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4'000 $ Best buy gift card, what to do !?

I would recomend checking the fine print of those gift cards. There are circumstancs where the cardholder starts paying monthly fees after a year of posession. So the question is do you have as much as you think you do?

I'm also wondering if a quad or octo base model is fine enough? RAM and hard drive upgrades i would recomend doing on your own anyways. Hard drive could be purchased with those gift cards, and RAM I'm not so sure of.
 
ButtUglyJeff said:
I would recomend checking the fine print of those gift cards. There are circumstancs where the cardholder starts paying monthly fees after a year of posession. So the question is do you have as much as you think you do?

I'm also wondering if a quad or octo base model is fine enough? RAM and hard drive upgrades i would recomend doing on your own anyways. Hard drive could be purchased with those gift cards, and RAM I'm not so sure of.
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I'm pretty sure that practice was prohibited some time ago.
 
Cant you find something more fun to spend the money on than a single computer that will only last a few years and does all the same things that a cheaper computer does?

Youre going to get bored with the Mac Pro after awhile, its just a computer. Best Buy has a lot of fun things that will keep you entertained longer than 1 mac pro. Just think about all the stuff you could get if you spent $2000 on a computer and $2000 on other things like a huge TV, high end surround sound system, high end car stereo (I doubt your wife would figure out you got new speakers in the car).
 
As much as I don't like the fact that you're lying to family, this should play well when doing my taxes and I can declare and make my groceries count as "business" expenses.
 
Kyrahlynn said:
Sir, I'd say you don't know women. Or at least, not a variety. Because that is an extremely narrow-minded comment.

I'm a female, and wouldn't say no to a $4,000 computer (heck, I spent almost that much myself on one, including some software!), provided that the purchase doesn't put the buyer in financial jeopardy. But that's just common sense.

To hell with diamonds, MACS are a girl's best friend :D
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The world really needs more women like you. Sigh.. where were you when I was single? :D
 
Music_Producer said:
They have an uncanny memory for all those types of things - my friend's wife still keeps reminding him of the plasma tv he purchased 2 years ago (he had always wanted one) It's not worth all the little arguments....
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Some people believe white lies are OK, and part of the marriage. I don't know if it's true, but if it works for them, it's fine. She may have a $2000 purse of some sort lurking in her collection, and she told him it was $400. :D


And the guy didn't come here for marriage counselling, folks.


iBlue said:
Really? That's so funny because my husband and I bought a Mac Pro and I hardly think I'm the only woman in the world who can appreciate such things.
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That's true, but it depends on the woman, and the OP knows his wife a bit better than I do.



Oh, and tell your wife that you spent $1300 on the computer. No way a Mac Pro costs $800. :D She'll walk into a Best Buy one day and see the crappy $800 computers you can get, and wonder why you got such a great deal. Spend $800 on the LCD as planned, but buy something else at the store that costs $500. This lie will cost you a bit more $$$, but $1200-1300 is more believable. Besides, at this point, go all out? :p

charlieroberts said:
(you might guess from me wanting to buy a mac pro without actually being a pro --and around here it seems that this is considered a MORTAL SIN--)
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You're right, and it's ridiculous.
 
Abstract said:
Some people believe white lies are OK, and part of the marriage. I don't know if it's true, but if it works for them, it's fine. She may have a $2000 purse of some sort lurking in her collection, and she told him it was $400. :D


And the guy didn't come here for marriage counselling, folks.




That's true, but it depends on the woman, and the OP knows his wife a bit better than I do.



Oh, and tell your wife that you spent $1300 on the computer. No way a Mac Pro costs $800. :D She'll walk into a Best Buy one day and see the crappy $800 computers you can get, and wonder why you got such a great deal. Spend $800 on the LCD as planned, but buy something else at the store that costs $500. This lie will cost you a bit more $$$, but $1200-1300 is more believable. Besides, at this point, go all out? :p
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What if she walks into Best Buy and realizes that the monitor costs more than the said price of the computer?! :eek:
 
What do you need to do with it?

