Got a nasty error - never saw it before - running a very simple query.

This query first worked on a SQL 2005 dev server in my office - then worked on my laptop (sqlexpress) but failed on a new customers fresh install of sql 2005.

Code:
Update #Load Set C11=DD.Dept
	From #Load
	Left join Dept_t DD on DD.DeptDesc = C11
Got this error:

Cannot resolve the collation conflict between "Latin1_General_CI_AI" and "SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS" in the equal to operation.

Googled for that error - got very few links - Tibor talked about it in one of them - so I know it's real

At any rate changing the query to this

Code:
Update #Load Set C11=DD.Dept
	From #Load
	Left join Dept_t DD on DD.DeptDesc collate database_default = C11
makes it work.

Why is this happening - did the new installed server get a bad collation default?

I don't want to be three months into this customer going live to discover a simple server install issue.