micky wrote:
I was busy for a while so I'm back to shopping.

Microcenter only has branches in 20 cities or so, but their webpage is
very good in terms of the detail it gives.

For example, they usually? tell you how much RAM it comes with, how many
slots for RAM there are, how many are used, and what's the maximum
amount of RAM you can put in.

And it lets you filter on whether it has an optical drive or not.

1) Optical drives it splits into 3 kinds, DVD-ROM, DVD-RW, and DVD+/-RW.
Isn't any of these good enough for me? I don't copy movies. And I
just bought some blank, DVD+R's but I think I can still exchange them.



A replacement optical drive for a desktop is $20.

Just ignore the type declaration. Put a $20 optical drive in
the order as a spare.

(1) Big-ass PC $???
(1) Optical drive (SATA) $ 20
------------------------ ----
Etc Etc

I keep one spare here, and it's been used and moved
around to some of the older PCs, for tests. The one I got
was an IDE drive at the surplus place, as otherwise you
probably couldn't find an IDE one in town. (The surplus store
won't even allow you to look at their stock. They "go in the back
and have a look around" for... everything!) The computer
stores here just stock the SATA ones. The spare IDE drive
also fits the IDE enclosure I've got (which has an IDE optical
drive at the moment).

The year 2000 PC won't touch the IDE DVD drive, and
refuses to do anything with it. All the other PCs
(like P4 era ones), are fine with the IDE DVD drive.

If the Microcenter PC you're looking at has a DVDROM, that
tells you it at least has the screws to hold the drive in
place. Then you can swap in your fancy $20 spare. Done.

Nero Infotool had a display that shows the "capabilities"
of the currently installed optical drive. if you were
wondering whether the drive is plus or minus, that's how
you tell. Infotool is a freebie, and does not use or check
any Nero license. A third-party developer actually wrote
the code.

I would not worry about exchanging any blanks. Keep
them. You won't regret it. You don't want to be
pawing through the crap they sell at local computer
stores at the last minute. Hold onto what you've got.
I have media I bought 15 years ago, that I just reached
in and used when I was out of the usual stuff. Now,
I'm out of jewel boxes.

Paul