I finally broke down and purchased my powerbook!

Powerbook May 31st 2005
I must say that for my first day out of the gate with my new PowerBook, its been quite an enlightening one. I woke up this morning and saw an advertisement from CompUSA in my email. Normally I don’t even bother, but it’s the holiday weekend and I’ve been thinking long and hard about getting a laptop. When I saw that they were running 18 months same as cash on Apple laptops I took it as a sign that now was the moment.

I decided on the 12” Powerbook 1.5 ghz / 512 mb RAM and the combo drive. (I’ve already got 2 DVD burners in my house)

While waiting for my credit application to clear I actually had second thoughts at the store. Do I REALLY want to make such a huge ass commitment to a piece of hardware? We’re talking about paying this thing down for 18 months, and all I have to do is miss 1 lousy payment and they’re going to retroactively slap me with interest rates all the way back to the day I purchased the unit. Then I saw that for 1 day only this offer was actually 24 months!

That sold me.

I know, I’m running on borrowed time, but I couldn’t help it. I’ve wanted one of these things for years, and its going to break down to around $70 / month. That’s including the 3 year Applecare warranty I flipped for. (laptops are one of the few things that I could actually justify purchasing the extended warranty)

I haven’t even thought of a name for him yet. Still working on that one.

At the store they told me that Tiger would be included free of charge, and that the CD was added to the box by their Apple certified tech (as if that fact made me any more comfortable about the teenager who threw my copy of Tiger into the box) I should’ve known that something suspicious was up when they came out with an open box item. They told me it was the only unit they had left, and that it had everything. Looking back I wish I had tried to talk them down on the price, but I wound up paying retail. (I was still giddy to be getting 24 months with 0% interest.) But I broke one of my cardinal rules, I didn’t look inside the box. I wasn’t even all the way through starting up for the first time, when I realized that my copy of Tiger was not present.

I immediately went back to CompUSA with box in hand, and although they apologized profusely about not having the CD, they did little other than to get my contact info, and say that an Apple rep would be in touch…

The next day I got a call from Apple, they advised that the best they could do was send me out a CD (and charge me $9.95 for the privilege) Sigh, honestly I expected much more from Apple.

I also picked up a wireless router that runs at 54 mbps, hooking it up was a breeze. Almost too easy if you ask me. I think they dumbed down the installation too much, and I can see how many people wind up leaving their wi-fi networks open to leeches / thieves. You literally have to go out or your way to secure your network. They didn’t even give me the option to add any encryption security on the install.

But typing my blog from the comfort of my leather recliner makes it all worth it. ^^