Opinion needed for buying MBA 13' from Macmall

[jyball]

Hi, there,

I became an apple fan because of iphone, but never own a mac before, recently get attracted by the new macbook air, my perference is the 13' MBA with 4GB RAM because I will need it for study and regular entertainment (online surfing mostly) frequently, i don't think a 11' screen will be better for my eyes than 13'. Also, MBP is good but I personally prefer more mobility than the performance.

So now the question is where and when to buy it,
1. thanksgiving is coming and will there be some good promotions from apple.com? maybe according to some old experiences?

2. I may buy from MacMall for the tax saving purpose, and they are now having some bundle free item promotions like free parallets desktop 6, norton antivirus 11 for mac and free HP D110A printers, it's a pre-thanksgiving promotions will end soon, should I jump into this or wait for possible better deals from thanksgiving?

3. I noticed the policy of Macmall saying that apple products sold by Macmall are non-refundable, so does this mean i can return from neither macmall nor apple, right?

Thanks, any suggestions will be welcome, hope to join the mac world soon.

 

[almostjay]

I just bought the 13"/128/4GB MBA from MacMall, so this might come off as rationalization on my part, but anyway:

1. The cost of this thing shipped was $1,318. That's almost $200 less than it'll cost you to get it direct from Apple (depending on your tax rate, and GOV/EDU discounts are only about $100 difference - still significant). I seriously doubt you'll see a Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale that will get you back in that range (unless of course MacMall has one themselves, although I don't see how they could drop the price even lower...).

2. No one can answer this with anything other than speculation.

3. If your MBA shows up broken, it is covered by a 1-year Apple warranty. You will have to deal with Apple for any returns, but this is probably a good thing as it cuts out the middle man. With this in mind, I'm not sure why anyone would buy direct from Apple and not take advantage of the savings offered by some of the resellers.

 

[jyball]

Thanks for the reply.

I always can not wait for any longer time to buy an apple product if i made my mind, like my iphone 4.

Just put the trigger for one MBA 13''/4GB/128GB, available for free shipping Fedex overnight, now the MBA price is $1359, plus one free HP printer and free Parallets Desktop 6, spent about $1530, hopefully the total $170 rebates will come without hassle. 3% cashback from FW and 1% from my CC will help to save more, and probably will sell the printer and PD6 for extra savings, my wish is a final cost of $1200 for the MBA, which is already half of my monthly income, but i believe totally worth it.

my thanksgiving is coming earlier~

 

[nizmoz]

Thanks for the reply.

I always can not wait for any longer time to buy an apple product if i made my mind, like my iphone 4.

Just put the trigger for one MBA 13''/4GB/128GB, available for free shipping Fedex overnight, now the MBA price is $1359, plus one free HP printer and free Parallets Desktop 6, spent about $1530, hopefully the total $170 rebates will come without hassle. 3% cashback from FW and 1% from my CC will help to save more, and probably will sell the printer and PD6 for extra savings, my wish is a final cost of $1200 for the MBA, which is already half of my monthly income, but i believe totally worth it.

my thanksgiving is coming earlier~

Is this from macmall?

 

[Airforcekid]

I just wanted to add if Norton 11 comes free dont install it there are no viruses for OS X and your taking from already somewhat limited resources.

 

[nizmoz]

I just wanted to add if Norton 11 comes free dont install it there are no viruses for OS X and your taking from already somewhat limited resources.

There are viruses but very rare.

 

[Airforcekid]

There are viruses but very rare.

There are Trojans but you have to download them by torrents then enter your password and install it yourself but there are zero viruses.

 

[jyball]

Is this from macmall?

yes, from MacMall, my order is already on the delivering truck, exciting

I noticed the free norton antivirus too, firstly I heard very few virus problem for Mac; and this norton product had kind of poor reviews, so I gave it up.

 

[SkippyThorson]

There are Trojans but you have to download them by torrents then enter your password and install it yourself but there are zero viruses.

Correct. There are Trojans, Adware, Malware, Spyware, and worms (correct me if I'm wrong), but out of all those bad words, there are 0 Viruses.