How to spend a $140 coupon.

Long story short, this has been resolved. Because I could only use it on a full laptop directly from Sager, and because we are both in California, I would have to pay $170.41 in taxes and fees to use a $140 coupon. So rather than lose $30.41, I had it changed to the $70 Steam credit.

Resolved.
------------------------ Original posting is below.


I have such problems. I had everything planned out. Now I get this $140 discount coupon, it really messes up things. Just terrible.

OK, kidding aside, I am still very happy I won this discount.

I could use some advice. I has planned to get the Sager NP8255-S, Notebooks :: Sager NP8255 / Clevo P157SM

The only upgrades would have been the 1TB 7200rpm drive, and Windows 8.

One issue with the coupon, it is for Sager only, not a reseller. I had planned to buy from a reseller as others in this forum have advised.

Should I just buy the laptop from Sager direct, or buy from a reseller and use the coupon to buy an accessory?

I was thinking a SSD would be nice, but as is I am over budget, (Wife thinks it will be about $1700 total). So I could do a 120GB drive, but that seems to tight for the OS and some games.

BTW, the other issue is making sure I get a board with Haswell C2 USB 3.0 fix. That is the only thing I am waiting for.

Thanks for the ideas.

 

I would get the laptop from MYTHLOGIC. IMO, they're better than a reseller because they do all the building, upgrades, and tech support in-house, rather than act as an intermediary between you and Sager. They seem expensive but you get a lot of extras, plus their support is top-notch.

However, can you even buy accessories from Sager? I'm not seeing any such section on their website.

 

So he wins a Sager coupon and you want him to forgo it and shop at another site that marks everything up +20%? We don't all poop money.

 

maybe he's not entirely aware that Myth is a system builder/"clevo reseller." and even though i unfortunately don't poop money either, the ~30% markup (by i don't know whose calculation) is fairly well justified.

 

That's subjective. I'm not bashing them, but people talk about it like they're located in the North Pole and Santa's elves put their laptops together. Maybe I went overboard with the 20% markup estimate, but I just thought it wasn't only annoying but rudely off-topic. The poster JUST won the Sager contest for $140 credit. He's not looking for another Clevo builder.

 

And to answer OP's post. I would just buy from Sager with the coupon. Buy the bare minimum of the laptop you want and buy the extras after that (SSDs, etc.) and put it in yourself. That's the most cost-effective route IMO.

To be specific, this is what I would do personally: Buy the NP8255 and only upgrade to the 780M. That'll come out to $1729, then subtract the coupon and it's $1589. Buy the SSD afterwards and it'll put you below your $1700 threshold. If you want to go slightly over, you could splurge for a 256/240GB SSD and still be near $1700.

 

If you gotta add something a mSATA drive is the way to go. You wont fill up 120GB very fast as long as you dont install games on it and keep your media on the HDD.

 

Yes, I am aware of Mythlogic. They do some nice things. I think they are higher end, and I am more budget...

I liked the 95% screen in the special edition, as well as the 780M. And the 16GB of memory would be nice if I do VMware. I think I can justify being over budget to her, but who knows.

But you did give me an idea. I will try various non-special builds and see how the price is. Keeping in mind the 140 can be a Sager accessory or simply a discount. Maybe that will give me some ideas.

Thanks for the comment on the 120 drive not filling to quickly. Too bad it seems to tight for games though. Hmm.

Oh, and here is a link to the accessory page for Sager.

custom gaming laptops - Welcome to Sager Notebooks

In the keyword field you can put "drive" or something else to narrow it down.

 

Gaming performance doesnt benefit from a SSD much. SSD's help with read/write times so it will make the game start faster and map loads faster but when you're in the game your performance is the same and based on the video card you.

 

I bought my rig directly from Sager. From my own personal research (read: your mileage may vary), the main reasons to purchase from a reseller instead of direct from Sager are the following:

Resellers may have custom options (paintjobs, selection of hardware, etc) that Sager doesn't.
The Reseller acts as a middleman between you and Sager for any warranty issues.

I'd put mythologic in a separate category; they actually build and assemble the system and offer things the other resellers don't, such as a custom bios.

Hutsady helped a coworker of mine order a sager and he was pleased. I had no problems ordering direct from Sager (although I called to place my order instead of doing it online)

 

Thanks for the information. I know SSDs only help loading. But loading a game almost instantly sounds cool.

Ajfountains, thanks. I had decided before I would use a dealer for those reasons. Now I am trying to justify if that is worth the extra hassle.

Last night I looked at the NP9380, since I thought 3D would be nice. The price still seems to high though, and I prefer the more compact 15.6".

I am leaning on ordering from a dealer, use the $140 from Sager to get the 120GB SSD, then reinstall windows to the SSD.

