On: Vista Kicks Ass

Matt, here's the secret to buying from Dell: shop in their small business section, not their home section. I'm quite pleased with my Inspiron 9400.

There used to be a real build quality difference between the Latitude and Inspiron lines but now some of the Latitudes are just black-painted Inspirons with marginally better support.

Lenovo is the way to go.

I'm not talking about Inspiron vs. Lattitude, I'm talking about the home line of Inspirons versus the SB line (9300 vs. 9400, when I bought mine). I find Lenovo's displays intolerably bad.

Oh, ok. What was the difference between the 9300/9400 Inspiron when you bought it?

I don't recall exactly, but there were at least two components -- the video card and wireless card IIRC -- that worked well with Linux on the 9400 but not the 9300.

....And IBM Intellistations for desktop use. They're almost studio pc quiet, built like a powermac, and I have never had a single problem with one. They even ship with a decent keyboard. Just can't go wrong buying IBM....

Cool, I didn't know they still made computers.

http://www-132.ibm.com/content/home/store_IBMPublicUSA/en_US...

I've heard that from a few people actually.

the 9400 is the same as e1705 rebranded.