04-06-2007, 06:42 AM
I was in the market for a new, Demo, or "special deal" Mac Mini last Friday, after having just missed out on the Apple Store's $519 Refurbs (sold out in about 4 hours, from 3AM to 7AM) and I'd been everywhere locally with no success. 1st I went to our local Oxnard, CA Comp USA, which is closing its doors by 4/15, but there was nothing there worth haggling over. They were so stuffed-shirt about everything, that they wouldn't even honor their own online prices for things like Memorex DVD+R 2.4X DL Media in 50-packs, which was $69.99 online, while their in-store price was $89.99. I asked the Manager-guy why they wouldn't even meet their own online prices, and he told me "if it's not sold by next Friday, (tomorrow), it's going to employees or charities so we're not honoring any online Comp USA prices...sorry."(td)
I walked...out to my car, and drove across the street to the Oxnard Best Buy, and they had a shirtload of the Memorex DVD+R 2.4X DL Media 50-packs stacked from the ground up to the top shelves in their media section, with $69.99 pricing, so I stocked up on them because you never know when you're going to need a nice DL disc to backup a favorite DVD or two, and they were just as friendly and nice as the CompUSA folks were discouraging, so I walked around their store and found a couple other bargains of note, the best of which was a 46-inch Samsung Plasma 1080(i)(p) HD TV with twin HDMI inputs, and all the tricks and features I'd ever seen on such a unit, marked down to $1699 as an "open box" unit, with a free "3-year Performance Warranty" that seemed to cover everything...oh that was hard to pass up, but I did.
My final stop was at The Oaks Mall Apple Store, and gosh what a nice, friendly, cool place to visit it is! They have staff coming out of the woodwork, ready to help you out, or just leave you alone if that's what you want (and I did), so it being the 30th of the month, sure enough they had their "Fire Sale" going on up front by the cash registers, and there was a nice Demo Intel Core Duo Mac Mini 1.83GHz/SuperDrive/80GB/AE/BT with 1GB RAM marked down to $729, which was better than the Apple Store pricing for a similar model ($749) Refurb. Then there was a "Refreshed" 3.0GHz Mac Pro with 2 x 500GB HDs/2GB RAM/AE/BT/X1900 Video Card for $3299...not bad at all.
Then I saw the 2 items that really caught my eye: there were 2 17" iMac Core 2 Duo's in their boxes, that appeared to be identical with 1GB RAM/128MB Radeon Video/BT/AE/SuperDrive/160GB HDs, but one was a Demo, and the other was "Refreshed." Finally I grabbed some help named Jason, and he told me the difference (never knew before) between the two. The Demo was used there at the store, cleaned up, HD reformatted with a fresh install of OS X Tiger 10.4.6, and was marked down to $1029, $30 higher than the Apple Store Refurbs were priced. But the "Refreshed" iMac came from Apple, was sold new/ordered by somebody who returned it within a 72-hour window, and it was apparently never even opened from what Jason or I could tell. The sticker that sealed the box was intact, the original Apple UPC Seal was replaced with another one with some pink marking pen drawn through the equipment list, and the word "Refreshed" in big, bold type went across the bottom of the UPC Seal.
Rather than spend close to $800 (with tax) on the Mac Mini, I thought that my wife would really appreciate the iMac, if it all checked out fine. So I asked Jason if I bought it could we open it up over at the Genius bar area/tech areas, and make sure that everything worked fine. He said why not? So I bought it, AppleCare ($119), .Mac ($69), and the best part was I got a "free" HP PhotoSmart 3-in1 #3180 Printer/Scanner/Copier with the deal ($100 Apple Rebate that they filled out for me as part of ringing things up), so I wrote a check for $1413.44 and it was mine ($1313.44 A/Rebate). Then the fun began....
-D
Jason brought the iMac & printer over to the end of the tech bar area, and we started to unravel the mystery of this "Refreshed" Intel 17" 2.0GHz iMac Core 2 Duo. After cutting the factory seal on the box, I opened it and there was a brand new iMac, still sealed up in its factory paper coat, and Jason looked at me a little strange and said, "Looks factory fresh and new...doesn't look like they even opened it!" So I held the foam screen holders down while he extracted it from the box, and when it was on the counter it was obvious the people that returned it never got this far...it was brand spankin' new! We removed the special screen and body covering, and there wasn't a single fingerprint on the iMac!
Then Jason went over to the accessory box, and sure enough, there was a brand new Apple Bluetooth mouse and keyboard instead of the USB item! Zowie, Silent Upgrade No.1! He left the new power cord for me to unravel at home, and plugged it in with a shop power cord, an ethernet cable, and had me fire it up. Sure enought the Tiger Welcome Screen came up...we were the 1st to turn it on. I quickly gave it my wife's name and password, and we bypassed all the other setup stuff except registration, no email addy yet etc because I didn't know what she wanted for her .Mac account yet.
