UpGradeing Laptop Drive Question...

[Super Warrior]

I'm currently in the process of trying to sell my desktop setup and get a laptop. I see some nice deals on the net for laptops,one of which is great but has no DVD drive. One of the things i'd be looking to do with a laptop is play DVDs.

I've no prior experience upgradeing laptops/notebooks.My question is simple: Are Laptop CD/DVD drive designs pretty much standardized like desktop drives are, and any laptop drive can fit into any laptop drive bay? Also is it as easy to put in the drives like desktops are too?

[redwudz]

No, not standardized at all. My laptop DVD drive is going out and I would have to buy one from HP for $140US. It's not even a burner. Since I use it mostly at home, I just use a external drive.

If you want a internal DVD drive, buy it with the laptop.

[Super Warrior]

No, not standardized at all. My laptop DVD drive is going out and I would have to buy one from HP for $140US. It's not even a burner. Since I use it mostly at home, I just use a external drive.

If you want a internal DVD drive, buy it with the laptop.

Ok next question: Are most drives from sites like dell going to be compatable with their laptops? The laptops i'm looking at right now are a Dell,but older(Latitude/Pentium 3).

So if i buy an internal DVD drive from dell,what are the chances it'll work with it?

[ROF]

With a Dell it's slim to no chance of it working if it's not stated to work with that model. They are worse than HP when it comes to standardization even going as far as changing configurations within the same family.

[Super Warrior]

Ok...but what about these drive makers such as Pioneer and Lite-On, that sell drives for laptops but don't specify what kind of laptop model(IBM,Dell D400,etc) they'll work in or fit?

For example this pioneer Laptop burner: http://www.meritline.com/pioneer-dvr-k-15-8x-slim-dvd-drive-bundle-with-nero-suite-software-pc.html

It says nowhere on the page what brand/model laptop its intended for. So would i still be able to install it in any laptop of my choice?

*confused*

[guns1inger]

Why don't you find a reseller for these drives and get a quote for the work on the laptop you are interested in. They will soon tell you if it can't be done, or if it can, how much it will cost. You may well find it is cheaper to buy a new laptop with a drive than to buy a crappy old one and try to bring it up to spec.

Personally, I don't believe a P3 laptop is worth more than about $5

[Super Warrior]

Why don't you find a reseller for these drives and get a quote for the work on the laptop you are interested in. They will soon tell you if it can't be done, or if it can, how much it will cost. You may well find it is cheaper to buy a new laptop with a drive than to buy a crappy old one and try to bring it up to spec.

Personally, I don't believe a P3 laptop is worth more than about $5

My questions pretty much apply to everything both old and new. For example most new laptops i'd be interested in,don't include or even have the option for a DVD burner either. So i'd want to know how i'd be able to upgrade that new one, if i choose to buy it, as well as an older model.

And the Pentium III laptop i'm looking at is 1.2Ghz CPU with 256MB ram and a 40GB HDD. Since i only do basic stuff(DVD burning,internet,mp3,etc.) thats *PLENTY* enough power and space for me. If i could get an internal DVD burner in it too,i'd have everything i need in a sweet little package.

Also the brand new Dell/Toshiba laptops i'd have my eye on if i could afford them, are pretty much exactly the same, only with slightly more powerful CPUs, but cost about $200-$300 more.

Plus i like to be able to do stuff myself if i have too, without having to rely on and fork out $$$ for some place to do it for me.

[Super Warrior]

C'mon guys? No explanation for that drive i posted earlier?

Thats not the only one either, through searches i've seen a bunch of other "laptop drives" from brands like Pioneer, that say nothing about the laptop model they are supposed to be compatable with. Which almost implies that its a standardized design that could fit into ANY laptops out there.

However from what you guys say, there is no standard/universal design when it comes to laptop disc drives. Confused.

[guns1inger]

There is a standard form factor. It's ultra-thin, pretty flimsy. The question is, does the laptop have a slot for it ? If it currently has a CD rom drive, then you can slot a burner in. This form factor is also being used in small form factor office desktops (and is a poor choice, IMO, we have replaced 5 drives out of a batch of 18 desktops in the first three months)

When you say 'only slightly more powerful', what are you looking at ? The specs you have described are pretty old and slow. Over here, you would be hard pressed to buy a new laptop without a DVD burner - they all have them, from the low budget student model to the high end media centre wannbes.

I would at least consider 512 mb memory if you run XP. XP on it's own required around 180MB or more just to load, then you add firewall, anti-virus etc, subtract some memory for the on-board graphics, and you will be paging on the first app you load.

