[Kelvin]

I went to Fry's in Plano, Tx today hoping to see the new iBook models. They didn't have any so I played around with the 12" 800. The trackpad was going crazy. The cursor was flying all over the place. After several minutes it simmered down. A few keys were missing also on a Mac Powerbook. The 14" iBook on display was in bad shape too; iMovie wouldn't even start up.

I then ended up in Frisco near the end of the day and decided to pop into Compusa. No new iBooks. Their iBook 12" 800 didn't have any missing keys but the trackpad button was broken.

In both these stores the Mac notebooks where in disrepair. Go over to the PC notebook area and there is no missing keys, all the track pads work and no goofy cursor jumping. Do people intentional break the Mac demo machines or can't they hold up to customers using them on a daily basis?

Why would anyone buy a Macs from these stores. I can just see potential switchers going in to check out the Mac laptops and then heading back over to the PCs wondering why the Macs are broken.

[kdixey]

Makes it easy to see why Apple opened stores of their own.

[heresiarh]

PC still has an 85% of the market.

[Ω]

A store near me has a 400Mhz(?) PB as their display model. Pre-Jag OS installed on it.

[ghporter]

My opinion here...

In the CompUSA near me there are usually 2-4 Mac laptops on display. Often, they only have two out, most of the time these are a 12" and a 14" PowerBook (with an iTunes demo cranked all the way up through those lovely clear speakers-beautiful sound, but loud enough to be painful!). At this same store there are at least 40 PC laptops on display, with most of them turned on. Look at the breakdown: people that play with demo machines only have two or three Macs to mess with, but dozens of PCs. Of course the Macs will show more wear and tear.

I don't believe that iBooks or PowerBooks are less rugged than PC laptops-particularly certain PC brands. But I KNOW that CompUSA's normal store staff is more interested in selling that enormous LCD display than keeping little Jimmy's mits off the demo machines.

Besides, I saved money by buying our iBook straight from Apple, rather than buying from CompUSA-no tax and free shipping!!! So to see what the latest model (of what they have on display) looks like overall, how much it really weighs, and so on, I go to CompUSA. Then, I go online and get it from Apple.

[kdixey]

How did you get it tax free from Apple?

[ghporter]

I think it was tax free...maybe not. Anyway, I didn't pay the local additional sales tax (which is pretty high, and pays for stuff I voted against). Plus, I didn't have to deal with CompUSA sales geeks.

[mrweirdo]

I wish i could get out of paying tax on the ibook I am going to be geting. Poor College student here in California and with an ibook costing 1088 after tax it comes to $1876.80

[iREZ]

Im hoping thats a typo mrwierdo, $800 bucks is alot of tax. If something cost 1088 in California, it should cost $1175 not $1800+.

[freakboy2]

every time i go to j&r here in nyc or compusa, i'm always amazed that the laptops have busted keys. you'd think that they'd want their displays to look unbroken.

just on that fact alone i decided not to buy my upcoming ibook/powerbook purchase from any of those stores.

same thing was true at the nyu comp store.

[mrweirdo]

whops lol yup i was wrong. It was an error i didnt catch doing four things at once while half asleep isnt a good idea

btw on a mac right now multitasking between three apps and burning a cd. that says something about the multitask capabilitys of the mac

[OldManMac]

Interesting comments about some of the bigger CompUSA stores, like San Francisco, and New York. These stores sell several million dollars worth of Macs annually, each, and they have full-time Apple Solutions Consultants in them, who are Apple employees.

[thetman]

i work at a second level Compusa and we have an apple consultant all of our machines are the latest. we have 2 ibooks out (12 and 14) and a 12,15,and 17 powerbook all of which are the latest. we have one of each of the imac sizes and an emac, the remaining g4 tower and 2 g5's. the main g5 has dual display (23 and 17) and the other has a 20", the g4 has another 17. The old models that havnt sold get priced down of course and the old demos are boxed up and reduced a little more. our apple guy leaves his work ibook out locked up with a sign on it and no one bothers it and all of the old demos look very nice. i sold one last week (15" w/combo) and the guy looked at before he bought it and said it looked pristine.