Manipulators
I like Dell a lot, but they keep screwing up. Their first big screwup along these lines was being DVD+R only, which they’ve just now rectified… long after HP (who along with Sony started the whole +R mess). Even worse is their lack of AMD chips, which is obviously starting to cut into their sales… I think that’s pretty amusing.
Even a year ago I would be dead-set against an HP/Compaq anything, and I’m still not a fan of their desktops, but despite the stupid design their workstations have worked quite well for me for the last two years (the only ones certified for high-end Avids), and Dell hasn’t given me much reason to be intensely loyal…
I still kind of prefer Xeons for servers, I’m not sure I’ve got any real reason for that, but using that technique to get Xeons for Opteron prices sounds like a hell of a bargain! Now if only Dell had any high-capacity storage systems not based on antiques…