My Dell Vostro 1400 showed up yesterday. The Vostro must be Dells replacement for the Inspiron. I've had Latitudes, which are fine, but look cheap imo. The Vostro looks much nicer. I spec'd XP so my problems are over. As expected, everything worked out as it should. All programs loaded, network and printers recognized, life is good. This time I chose a 14 inch widescreen. I usually get 15.6 screens, but I thought I would try a smaller model. I like it! The Dell looks a lot nicer than the Compaq I returned. The Compaq had a pebbly, cheap black plastic shell ala WalMart tacklebox. The Dell is smooth, has nice chrome accents and blue leds. Not too much bling, but a little bit of style so I won't have to hide it under a newspaper in the coffee shop.
On a different note, returning the Compaq to Best Buy sucked. I wiped the drive clean for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, BB has (probably wisely) decided not to trust the customer anymore. They insisted on running it through it's paces to make sure I had not damaged it. They also were insistant on enforcing the 15% restocking fee. Their stance is that the machine is not defective. My stance is it didn't do what the salesman said it would do. That did not seem to matter much to them, but they did meet me half way and charge me a 7% fee. I'll contest that with my credit card co.
Back to the topic - I think it's clear that Vista is a flop. Say what you want, it is not an intuitive step up from XP. I'm not even sure it is a step up - at least in my experience. BB said it's totally different from XP and I need to re-learn computers (not to mention buy new software!). Bull*****. My first computer was a Vic Commador. I then had an Apple IIc and then in College a Mac +. From there I went to Intel and worked my way up through the various operating systems. I even switched over to Mac OSX for awhile. No problem there except that the hardware failed me - 6 times. Back to Intel. I have never had so much trouble operating a computer. Imo - Vista should have been an easy transition from XP with some enhancements and refinemets. I know I'm not alone in this because Dell sells new XP units and the guy at BB fessed up that they have a "business" website that sells XP.
Now you tell me.
