FINALLY PURCHASED MY MACBOOK, and good price!

I finally did it. After spending countless hours on this forum!! I had 3 ways to buy my macbook (I wanted the black 2.0ghz, 120gb HDD, 1Gig Ram):

ALL PRICES IN CANADIAN DOLLARS UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE!
1) Through education discount. $100 cheaper than the regular price.
2) Through visaperks, who has a 10% off deal with compusmart. This was cheaper than the education discount by I think $60.
3) Refurbished, the cheapest option.

I finally saw the mb i wanted today n the refurbished section, gave apple a call in the morning but hesitated because of shipment. You see, I'm still considering buying the new T61 14.1" widescreen which will be out soon. I would've waited more for that one to come out and see the price and reviews, but I'm going away on friday for 3 weeks and i need a new laptop. The first representative told me that it won't get there by friday even if i choose the fastest method. This evning, 2 other reps told me it'll get there monday-friday. So there's a chance that I won't receive it by thursday night but hopefully it'll be here by then. Plus, the Canadian lenovo prices are just ridiculously high, and while I might be able to purchase a laptop from the US website and have a friend shipp it to me and work my way around any possible warranty issues with a few lies (i.e. "i live in the US but might be moving to canada in a month; will the warranty still apply?" and i'm pretty sure the answer would be yes), I'm imagining that the T61 will be more expensive than the t60, and the t60 aint that cheap.

Anyways, the refurbished black 2.0ghz 120gb HDD 1gig ram, plus a $20 adaptor (i think I could've found one for way cheaper), plus expedited shipping around $25, plus 13% tax came out to $1688, roughly $1500-$1535. Not bad at all, huh?

Now all I need to do is find a cheap (or free? ) copy of windows XP, Parallels or Boot Camp, another gig of ram, and I'll be done. And all I need to worry about is any heat issue, battery life, the integrated video card, the low resolution on the macbook, and the cheap-feeling macbook keyboard which I HATE.

K, wish me luck to receive my new baby before Friday.

PS. I thought I'd give it a shot and asked if I can pay more to have the two 514 Ram sticks replaced by only one 1gig stick, and he said no because on the core 2 duos the rams have to be identical. What does that mean?

 

I bought my Macbook black for $1128 brand new.

 

How did you get it brand new for that price? Why was it selling for so much less than it's "new" price?

 

"PS. I thought I'd give it a shot and asked if I can pay more to have the two 514 Ram sticks replaced by only one 1gig stick, and he said no because on the core 2 duos the rams have to be identical. What does that mean?"

that's crap you don't have to have 2 dimms installed, it's just cheaper. I think he thought you wanted to have 1.5gb ram in which can still be done, you just lose some speed to the lack of dual channel.

1gb is not to expensive, here I can get a 2x1gb pack for like 150 bucks. I am in Alberta; we only pay 6% tax

just get a OEM version of Windows XP home, it cost 100$ at brick and mortar shops. (MemoryExpress)

 

1) $100 Student Discount
2) Amex $250 off first purchase for signing up
3) $50 - Called Apple and told them I wanted to cancel my online order and buy from an Apple Retail Store instead. The represenative offered me $50 off if I kept my online order.

 

Gotcha. To be fair then, two of those things aren't really "standard" things that you would factor into the cost of the MacBook.

 

$250? Whoa, I've never seen such a big offer. I wasn't given anything when I signed up for VISA and Mastercard.
By the way, are those prices in US dollars?

That makes me slightly feel better!! My enthusiasm over what I thought was a good price suddenly drowned after reading sp00n's post. Thanks!

 

By the way, I still don't get how $1128? Did it have 1gig ram, 120gig HDD? Because, assuming your price is in USD, the price of such a laptop, brand new, is $1500 USD. You reduced the price by $400, meaning it would be $1100. Don't tell me you pay only 2% tax (I envy you if you do).

And to be even more fair to me, I purchased an adaptor plus $25 expedited shipping, so I really paid $1633. And we here in Canada pay 13-14% tax on our purchases, so really, if you lower the tax and convert it to USD, it'll be closer to $1380 USD. Meh.

 

Yes, it was in USD. It was the standard Blackbook configuration (1GB, 120GB, etc.)

Tax was 6.5%. My $100 off student discount pretty much cancelled out the tax. Shipping was also free.

 

Congrats man. Theres no reason to NOT own a mac now. you can actually ENJOY using a computer, and when you absolutely MUST use windows, its right at your fingertips.

You dont want Parallels though. Get yourself a copy of XP, and download bootcamp from apple for free. its easy as pie.

pop that new ram in there, and you'll be sitting pretty.

 

I don't see why you're advising against Parallels though; it serves a useful purpose as well.... namely, letting you run a Windows app without having to reboot into Windows just to use it..... that can be pretty convenient if you want to primarily work in OS X but have a Windows app you need to use from time to time. One can use both Parallels and Boot Camp of course depending on what your needs are.

-Zadillo

 

Yeah thats true. would be convenient. i dont like emulation though.
parallels is not free. boot camp is.

 

Parallels is virtualization, not emulation. There's a significant difference.

And yes, Parallels isn't free, but that doesn't mean it might not be useful depending on what someone's needs are.

Again, Parallels and Boot Camp are two different things. If one only has a need to reboot into Windows and use it completely separately, then Boot Camp is all someone would need. However, if someone would find it convenient to be able to run windows apps alongside OS X (especially in Coherence mode, which makes it a lot like running a Windows app just like any other OS X app) without having to take the time to reboot into another OS, it can certainly be worth it. At that point, the cost of Parallels becomes worth it.