Simple question: what do you do with your mac?

I'm holding out for the 15" MBP with the tech of the current 17" (17" is just too much Mac for me to lug around) (maybe it'll have the new mobile quad-core proc if we're lucky). If I had a pile of dosh to blow at Blurst Buy I'd get the MBP plus a 30" wide-gamut display, an Epson R2880, and a pair of 4-bay ReadyNASes, but then I'm a photographer so that's what suits what I do best.

Personally, I think that the massive amount of compute power and memory bandwidth available in the extra-expensive mac pro is only really valuable for a relatively small set of people that spend a lot of time pushing their machines to the limit to do stuff they get paid for, which mostly involves dealing with high-bandwidth media streams or manipulating huge media files of some sort.

If you're one of those people (or just do it in your spare time because you enjoy it) and feel that a pair of Xeons is necessary to improve the experience of whatever it is you're doing, then go for it. If it's to use iLife apps, do office stuff, watch movies, and surf the web, I don't think you'll get the value out of a top-end mac pro vs. say, the new Nvidia mac mini or a MacBook. You'd be better off diversifying your purchase between a Mac and nice stuff to go with it.

BTW, about the gift card thing, if she asks you where the new machine came from, I'd tell her you've been saving up for it for 2 years by putting a little money on the side each week and leave it at that; maybe even tell her just before you bring it home. No details that will get you in trouble, and you're being honest. She may even praise you for saving up for something you want for so long.

Good luck.
 
if i was this guy...MY DUDE...id print out this thread and show my wife to show the amount of garbage hes gotten haha
 
He actually works at a BestBuy Store as at the Customer Service Department. He has been slowly returning items and putting the refund on the gift card so he doesnt get caught. It just so happens that everything he has stolen now adds up to $4000.00 BestBuy's Loss Prevention Team has not noticed this $4000.00 loss over a period of one year.... thats my guess on how he have all these giftcards.
 
I think it's fine to do this. I understand why you would do it. Some women think spending money on a computer is foolish. It is your money, and you "saved" it over time instead of making an instant decision to spend $4k.

Sometimes gift cards expire a year after purchase though. I assume you know this and the cards you bought don't expire?

Anyways, you could buy a really expensive Mac and sell it on eBay for nearly full price??? Or I guess Craig's List is free to sell items there. Or, you could tell someone you will trade them.

It is really tough as you are not going to get a BTO computer from Best Buy.

If you go to BestBuy.com can you buy components and do upgrades that way?

You are really in a tough position. Best wishes to you.
 
This is one of the funniest stories I've read here on Macrumors. I fully support the OP.

I'm not married, but catch hell from every woman (girlfriend, mother, grandmother, female friends, etc) in my life when I purchase anything remotely expensive that's electronic.

I can sympathize.
 
As a woman and a wife, I fully support the OP.

I'm one of those women sporting a $600 purse that my husband thinks cost $100. He wouldn't care in the least that I paid $600 but frankly it's not worth his disbelief and scoffing over my purchase when I know he'd turn around and drop 5x that amount for a MacPro in a heartbeat :p

Good luck charlieroberts! Let us know how it all goes!
 
This is too funny.

Maybe you should have just slipped a 20 in an envelope every now and then. Hard to transfer this much in GC without loosing some money.
 
charlieroberts said:
I was waiting for someone to say something like this... "OMG you should not buy that pair of jeans, stick those 200$ in some kind of Hedge fund and you will be able to live off of it in 500 years ! "
Come on, not everything should revolve around your investments and all that crap, live a little on the edge, and in my case, I can afford not to get any interest on my gist cards, plus It's a pretty convenient way to save money, getting it off your pocket.



So you are at a bar about to have a beer and call your wife asking if you can buy another pint ? Or at a restaurant, and tell her you are still thirsty and want another pink lemonade ?

