Dell Inspiron 6000(d)

Construction: Upgrading and Maintenance A Look Inside...

Removing the bottom access panels give way to reveal the DDR2 SODIMM memory banks and modem. The Inspiron 6000 sample we have here came populated with 2 x Micron/Crucial 512MB DDR2 400/PC3200. You can access the hard drive once you remove the two screws holding it in place on the far left side.

Like the previous Dell designs, you can easily access the keyboard by first removing the top bezel. After that just remove the screws holding the keyboard down and lift up and out. You can barely see the GPU card here, as everything is inaccessible except the miniPCI card that came populated with Dell Wireless 1450 (802.11 a/b/g) Dual-Band WLAN miniPCI card. The only possible flaw we see is the power button flap in the top bezel. When you push the button, the flap swings down and to the left to make contact with the button on the PCB board. After a lot of use, it is possible for the flap to get weak and stuck in a position where pressing down the flap won't power up the notebook. This is what happened on Asus' Z80K. It was only more severe because of the way the flap was designed. It would be best if the button was designed as a circular push down, as opposed to a flap. There is a lower risk of problems this way, in our experience.

We should note that there are two submodels of the 6000: the 6000 and the 6000d. There is an actual difference in weight, motherboard design, chipset, and GPU implementation. The 6000 sku uses the 915GM chipset, which means that it uses Intel's IGP solution (Intel Media Accelerator 900 Graphics). The 6000d sku, what we have in the labs, uses the 915PM chipset and a modular PCI Express x16 GPU card format for either a 64MB or 128MB Mobility Radeon X300 configuration. Obviously, the latter submodel weighs a tad more with the "added" hardware.