Since one of the work laptops was stolen from the office recently, I had to order a new one to replace it. We had bought Dell PCs before, and found the service to be pretty good, especially in after sales support - stuff like warranty repairs. So I went onto the Dell site to place an order. I had done a bit of browsing last week there, but since January 30 or so, when Vista was released, that is all you can get with the notebook I wanted (A Latitude D820). Since I was going to be using it with some rather memory-hungry software that runs, and works with data from, a 3D Laser Scanner, I wanted the memory to be available for the program, not hogged by the operating system. Not to mention the possible compatibility issues and bugs that will emerge.

I don’t think I am the only one who doesn’t want to go to Vista in the workplace yet, and I think Dell are shooting themselves in the foot with the Vista-only PCs they are selling. In the end, I managed to get the Latitude with XP after calling them, but they gave the impression that I was getting one of the few remaining ones left with that operating system. My workplace is thinking of getting another desktop as well, to replace one that is a bit flaky, but again, I had difficulty ordering one without Vista. This could lose them quite a few sales, particularly in the conservative business PC sector.

At least I’m not trying to order a laptop without any operating system, that’s another world of pain…