Then he brought out a special store Flash Drive, one that connected directly to an Apple Server and would do ALL the updates in like 4 minutes, so Jason keyed it up, and WHAMO! All the updates were done like right now. Finally, I did an Apple System Profiler Report on it to make sure all was kosher, and everything checked out perfect, all updates were done, but there was one more surprise: it had 2GB RAM! So I ended up with someone's brand new CTO 17" 2.0GHz Apple Intel iMac Core 2 Duo/128MB Radeon Graphics/160GB HD/BT/AE/2GB RAM/SuperDrive/Apple BT Keyboard & Mouse, AppleCare, .Mac, and a free HP 3180 Printer/Scanner/Copier for $1313.84!(
Thanks to the Apple Gods for this great little iMac, he said! We've had it at home for a week now, and it just works fantastic. I have never been so lucky with a new Mac purchase in my entire life, and can only imagine how all of this happened to lucky me. Moral of the story: don't EVER be afraid to go down to your local Apple Store at the end of the month and check out their "Fire Sale" items, because you just might be in for a big, wonderful surprise.B)
Hardware Overview:
Machine Name: iMac
Machine Model: iMac5,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: IM51.0090.B03
SMC Version: 1.8f2
Serial Number: W865XXXXXXXX
________________________________
I walked...out to my car, and drove across the street to the Oxnard Best Buy, and they had a shirtload of the Memorex DVD+R 2.4X DL Media 50-packs stacked from the ground up to the top shelves in their media section, with $69.99 pricing, so I stocked up on them because you never know when you're going to need a nice DL disc to backup a favorite DVD or two, and they were just as friendly and nice as the CompUSA folks were discouraging, so I walked around their store and found a couple other bargains of note, the best of which was a 46-inch Samsung Plasma 1080(i)(p) HD TV with twin HDMI inputs, and all the tricks and features I'd ever seen on such a unit, marked down to $1699 as an "open box" unit, with a free "3-year Performance Warranty" that seemed to cover everything...oh that was hard to pass up, but I did.
My final stop was at The Oaks Mall Apple Store, and gosh what a nice, friendly, cool place to visit it is! They have staff coming out of the woodwork, ready to help you out, or just leave you alone if that's what you want (and I did), so it being the 30th of the month, sure enough they had their "Fire Sale" going on up front by the cash registers, and there was a nice Demo Intel Core Duo Mac Mini 1.83GHz/SuperDrive/80GB/AE/BT with 1GB RAM marked down to $729, which was better than the Apple Store pricing for a similar model ($749) Refurb. Then there was a "Refreshed" 3.0GHz Mac Pro with 2 x 500GB HDs/2GB RAM/AE/BT/X1900 Video Card for $3299...not bad at all.
Then I saw the 2 items that really caught my eye: there were 2 17" iMac Core 2 Duo's in their boxes, that appeared to be identical with 1GB RAM/128MB Radeon Video/BT/AE/SuperDrive/160GB HDs, but one was a Demo, and the other was "Refreshed." Finally I grabbed some help named Jason, and he told me the difference (never knew before) between the two. The Demo was used there at the store, cleaned up, HD reformatted with a fresh install of OS X Tiger 10.4.6, and was marked down to $1029, $30 higher than the Apple Store Refurbs were priced. But the "Refreshed" iMac came from Apple, was sold new/ordered by somebody who returned it within a 72-hour window, and it was apparently never even opened from what Jason or I could tell. The sticker that sealed the box was intact, the original Apple UPC Seal was replaced with another one with some pink marking pen drawn through the equipment list, and the word "Refreshed" in big, bold type went across the bottom of the UPC Seal.
Rather than spend close to $800 (with tax) on the Mac Mini, I thought that my wife would really appreciate the iMac, if it all checked out fine. So I asked Jason if I bought it could we open it up over at the Genius bar area/tech areas, and make sure that everything worked fine. He said why not? So I bought it, AppleCare ($119), .Mac ($69), and the best part was I got a "free" HP PhotoSmart 3-in1 #3180 Printer/Scanner/Copier with the deal ($100 Apple Rebate that they filled out for me as part of ringing things up), so I wrote a check for $1413.44 and it was mine ($1313.44 A/Rebate). Then the fun began....
-DJason brought the iMac & printer over to the end of the tech bar area, and we started to unravel the mystery of this "Refreshed" Intel 17" 2.0GHz iMac Core 2 Duo. After cutting the factory seal on the box, I opened it and there was a brand new iMac, still sealed up in its factory paper coat, and Jason looked at me a little strange and said, "Looks factory fresh and new...doesn't look like they even opened it!" So I held the foam screen holders down while he extracted it from the box, and when it was on the counter it was obvious the people that returned it never got this far...it was brand spankin' new! We removed the special screen and body covering, and there wasn't a single fingerprint on the iMac!
Then Jason went over to the accessory box, and sure enough, there was a brand new Apple Bluetooth mouse and keyboard instead of the USB item! Zowie, Silent Upgrade No.1! He left the new power cord for me to unravel at home, and plugged it in with a shop power cord, an ethernet cable, and had me fire it up. Sure enought the Tiger Welcome Screen came up...we were the 1st to turn it on. I quickly gave it my wife's name and password, and we bypassed all the other setup stuff except registration, no email addy yet etc because I didn't know what she wanted for her .Mac account yet.
Then he brought out a special store Flash Drive, one that connected directly to an Apple Server and would do ALL the updates in like 4 minutes, so Jason keyed it up, and WHAMO! All the updates were done like right now. Finally, I did an Apple System Profiler Report on it to make sure all was kosher, and everything checked out perfect, all updates were done, but there was one more surprise: it had 2GB RAM! So I ended up with someone's brand new CTO 17" 2.0GHz Apple Intel iMac Core 2 Duo/128MB Radeon Graphics/160GB HD/BT/AE/2GB RAM/SuperDrive/Apple BT Keyboard & Mouse, AppleCare, .Mac, and a free HP 3180 Printer/Scanner/Copier for $1313.84!(
Thanks to the Apple Gods for this great little iMac, he said! We've had it at home for a week now, and it just works fantastic. I have never been so lucky with a new Mac purchase in my entire life, and can only imagine how all of this happened to lucky me. Moral of the story: don't EVER be afraid to go down to your local Apple Store at the end of the month and check out their "Fire Sale" items, because you just might be in for a big, wonderful surprise.B)
Hardware Overview:
Machine Name: iMac
Machine Model: iMac5,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: IM51.0090.B03
SMC Version: 1.8f2
Serial Number: W865XXXXXXXX
________________________________
