Latitude E-Series DVD Burner troubles

In my case, I actually ordered Vista Business (although my order doesn't show that), but came with XP. I sure as heck don't want to revert to XP after spending a day installing drivers and software. If you can order with Vista, then they need to support it with Vista.

 

For the E6400 it doesn't come standard, I had to order the weight saver and it costs US$20. Yes US$20 for some thin plastic thingy. And it's a real pain to remove it because you have to pull it out - weight saver doesn't have a release catch.

 

I saw this happen while trying different RAM configurations.

John

 

It's US $15 in the US, and can be found on the accessories page ("TravelLite Travel Module"). Yes, that's still too much. I think I got one standard with my i3700 years ago (same design as the C series latitude).

 

You should challenge them on that. The "downgrade" path is specifically designed to allow you to use XP as a placeholder and upgrade to Vista when you are ready for no extra cost. They ship you the disc, and they should fully support it. This response is not acceptable for a business machine anyway, which is typically going to be loaded with your company's windows build, not Dell's.

 

Ok I had another chat, they offered me to have someone come over tomorrow to replace it, but I asked them to just send a replacement unit instead (It's not that a hard job to replace the media bay ;P). I'll get it this Wednesday.

I'm quite happy with their support. I'll let you guys know if it helped.

 

Are they making you return your current one?

 

Have any of you tried using burning software other than the built-in software for Vista? I had problems before with my Vista desktop failing to burn DVD's until I installed Nero. Using the Nero software solved all my DVD burning problems.

 

I tried it with Roxio, which I ordered with the Dell, and it just seemed to think I had an invalid media installed.

 

So it seems like there are two problems here... vibration and DVD media not being recognised either for burning or for reading. I'm assuming this last issue can be addressed with a firmware updated, but what about the vibration? I'm very interested in getting an E6500 or E6400, but this would definitely be a disappointment.

@Jorisa - Please post after you get that replacement drive.

By the way, are there any DVD drives that could replace the one that Dell includes?