Personally, I think the Vanguard web site is terrible compared to the other 4 I've used recently.
Agreed, all that cost saving has kept Vanguard from having a decent website. Fidelity and TDAmeritrade are significantly better as far as the website is concerned.
For the record I was comparing the ML investors website (which I find hella-annoying) to the vanguard site.
And I have the same question as Will - what's not 'decent' about it? I can find all my investing information easily. Vanguard does a decent job listing the returns I have gotten on each investment, something ML seems to hide. It's easy and straightforward to set up automatic deposits/payments, etc.
It isn't flashy but I can't think of anything I want it to do that it can't do.
Having recently moved from USAA to Vanguard, I can say that USAA is a much better site than Vanguard. I'm used to Vanguard's site now, but I remember a few things that bothered me.
1. The font of every link at the top is too small.
2. Why do I have to say I'm a personal investor just to login? They should have a separate site for executive/busness accounts. (Just checked, looks like they fixed this)
3. I ran into a few bugs where certain links in the main menu were dead; I had to go to another page just to get to the real page that I wanted. Something like the 'overview' page can have a dead link depending on what page I'm on.
4. Separate page for username and password? The security image is silly.
Obviously not big things, but it wasn't easy moving from a website I understood through and throguh to a brand new one. There's always going to be a feeling of 'I don't know what I'm doing', because of the complexity required in an investing website.