[danevs12345]

Hi all, last night I purchased my first dell: (won't let me link yet due to post count) its a second hand pink lid 1011 from eBay.

So I am definitely going to be modifying it immediately! Plans are to upgrade the ram, paint the back cover viper green, and I have a 2.5 SATA 400gb spare so that is going in, I will be sticking with xp I think, don't mind it as an OS.

Is there anything else that I should do while I have it all stripped down? Any recommendations? I've seen the trackpad mod, webcam, screen bezel, WiFi card etc which ones are definitely worth doing at the same time?

Thanks in advance, and I will be putting full pics and everything as I do it ... 'Project thread coming soon'

[lswartz]

Post more quick! I want to see a before picture & then have fun. Viper green sounds like a great color.

[danevs12345]

I will upload as soon as it arrives :-). I have just painted a car viper green and have enough left, it is a really nice colour on the light.

So far, and after reading numerous reviews and guides I have ordered the 1010 touchpad.

Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced 2gb ram module?

Should I change the webcam? And if so, is there a guide available?

And a quick q, the hard drive I have is from an IBM thinkpad, it was in a caddy as a dual boot. It is installed with xp pro, if I install the hard drive, will it boot straight up? Or will I need to do a usb reinstall? (I.e. will it at least boot into Windows so that i can reinstall the correct drivers for the dell?)

Many thanks :-)

[rrfranczak3]

Windows 7 runs faster than XP also with the 10v (1011) you can load OSX pretty easily too

[danevs12345]

Originally Posted by rrfranczak3

Windows 7 runs faster than XP also with the 10v (1011) you can load OSX pretty easily too

Really? Full win7, not starter...? I'm under the impression that a well set up xp netbook is quicker than any win7 (with atom/2gb ram restrictions that is)

If win7 is quicker I may look into it... But I dont have a copy of win7 to hand either, and dont plan on giving 80 quid for one (I had a vaio that someone had put a dodgy copy of win7 on and it was never right, wouldnt like to do it again!!)

---------- Post added at 07:14 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:45 PM ----------

this is the one I've bought: eBay - The UK's Online Marketplace

If you look at the last picture of it (when it's upside down) there seems to be a lump at the back of it, is this the claimed "double life" battery that has been added on? If so its coming out because it looks awful, just noticed it...

[rrfranczak3]

I run FULL Windows 7 Ultimate with AERO turned on and it runs faster than my XP Pro, if you look at my signature below you will see that I dual boot both and I am telling ya that Win 7 runs faster

[danevs12345]

Originally Posted by rrfranczak3

I run FULL Windows 7 Ultimate with AERO turned on and it runs faster than my XP Pro, if you look at my signature below you will see that I dual boot both and I am telling ya that Win 7 runs faster

I've noticed the sig, and its probably the main reason for my original post of "what to do?" yours has so many upgrades!! I just want mine to be a quickish machine for easy browsing and downloading, oh and reliability!!

If, hardware wise, I only upgraded the ram and changed the hard drive, would it run full win7?

[rrfranczak3]

yeah well I bought mine configured the way I wanted it...LOADED, only thing I have done is upgrade the HD, 1st to a 500gb then to a 750gb, next I think I will go for a 750gb (7200 rpm) drive, right now mine is only 5400rpm.....and I also did upgrade the RAM to 2gb which is tough to do considering its the 1010 NOT the 1011, with the 1010 you have to replace the entire daughter board which consists of the processor also, with the 1011 you just swap out the SIMM module.....much easier and much much less expensive.....

PS. 400gb is fine to run Windows 7, but I would increase the RAM to 2gb though

[jjthebo]

Hi rrfranczak3, are you running 32 or 64 bit windows 7 ? The 35 dollar 2gig daughterboard from asendtech is working fine, looks just like the other one I have but will update in 6 months as to how it is doing.

[lswartz]

Originally Posted by danevs12345

Really? Full win7, not starter...? I'm under the impression that a well set up xp netbook is quicker than any win7 (with atom/2gb ram restrictions that is)

If win7 is quicker I may look into it... But I dont have a copy of win7 to hand either, and dont plan on giving 80 quid for one (I had a vaio that someone had put a dodgy copy of win7 on and it was never right, wouldnt like to do it again!!)

---------- Post added at 07:14 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:45 PM ----------

this is the one I've bought: eBay - The UK's Online Marketplace

If you look at the last picture of it (when it's upside down) there seems to be a lump at the back of it, is this the claimed "double life" battery that has been added on? If so its coming out because it looks awful, just noticed it...

Windows 7 is faster than XP. My son's I7 2600K boots in about 1.5 minutes & it is slow due the SATA HD. A SATA 6.o Gb/s or SSD would really make it snappy. We can get Windows 7 for a reduced price online or the college bookstore if you are a student, maybe you can too.

That pink is not the bright pink that Dell sold, viper green would rally help it though

The lump at the back is the battery. I have it on my Mini 9 too & have learned to live with it. It really only bothered me the first couple days.