wow, I messed up with the waiting...no more free upgrade stuff

I kept waiting, now theres no 2gb upgrade and it costs me almost 100 bucks more for the laptop I wanted a week ago. I'm guessing nothing goods coming up from now on.

 

There's always gonna be another sale- keep your eyes peeled for a good coupon or discount. If you've waited this long you can wait a little longer.

 

Yep, now you just gotta suck up the loss or wait it out Alternatively, you could just buy what you want, and if it comes up at a cheaper price before you get it, Dell is usually good at crediting you the price difference.

 

thats true, I just don't want to wait too long; I have up until the 15th to see if something turns up [the coupon ends, maybe new deals come up]

do you guys think I can call dell and say I was planning to buy today after looking at the upgrade yesterday, cuz It was there before

 

The sales people want nothing more than to sell you a PC, give it a try and see what they can do for you.

 

MAYBE next week will have another sale...I hope..

 

You guys (and girls) are really going about this wrong. You can be waiting on more sales forever since something else is always happening "next week". If I waited on my Vostro order, I would STILL be waiting to place that order since the deals have actually gotten worse since I first bought it. Seriously just order what you want at a reasonable price, and if something better comes along for pricing, Dell will credit you the difference. Or place an order online for the spec you want, then call sales right away and say "How can we make this deal better for me" or something like that. You will be much happier than playing the waiting game, and it could take weeks to get the PC built and delivered anyway.

 

thats what I thought.



I'm tired of waiting to pounce on the best deal...it makes me very weary; to top it off, I don't even know if I'll need a laptop for college................
People have said you don't use it in class and all this stuff, so why don't I just bring my desktop

 

Having a laptop in college is very nice. If you have a roommate, a lot of times it will be MUCH easier to get work done when you are not in your dorm room/apartment. With wifi pretty much everywhere now, being able to work anywhere you want to be gets you a lot of freedom. Also for any type of group study session, being able to bring along the laptop is awesome.

 

That makes a bunch of sense lol...

I think if I do call dell, how do you think I would even config it w/o them ripping me off? I like 'clicking' through all that stuff online

 

Why would you buy your ram from Dell when you should be maxing it out with 4 gigs for around $180

 

Just be an intelligent consumer. Know what you want and know what it costs on the website. Configure an order first so you get a quote in the system (and so the sales people do not have to type in all of your information) and then call in. The sales people can send you a quote in minutes, usually while talking to you on the phone. If the price or offers given to you by the phone rep are not better than the website, just stall a bit. Even if you do have a problem, you can just do online chat to cancel it.

Just avoid asking for the sales rep opinion on anything, or asking any technical questions when you have them on the phone.

 

What we did is just went through step by step online while talking to the guy on the phone. We already knew what we wanted and how much it cost but this way we didn't forget anything. He was real cool about it and I was even able to get vista premium without any trouble on my vostro.

You could try checking out the dell outlet place on their site. While I was deciding what to buy I figured it was between two things the cheapest thing I could get that would work for me in college or a really nice computer with a great graphics card that I could game on if I wanted. Fortunatly I came upon the vostro 1500 and landed a really great system for (IMO) a great price. Can't wait for it to arrive!

 

Thanks guys for your insight. my mom is sort of convincing me not to get a laptop now for college....I'll just continue the conversation since I can at least learn about the procedure if I eventually get a chance.

Thanks for the tips ocellaris and darkday; I'm going for the 1420 @ 2 ghz, 8400gs, 2gb of ram, bluetooth, webcam, 160gb: which used to be about 1grand yesterday and is now like 1100+....

 

Well, for what its worth, if you mom has not been around a college campus in a while, desktops are getting hard to find and mobile internet connected devices are everywhere. The desktop PC is slowing turning into a relic as everyone wants to go mobile. It used to be that people hard a "powerful" desktop because a laptop was either too damn expensive or just cheap crap

One more thing. You mom is always right. You will not understand this until you have your own kids though

 

I'm not trying to get you to go against your mom or anything but I think a laptop would be a lot nicer as others have mentioned there are many wireless hotspots on a normal campus. Go to your university website and do a search for a map on the wireless hotspots and if it's anything like mine you will find nearly the entire campus is covered. That is one of the reasons I bought a laptop. You could probably get away with a desktop just fine and be able to get a better system for the same ammount of money but with a laptop you can sit outside and surf the internet or if you need it for class you can always have it with you.

Oh one more thing I just priced a vostro 1400 with the specs you gave and it came out to ~1000. However IMO you could get it for 700 easy because 1) what are you needing that 180 dollar 2ghz processor for ? 2) what are you needing a 160 gb hard drive for (vs 120). Take a look at the smart value package for the 1400 I think it's something you should consider.

 

imo if it was strictly for college i would grab one of the base models or even the amd based ones they will do everything you need.. now if you are wanting to use it for games thats another story.

we just picked up 2 toshiba pentium dual core t2080's for 400 after rebates for the wife's business.. they will do everything she needs them to do and nothing more.. decide what the needs will be and buy accordingly.. chances are the deals will not get much better accoridng to csr's i spoke with today because the shcool rush is soon over

 

yea, it would be a lot better to have a laptop for class [yea the whole campus has wifi; I think lol] and it does seem convinient to have it anywhere but I guess I'm really not going to buy anytime soon, I don't think....

Thanks for all your support guys, its disappointing to have expected to get a laptop for over a month and then to get shot down

I can pay for it myself but my mom did bring up some good points lol

 

True some reps will work to accommodate your request but I don't think they'll honor an expired upgrade deal. However, I do agree with most everyone else. Order now and if something better comes along in that month long process, they will match it.

 

I got 2gb, from Dell, because A] Im not using Ultimate (64Bit) so 4Gb would have been a waste, B] 2Gb was the same price as 1Gb (Free upgrade) and C] My time is worth money too, and just having it all installed, and tested, and guaranteed to work with everything - it was a no brainer.

Now that you have to pay $125 more for 2Gb, I would probably go with the 1Gb option, and pay $90 for 2Gb online, and give the two 512K sticks away to someone else.

 

I just bought 2GB (2x1GB sticks) RAM kit today and it was a "Hot Deal" at $70+15 shipping. At the time I ordered my PC, I could have gotten 2GB for +$100, however I was thinking I could get 2GB of RAM myself for ~$55. Looking at it now, I wish I just spent the $100 when I ordered my PC. RAM is actually going up in price it seems, so keep that in mind when you look at what Dell charges.

One more thing, 2x512MB sticks of notebook RAM have very little value if you want to resell what comes in a 1GB system