Updating Dell comps

ojdidit · Sep 14, 2004

I may have misinterpreted this, but an old post here mentioned that Dell bios's aren't accessible without help from Dell customer support. True? This would be a major consideration for me when making my next purchase.

Strogg · Sep 14, 2004

right and wrong. to update the bios, you'll want to go to dell's site to download a new one. but the bios setup (at least with the computers at school) are completely accessible to anyone.

acejones · Sep 14, 2004

Strogg said:

right and wrong. to update the bios, you'll want to go to dell's site to download a new one. but the bios setup (at least with the computers at school) are completely accessible to anyone.
Click to expand...

and you don't need to update your BIOS unless something is fixed and that BIOS update will fix it. This should not be a major consideration in making your next purchase, imo.

Wyatt_Earp · Sep 15, 2004

One thing you can't do with Dells though is overclock them. The bios has no option for changing frequencies for the CPU or the RAM.

ojdidit · Sep 15, 2004

I was wondering about the ability to add or change drives or add ram down the road. If Dell could write their own bios, I reasoned that they could make it very restrictive.

evilevets · Sep 15, 2004

Dells are completely upgradeable in terms of drives, memory, video, CPU, etc. At least the Precision series are. Don't have much experience with the Dimensions though.

Steve

Major Attitude · Sep 15, 2004

evilevets makes a good point. Basically, the cheaper the PC, the more corners cut to make it that price. A higher end dell would have a better board with seperate higher quality video, etc. Lower end will have onboard video, less expansion room, etc. In some cases companies used to keep their BIOS on the hard drive in a hidden partition and that was always a pain because a dead hard drive could leave you in a lot of trouble. Since hard drives usually die first, that sucks.

If you have a price range, we could suggest other places. I go to www.abspc.com often and sometimes TigerDirect has good deals on new and refurbished machines.

Beoswe our geek shopping for some options including Dell deals:

http://majorgeeks.pricegrabber.com/search_attrib.php/page_id=9

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Updating Dell comps

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