 

Unless you are a PS3 or xbox360 lol.

SSDs are great for general speeding up even if its not games.

 

So, I was thinking about the NP9380, as it would be interesting to play with 3D. Also later, a few years down the road, I could add another 780M. The size and weight was not too much to handle. If the $140 discount, I might make it work...

So I priced it all up and bam, Sager charges me tax. Tax in California is a big chunk. So that is another reason to use dealers.

So it appears I will stick with the NP8255-S, and just use the $140 for a SSD, maybe another HDD.

 

Sorry to burst your bubble but you won't be able to use the $140 for a SSD purchase through sagernotebook.com. Even though it was previously stated you can use it for anything for sale on their site, you can only use it towards purchases of new Sager systems. Believe me, I had a few emails exchanged back and forth between Sager today about this, being I was one of the winners on facebook. I guess the fact I was one of the only winners who even owns a Sager and also that my girlfriend just purchased hers last month through xoticpc, isn't good enough to just honor was was previously said and allow me to use it to purchase a SSD for her SAGER. Unfortunately, this means my P170SM I was planning on buying, for my birthday, will be done through mythlogic instead.

 

if that is true then the $140 is worthless to me. Why? Because it would cost me more in tax than I would save using the $140.

 

The funniest part about the whole thing is they actually prefer you to buy from a reseller than they do direct from sager. Even they're intern on here suggested the same. They'd rather have more staff focused on building systems than handling customer/tech support. I went looking everywhere for the rules for the giveaway. Here, facebook, and twitter. Some posts say $140 or $300 towards a website purchase, others say $140 or $300 towards a laptop. Obviously we both saw the one on here for the forum giveaway which says website purchase. I can't complain too much about the steam credit, but for a company that has been happy to take my money on two purchases in the past two years, they're really uptight about honoring the poorly communicated contest rules. As stated before, mythlogic will now be receiving my money for future systems.

 

If I didn't have to pay for tax, it might be OK for me. I was also planning on using it for a SSD. I will send an email to try to confirm.

 

PuNkMaN and Ajnindlo (and any others that are involved for that matter),

I would like to go on record as saying, " Sorry, we screwed up." I should have checked the option out with Sager beforehand, but same as you and probably the rest of the winners/potential winners, I had assumed it was for sagernotebook.com, not just for the purchase of a new laptop. That was my mistake, and I misled you unknowingly under the premise of assumption. As most people in the business (and myself especially as an underling) should always be aware of, assumption is the worst form of communication and I forgot my place as an underling. We, as the marketing team, weren't even aware of the rule until we brought it up today and management told us we could not honor that request after discussion. Again, we wouldn't have had to ask that question if we had asked the question in the first place or had made it clear what the credit applied toward. We even assumed that most winners who wanted Sager credit would want to use it towards their own purchase of a new laptop, so that was another assumption on our part for which we are very sorry for not clearing up. I echo the team at Sager and say that I'm extremely sorry we can't honor the request for a hard drive through our spare parts section.

I also want to say, I make mistakes the same as the rest, but I'm extremely sorry I let you both (and possibly others) down in particular this time with poor communication. At least, for us, we now know what we will need to clarify for our giveaways in the future and what questions to ask when we present the ideas to our superiors, but obviously not without the cost of losing some or all of your approval. Again, we are sorry. If you have any more clarifications or tips for how we can improve our giveaways in the future, I (and Sager) want to know! That goes for the rest of you! Any tips and feedback is appreciated. It's how we were able to change our giveaway in its early stages of planning/announcement right here on these forums. You guys have some awesome ideas and maybe a few of you have even more experience than we do with running contests of your own (this is our... 3rd big giveaway besides the very small ones that we have done on twitter/facebook, starting only 2 years ago?). What I'm saying is that we're still learning. We want to give back to the fans that have helped us grow without the need for the marketing up to this point. We're also trying to open up to you as fans and become more involved. Even as we gain more fans, we will continue to try to give back to you guys in particular, because you helped us grow. You made us who we are today and without that, without you, we wouldn't be in business. I want to thank you all, again, just as on Twitter and on Facebook, for being the coolest fans to work with. We really honestly can't thank you enough.

 

I'm not as upset with the mistake as I am with the company itself not willing to honor it. I really hope saving some money on SSDs is worth losing my business over, not speaking for others. I appreciate your apology and agree that everyone makes mistakes. Also, the hours you put into this giveaway, yourself, should be commended. Thanks for your time. Just know, you didn't cost your company my business, your company did.

 

Even then, most of the time loading into a map is not dependent on SSD or HDD. Map itself will load plenty fast off HDD, getting into the game IMO seems more dependent on your connection to the server. Can see plenty of times that someone with HDD will load into a map before someone who has SSD and for whatever reason has higher latency to server/connection.