[redwudz]

Agree with all above. If you really want a laptop that doesn't include a DVD burner, why not purchase a external DVD burner/drive? That, you can upgrade easily. A USB 2.0, or better a Firewire external burner would be the best way to go. Trying to upgrade an internal DVD/CD drive is not a simple problem. They just aren't made that way.

Laptops as a rule are classified as 'disposable'. Most power users in the corporate world just dump them and buy a new model that does what they want. They are the major users of laptops. And the industry caters to them. As I mentioned, there are a few companies that build custom laptops, but they aren't cheap. With a laptop, you are buying a machine that is built for the masses, generally corporate. Not the type of machine made to customize.

[Nelson37]

It is not so much the drive, it is the way it mounts in the case the the power and data connectors. There is NO repeat NO standardization in how this is done, even with the same laptop manufacturer. If you can carefully examine the mounting hardware on the existing unit and determine to what extent the drive is customized to fit, that is the only answer. Otherwise no guarantee. Be prepared for extravagant pricing. Recently needed custom mounting kit for floppy disk in Toshiba laptop. The complete unit was over $300.00, the 4 SCREWS were $6.00 EACH.

External USB or Firewire will not only work, but will also be easily transferable to your next purchase.

[Super Warrior]

When you say 'only slightly more powerful', what are you looking at ? The specs you have described are pretty old and slow. Over here, you would be hard pressed to buy a new laptop without a DVD burner - they all have them, from the low budget student model to the high end media centre wannbes.

I would at least consider 512 mb memory if you run XP. XP on it's own required around 180MB or more just to load, then you add firewall, anti-virus etc, subtract some memory for the on-board graphics, and you will be paging on the first app you load.

The new laptop i'd get if i could afford it would be a Dell Inspiron B120. With a 1.4Ghz Celeron M, 256MB Ram, and a 40GB HDD. So its only slightly more powerful than the Pentium III laptop and about $150-$200 more.

As for your specs on what it takes just to run WinXP,you are WAY off. Right now at this very moment i am useing an *OLD* IBM laptop, that only has a 150Mhz Pentium I and 80MBs of Ram. It runs WinXP just fine,although a little slow but thats to be expected with a 150Mhz CPU.

[whitejremiah]

1.4ghz celeron is probably WORSE than a pentium 3........and as for what he was talking about with windows xp.....he was talking to run it SMOOTHLY.......i had winxp running on a 400mhz computer a while back with like 128mb ram.....btw, winxp REQUIRES 128mb of ram, if i remember correctly, so im surprised it even installed on that type of computer at all....take our word, you dont want to run winxp on anything less than 512 ram...and even on 512, its still kinda shifty from time to time...........you would see if you ran it on a computer with like 1.5-2gb of ram and say a 2-3ghz processor..thats how windows xp was intended to be ran...........

[TBoneit]

The Celeron M at 1.4 Ghz is going to be signifigantly faster than a P III model. Bettery life will be better and the older clapped out used PIII laptop battery may not hold a charge. The batteries only have a finite life.

Lets see: New with warranty, new battery new everything faster, licensed copy of Windows XP, and only 150 to 200 more? well worth the extra money! Used laptop? Why is it being sold, real reason? may be going bad.

[Super Warrior]

Laptops as a rule are classified as 'disposable'. Most power users in the corporate world just dump them and buy a new model that does what they want. They are the major users of laptops. And the industry caters to them. As I mentioned, there are a few companies that build custom laptops, but they aren't cheap. With a laptop, you are buying a machine that is built for the masses, generally corporate. Not the type of machine made to customize.

Like i said i only need a Pc for basic stuff like DVD burning,DVD watching,internet,etc. All of which does NOT require much power at all.

A laptop with a 1.2+Ghz CPU and 256MB ram could do all that EASILY, and would last me a *LONG* time. However i'd just like to be able to upgrade to certain things myself like a DVD drive if i had too...

I realize i could just buy a desktop burner w/USB external adaptor for cheap, but the whole idea of having a laptop to begin with is to have everything in simple, compact form.

[Super Warrior]

The Celeron M at 1.4 Ghz is going to be signifigantly faster than a P III model. Bettery life will be better and the older clapped out used PIII laptop battery may not hold a charge. The batteries only have a finite life.

Lets see: New with warranty, new battery new everything faster, licensed copy of Windows XP, and only 150 to 200 more? well worth the extra money! Used laptop? Why is it being sold, real reason? may be going bad.

Its a Refurbished P-III laptop from a site. I don't care about the battery life as i would not be looking to take it everywhere with me.

