Looks like Dell has decent educational discounts after all -- I was just going to the wrong place before. So ... here's what I'm likely to get. Of course, the rebate might take awhile to arrive, so for the short term, I'll need to pretend the true cost to me will be $1760.

I've started the process of getting the money flowing in appropriate streams for this to happen. I wish National City wern't so slow -- I moved $1000 to my NationalCity checking so I could come close to flushing out my Visa, but although it's credited, it's not 'available'. And of course, once I move it to Visa, it'll take them awhile for them to do the same thing. I wonder if a few appropriate phone calls might lubricate the process.

Inspiron 8500 Mobile Pentium 4 Processor,2.2 GHz,15.4 WXGA Qty: 1 Price: $1,760.00

Date: Monday, August 11, 2003 9:42:01 AM CDT Catalog Number: 23 2231 Inspiron 8500: Mobile Pentium 4 Processor,2.2 GHz,15.4 WXGA Memory: 256MB,DDR,266MHz,1 Dimm Video Card: 32MB DDR ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9000 4x AGP 3D Video Hard Drives: 40GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive Floppy Drive and Additional Storage Devices: No Floppy Drive Integrated Nic And Modem: Integrated 10/100 Network Card and Modem Modular Internal CD/DVD Drives: FREE 24X CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive Upgrade! (from DVD) Wireless Networking Cards: Dell TrueMobile 1300 WLAN (802.11b/g, 54Mbps) miniPCI Card Primary Battery: 72 WHr Primary Battery Limited Warranty, Services and Support: 3 Year Limited Warranty plus 3 Year Mail-In Service Mail-In Rebate Offer: SAVE $300 with mail-in rebate! System price shown before rebate

My legs are really sore. Ouch.