gdana:
Your experience parallels mine exactly. I bought a "top of the line everything" Inspiron 8100, and it was so full of quirks I couldn't stand it! Sure enough, I sent the piece of crap BACK. Screw Dell I am NEVER buying one.
First I noticed the housing, like you.
Then I noticed that everytime you close the screen, the thing looks for an external monitor & locks up the PC if any games or anything are running. Because my laptops are "personal car jukeboxes" this was especially annoying as it startles everyone in the vehicle just because someone opens the lid to change tracks (EXTREMELY loud skipping sound effects for about 10 seconds when you open/close the lid, they all literally jump & plug their ears). Plus, it doesn't respond to Windows' own "Hibernate, Stand By, or Do Nothing" lid-closing options.
Then I noticed that they have a "feature" that prevents the use of the touchpad while typing. You can't even demonstrate the GeForce2Go with this feature! I've beaten Quake3 with a touchpad on Hardcore difficulty using a touchpad (yes, for real even though 1-player isn't ANYTHING to brag about) on my Compaq 1800 laptop, so this is REALLY disapointing.
Also, about the 3rd time I turned it on, the screen was all "static-y" with inverted colors, even during the BIOS' Inspiron splash screen. After starting Windows & changing a few resolutions, it fixed its-self, but it got worse and worse every time I used the thing until the point that it couldn't be worked around. That was obviously a "bad-luck" defect, but certainly NOT the only one!
Almost the first thing I did with the 48GB drive in it was copy drive images of all my other PCs hard drives & format them for Windows XP instalations (I was going to extract necessary stuff later). Sure enough, it FAILED & lost everything. Not just lost, but corrupted the files, FAT tables, & partition tables making the un-recoverable. 4 years of computing down the drain within days of buying a Dell. Actually, I've had bad luck with all IBM Travelstar drives: I'm on my FOURTH Compaq 8100 (12GB, 20GB & 30GB IBM Travelstar drives failed, though none as seriously as the corrupted 48GB Travelstar), and downgraded to a 10GB Toshiba in it after all the trouble because I thought the 48GB laptop would do.
Sure enough, Customer dis-Service thinks drivers are the source of the video problem, even when I explain to them that there's not even a hard drive in the thing!
But that not all, you see I had $2,200 of the $2,850 I needed, & I asked about the "90 days same as cash." My brother & I were in this together, and so when they said I didn't qualify (No credit history) my brother tried out. He had previously qualified for financing a long time ago when he was only curious how much an older Inspiron 8000 would be per-month (We had decided to wait for a Tualatin-based 8100 & pay with cash), so when they said he was pre-qualified we corrected them: No. He's prequalified for the financing "loan" but they insisted that he was also pre-qualified for the 90-days. So we ordered. When we recieved the agreement, we immediately called our representative & she said "Yes, it does look like a loan. That's just what goes into effect when we don't get the money in 90 days." Sure enough, 30-days later their beating our door down for the first payment.
SCREW DELL & SCREW DELL FINANCIAL SERVICES! I wouldn't pay for that POS now that I know what it's like. I told them: It's your mistake & I don't have the money now, I will in 60 days; so you can take it back. They did & boy am I ever glad.
Now, I've fallen in love with a new 1.1Ghz non-Tualatin Toshiba (With a Touchpad & GeForce2Go!).
Do what I did: Screw Dell & GET
THIS BABY!
/EDIT Sorry for the broken link. Don't know how it keeps breaking. It's the Toshiba 5005-S504.