Bto

[AmbitiousLemon]

When we first heard about the new G4s and especially once the MX in the GeforceMX sank in many of us began to get angry with the limitations on the BTO options on the apple store. I'm not really interested in buying a new computer for another year or so but I was interested in the BTO options as well.

I took a trip to my college apple store and started asking some questions. I can buy just about any configuration I would want. Ok so I can't buy a G4 without the processor, but I can get my choice of optical drive (as long as apple is still manufacturing what I want, ie no floppy or CD-Rom). So I started thinking and I figured if i was going to buy right now i would get my g4 (933 or dual 1) with no RAM (we all know we can get it cheaper) no hard drive (again cheaper bigger drives available elsewehere) and no video card (buy a radeon 8500, geforce3, or wait for the geforce4 or radeon 9500) i would keep the super drive (i could really use dvd for backup). just think how cheap such a machine would be... makes you think (o sure you would probably have to wait an extra month because of its BTO but hey i think it would be worth it).

 

[irmongoose]

Ya.. it would be cheap... and nice...

but you cant do that can you

shucks


irmongoose

 

[AmbitiousLemon]

well you can do that, thats my whole point. All of these people have been whining about the BTO options at the apple website but none of them have looked beyond the website to see if apple can make what they want. Sure if you just want to buy from the online apple store then your choices are limited but if you want to but forth some extra effort and ask the right people then you can get what you want.

I bought my powerbook a few years back without a hard drive with no problem.

 

[mischief]

Any Apple retailer listed as "specialist" can do this for you.

I've ordered the last 2 machines for my current boss this way.

Personal favourite:

Dual 1Ghz, no RAM, No HD, Zip 250, no modem, Airport card, Superdrive, nVidia GeForce4Ti, 3 of Apple's 2-up drive frames.

Add 1.5Gb of RAM, Sonnet ATA 133 RAID card, 4 ATA 100 120Gb drives, RADEON 7500 PCI, SCSI160 Dual Channel card.

 

[evildead]

re AmbitiousLemon

Thanks for your post! When I got my latest Mac I BTO it.. but I was disapointed about what I could configure. I wanted to get all my RAM and storage someplace else... but could not. I guess I should have looked a little harder.n Next time I will

 

[Mr. Anderson]

Re: Any Apple retailer listed as "specialist" can do this for you.

Originally posted by mischief
I've ordered the last 2 machines for my current boss this way.

Personal favourite:

Dual 1Ghz, no RAM, No HD, Zip 250, no modem, Airport card, Superdrive, nVidia GeForce4Ti, 3 of Apple's 2-up drive frames.

Add 1.5Gb of RAM, Sonnet ATA 133 RAID card, 4 ATA 100 120Gb drives, RADEON 7500 PCI, SCSI160 Dual Channel card.

What we're your savings doing it this way?

 

[teabgs]

If you buy without any RAM or HD, can you get it from apple? IF you call them I mean...Also, they will still ship all the software that would be on the HD if you had ordered one right? Cause it would suck if they didnt include the software.

I'll probably get my new computer this way if its a big diff. in price and I still get all the software. Also, is it possible to not get a keyboard/mouse and then buy them seperately. Cause I believe there are a few different Keyboards that apple offers.

What are the diff keyboards that they have? I heard of a Final Cut Pro keyboard somewhere. Does anyone know what that is?

Also, you can still get Apple care if you do it this way right? Just wanna make sure.

 

[mischief]

haven't done it yet.

I'm just keeping track of what I'll do when I get the cash together.

I have built a couple machines this way. The retailers HATE doing it cuz a custom BTO is a liability--that is: If I order one and then back out, they're stuck with it.

The last one I built was a dual 533 but it was with my employee discount and wound up spec'd by comittee into more/less than I initially quoted.

Most times if you are going to these extremes you're not actually going to save much cuz yer just shifting money from one thing to another. If you want a good guestimate you can go to any online retailer and spec out HD costs at ten percent less than retail to calc what'd come out of the BTO cost for removing it. Do the same for Optical drives. RAM specs up 10-30% to get it's installed value from Apple.

 

[AmbitiousLemon]

wow i posted this thread so long ago. good to see someone finally took note.

but as to what are the advantages here are my thoughts:

often you already have a keyboard, mouse, hard drive so why buy more?

sometimes hardware from other vendors is much less, like ram.

sometimes you just dont want to buy a superdrive you may just want a cdrom or cddvdr drive with no writing ability

sometimes you want to add some way over the top stuff. 160gig harddrive anyone? ati 8500? 60gig 5400rpm drive in your laptop?

well those were my thoughts. i posted this after the release of the geforce4 mx and before the geforce4 ti. lots of people were upset and wanted to get no graphics card and get a ati 8500. i just wanted to tell them they could.

 

[eyelikeart]

I got my TiBook bto...

I ordered my TiBook with the following:
• 500 mhz G4
• 128 MB RAM instead of 256
• 10 Gig hard drive instead of 20
• no airport

I was able to scale down the price to something more affordable...then did the upgrades later...

 

[Choppaface]

Re: Any Apple retailer listed as "specialist" can do this for you.

Originally posted by mischief
Sonnet ATA 133 RAID card, 4 ATA 100 120Gb drives,

O_O_O_O_O_O_O_O_O_O_O
are those all WD caviars? what kind of read/write are you getting out of all those together?

 

[LethalWolfe]

There are no Apple stores anywhere close to me, but I can call Apple and configure a truly BTO machine?


Lethal

 

[Beej]

No retailer I spoke to would do anything like that for me. The place I ended up buying from even got upset when I said I would go eslsewhere unless they replaced my 256 MB stick with a 512 stick, even when I said straight out that I would pay the difference!

Yet another reason to slap Apple and Apple resellers in Australia.

Man, I could have saved soooooo much money...

 

[eyelikeart]

I ordered mine from someone locally who is an authorized reseller....he was happy to do whatever it was I wanted....

I'd recommend not going to a "retail" store to buy one such as Comp USA or whatever....they aren't that helpful as far as I'm concerned...

u get a more personal touch from someone who actually cares about selling the computer...