Yeah, I didn't think so. So you spend well over 25$ a week that you don't account to your wife right ?
Or maybe you save money to buy her a present ? When you do, do you tell her how much it cost you ?

So, I'm spending my 25$ a week and keeping it for myself. It's my present to myself.

My marriage is solid, and I don't mind you thinking otherwise, I would just like you to keep it to yourself. If you are going to post, make it something useful.
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that guy is like 15.ive seen his youtube videos.he isnt married,and never will be
 
charlieroberts said:
well she's not very computer savvy, so it might go a little like this;

Me:Hey honey ! my old computer just died :confused: . I might have to buy a new one !

She: Oh that's too bad! How much are you spending ?

Me: Well I'm thinking along the lines of 800 dlls (that's going to the LED display ;) )

*Goes out, comes back with MP, everyone is unsuspecting and happy*

I getting kind of discouraged though, no ones seems to have ideas...

At this point I'm thinking going for the base 8-core (i was looking at the 2.93 quad) And then ordering HDD, RAM from newegg and the ATI GPU from apple.
I dunno however if you can install the airport card yourself, havent found it on the apple store.
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I think it's fine to save up for something you want. Many people spend $50 a week on going out to eat. But I agree that we should stop with the sexist comments. I'm the tech geek in our family and I'm the wife. I wanted to buy a $2,000 MBP recently but my husband thought it was too much to spend right now and suggested I wait, so I'm waiting.

Two points though:
1. Best Buy offers 18 months same as cash financing for all purchases over $499 (about as long as you've been saving). You could have applied that $50 a week to the credit card and had the computer awhile ago.

2. Gift cards aren't the safest place to store your money right now. For instance, how many people still have Circuit City gift cards? Just glad you chose Best Buy over Circuit City! :eek:

I agree that you should diversify your purchase. You didn't really explain your computer needs, just your wants. We all want the ferrari, but if you don't know how to handle it or you drive only on roads with a 50 mph speed limit, then do you need it? In otherwards, what very intensive computer work are you doing that would justify a $4,000 computer?

Go with a lower end computer than you were considering and add lots of useful accessories and software. Best Buy sells lots of different things. With any leftover balance, maybe buy a new appliance like a fridge for your household.
 
WOW just WOW

This is amazing, I've laughed my ass off !

Thanks to all of you who replied, and the guy who said I should print this and show it to my wife... well I begining to think about it ! It's histerical !

The problem remains though, I have no clue HOW I'll buy the mac I want. So in the end, I really enjoyed reading this, but I'm right where I started.

I'll give it some thought and tell you what I do.

Oh and to all of you wondering why I want a mac pro, I have a 2.4 MBP 17in (santa rosa I think). And while it runs Lightroom perfectly well, I'm a hobby photographer, and since I got to shooting raw with my d300 (those files are HUGE) I just wished I had a little bit more oomph. So... I dont want another laptop, a mini would be downgrade, and I really dont like the iMac (something about the look and feel). So yeah a mac pro is more or less what it's about. And don't come telling me about refurb, I already have the money, and it was specifically put aside for my mac pro.

Although a couple of nikon lenses would also be something nice to buy with my gift cards (another purchase my wife wouldn't be proud of) and THEN print out this forum and get my mac pro ! omg, I had too much coffee, saying stupid things now... or am I ????

ironspider said:
that guy is like 15.ive seen his youtube videos.he isnt married,and never will be
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This is funny, i just googled charlie roberts and turns out there is only ONE ! amazing...
[/sarcasm]
 
Wow, This is awesome. I never thought of this. I hate telling my wife I spent a lot of money. I bought some Jeans the other day, and my wife asked me how much I paid. I said I paid $150.00 less than True Religion Jeans. The jeans I bought were $140.00, which is way more than she would ever approve of (for a pair of jeans).

Its just easier not telling the whole truth.

My wife and I always fight over spending money on Computers and such, but she can spend a crapload of money on makeup, and hair products (which I never bitch about).
 
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