Finally. A Windows machine that Walt Mossberg can love.

Walt's latest Personal Technology column for The Wall Street Journal talks about the Dell XPS One, a machine that has the guts and design to compete with the iMac. According to the article:

Something interesting is going on at Dell. The Texas personal-computer behemoth, long associated with boxy, boring machines, has started emphasizing industrial design. And the company, which in recent years seemed to care only about corporate customers, techies and hard-core gamers, appears once again interested in average, mainstream consumers who value simplicity.

I think that Mossberg's bias toward machines that are easy-to-use and approachable is what upsets the majority of the gadget bloggers out there. Most people writing blogs about cutting edge electronics either openly dislike him or give him grudging respect. However, he was advocating Macs as home computers early in the life of Mac OSX-- way before it was fashionable to do so.

I've been looking for a PC that I can recommend to those people who can't bring themselves to buy a Macintosh. The Dell XPS One is one of the few Vista desktops I've seen that I would recommend as a Mac alternative.

I'm going to start looking at notebook computers like the Dell XPS M1530 to see if they live up to the same standard.