UPDATE: PC Deals

In this post I told you about my coolio computer deal/mistake from OfficeMAX:
Wednesday, November 09, 2005 - PC Deals

Well, it gets better.

Being three weeks after my order date, I get curious and call to see why my computer isn't at my door step. (actually Danielle called for me, wonderful wife that she is. So I'm lazy. So what, so are you.)

They say that they don't show the system in their 'pending orders' so they aren't sure. But they got a PC delivered to them a week or so ago that no one ever picked up. The woman on the phone surmises this must be my computer, since they haven’t been able to reach anyone to pick it up. I hear this story, and begin to wonder. Will this PC actually be the one I ordered? Or will it be someone else's who came in because of the sale price but ordered the base computer, and now I’ll have lost my upgrade to 512 of RAM? Worth a visit to the store to see. I pack up both the white AND the yellow receipts and head off to the store.

When I get there, I recognize no one form my previous 3 visits to this store, all under a month ago. The manager I'm speaking with is apparently the woman Danielle spoke with on the phone, cause she seems to know what I'm asking about. She takes my receipt bundle, and goes behind the counter. She looks around, goes into a back room, comes out, looks under the counter, goes back in to the room, then finally drags out a cardboard box about the size you'd have to use to bury an old microwave oven.

"Do you know a Kevin... Kevin..." her eyes scan the box. I strongly resist the urge to say Federline, but I'm gay just for knowing that name in the first place, I don't need to say it out loud. “Broksille?”

I’m thinking that’s not even a real name, and she’s just butchered some poor guy’s barely ethnic name. None of this is pertinent to my answering the question, though. “Nope. Don’t know him.”

“OK, well this is the name on the box. Don’t know why it got shipped here, but we’ve called this Kevin several times, and none of the numbers seem to be any good. I think this computer must be yours.”

I fail to see why the fact that Kevin’s ex-wife took him to the cleaners and gets more than half of his take home pay for the kids in the divorce so he had to pay his phone bill late so they had turned it off makes his computer mine, but I’m not one to argue. “OK, if you say so.”

“Yeah, this UPC and this one match from your receipt, so this has got to be your computer.” She drags the box around the counter towards me. I see now that it is not only the knee-high box, but also one on top of it about the size of, ohhh.. I don’t know.. a flat screen monitor?

“Are these both mine?”

“Yep, both boxes are yours.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to be taking someone else’s stuff.”

“Nope, that’s all yours.” I ask her if I need to sign anything, or if I need a pick up receipt and she assures me that I am done. She thanks me for coming in and waves her hand. For some reason. She is standing three feet away from me. I suppose this means, “now, get the fuck out of my store.” I have no idea. Nor do I care. I hike up the two boxes, and walk them out to my car.

Once home, I tear into them and find that, yes, I have been given the 15” HP flat panel monitor that was originally sold as part of this package. I was refunded, resold, upgraded and given a 19” ViewSonic, but here lies another monitor. Easy decision – the 19” goes upstairs to my machine, and this little gem, that matches in its silver tones so perfectly will find its homestead on the kitchen desk.

I open the CPU box, take out the keyboard box, mouse, documentation box, (why doesn’t anything come with the software anymore? This drives me crazy. How am I supposed to reload my sister’s laptop if my new desktop doesn’t come with any software? Oh, wait. I see. I believe I just answered my own question.) and all other boxes and packing material and pull out the silvery HP PC. Looks nice. I put it up on my coffee table and open the side to check out the innards like a ravenous vulture.

Whoa. This hard drive is an 80 gig. That’s not one SIM of memory, its two. How many megs are they? 512 each. Wait, this CD drive isn’t just a reader… the door says it is a DVD writer. What a cool little block this is in the accessory slot- a memory card reader for all type of digital camera cards. How fancy.

I prepare to install my wireless card in it to get it on the network, and I notice it also has a built-in network card, in case I need to run a wire network connector to it. Sweet.

I get it set up, plugged and ready to rock. Damn this set is fast. Its not theoretically as fast as mine upstairs, but boy, a brand new computer sure is blazing. No spare DLLs, no HP printer drivers running all the time, no memory hogs in start up. Very nice.

So, the end of my computer story is this:

For $279 I received:

HP Pavilion a1110y Desktop with Intel Pentium 4 516 (2.93GHz, 533MHz FSB)
1GB DDR2-400MHz SDRAM (2x512)
80GB 7200 rpm SATA Hard Drive
16x max. DVD-R, CD-R Drive
Memory Card input
15” HP flat panel monitor
19” ViewSonic flat panel monitor

I think I just might have gotten my money’s worth here.