Well I have a little for both sides of this...
ON the delivery / shipping side, the person you talked to that promised shipping "X" probably was wrong in doing that, becuase they were new or just wanted to get an angry customer off the phone. I know this becuase I see it on a daily basis at my work. (my department ships replacement Cell/PDA's) The part that sucks for me is I have to deal with the people when they call back after said problem. Half of the time, the rep will promise one thing, but then just ship the normal way out of habit. Or they promise something special but do it to late and the request arrives after shipping is done for the day. (as mentioned above)
Now on the other side, What ever you do do not get a Dell Insperion 6000 if you want to be able to use a PC card with it. The motherboards they had in them are crap from the factory and have to be replaced if you want to use a PC card (at least our cards). I deal with Cellular PC aircards at work, Dell even admitted it was a problem and gave us a code to give customers when they had to call Dell to get the motherboard replaced. A flipping 30 digit code, that when you talk to tech support they don't know what the h@ll you are talking about.
SO once you get someone that knows, and they send a tech out to replace the motherboard, the tech brings the same model MB, which does not resolve the problem, and you get to start over again. (i've seen this happen 3 times personally when trying to help customers)
At this point if I have a customer with said laptop I tell them to return it or our card, cause it isn't worth the hassel to get them to work together.
ON the delivery / shipping side, the person you talked to that promised shipping "X" probably was wrong in doing that, becuase they were new or just wanted to get an angry customer off the phone. I know this becuase I see it on a daily basis at my work. (my department ships replacement Cell/PDA's) The part that sucks for me is I have to deal with the people when they call back after said problem. Half of the time, the rep will promise one thing, but then just ship the normal way out of habit. Or they promise something special but do it to late and the request arrives after shipping is done for the day. (as mentioned above)
Now on the other side, What ever you do do not get a Dell Insperion 6000 if you want to be able to use a PC card with it. The motherboards they had in them are crap from the factory and have to be replaced if you want to use a PC card (at least our cards). I deal with Cellular PC aircards at work, Dell even admitted it was a problem and gave us a code to give customers when they had to call Dell to get the motherboard replaced. A flipping 30 digit code, that when you talk to tech support they don't know what the h@ll you are talking about.

SO once you get someone that knows, and they send a tech out to replace the motherboard, the tech brings the same model MB, which does not resolve the problem, and you get to start over again. (i've seen this happen 3 times personally when trying to help customers)
At this point if I have a customer with said laptop I tell them to return it or our card, cause it isn't worth the hassel to get them to work together.