Intel price cuts...

Since intel is lowering prices on the Pentium M chips as of today, will these cuts be reflected in the laptop pricing as soon as this week? Is it an accross-the-board cut? For example, if the 1.86Ghz (750) is going from $294 to $241, will the W3V go down $53 as well? Or does this only apply to built-on-asus machines?

Thanks guys.

 

I'm not sure about the Ensemble units(Which I think will only have a small impact, the v6v has been hovering over the 2600~2800 CDN region since it was released. I saw most laptops drop over 30% of their base price, but the Ensemble units seem to stay still..

 

Ensembles will stay steady for the next month. The next incarnation of them will have 2.0's in them and will stay at the same current price. Those probably won't be here till the end of August though.... This is because the price cut is for new cpus, not systems already built. So the next order from Taiwan will include the updated cpu at the same price.

As far as intel's price cuts, yes it's effective tomorrow. I know on our side, the new prices should have been reflected at close of work on Friday, since none of those orders would get built until Tuesday. This price cut is effective on cpus that we order as of tomorrow. For us, these price cuts present two issues....... 1. people slow down ordering in the last month before a price cut and basically wait till the day they get cut to order. 2. everyone else is ordering all their cpus for the quarter on this first day too. It shouldn't add any time to build times, but the week of a price drop is traditionally the busiest week of the quarter for orders.

... everyone should be busy.

 

So should their Credit Card bills

 

So you're saying the Z63A is now cheaper, but not the W3V.

Damn, I'm having such a hard time making a decision here. I'm such a sucker for the little extras like bluetooth and aluminum lid. I'm pretty certain that I really don't need the dedicated gpu.

 

You can always get a BT dongle.

As for the Aluminum lid. It says 'W3' on the lid, so you can think it's a w3v and has an aluminum lid. Errrr...kinda

But really, is it needed?

The side light is pretyt enough. You can loook at it for hours after hours!

 

I noticed that the ISTNC website has been updated to reflect the price cuts. The price for the 730 (1.6Ghz) hasn't changed much (only went down $5 or so), but I think the others have jumped down to the next lowest price. I've been waiting for this to happen before ordering a Z63A myself.

As for the W3V vs. the Z63, I don't really see the advantage to getting the W3V if you don't care about the GPU. The Aluminum lid and BT are nice, but I don't think they justify the difference in cost (which can be pretty big, depending on the components you select for the Z63).

 

1.6's are being dropped all together, so the price of the 1.6's are actually the same as the 1.7's as of today........ anyone who still offers them...... probably has some stock. $5 off isn't a deal, but if they didn't have any, they wouldn't be offering them..... you'll see 1.6's disappear in a couple weeks.

 

I'm not sure who has and hasn't lowered their pricing, but I didn't notice a lower price on the 1.86Ghz (the one I'm getting) on any of the sites. I'm interested in geared2play.com for the lower pricing they seem to offer. But then I also just found out about starpcs.net, which is supposedly Asus authorized or whatever (i know you think this is B.S. Justin, and I'm not questioning you on that), and they have a 3% student discount right now, which takes about another $50 off the cost, and brings it down to around $1455 with shipping (z63a, 1.86Ghz, 512x1 ram, dvd/cdrw). Star's warranty is 2 years, which is 1 less than I was hoping for, but the cost is nice.

 

I'm certainly not trying to badmouth starpcs.net, as I've heard excellent things about them... but one thing you should consider is whether you'd like to have the original manufacturer's warranty on the individual components in addition to the warranty on the custom-built system. Some vendors, like Geared2Play and ISTNC (I'm not sure about Proportable, Justin?), use retail (boxed) parts in their systems, which means that in addition to the warranty provided by the vendor, you also get the individual warranties on all of the componenets (e.g. 3 years on CPU from Intel, 3/5 years on hard drive, depending on brand, etc). So even if you only have a one year warranty on the system, if your CPU dies within 3 years, it's still covered by Intel.

I emailed starpcs.net about this, and they told me that they use OEM parts in their systems, which means that you don't get these individual warranties. Starpcs will, of course, cover all of the components during the first two years, but after that, nothing is covered by anyone. Now, again, I'm not trying to dissuade you from buying a system at Star, I just mean to point out that there is one more issue that you might consider. If the warranties aren't that big of a deal for you, then Star might be the cheapest place to get your Z63. If they are, then you might want to check with other vendors to see whether they use retail parts before making your decision.