P-171SFX from Gateway or P-6831FX from Best Buy?

Hey guys,
So I talked to a lady at Gateway today. She said the P-171S FX was going on sale Thursday, and that if I called and talked to her on Saturday when she's working next, she may be able to flex some on the price (which is $1599). Best Buy has the P-6831FX on sale for $1249, plus a free $50 game. The ONLY difference between the two models is that the P-171S FX from Gateway has a T7250 in it, while Best Buy's has a T5450 in it. The differences in the processors is a 800MHz FSB in the T7250 vs 667MHz in the T5450, and about a 400MHz clock speed increase in the T7250. I'm so tempted to press order on BB's website right now -- it's SUCH a good deal, and I don't know if it'll last until Saturday! What do you guys think I should do? I have no idea how much they can really "flex" on the pricing at Gateway, what has your experience been? TELL ME WHAT TO DO I'M DYING HERE! Thanks,

Warner

 

IMO, T5450 and T7250, both have 2MB L2 cache so, you won't be happy with either processors. Best I bet gateway lady can do is give you $100 off, so bill comes out to $1500. Why don't you put $250 towards a new processor?

Btw, $1250 at Bestbuy is just for the laptop. For extra game and geek squad optimazation, the price is $1299. Some people got lucky when cashier misread the AD and gave $1250 with free game.

Another note, Gateway comes with fingerprint reader and "slot" loading DVD.

 

Thanks for the reply. That's sort of what I was thinking -- upgrade the processor later on down the road. As far as the free game, I'm doing it on the Best Buy website since there are no stores in my area that carry it... It just told me to pick a game and put it in my cart -- I did, and it's sitting there at a $0.00 price.. And now my curser is hovering over the purchase button. So tempting! Would be a pretty sweet upgrade over the X2400HD I'm using right now...

 

I think it should be 1250$ with game It says on the site that just add a game under 49.99$ to the cart and get it for free

 

Alright, I did it... I kind of feel bad, because the girl I talked to at Gateway was very helpful and patient earlier today -- but this was too good of a deal to pass up! $1249, and Unreal Tournament 3 (which should run BEAUTIFULLY on it) for FREE! I'm normally much more reserved when posting, but man, I'm excited.

Warner

 

I'm still on the fence, although it's for the P-171X FX Edition, I'm still trying to debate that the better screen and faster processor is worth it...

Assuming that I don't get a discount (I work in education so I'm assuming or hoping that there will be a marginal discount), 749.99 difference is a lot!

Assuming that a comparable processor (T7700) - 327.99 at newegg, that screen would cost an extra 422 dollars! Maybe it's just worth it to just get the P-6831FX and upgrade the processor later on and ignore the better screen?

 

My thoughts exactly. I can live without the high-resolution screen. Almost seems like Gateway shot themselves in the foot a little by letting BB sell it for so cheap!

 

Just remember, higher the res, lower the fps. If this is a primary a gaming machine for you, 1440x900 is perfect. If its multimedia machine and light gaming, high res should suit you better.

 

Thank you, I'm leaning more towards getting the Best Buy laptop as I do play games on it, but I mostly use it for work and school. (Almost all adobe products, Bioshock, etc).

I'll probably call up a rep tomorrow and find out if they give out any discounts, price flexing, member discounts, or educator discounts. It's really hard to beat that price, but if a gateway rep could offer a good discount on any of these laptops, I'm sure that they'll make it up in sales!

 

There were two ads/deals. One was for the laptop and game for $1249. This was on their website. The second was for the laptop, game and optimization for $1299. This was printed. I ordered mine with Gears of War online for $1249 and picked it up in store.

 

If you are looking for a better processor (T8300) or higher res screen (WUXGA - 1920x1200),
the gateway P-171X FX Edition is priced at $1999 but Gateway will negotiated up to 20% lower (e.g., $1599 - that's $400 lower than list price).

 

Dang, the person that I talked to only gave me 15% off the Gateway® P-171X... did you get any other perks on top? I might have to do some renegotiation to my representative then.

 

Yea, if you are planning to keep it for a while and don't want to muck around with upgrading CPUs later (not hard, just a bit of a hassle), get it the way you want it now.

Use Mind Persuasion! Get it the P-171X FX at the Bestbuy price!

 

Guys is this true? I had not realized you could get 15 - 20% discount by calling? If it is true I would much rather get the $1999 model.

Have you guys done this on this model in the recent past?

 

It basically depends on the rep that you talk to. 15% is the best that I had got, although I asked a different rep and they only gave me 7%. You could possibly keep calling and getting different reps that give you a different percentage.

The best discount that I've gotten was 15% (for the P171X). I think the person that got the 20% was the one that was looking at the P171XL.

So for the cost of the laptop is 1699 for me.


Best Buy is $1250 right now, so if I put in a T8300 in the price range of $250-$350 depending who you buy it from. The cost would be $1500.

This would mean you paid an extra $199 for the features that were not included on the best buy laptop such as the higher resolution screen, fingerprint reader... and I don't know if there's any other differences other than those two...

 

The P6831 is a good deal, I bought it when it came out for $1349. To bad there price match is only 14 days
Anyway, the performance is pretty good even with the small processor. Mine scored 7023 points in 3dmark. I have upgraded to T7700 processor now and score is 8316.
Memory speed was a concern at first, but after the processor upgrade, the memory speed doubled.

 

Hey guys - fyi i got the P-171X for $1,699.99 yesterday. My rep was awesome - they WILL dicker. He asked for referrals and said he would def. hook others up too. PM me if you want all is contact info! Good luck...

 

The $400 off - $1599 was for the P181X FX Edition. The rep I spoke with offer up to $500 off for the P181XL FX Edition, but wasn't interested at that cost.

One bummer is that the rep mention my P181X won't ship under 2/22/08 from China...

 

Has any one bought the P-171S FX from gateway yet? If so what kind of discount did they give you? I'm hoping I can get it for the same price that the P-6831fx retails for.

 

you can get it cheaper now. Best buy raised their price up to 1699.00 today, against suggest retail price.

 

I talked one of the reps down to 1629 with taxes, shipping and a three year warranty for the p-171sfx today. you can get them to go about 20% cheaper and I made it to 22% cheaper today.

it doesn't ship until March 7th or so, so thats something to think about.

 

Ill have to see if bestbuy lowers the price otherwise i might see if i could get them to go 20% off on the Lowest FX (S) which would hit around the 1279 pricepoint

 

Thats pretty good imo for upgraded slotted DVD, finger print reader and tad better CPU.

However, lot of things could happen now til March/2008 delivery. There are many unknown factors for P-171 FX series because no one has them.

I am sure since there are only 3 configs, they are coming in crates and large containers from China. Perhaps better to order closer to due date?

 

i know im going to wait until the first ones ship. it could end up bitimg me in the ass for price point though. i'm willing to chance it.

 

I keep forgetting to ask the reps about if they have a promotion between now and before it ships, since it's a preorder, if we could also get that promotion as well? Since it doesn't come with a promotion right now, I like to try to get the best bang for the buck!

 

I agree the fingerprint reader is attractive to use for logging into my many sites rather than typing in all my usernames and passwords and I like slotloads a lot over trays because notebook trays always feel flimsy, better proc without killing warrenty is a plus too... If it goes on sale before shipment I will probably try to get it to the 1250-1350 pricepoint and bite on it otherwise I am probably gonna wait.