I'd rather have my trackpad, sound, sleep/wake, graphics driver, etc ... work out of the box than to have an extreme degree of configurability. You are right,

I'd rather have my trackpad, sound, sleep/wake, graphics driver, etc ... work out of the box than to have an extreme degree of configurability. You are right, this is my perspective, but for Dell it's also a matter of numbers. Which direction, if they can't do both now, will sell more laptops, cause fewer returns, etc.