How Long Is The Wait On a BTO Machine?

[paxtonandrew]

Hello,

I am about to holiday in Hawaii, and I want to purchase an $1600 iBook G4 14 Inch BTO with a SuperDrive, and i am wondering what other users have experienced with their BTO orders. My It guys at work believe Apple Have a warehouse full of these BTO computers, which will mean there will be no "Lead Time", but i don't know. I live in Australia, and with some simple calculations, the computer is almost $500 cheaper :eek: in Hawaii, so this seems economical. If i ordered the computer on my first day there, how long would it take to recieve the order?

Thanks for the help. :confused:

Paxton

[PeterD42]

Before buying anything in the US (or Hawaii :cool: ) I would check where you have to send it back to for repairs under warranty.
Tis a long way from Oz and the postage is more.

[micsaund]

I ordered a BTO PB15. It said "estimated 3-5 days" for the lead time. I ordered on Monday night (6/28) and it is arriving tomorrow (7/6). That time includes one day of just sitting in the warehouse (today) because it's a FedEx holiday, otherwise, it'd be here today. I used the "Free" shipping option and Apple still sent it via FedEx. The kicker is that it came from Shanghai, China, so your friends who are thinking that Apple has a bunch of BTOs just sitting around (at least in California) is wrong. I'm guessing that if you do NOT get BTO, they probably have them sitting in a warehouse, but with BTO, I'd imagine they roll off the assembly line in China and go straight to you/me.

Anyway, I'm not sure how using the paid-for shipping option would make any difference since Apple used FedEx anyway. If I had to bet, though: I'd say that since BTOs come from China, they ALWAYS use FedEx no matter what you select (to avoid package loss, monster shipping times, etc). However, if you get off-the-shelf, which I'd guess ship from a country-local supply, they probably use FedEx Ground for "free" shipping (as they did with my APP package which shipped from California) and then FedEx if you pay extra for the 2-3 day. So, if going BTO, I'd personally probably say to skip paying extra for the shipping since there's nothing faster from China than FedEx anyway.

Mike

[Ryan1524]

arrived within 3 days. ordered on 06/30 and arrived on 07/02. BTO Powerbook 15" :cool: