one of these babies but in my country i can get only 2 versions the one with 1GB Ram & the combo drive for 2000$ and another with dvd writer & 2Gb Ram for 2300$.
I find it really hard to justify the extra 300$ for 1 gb of ram which is ~40$ and the dvd writer upgrade. So here is my question:
Can i buy a notebook dvd writer, found a Samsung drive at ~70$, and swap the combo myself? What kind of connector should i look for at the drive ? Does the size of the drive matters (width, height) ? Some suggestions for what drive to get?
10x for the time

 

The 2gb version might be 1x2gb ram chip as opposed to 2x1gb ram, in which case that's probably going to be worth a fair bit more then $40.

I've heard people say that the HP8510p uses a standard laptop drive connector so from that I would say that you can probably change out the drive yourself fairly easily. Although I'd try and get hold of some technical specifications before you paid out any money.

If it were me I'd go for the 2gb dvd writer version if the ram chip it comes with is a single module (it makes it nice and easy to goto 4gb later!).

 

the 2gb model goes at 2x 1gb sticks so it's not really that easy, thinking of getting the 1gb model which has a 1 GB stick and buy another 2 Gb stick, i will have to look around for more info regarding the dvd drive.

 

I think something like NEC AD-7543A Labelflash would fit in 8510p since it uses standard 12,7mm drives. At least that is writen in manual