So I get a box from Dell today.  I open it, its a completely different system than mine, which they told me was still a shipping configuration, so I could pull out my old HD, stick it into the newly arriving system, and be on my merry way.  This new Vostro has Vista on it which if I remember right from Brennan's blog means I'm shit out of luck insofar as downgrading to XP, or at the very least in for a lot of pain.  The latest version of Mobile Device Center does seem to work with my CE 4.2 devices that I need, so maybe I'll just use Vista on the laptop.  Of course they seem to have given me a slower HD rather than the 7200RPM serialATA I paid for.  I don't think I'll purchase anything from Dell in the future.