Also on the same site is a refurbished Pentium 4 1.4Ghz,with 512MB ram, and a 30GB HDD for slightly more. It looks nice too but only has a CD-Rom drive. So if i decided to go with that one instead, i'd still want to know if i could put an internal burner in it if i wanted...

[TBoneit]

I'd say you probably could if the maker has them in stock for that particular model. I say that as even as the same bare drive may fit many makes and models but you need the casing that adapts it to your particular make & model. And then the outside of the drive, the part that holds the eject button may or may not need to changed wit the one from your old drive for cosmetic and/or functional reasons.

It is not even nearly as easy as a desktop drive where they are all the same form factor (Generally). E Machines and Sony for instance used different drawer fronts on their drives for styling pruposes.

[Super Warrior]

1.4ghz celeron is probably WORSE than a pentium 3........and as for what he was talking about with windows xp.....he was talking to run it SMOOTHLY.......i had winxp running on a 400mhz computer a while back with like 128mb ram.....btw, winxp REQUIRES 128mb of ram, if i remember correctly, so im surprised it even installed on that type of computer at all....take our word, you dont want to run winxp on anything less than 512 ram...and even on 512, its still kinda shifty from time to time...........you would see if you ran it on a computer with like 1.5-2gb of ram and say a 2-3ghz processor..thats how windows xp was intended to be ran...........

Naaa WAY off there. But i'm not suprised as MANY make incorrect assumptions about what kind of power it takes to run certain things.Windows XP does NOT need that much power guys.

About 5 years ago for example i had a Gateway desktop with a 1.3Ghz Celeron and 128MB ram. WinXP ran perfectly on it.

256MBs for XP is PLENTY enough and a bit of overkill. Same with CPU,something with 1Ghz or more can run XP without any issues.

[guns1inger]

I used to edit DV under XP on celeron 500. So what. I can also write Visual c# applications in notepad and hammer a nail in with a shoe. It's all possible, but none of it is the best way to do things.

You don't want to be told that what you are looking to buy is a piece of out of date, woefully under-powered hardware. OK. Don't ask for our opinion if it is going to piss you off when you hear it.

I will leave you with my first response to this post

Why don't you find a reseller for these drives and get a quote for the work on the laptop you are interested in. They will soon tell you if it can't be done, or if it can, how much it will cost.

[Super Warrior]

You don't want to be told that what you are looking to buy is a piece of out of date, woefully under-powered hardware. OK. Don't ask for our opinion if it is going to piss you off when you hear it.

Huh? I'm not pissed about anything.And those laptops i'd be interested in would be plenty powerful enough for what *I* need a comp for (Anyone who honestly thinks Windows XP requires anywhere near 1GB or more of ram to fully run, is a complete idiot. 256MBs more than gets the job done,anything over that is sheer overkill).

I was never asking your opinions about the power required for running stuff anyway...

I just wanted to know about laptops and the ease/difficulty involved with installing internal drives,various compatableity issues,etc.

[MOVIEGEEK]

"(Anyone who honestly thinks Windows XP requires anywhere near 1GB or more of ram to fully run, is a complete idiot. 256MBs more than gets the job done,anything over that is sheer overkill)."

256MB is fine for basic functions but if you're working with video then you need at least 512MB.
I would do as suggested and get an external writer.

[Super Warrior]

256MB is fine for basic functions but if you're working with video then you need at least 512MB.
I would do as suggested and get an external writer.

When you say "working with video" what do you mean specifically and with what programs? Just curious.

Anyway i know i could just buy a Desktop Internal drive w/USB external adaptor,both of which would be fairly cheap and that is probabley what i will end up doing.

However like i said,it would be GREAT for the sake of size compactness, if i could have an internal DVD burner on the laptop.

[TBoneit]

XP runs Ok on 256 memory until you start loading Antivirus & AntiSpyware software and printer and a few other things then 512 memory lets Xp run much faster. I've seen it on many computers. A customer liked the speed bump on the one he upgraded so much that he came back and bought 256Mb for all the other computers in his office.

I have run Xp on 128 and a PII and a 1.2 Gb drive just for the heck of it. It wasn't pretty!

A customer came in with a old computer he managed to install XP on with only 64 Mb just to see if he could do it..... Press the start button, wait 30 seconds while the drive thrashes and up popped the start, then press programs wait approx 1 minute, select a program wait what seemed like forever.

Anyway, back on track, a newer computer will generally have a speed advantage beyond the sheer CPU clock speed. Better CPU architecture. Faster Memory, Faster Hard Drive, Faster Video.

