Amazing technical breakthrough from Dell!

[Weyland-Yutani]

I got yet another Dell flyer through the letterbox this very morning. What joy!

What they said . . .

"The Inspiron 546, lets you customise its level of performance to suit your exact needs. You get exactly what you need and nothing you don't."

What they meant . . .

"You get Vista. No choice. If Vista's performance "suits your exact needs" you're probably asleep most of the time."

[Purpose of Dell's mindless comma (after "546") -- unknown.]

What they said . . .

"Choose your processor from an AMD Athlon X2, to a Phenom X4. So you can check an email, edit a digital photo, and run your virus protection -- all at the same time."

What they meant . . .

"Whichever processor you choose, with Vista, and some luck, you might be able to match the performance of OS-MFT on an IBM mainframe in 1964, OS/2 on a 486 in 1989, Linux on a Pentium in 1994, or practically any mobile phone on the market in 2009. Maybe."

[Purpose of Dell's mindless comma (after "X2") -- unknown.]

[Ferentix]

I don't know about Dell particularly, but the ads placed in magazines/newspapers by PC World and their ilk are pretty bad. There's something very patronising about the wording if you know anything about desktop systems.

[consused]

What they meant . . .

"Whichever processor you choose, with Vista, and some luck, you might be able to match the performance of OS-MFT on an IBM mainframe in 1964, OS/2 on a 486 in 1989, Linux on a Pentium in 1994, or practically any mobile phone on the market in 2009. Maybe."

Was OS-MFT around that early? Anyway, it would have delivered more work as it didn't have to resource any mouse management or eye-candy.

[ken_yap]

I once got a flyer from them that started: Dear so-and-so, Since you have been a customer of Dell since 1900...

Methinks they should get their system clock working first before trying to sell me another system (yes, I did buy a laptop from them, that's how I got put on their mailing list, and the purchase was advantageous tax-wise at the time). That laptop still works fine with openSUSE.

[hcvv]

Originally Posted by ken_yap

I once got a flyer from them that started: Dear so-and-so, Since you have been a customer of Dell since 1900...

Still strugling with the Y2K bug after 10 years .......

[Weyland-Yutani]

Originally Posted by consused

Was OS-MFT around that early? Anyway, it would have delivered more work as it didn't have to resource any mouse management or eye-candy.

My mistake -- 1966. Cant say I miss MFT all that much, but I sure do miss VM. (The first two languages I learned were for use on a System 360-50 OS-MFT/HASP machine -- JCL and Assembler (BAL). Happy days.)

I don't hate Dell, by the way, just their gormless marketing. This Dell tower I'm using is about 8 years old, and still going strong. It's a well-designed and easy to use case, and it's been a pleasure to mess with its innards over the years. It even looks good. I have a 1TB SATA drive on my desk, waiting to be installed in it just as soon as the IDE-SATA card arrives in the mail. (It's destined for the SATA machine I haven't got yet.)

[weighty_foe]

"Choose your processor from an AMD Athlon X2, to a Phenom X4. So you can check an email, edit a digital photo, and run your virus protection -- all at the same time."

Indeed. I often find myself, reading my single email whilst *at the same time* editing my digital pictures.

I find this easy because:

1) I have three arms, 4 eyes and, two monitors
2) I use Linux & do them one after the other

Incidentally, I heard with Windows Vista you, can turn off your anti virus protection because once, the haxx0rs have done their thing, the system is in fact more, useable & responsive.