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Whether to buy at Amazon or Apple online store

tubedogg

tubedogg

macrumors 6502
Original poster
I am wanting to buy a PowerMac dual-1.8GHz.

At the online Apple store, I can upgrade the video card to the 9600XT for $50, which I think is reasonable and gets me away from what I have read is a pathetic base card (the 5200). I can also remove the modem that I won't need to save $29. This brings the total to $2020. Adding on tax, but with free shipping, the effective total cost is approximately $2156.

At Amazon, I can't remove the modem or upgrade the graphics card, but the base price is $1994, minus a $150 mail-in rebate, no tax, and free shipping, bringing the effective total cost to $1884.

Is there any benefit for ordering directly from Apple? i.e. Amazon ships the machine in the original box and it contains all the same accessories, right? (keyboard, mouse, OS 10.3, etc.) For $312 difference, which I can use to buy the Radeon 9800 Pro Special Edition which seems from various reviews to be a better card than the 9600 XT, it probably isn't worth buying directly from Apple, yeah?
 
FYI, Amazon does charge shipping on the dual 1.8; but even with the shipping charge they are still cheaper than the apple store because of sales tax.
 
if you don't need to customize, or if you can't take advantage of educational or government pricing, there isn't a compelling reason to buy from apple directly.
 
In your case...

In your case, it seems like it would make more sense to buy from Amazon, and funnel that savings into your video card.

In my case, I just got burned. I ordered an iPod shuffle as soon as they were available at Amazon to save the sales tax the Apple Store charges -- about one day after they were available from Apple.

Guess what it said when I got to the checkout? Estimated delivery of March 28.

Ouch.
 
May want to reconsider the modem

Just a thought. I bought from my university store so could not customize, but had I been able to, I would have opted out of the modem as well. It turns out I use it more often that I would've thought, because the software for PDF and Word are so easy now. There have been a number of documents (either Word, or that I've scanned in) that I've FAX'ed to people (I know, some people still insist on it), and all I do is hook up a phone line, go to the print screen, choose FAX, and it's done! 🙂
 
jimbo999 said:
FYI, Amazon does charge shipping on the dual 1.8; but even with the shipping charge they are still cheaper than the apple store because of sales tax.
Click to expand...
Yeah I happened to notice that last night. Whoops! 😱

I think I'm gonna go ahead and order at Amazon...I checked out those other places you mentioned but none of them would beat Amazon with the rebate.

Thanks guys 🙂
 
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