And i thought us Brits were getting a bad deal..

[Fredstar]

Sorry to bring this up again guys but i thought i would just say that i thought here in the UK i thought we were getting a raw deal compared to those lucky Yanks...
..I am ordering my grandad a Powermac (convertered him ) because he was so sick of viruses/spyware and he lives in Holland, the difference between the uk and Dutch price (exact same specs) was nearly £300 more in Nl for a dual 2ghz and some extra spex..!! I am now considering ordering it in the UK and taking it over by car.
DW i know MWSF is coming soon and Tiger is out by June so i am not ordering till next summer but just speccing up for his budget (£5k) now to get an idea what i can get.
It will be an awesome set up and i can't wait to teach him on it - here is what we get so far:
Dual G5 2ghz
2 x 20" Apple displays
4gb ram (Crucial)
Nvidia 6800 GT
250gb HD
This will be the last computer that he will buy and has had some Pensions that have matured and that so he wants to get the best he can afford, he loves using Photoshop e.t.c (so slow on his AMD 2.2 ghz)
Anyways, Netherlands store=Rip Off

 

[edesignuk]

Wow, that'll be quite a setup for a grandad!

 

[iGav]

Wow, that'll be quite a setup for a grandad!

That's exactly what I was thinking.... 4GB RAM...

Seems a little OTT, I'd pony up the £££ and drop the RAM to 2GB and go to a Dual 2.5.

Photoshop may like the memory, but I'd be surprised if your Grandad would be working with multiple GB Photoshop files that would benefit from 4GB RAM, and if he's not, he'd be better off with the extra processing kick from the 2.5.

And buy it from the edu store and save some more pennies.

 

[Fredstar]

Trust me this is one grandad who loves speed in computing and he wants to do some pretty fancy stuff in photoshop.
I told him there is no way you will need 4gb's but he is pretty stubborn about these things, using the 8 banks it is only another 300 to get 4gb. 512mb chips are less than 50 quid at Crucial which is pretty good.

 

[CorvusCamenarum]

Wow £300 is a lot...especially to someone like me who deals in dollars. Why such a large discrepency? Is it the outlandish european taxes or something?

On a related note, it sounds like you could have a nice little arbitrage opportunity there. Granted, I don't know much about the legal end of it or how expensive it is to travel from there to there but £300 a pop sounds like a tidy sum.

 

[Fredstar]

If i were to buy it in the UK could i just use an adapter for the Powermac/Screens and voila? Or would a transformer be involved?
And the whole point of this thread was to gage why Holland Mac buyers pay so much, anyone know?
Also i didn't see one ipod ad/Apple centre/Apple ad or any kind...Did see loads of Creative adverts, they are obviously trying to steal the european market that Apple are just not advertising in.

 

[iGav]

And the whole point of this thread was to gage why Holland Mac buyers pay so much, anyone know?

You sure it's not to do with the £/€ currency difference?

You get 1.4115 € per £ at the moment, so it might work out cheaper finding out the cost in € and then exchanging £ for the required amount in €, I would've thought that would make it cheaper to buy in Holland.

 

[Fredstar]

It is actually a bit more expensive in France so must be a Europe thing, with education discount he could save as much as 600 quid so def worth driving over with it.
Just to hightlight the price difference (with education for UK)
UK £4050 vs. NL £4680 vs. FR £4717
Quite an interesting lil comparison

 

[iGav]

Would it still be covered by the warranty??

I know the portable range are covered worldwide, but if you buy a PowerMac here, and ship it to Holland.... Apple MAY not cover it there, meaning you'd need to bring it back to the UK to have it repaired and then ship it back to Holland.