After considerable deliberation, I ordered my new Dell XPS M1330 last night from a Japanese speaking sales assistant called Cho Sei. It came down to a decision between the MacBook and the Dell. The RRP of the MacBook and similarly specced Dell came out about 30,000yen in Apple’s favour but after speaking to Cho Sei, Dell came in with an impressive counter offer which won me over.

The other factor in this decision was of course the OS, and Windows Vista is not doing Dell any favours in that competition at the moment.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/08/18.html

http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/08/more-raves-for-vista.html

I will give it a go and then ‘downgrade’ to XP if it all becomes too painful.