How can Dell claim to be green when they offer no upgrade options?

They Do its called buy a new system. Realistically why should Dell or any company spend thousands of dollars to develop "Upgrade option" for system. It just doesn't make sound financial sense.

Now what Dell could really do would be to develop systems that are 100% fully compatible with 3rd party aftermarket parts.

Well aside from the ‘green’ aspect there is the customer retention factor that would make it worth while also I don’t see it being expensive to setup, they already have service technical’s and parts in most regions that could perform upgrades at a reasonable rate.

They are not going to spend the time and effort to develop the upgrade parts. The logistics are staggering and the cost prohibitive. It would be extemely expensive and as fast a the tech changes. at what point would one draw the line on when to stop making upgrade parts.

Dell systems at the present as well as in the past are developed as one unit in that the case and system board are married and not interchangeable.

I disagree with you on the logistic costs; they already have the infrastructure for this. If I call dell with an issue on my rack UPS they will be here within 4 hours with parts. If they don’t have the parts they will be on their way from Sydney or Malaysia by the end of the day.

I do agree with your second point their systems are developed as one unit making parts not interchangeable and this is the issue I have with Dell. There is no reason why they could not make systems that are upgradeable. I see that they only do this to prevent 3^rd party parts being used in their systems but this is firstly environmentally irresponsible (we are in the green forum here) and secondly counter productive, I’m now going to move to another supplier because I can’t upgrade with them. I don’t understand with Dells size and market share they can’t be so competitive with generic brand parts that people would just go with Dell anyway for parts.….

There's also the problem of  predicting the future, so to speak.   Dell might have had some preview of Core i7 development in 2007, but no way they could've had enough information to make the 9200 100% compatible with a technology that didn't really exist yet.   2 years doesn't seem that long in real life, but in PC technology it might as well be forever.

I have an XPS 410 (identical to your 9200), and by the time I upgraded it to the max (Q6600, 9800GT, 4 or 8GB RAM, etc. etc.) I'd be at least 2/3 of the way towards paying for a new system that would be a better machine all around anyway.  

I don't bother anymore with trying to figure out why Dell does things the way they do (e.g., improving customer retention)  - I bought 1 PC 2 years ago, but Dell sells millions of them every year.    It's just an entirely different scale.

Anyway,  plenty of people on this forum get by just fine with a 5-or-6 year old PC and would probably be blown away by a 9200 - it has plenty of life left in it yet for someone, be it resale or a charity donation.   Thinking it's now just trash because you can't make it into what you want,  never mind what you really need,  completely misses the point.

That logic applies to already made parts. But what about new? Do you have any idea of how long and how many resources are involved in Developing a new board then the extensive testing that is required. The cost to tool up the manufacture of the board, which would be a relative short run. It mount extensively. Dell systems are usually in development for over a year before they are released. Even if Dell decided to build with so called retail boards there is still a vast amount of R&D required to get the system to function to the specs that they want.

To convert an LGA775 system to an i7, you would have to replace the motherboard, processor, memory, and likely the CPU heatsink.

If you build your own PCs from generic parts, then this sort of thing is possible, because the parts all have standardized size, connectors, mounting locations, etc. (Of course, some things change over time, but there is still a lot of flexibility here.)

Some Dell systems are built in a somewhat "customized" manner. Dell and other manufacturers do this for various reasons, such as small-form-factor designs, or cost reductions.

Your Dimension 9200 looks like a fairly standard BTX system. I suppose that it should be possible for Dell to offer an upgrade kit for this. However, Dell is a business, so they will only do it if they think that it will be at least as profitable as selling you a new computer. This isn't likely; the cost of labour to have the upgrade hardware professionally installed (and making Windows happy after the upgrade) probably outweighs the cost of just being wasteful and buying a complete new system.

But why shouldn't Dell build their systems such that they can be upgraded using standard components? This would at least allow technically-minded folk to upgrade their systems.

Dell could easily do things differently,thay won't because of there dedication to capitalism . They put together a PC that only dell parts will work on. Don't get me wrong here,I have spent thousands of $$$ on there PCs. But have just figured out that in the long run you are better off trying to build a custom rig. I am a perfect example of what Dell will loose in the future. A person who buys a PC ,at the cost of thousands of dollars just to do it again.NO more !

Example: I spent over $3000 on my XPS710 2 years ago,and can't even use the case. What a waste.They gave me an increase credit line of $4000 that I can't use to buy a $ 1700 computer from Alienware.Whats with that.

this isn't limited to just Dell All the major player play exactly the same.  It is far more cost effective and profitable to get you to just buy a new system.  And you think Desktops are proprietary  look at laptops. That is a whole nother can of worms