There's a very good idea on Dell's website that I haven't seen on other laptop sites: All Dell laptops have a sticker with a "service tag" (a 6-character code that looks like, say, HYBVGX). You enter that code in the Dell website, specify the OS (say, Windows/XP), and you can download all the drivers specific to your laptop configuration.

The idea is wonderful. For Lenovo laptops, by contrast, you have to somehow know exactly what components are used in your laptop and then go hunt for those drivers. (And no, I don't want to use Lenovo's mysterious automatic update tools.)

I said that Dell's idea is wonderful, but the implementation is horrible unfortunately: you have to download the drivers one-by-one (unless you're willing to use their download manager), the order in which drivers are installed matters and Dell doesn't tell you the order, the documentation on what each driver does is very poor, they are inconsistently packaged (zip files, exe's, installers), and sometimes you get offered, say, 3 wifi drivers because apparently Dell doesn't know which wifi chipset was put into your configuration.

Like I said, the idea is great.