My order is for an XPS M1330 - not with SSD mind you. Form and performance are what I want - and I want a Vista machine. Why would I want to buy another Mac?

Why not build your own box? Does Dell still build systems with their non-standard motherboard setup? I've got an old Dell that I never could upgrade because of the motherboard.

<cough>laptop</cough>

(d)oh!

You've never built your own laptop?
C'mon, yer big girls blouse wearing jessie...

update: the Dell person was full of crap. I yesterday got a GE form pack for my 2nd order which had a different delivery address to my home address.

Shame that order was before Dell dropped their prices.

What's the point in having a "notify me" box to check if nobody notifies me?

Let's raise a glass to 370 francs saved and 1Gb RAM gained, shall we?

I have just had some amazing service from Dell.

My Dell mouse broke.

I had a web chat with their technical support at 1pm yesterday. They agreed to give me a new one free of charge.

It arrived by UPS at 2pm today!

joy of joys, GE has now sent me the forms to complete and send back so that my order can be completed. Excellent

I need to rant a bit here, as I am totally frustrated. I needed a new battery for my Dell D400 notebook. Its about 2 years old. Not exactly ancient. The spare item is not listed on the Dell website. I tried to find an email contact to tell them so, but there is none except for sales support , requiring a customer number. I then phoned them up and they asked:

"Is it company or private ?"
"Company."
I answered and the put me through to company accessories.
"What is your company customer number ?"
"I dont have one."
"So how did you buy the Dell ?"
"It was vested by me in the company."

At this point they hung up and the process on their premium rate phone line including the riduculous holding-time started again.

This time I did it again, and got through to a human called Danielle, who was very helpful, and gave me a part number. The part number resulted in "No products found" on the Dell website.

We ended up with a few problems trying to spell out my details. I suggested emailing her to make life easy (!) and she gave me her email, which was a long name.

For whatever reason lost in translation the email bounced and I was back to square one.

I still have no fresh battery, and my faith in Dell is extremely low. I am about to buy another notebook, but it wont be a Dell one, on principle.

dave

Unfortunate, but one has to be grateful there are other choices available. I certainly agree on you, if that was me, I would bind myself never to buy from that company again.

I bought a replacement battery for a Sony Vaio on eBay. That might be a less painful option - even with PayPal.

I have a delivery date (by when my present will be with me). So I'm happy

I just bought a spare battery from digitec.ch for my IBM-Thinkpad. Buy something with second sourcing is probably the moral of my tale.

dave

Dave, didn't you say today on the G4 for sale post the exact opposite?

Thanks for taking the trouble to check out my own capriciousness. To be honest I have no particular allegience in a nonwork capacity: I just want it to do basic fun stuff with minimal effort from me. If that means I must revert to a PDP-11 to avoid pointless bells and whistles, to write my insulting posts, then I would. Even a switch to the Mac world would be frustrating, so I struggle on with minimal upgrades...

dave

krlock care to elaborate?

This can be arranged. You need SIMH and a PDP or VAX OS.

Yeah, been there. Analysing submarine gyroscopic precession-rates and playing Infocom Zork adventure games in equal quantities. Those were the days....

dave

Yes I saw that Mac for sale, was tempted, as I have a 450 MhZ Powermac. DaveA, if you go Mac, you will not regret it. I have had mine for 3 or 4 years, and 5 or 6 years now I have had Linux also. Ubuntu is also a brilliant implentation of Linux. OS X also is underpinned by Unix, so all the tricks learned in Linux are far from wasted.

My first job in Switzerland was running and maintaining a PDP 1173 ..... those were indeed the days, and the company I worked for had a Wang system for everything else in the office .....

Lob, got your new Dell yet? You're in for a shock (CNet review).

Ordered my Dell XPS M1330 Jan 7. Est delivery date was Jan 23. Now put back to Feb 1 due to "high demand" for this offer.

Just as well I'm not in a hurry.