[geeks] Vista cost

[Joshua Boyd]

On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 10:43:07AM -0600, Lionel Peterson wrote:

> Refurb Core 2 Duo laptops are very rare at this point - give it some
> time, and they will become more plentiful. I was able to get my
> MacBook Pro as a refurb, which equalled a 21% discount of list price
> for a current model. The same discount is standard on previous
> generation machines, but almost makes them not worth while, since the
> difference in specifications can make the price difference... 

Yeah.  I don't plan to give it a lot of time.  If we see the perfect
refurb, we will probably get it.  Otherwise, in a few weeks we will just
buy a new entry level MacBook, and then upgrade the ram later.
 
> For example, I first bought a MacBook Pro (non-Core 2 Duo), it had an
> 80 Gig HD and 512 Meg RAM for 29% off list price, $1,399. Then I saw a
> the COre 2 Duo version for 21% off list price, or $1,599 - it had 1
> Gig of RAM and a 100+ Gig HD. Ignoring the processor speed-up of the
> newer laptop, in order to get 2 Gig in the older model, I would have
> to throw out the 512 Meg SoDIMM and buy 2x 1 Gig SoDIMMs for $200, so
> I'd be out of pocket $1,599 for 2 Gig and 80 Gig HD, with the newer
> model it would be $1,599 + $100 for the additional Gig of RAM, so the
> out-of-pocket is $1,699 - so for the $100 difference, I got a 25-50%
> larger HD (I can't remember ;^), and a 15-25% faster CPU... 

Thats the sort of reasons why we aren't going for a PowerMax or Smalldog
refurbed iBook.  One we add ram and a wireless card, we are up to the
price of refurbed macbook.  The powermax rep that I talked to the other
day even told me that I probably should just buy a refurbed macbook
instead of an iBook for them, even though they didn't know when they
would have refurbed macbooks.
 
> IMHO, it is worth waiting for a Core 2 Duo with the latest features as
> a refurb (of course, YMMV)... 

Currently $1100 on the apple store for a refurb c2d 2.0 ghz with 1 gig
ram and 80gig disk.
 
> And of course, don't forget that thanks to Boot Camp, Apple gives you
> a CD-ROM with the required drivers (32 bit,IIRC) for WinXP Pro SP2 ;^) 

I don't love the thought of bootcamp, but I might give it a test drive
primarily for testing cell phone data connectivity.  Or I might try
parallels instead.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd
jdboyd at jdboyd.net
http://www.jdboyd.net/
http://www.joshuaboyd.org/