I’ve been thinking about upgrading my main computer for a while now, figuring I’d put it off until 2004 just because… and when a few days ago I realized that my desktop system, an Apple Mac 450Mhz G4, was older than my 3 1/2yo son, I realized that the time had come. So I spent some time exploring and settled on a dual 1.8Ghz G5 tower system as a suitable upgrade. Sort of like going from a worn Yugo to a Ferarri.
As a faculty member of the University of Colorado, Boulder, I have access to academic pricing, which is a hit-or-miss thing. I found out that pricing is pretty standardized on Apple hardware, so I went to the Educational area of the Apple store and priced the system out at $2295. Plus tax. Plus shipping.
That didn’t seem like a great bargain, so I ….
…Called around and talked with the sales folks at a variety of different Macintosh outlets, and finally settled on MacZone. With a little wheeling and dealing, they sold me the dual G5 system for $2495, no tax, no shipping and the threw in a free 1GB RAM upgrade too. Sweet!
And today I wasted about four hours getting it up, on my network, hooked into my dual monitor setup, and ready to fly. And, oh boy, is it ever faster than my old computer. I forgot what it’s like to have a snappy response, and I can most see it when I’m working with my digital photographs that are typically 1-3MB per file. On the old system it would take 10-30 seconds to decompress the images each time they were opened, and now it’s not even long enough to put up a dialog box to tell me something’s hapenning.
I like it!
What wheeling and dealing did you do to get free shipping?
Nothing too radical. Just talked to a real person and explained how I really was thinking about buying with the academic pricing, but wanted to see “what they could do for me”. He told me that MacZone was offering free shipping through a current catalog anyway, so he basically credited me for having had that catalog (and I’m sure I’ll see PLENTY of their catalogs from now on). Good luck!
True, academic pricing is no longer as drastically lower as it was in the days when Apple’s gross margins were obscenely high…
But you DO know that shipping from the Apple Store is free, right? That $200 difference is easily enough to pay for high-quality 1GB RAM. Legally, you are obliged to pay your state’s sales tax on that machine, it’s just that MacZone isn’t authorised to collect it, and that law just happens to be enforced very laxly :).
I fully support buying from independent resellers, but I don’t really see what makes this such a great deal.
To Eric: What are you the self appointed Tax and Moral police? Give the guy a break … he just got a new G5. Let him enjoy it, instead picking the flys**t out of the pepper.