Aaargh!

I'm finally done moving everything from my old notebook over to the Inspiron 9400. I've only just started to do some real work on it and am already appreciating the extra horse power and memory. The 17" screen is pretty nice too, but a little too reflective I think, making it feel more like a plasma screen than an LCD screen. I wonder if this was done for cosmetic reasons? If so, it was a bad choice.

One major problem that I've discovered so far is that it doesn't have a built-in mic. For crying out loud, how much more could this component possibly be? I'd take a built-in mic over all these multimedia buttons any day. I've gotten quite used to using Skype, and the lack of a built-in mic is a major pain in the rear.

From what I can tell from the Dell support forums, I'm not the only one to have been caught off guard by this. Apparently they've stopped including the built-in mic for quite a while now. I've griped before about how Dell has been dropping features from their notebooks (specifically, the mouse nipple in the middle of the keyboard and real docking station support). Grrr... These are features I'd pay extra for, but they're not even an option!