[forgetsusername]

>Even though you can buy a Thinkpad directly from Lenovo, Best Buy still exists

For how long? It's a product an older generation that, for some reason or another, appreciates receiving the sales pitch. We're all tech savvy people here; go into Best Buy and start looking at computers. 4 out of 5 times you'll receive a sales pitch with, at least, a few elements of utter bullshit.

Meanwhile, the younger generation are becoming more and more comfortable with buy things online, sight unseen. The GP said it needs to see and feel options on a vehicle. I don't. I need to know what they do, and whether they work (information I can gather from reviews). In my experience, going and playing with something for a brief period of time at a dealership or store doesn't provide enough real world information, and I'm just as likely to make the wrong choice about a feature.

[breischl]

>>The GP said it needs to see and feel options on a vehicle. I don't.

Maybe not, though a lot of people do and you probably should. The ergonomics of a car are more important, and much more complex, than for many other items. Some of this is addressed by adjustable seats, but not all of it. Zappos solved this by doing lots of returns, but that's not a great solution for large items with high shipping costs.

That said, I could easily see the value in having a single specimen at the showroom to check for fit, and then having everybody special order one with their own trim level, colors, etc.

[xixi77]

I would certainly not buy a laptop sight unseen -- you can't really evaluate things like how the keyboard/pointer device/etc. feel from a picture, or how the screen looks in sunlight, or if that 0.1" width reduction is worth it, etc.

Much more so with cars -- e.g. how would I tell whether 0.5" less elbow space is still good enough, or how good is road visibility from the driver seat (IMO the single most important characteristic of a vehicle!), or whether the plastic feels cheap, or how clear/useful the HUD is, from looking at pictures?

Thinking about it, I've picked my last car based on rear seat headrests obscuring rear visibility too much for my liking in one of the last two contenders. I wouldn't have been able to notice it without actually driving the vehicle.

Sure, there are reviews & ratings, but those reviewers are not you -- if (for example) you don't care about those headrests quite as much as I do, why should you let my opinion skew yours?