Can somebody explain this a little better?

Earlier this evening I was on a flight that was held for a while just before departure because, according to the pilot, Atlanta was unable to transmit "performance data" to him for takeoff. (I assume that he was talking about V1 calculation but I suppose it could have been something else. I also won't say which flight as I don't want to get anybody in trouble.)

After the flight I got to talk with him and asked why they needed to get that from ATL rather than calculating it on the spot in the cockpit. He replied that he didn't know why DL insisted on doing it with a centralized computer in ATL, that other carriers use a computer in the plane to do it, and that I should write in and complain about it because the more people who complain about such delays the faster DL will give them a computer so they can do the math on their own. He also explained further that the delay was caused when ATL couldn't access the weather data from where we were departing and that if they had been allowed to do the calculation themselves they could have gotten us out of their 15 minutes faster.

Can anybody shed some more light on this? Curious as to what's going on. Should I drop DL a comment on this?

Cheers,
OPos.