discounts..

[bencampmovim]

I'm buying a T43.. i've currently applied an academic discount from Drexel University (i'm also Faculty at University of the Arts.. but they both have the same rate)

Does anyone know what organization has the HIGHEST discount with IBM? For T43 order..

Thanks,

-Ben

[James314]

(didnt mean to post here, ignore me!)

[JHEM]

It's often model/school/state specific. But check the UPENN and Rutgers Camden bookstores locally. Also the SUNY prices on the IBM.edu website.

I believe last time we went through this Harvey Mudd and CO School of Mines had the largest discounts, but they were heavily subsidized and not available to other faculty or students.

After that it was a matter of tier level of your school and what contract the state or school might have with IBM. SUNY, UCAL, MIT, UC, etc. had the next best pricing, followed by just about every other school.

Last time I checked PSU was in this lowest tier for pricing, must not be any Big10 football fans at IBM!

Regards,

James

[rssb]

I have to agree with james ( James314 & JhEM ), to a certain extent there are people trying to get keyboards, abusing warrenty etc.. ,

all said, i think we should look at the deeper picture,

1) why do some models cost more than others, even though they have everything inferior, lets say models with radeon 7500 are listed for more price than models with radeon 9600, sometimes even older processor , ram etc.. May be if they had set the price during intial release, when newer things come out, shouldn't they adjust the price accordingly.

( Between T40,T41,T42... from a manufacturing point of view the price should not be that different, the cpu, gpu use the same socket, voltages are same /smilar, design , spacing location everything is identical, except for a couple of new chips being added. Which i am sure was taken into account earlier itself. They all have the same bios, esp even if you dont have a finger print sensor, or hard disk protection sensor, the code is still active in your bios and scanning for these hardware each time you boot up ! )

2) if you look at all other companies, they have a uniform code for discounts, and depending on the hardware they are priced, here IBM may be because of its vast database, has evolved into such a complex pricing scheme, if you look at different places, you would end up with different prices for the same item or a better one.

3) if a particular channel gets more discount, when compared to others, does that mean people buying at the other place are not the same( i mean faculty,students,businesses -- this is discrimination ).They have some of the highest discounts to very very good schools, which are financially well to do ( havard for example) . I doubt if they are really bitting into profits and selling it them at loss, when they discount them . May be they reduce thier margin, but they can never go below manfacturing costs, or with all this sale to lenovo trying to be cut thoart etc... when $100 million thinkpad market was a reason to spin off the unit.


There was documentry which i saw sometime back, how shoe making companies, get thier products done in asia (sometimes using even children, through thier contractors if not directly employing them ) which employing cheap labour, pay them 40 cents an hour and the same shoes sell here for $40 per unit !. When sales are low they they suddenly put a sale tag and sell them for $15, do you think they are really running into losses by reducing it ?

I am not saying IBM does the same, i have no idea, may be IBM has more ethical standards than others, but these things are occuring atleast in other industries.

There are many loyal customers here, including me, who dont mind selling the extra buck for the quality, there is no doubt that IBM engineering is far superior than other companies. I wish there was a more logical pricing scheme, which makes these discounts more sensible.

[bencampmovim]

i think i wasn't clear enough.

i ordered my computer on the phone.

all i did was _SAY_ that i am a drexel student, and they applied a discount.

Now granted, i AM a drexel student, but they had no way of knowing it, so i wanted to know is there any other schools that i could just say "I AM an MIT student" or something that would get a bigger discount?

Thanks!!

-ben