Indigo Incarnates

So... the changeling effect claimed another victim recently. The laptop I bought about two years ago started having some serious (and expensive) problems. The keyboard and touchpad would become intermittantly unresponsive, one USB port was dead, and the machine started having serious problems with video playback. The battery life was also getting kinda short. So Doug said it was my turn for a new computer since he had recently purchased a netbook.

We had an account at Dell. I found a little laptop I really liked for $579 in the "small business" section. When it came to checkout, however, Doug learned that he couldn't buy it since he wasn't an incorporated business. The same computer in "retail" section (for individual consumers and not businesses), cost a lot more money and had a much weaker video card and less memory. To boost the retail version up to the corporate version, it would have cost about $250 more. I wasn't willing to spend $800 for a computer since I know these machines typically die horrible and quick deaths when I am the owner.

So we ended up not buying one at all. Doug gave me his 4-month-old netbook that he's used only a handful of times. I like this little 10" computer quite a bit. And it's already paid for! Whoo-hooo!

But the experience did leave me scratching my head a bit. How come Dell sells two versions of the same machine in which the weaker one actually costs more money?!