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John said "The salesman has (presumably) seen the product. You have not. I think the job of the salesman should be to help you make an informed decision about what you're buying, not to push products out the door. Those who say "Tough, that's just the way it is, you should have researched the product before buying it," just don't get it. It's impossible to know that you know everything about a product before you buy it. You can research it until it's obsolete and you're still not gonna know if you missed a little detail like Eric did." Sure I certainly agree in an ideal world, but the job of a salesman in keeping up with the details on a rapidly moving field like this is really very hard.. Thinkpads in particular have been hard to deal with because they are constantly changing the design in tiny trivial ways (batteries that are just slightly smaller, and, in the case of the switch to the 760, hard disks that are identical except for one small ridge that makes it ipossible to use old hard disks (except in the Ultra bay with the help of a file attacking the little plastic holder). Yes, it would be nice if sales people knew all this stuff, but I certainly do NOT expect it and do not count on it, and try to find out as much as I can myself. What I have found is that I know some stuff that the salesman doesn't, and he knows some stuff I don't, and between us, I have been able to avoid surprises in the thinkpad line -- but, as I noted before I find it VERY useful to just go through the list of available accessories in the catalog before buying anything. I did that for the Tecra, for example. This is especially true if you are buying something pretty new. One of the troubles in the computer field is that things change rapidly. Very often the salesman has *not* seen the product you are buying, and if he does see it, then next month the fact he saw last mnths model is if anything likely to be misleading. So you don't get the usual effect of a sales person learning stuff. Of course the competence of sales peope varies tremendously. In some of the stores in NYC, I have been told MOST extraordinary things. My best experience is at Rockwell, where the sales people at least seem competent, and have not made the kind of statements that makes you wonder if they know what a computer is :-) I still can't count on them to know everything about new products they have barely seen themselves, but generally I have had good experience there, and frequently recommend the place to others (and so far I have not had any bad feedback).