I have a Dell Inspiron 1150 notebook that came with a Samsung CD-RW/DVD Rom. I believe it's model 335-S? Anyway, I made a stupid mistake of not getting a DVD writer installed. I'm wondering if I should buy an external DVD burner (and what is a good type to use), or if I should send my notebook back to DELL and have them install a new driver (or have them ship it to me and I install it)? The DVD burner software I have is DVD XCopy Express. Any help and suggestions appreciated! Thanks!
Welcome to the forum; Below you will find a thread about the external burners recommended by the members. Look at bbmayo's answer and that will get you started as he gave real good advice. http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/183917 You could send the notebook back to Dell but it would probably be gone for about 2 weeks. The other problem you might have is heat buildup as the CPU while transcoding the movie will tend to get rather warm. If you fell confident enough you can try and put the burner in yourself but I am not sure if that would not void your warranty. You also need to ditch X-Copy as it can not decrypt the newer movies. In place of the I would use DVDDecrypter and DVDShrink ( both free) or you could get AnyDVD which essentially does the sam thing as DVDDecrypter does
Excellent help! I really appreciate it. After doing a little more digging around on DELL, it looks like the only option is an external driver, so your link to the recommendations is timely. Thanks for the advice on the DVD software... where can I download that at and which one would you suggest over the others? Thanks again for the help!
drtysnchz, Go Here: http://home.comcast.net/~bbmayo/index.html 3rd topic- that is a pictorial guide to using Shrink 1/2 way down the main page at bbmayo look for the D/L section . There you should find the D/L sites for Shrink and DVDDecrypter. Good Luck Another good site for you to look at is ScubaPete's : http://www.dvdplusvideo.com/index.htm
