Gone Shopping

Hey, I just bought a new computer. Yay for me.

It’s an Acer laptop. Dual core intel (running around 1.87 ghz), 3 gigs RAM, 250 meg hard drive. Price after mail-in rebate, $499.  That’s a good $30 bucks lower than what I saw at the other big stores for an equivalant deal.

They had a $399 one listed that had the AMD version of the equivilent processor. That’s what I was going to get originally, but I knew I’d want to immediately upgrade the memory. And it came with a 120 gig hard drive. So doubling my HD space and memory for $100 seemed like a good deal.

I had gone the day before, and the guy helping me was no-pressure. Then when I went back on Sunday (when the sale started), the gal was also low-pressure. She said “this has trial versions of Office, so if you want the real thing, you’ll need to buy it” or something to that affect. I’m fine with that, so at least I wasn’t surprised with what was on it.

She did mention needing the additional memory to make it run decently. My comment back, for anyone interested, is:

No. Vista should run on 1 gig. Sure, the extra will make it run better, but it’s not necessary. My wifes computer runs fine on 1 gig. Now, if you’re having trouble, start uninstalling all the junk that gets put on at the factory. there are at least a dozen things running that on’t need to be, and once you get rid of it, you’ll notice a big difference.

The other thing they offered is to have their technician clean the system up. (Removing the extra stuff programs and other stuff, I really don’t know what.) I don’t see the need to pay someone to do this, since I can uninstall things just as well as the next guy. But I imagine that some people might be intimidated doing it, so go for it. (I wouldn’t spend more than $25-$50 for the service though.)

they offered their extended service plan/warranty, but I thought it was a little too expensive. ($129 or more, as I recall).  Since this is a cheap computer, our plan is to replace it in a couple years, so the warranty doesn’t make sense.

I’ll go into more details on what I do with the computer over on my technical blog, since, well, it’s technical stuff.

This weekend is the tax-holiday. We could have saved $30 if we were willing to brave the crowds, but timing wise, we decided it wasn’t worth it.

Circuit City offers a 30 day price protection. If you see the same computer advertised for less within 30 days, bring in your receipt and they’ll exchange you for the difference. We did this last year at Office Depot, and saved $75, so it’s worth keeping an eye open.

Overall, it was a good buying experience. I’ll shop there again.

(Note: this was the Circuit City at The Mall of Georgia, for anyone local.)