@SagerNotebook, what a terrible decision. $140 credit only towards a new system rather allowing CURRENT and LOYAL customers to use it towards upgrading their system? I just bought two heatsinks that CLEVO SHOULD HAVE given me from the beginning. I am not a winner, but just saying there are plenty of upgrades that CLEVO cheaped out on that should have been given to current owners that could use the $140 to good use. Aluminum heatsink on P150EM that use the SAME CPUs as P170EM? Seriously, what bs is that? And of course, someone in QA took two years to figure out their new GPU heatsink design sucks and rectified it on P150SM... That $140 credit could be used by any P1X0EM owner to upgrade to a someone slightly better but still sucks compared to MSI/Asus/Alienware GPU heatsink.
- Thank you Clevo/Sager for charging me $100 for something that should be default on my P150EM, scums.

Whatever, my disappointment with Clevo doesn't seem to end. Still can't believe Clevo locked 700M series from P1X0EM notebooks... that have to go with a MOD from a friendly forum member, that even Sager couldn't do... Unbelievable when you see MSI and Alienware allowing and supporting such upgrades.

Every time I come to Clevo/Sager forum on NBR, I see more reasons why I should buy Alienware next notebook. Clevo/Sager USED to, that seems to be the phrase... In the past were a good company. Now seem to be nearly as scummy as Asus. Too bad MSI notebooks still look like shiny, red bricks.

 

Wait... you complain about free things? Since when does complain about free things be acceptable? Its free! Be thankful you have it and go away... I wanted this. If you dont want it, I can take it and be very happy.

 

No need to be rude. If you do not see why either of us have an issue with this, not about something being free or not, then please keep your thoughts out of this thread.

 

Um, to use this for the NP8255-S that I want will cost me an extra $30.41. Or in other words I save money by not using it. Hopefully my email will be answered tomorrow and this can be cleared up.

 

Let us know what response you get please.

 

Ok, as I mentioned, I live in California, and so does Sager. So I would have to pay state sales tax and fees which add up to $170.41. Subtract the $140, and that is $30.41 in taxes and fees. Now if I choose a reseller, then same price but no taxes or fees. So I save $30.41 by not using the "free" gift. Not Sagers fault, it is a state sales tax. Just what I get for living in California, which is a terrible state. Serriously, don't come here, we are full.

I did confirm it has to go towards a new notebook computer, and not "parts". So I guess my new Sager notebook won't have a SSD after all. Eh, it's not like those are that fast anyway.

In the gift email you needed to tell them right away if you wanted the Sager credit or the Steam credit. Which I had already told them I wanted the Sager credit. So, I figured it was too late, I was stuck.

So after I confirmed the parts only, and no way around sales tax, I thought it was worth a shot to ask for the Steam credit. I don't even have a computer to play games on, but I hope I soon will. A few minutes later I got an email with a Steam credit code for $70. Yea!

So when is that Steam winter sale? Winter is coming, right?

So happy ending, the Steam credit of $70. And I can't blame Sager for sales tax. I hear Alaska has no state sales tax...

 

Yeah it's a shame you couldn't get yourself a SSD as previously promised. For what it's worth, I hope you enjoy the steam credit when you get your new system.

 

Well, they didn't promiss a SSD. And if I lived in a different state I could/would have used the $140 credit towards a laptop. Not under thier control at all. As for using it for parts, yes they could have been clearer. But since they added it at the last minute, I can understand omitting that part.

As for you, if you don't want the $140 Sager credit, nor the $70 Steam credit, then you might be able to trade or sell it. Not sure if it transferable, but then how would they know. The Steam credit is a code anyone can use. And Steam money can be used to buy games as gifts. So could cover the gamers on your Christmas list.

Bottom line I am still happy I won. It is a neat feeling to know that I have future games to play. And with those sales, $70 can buy several good games. I wonder how cheap Battlefield 3 is right now.

 

Battlefield 3 on kinguin.net is quite cheap (around 10 bucks) . Then again, you can probably find it even cheaper elsewhere! It was recently included in the humblebundle...

 

And with BF4 around the corner, you'll be screwed trying to find a server to play on.

 

I wouldn't expect demand to drop so quickly. I can't be the only cheap gamer.

 

Just played the open-beta of BF4. Let's just say that if they don't improve a couple of things in a month (when BF4 is supposed to go live), I wouldn't count on BF3 having a quick death

Anywho, even for the basic BF3 with no DLC, it is a very good price, IMO. Still worth a few dozen hours of fun. And certainly a better dollar-to-hour entertainment ratio than say, a trip to the movies, right ?

 

It's funny that the very thing that they do to keep you invested (level up system) it hurts the new title.