In general these all add together to make a newer computer faster overall and more responsive.

OTOH if you were talking E-machine 1.4Ghz vs a Dell/Sony 800Mhz then the latter may be the better more reliable machine.

Cheers

[Super Warrior]

I have run Xp on 128 and a PII and a 1.2 Gb drive just for the heck of it. It wasn't pretty!

In that particular case, i'd say the CPU played a Role in it too with that slow Pentium II.Ram is not everything, CPU power to process and move all the information is just as important.

Also when i talk about Ram and XP, just to use and sustain XP, 256MB is plenty enough. Ofcoarse you'll need more if you want to run higher-end applications but then you're talking about the needs of those particular programs themselves, nothing to do with XP.

[TBoneit]

I agree of course, I just did it to see how it would go. I have a Celeron 466 with 256 Mb hee on the bench from a customer. Considering what it is it runs XP in a decent fashion.


Having said that I run a 3.0Ghz (800fsb) P4 with 1Gb ram myself and a SATA boot drive

[ozymango]

Super[/url] Warrior]
I just wanted to know about laptops and the ease/difficulty involved with installing internal drives,various compatableity issues,etc.

Well, having just spent the better part of the morning trying to get my friend's old Gateway laptop apart so I could solder a loose power jack ... ...

For just watching DVDs I've seen just fine results with a P3 and a decent amount of ram (256mb) on this laptop; it's not a burner, just a player, so dunno how it behaves on that side of the equation.

As for whether or not a different drive wil "work" in whatever laptop you have -- again, as others have mentioned, you may just have to search through all the docs you can find to see what'll work and what won't. I'd probably stick with a known popular brand (e.g. Dell, Gateway, Toshiba, IBM) simply because a lot of other people have these and there's a better chance you'll be able to get whatever part you need on eBay or wherever if you wanna try swapping stuff.

As for whether the DVD drive you linked to will fit -- a quick glance at the pictures makes me suspect this is a generic Dell-type configuration. The thing about most parts like this nowadays is not so much that the actual drive itself (stripped raw) is different, it's all about the way the casing is constructed. I have taken apart a Gateway DVD player (for a Gateway laptop) and the actual drive mechanism was something of a "generic" fit, so I was able to gut an old Dell CD-ROM (broken) from another laptop, and put the DVD player "guts" from that drive into this case. Then popped that in the Dell laptop and voila, a DVD player!

To an extent this is true of most of the "standard replaceable" laptop parts (CPU, RAM, hard drive, floppy, optical) -- you don't make all that many different internal assembies mechanically speaking, it's the packaging that tend to be unique between different brands. So if you're mechanically creative, you can often make a lot of stuff work that's not really supposed to.

But generally I'd just go with a popular brand of laptop as you'll just have that much more luck finding somebody else who's got the part you're looking for, at a decent price. I've got a stack of old Compaq LTE laptops because most of the parts are interchangeable and they were very popular at one time, I could always find a junked laptop that had just the part I was looking for!

[ROF]

Although it doesn't quite answer the original posters question, this morning I purchased a sub $500 laptop. The end user didn't need DVD burning capability(already owns an external DVD burner) but the laptop has a built-in/removeable DVD-Rom Drive.

So I purchased a P3 1.1Ghz, 14", 512MB, 30GB, DVD-Rom, Wireless G. It's a IBM Thinkpad T23 from laptopcloseout.com

I've purchased several machines from them and have found they have reliable, prompt, and competent service. Cheap pricings too.

[TBoneit]

The IBM laptops seem to be among the better ones available.

On the Gateway that ozymango mentions the power plug connection to the mainboard going bad seems to be very common on some brands.

[Super Warrior]

Although it doesn't quite answer the original posters question, this morning I purchased a sub $500 laptop. The end user didn't need DVD burning capability(already owns an external DVD burner) but the laptop has a built-in/removeable DVD-Rom Drive.

So I purchased a P3 1.1Ghz, 14", 512MB, 30GB, DVD-Rom, Wireless G. It's a IBM Thinkpad T23 from laptopcloseout.com

I've purchased several machines from them and have found they have reliable, prompt, and competent service. Cheap pricings too.

Laptopcloseout is very overpriced. $450 for a 1.0Ghz P-3 Laptop with 20GB drive? A brand new Dell Inspiron B120 with 1.4Ghz Celeron(1MB L2 cache) and 40GB HDD costs the same price!

I've also seen refurb laptops with 1.2Ghz P-3 and 40GB HDD for $390.

[TBoneit]

Supe Warrior OTOH you are talking a closed box Dell bottom end against a Thinkpad.