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Originally Posted by MetalManCPA
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It's no different than buying a car - you want perfection when spending your hard earned money, but it doesn't usually happen without a little effort and numerous trips to the repair shop. Sometimes you'll get lucky and get a product without problems.
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I have to disagree with this part of your post -- cars and computers are completely different in this realm. A car is a machine with thousands of moving parts, and a very complicated assembly process. If you buy a new car and there is something wrong with it, it is most likely because an error was made during assembly. Computers, and in this case our PDAs, are solid-state devices built almost entirely on automated lines. Each unit is identical for the most part, and if there is a problem with one, there is usually a problem with all of them.
If a car has a problem like that, it prompts a recall, at a huge expense for the manufacturer. Imagine if GM treated its customers like Dell has -- thousands of new cars that won't go faster than 40mph and get 10mpg even though they should get 32, and GM says to just hang out until we figure out why. This would never fly in the automotive industry.
The real problem here is the culture that Microsoft has created. It started with Windows 95 -- people were so amped about seeing this new OS that MS decided to release it even though it was full of bugs. Contrary to traditional business logic, all this did was increase the consumer's appetite for MS products. "What they gave us was crap, but they're saying newer and better things are coming..." We have become so used to software updates on our computers and firmware updates for our other devices, that we've started to give companies like Dell too much slack. There are always going to be problems with software, its just the nature of the beast, but there's a certain level of quality that should be there before its released. Dell obviously didn't follow this principle when they decided to deliver WM5.