But honestly, they're two completely different solutions.

-Zadillo

 

well neither of us know what his 'needs' are. theres nothing wrong with free.

 

free? I'll grab on to anything that is free.
Hey I'm not even sure if I need Parallels or Boot Camp. The only program which I have that doesn't work on OS X is a teach-it-yourself French language CD, and that's about it. If there's a trial version of Parallels I'll try it for sure. Otherwise, i'll stick to boot camp for now.
But priority right now is finding windows XP. I've been hearing a lot of complaints of windows VISTA so I'm going to stick with XP. My cousin has a core 2 duo with 2.5gig of Ram (I don't know how he has an extra .5), 160HDD with 7200RPM and he says his computer is a slow piece of junk when running vista!!! Wow.

 

With 2.5GB of ram in Vista, his computer should be running fine. Tell him to stop downloading so much porn, and he will be fine.

 

lol. Unlike myself, that guy has no time at all to download porn!

 

As a long time Windows and Mac user all I can say is Vista is absolutely worthless. It's one of the most bloated OS' I have ever used. The 3D flip thing was a pure ripoff of Expose'. Expose' is 1000% times better than that idea and runs very smooth and Quartz is far more advanced than Aero, hell Windowblinds 5 is more advanced that Aero. The DRM employed in Vista is also a nightmare although the hackers are having fun already cracking it.

Don't get me wrong i'm not and have never been a Microsoft basher/hater. In fact I usually tend to like their products, but Vista seems like it's a bad joke and was a product released in early beta. Vista as was promised 2-3 years ago is a stripped down shell of what is being sold today.

I've always like Windows XP and that's what I intend on running for the far foreseeable future unless Microsoft can pull a giant rabbit out of it's hat.

p.s. Newegg.com still sells OEM versions of Windows XP.

 

2GB + 512MB = 2.5GB

Bootcamp is free because it's in beta. It will cost $30 when it goes final.

Honestly I think Parallels is much better than Bootcamp. Not having to reboot your computer saves me a lot of time. Plus, with Bootcamp, you have the option to install other non-Windows OS such as Linux, Solaris, etc. Bootcamp will only officially support Windows XP and Vista.

 

Just to clear up any confusion; Boot Camp will only cost $30 if you want to use it with Tiger. If you upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, you will not have to pay anything extra, as Boot Camp is built into it. The $30 charge is basically to allow people who want to use Boot Camp but don't want to pay to upgrade to Leopard a way to use it.

Anyway, Parallels and Boot Camp both have their merits. I think they are complementary technologies, personally.... there are cases where Parallels virtualization is a lot more convenient, and there are other cases where a full boot into Windows using boot camp is better (or in the case of games, the only option).

 

This is also a good time to remind those using Boot Camp beta that it will likely go dark around the time of the Leopard release. So be prepared to upgrade to Leopard or pay for the Tiger version. And BACKUP! You don't know how much access you will have to the drive once Boot Camp is turned off.

 

That's one thing I'm still not totally clear on though..... when the Boot Camp beta "expires", would it really include making any partitions set up with Boot Camp inaccessible, and disabling the boot loader?

Somehow I just have a suspicion it won't work like that - I would think that a boot camp partition would still remain available.

It seems like the thing that might become inaccessible would be the ability to use the actual Boot Camp program to create new partitions, etc.

 

I am impressed. I did not know you could haggle with Apple.

 

Woah! Thats awesome. You know what sucks though, you can only get an education discount in college not in high school.

 

When you order from Apple.com, they don't verify if you go to college or not. All you do is select the school you go to and pick your product. Now if they actually verify with the college you selected in your order, I am not sure.

There's probably a way around it though. If you know someone that goes to a college that has Apple Discount, you could just checkout with their name. The billing and shipping address doesn't have to match the student's name. I used my dad's credit card for my order, but the order was under my name.

 

I am thinking they would just disable the boot manager until you upgraded to the full version. However, you never really know and it would be prudent to back that stuff up before the date comes.

 

Yeah, possibly........ although I haven't checked, is the Boot Camp beta timelimited, or something else? I don't think it "phones home" so there isn't a way I think for them to automatically disable it.

If it is a timelimited beta (the only way I can see to prevent people from continuing to use it), they would at least need to have updated that to deal with the delay in Leopard.

But if so, I imagine one could move their Mac clock forward (say to 2008) to see what happens.

-Zadillo

 

It is unclear if there is a timer built in. But Apple does say it is only good for a limited time, and if they are trying to sell it, it would make sense to shut the beta down. Although how they would go about that i don't know. Perhaps the timer has been in there all along and they just have been updating the expiration with each release.

 

See, this is why free (as in speech) software is the way to go. Nobody would have to worry about backing up all their data and if their computer was going to be suddenly disabled by Apple.

 

I don't think anyone has to worry about their computer being suddenly disabled by Apple.

 

EDIT: I came across an old post on the MacNN forums that mentioned Boot Camp expiring in September 2007, so that could be it (if it is, they'll of course need to extend it).

I did find a more recent article though where Apple did clarify what will happen when the beta expires:

So basically, your existing Boot Camp partition will still work fine. The expiring software would be the Boot Camp assistant itself (that lets you create and manage Windows partitions).

And the driver updates makes sense too.

 

I sorta figured they'd just release a Patch in amongst a mandatory update that would set the disable time for Bootcamp. If someone could find the clock though, that would be groovy