Hi Jeffrey

The 3 items that they do not discuss are PSU, mobo, and case. I have had 
some experience with Dells, and the bottom line is they do not want (or even 
enable) you to upgrade. In this case they will probably use a cheap and 
underpowered PSU, a very tight case, which usually prevents you from adding, 
or even replacing fans or other items you may want to. The main problem will 
probably be the mobo. It is almost certainly a Dell brand with a Dell bios, 
both propriety and usually crippled to some extent or another, ie. they do 
not allow you to utilize all the features available. Also if you have to 
replace any items you will probably have to obtain them from Dell at 
ridiculous prices. I had to get a 526mb ram for an old Optiplex and the 
price ranged from $80-$120. The ram was made by Kingston especially for 
Dell!
They also used to use a not ATX configured PSU, but I believe they stopped 
that, because using a standard ATX PSU fried the dell, and allot of people 
were unhappy.

fyi I am typing this on a Dell xps 400 (sad but true)! I have a portable fan 
bowing air though the front vent to keep the poorly placed HDD's moderately 
cool, until I do a major engineering reconstruction to replace the Dell fan 
which is pathetic.

On the positive side the Dell has given me little trouble, and I have 
convinced myself that when it dies I will have to build a computer for 
myself. I have built repaired several computers for other people.

Sorry that this ended somewhat as a rant, but  I do not object to their 
business model to build inexpensive and stable computers, but I strongly 
object to the underhanded way they that they hide the basic facts such as I 
have discussed above.

Hope this helps

Regards
Art Hounslow

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