My Computer's Hard Drive

What options do you have? List the amount/GB, type, speed and price of each option.
On the Studio 16 XPS, I have four hard drive choices:

• 500GB, 7200RPM SATA hard drive, included in price
• 640GB, 5400RPM SATA hard drive [Add $35]
• 128GB, solid state drive [add $154]
• 256GB, solid state drive [add $445]

What are the difference between the two options? 
There's two primary differences between the two hard drives.  The upgrade is 140GB larger, but at the same time, it's slower to access data as well.  The two solid state drives are better for mobile use; they're more durable because they don't have moving parts inside.  Of course, there's a premium for that durability.  Personally, when I travel with a laptop, I'm not that rough on it, and the computer will not be running with the hard drive spinning while it's moving, for the most part.  I really don't need the solid state drive.



Go back and look at the system requirements for the software you need to be able to run? What's the highest recommended processor speed?
Looking at the software I need, either of the two standard options will serve my needs; however, I do use and produce a lot of media: digital video, photographs, movies, screencasts etc.  So the larger the hard drive the better.  Of course, I could always use an external hard drive for extra storage if needed.


Which option are you going to select? Why do you only need the included processor option and not need one of the upgrade options? or vice versa, why do you need to upgrade? 
As I mentioned with the processor and motherboard, I consider price breaks quite closely - if I have several upgrade options, how much does the price increase each time?  If there's four options, and they increase in the amount added to my purchase by +$50, +$100, +$300, +$350 - I'm really only deciding between two options.  If I'm going to spend any money to upgrade, it makes since to go ahead and spend the $100 rather than the $50, that's a small difference.  And, if I can afford $300, I might as well add another $50 to get that last option.  Of course, that all depends on the difference.

In this instance, I'm going with one of the standard hard drives - not steady state.  For the standard drives, there's only a $35 difference for the upgrade listed on Dell.com.  Given that it offers an additional 140gigs of storage space, there's really not much of a decision to be made, for me.  I upgrade to the 640GB.

My RAM

What options do you have? List the amount/GB, type, speed and price of each option.
On the Studio 16 XPS, I have two RAM choice:

• 6GB shared dual channel DDR3 at 1333MHz, included in price
• 8GB shared dual channel DDR3 at 1333MHz, [Add $150]

What are the difference between the two options? 
The only apparent difference between the two options is the quantity or GB.  6GB vs 8GB.

Go back and look at the system requirements for the software you need to be able to run? What's the highest recommended processor speed?
Starting with the system requirements for my OS - Windows 7 - the minimum is 1GB of RAM with an additional 1GB RAM needed if I'm going to run Windows XP mode within Windows 7.  That doesn't suggest that I need to upgrade from 6GB to 8GB.  However, that's the minimum requirements for Windows 7.  I need to consider how much beyond those minimum requirements I want my machine to be.

Which option are you going to select? Why do you only need the included processor option and not need one of the upgrade options? or vice versa, why do you need to upgrade? 
As I mentioned with the processor and motherboard, I consider price breaks quite closely - if I have several upgrade options, how much does the price increase each time?  If there's four options, and they increase in the amount added to my purchase by +$50, +$100, +$300, +$350 - I'm really only deciding between two options.  If I'm going to spend any money to upgrade, it makes since to go ahead and spend the $100 rather than the $50, that's a small difference.  And, if I can afford $300, I might as well add another $50 to get that last option.  Of course, that all depends on the difference.

In this instance, there's a $150 difference for the upgrade listed on Dell.com.  I did a quick search - at http://shopping.google.com - for 2GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM, the difference between the two options I'm considering.  That quantity of RAM appears to be about $80.  However, typically, a computer will have a certain number of slots for adding RAM; I believe this laptop has 2 slots for RAM.  That means that the base price includes a 3GB RAM module in each of the two slots, so I just can't add another 2GB - there's not a slot available.  And, often it's necessary to have the same size RAM module in each slot (it's been that way in the past, I need to research if that's still true).  What all that means is that if I want to upgrade to 8GB from 6GB, I'll really be looking at purchasing (2) 4GB RAM modules to replace the 3GB RAM modules included in the price.  So, doing a quick search for "6GB dual channel DDR3 1333MHz" and "8GB dual channel DDR3 1333MHz" I find that the 6GB option costs about $190 "on the street" (from another retailer) and the 8GB option runs about $250.  IF I want to upgrade in the future, it'll cost me $250.  So, the $150 upgrade now may be worth it. 

I'm going to select the 8GB option and pay the $150.  It seems like it's worth the price compared to the open market.  Also, having it installed in the base configuration means that it will be covered by warranty; typically, if I open the case of a machine to do any work on it, it voids the warranty.  Further, upgrading RAM is almost always beneficial in the long run and can make a huge difference in the performance of the machine.  (I've taken a computer my mother-in-law considered dysfunctional and old, cleaned the viruses, added RAM to it and had a perfectly working machine).