Was that a hardware TPM, a firmware TPM bundled with the CPU and chipset, or a software emulated TPM? Windows, for example, may claim a "TPM" is present when it's just a software emulation.
In short, it may not be Dell that's doing this, and when they say a model doesn't include a TPM, they may mean it doesn't include a true hardware TPM. That's the only sort of TPM I'd bother using for my own purposes (and, yes, they're useful), so the distinction is relevant.
