For back story see: [Here], [Here], [Here], [Here] and [Here]  All these posts are about the trials and tribulations of ordering one single Dell Latitude E4200 laptop from Dell.

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My Dell Partner Direct Account Manager called me late yesterday afternoon.

This was further to my e-mail earlier in the day asking for lead time confirmation and to ask if the  costs had changed.

I was re-quoted and the E4200 was £115 more expensive but we soon resolved that.

The next stumbling block is the current lead time. As you can see from the above that’s up to 36 days on top of the 35 days that have passed since I placed my original order.

I was told the hold up is the 1.4Ghz CPU.

I had to be honest with my rep without throwing my weight around. I’m not prepared to wait 71 days for a laptop product that Dell offer on their web site when I can order one off the shelf from HP or Lenovo.

The demand for the E4200 was clearly started too early, in the UK at least.  It has been featured on the Dell business site as an orderable product since September 16th. I ordered one on the 17th but with a Delivery date in the late Novembers its all a bit vapourware for my liking.

Disheartened but still brand loyal I asked about the availability of the E4300’s but they too have a long lead time.

Earlier in the day I spent an hour or so doing real research into alternative products from other vendors like HP, Lenovo and Sony. Specifically their small form factor laptops in the 12.1” range.

Ill be honest HP 2710p below is getting pretty near top of my list.

If the 2710p came with a faster CPU 2nd generation SSD I would be giving it some serious thought.

As it stands I have a call in with Dell to see if we can work out a deal on a seed unit or something to tide me over.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 at 9:58 am and is filed under Consumer Issues, DELL, Dell Latitude E4200. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.