Thought you guys might get a kick out of this -- Had a customer who called me up, said that his hard disk had gone bad and he'd ordered a new hard disk from Dull, who had given him an upgrade from his failed 160GB to a 320GB hard disk for $40 something. When he got the hard disk, he said the new hard disk "wasn't quite long enough" to make contact with the interface... so I'm thinking, that's odd, Dell should know their own machines, but still I haven't really seen an odd-ball hard disk like that, well, whatever. He called Dell support, who were less than helpful but did manage to send him a return envelope for his new purchase that was apparently not the correct item. Then he called me to see if I could get a hard disk that would fit his machine. I said I'd take a look and probably could help him. He had his son drop off the laptop, and I called him about two minutes later once I'd unwrapped his old disk.
As you can see, there is an adapter that converts the standard SATA connection on the hard disk for use with that particular model of Dell ( Inspiron 1720 ). Dell support didn't ask him if there was an adapter; apparently they didn't know, and they did not have any directions included with the new hard disk. So, since the disk is already refunded and soon on its way to Dell, I get some business and Dell gets a very dissatisfied customer. I told him that consumer reports recommends Toshiba and Sony as good laptop brands and that I personally like Toshiba.
