My Mac Pro
I recently upgraded the venerable Mini. I wasn’t really planning on doing it, but the opportunity was too good to pass up. I mean, how can you pass up a free Mac Pro? That’s right. I said a Free. Mac. Pro. I’ll give you a minute to hate me…
All done now? Good, let me explain.
Like any tech junky, I have an extreme case of gadget lust. Any new shiny gizmo is likely to find its way onto my wish list. Anything Apple is almost an automatic addition to the list. The problem is that I am poor. Well, that’s not really true, I make a decent living. The problem is that I also have a Wife and three hungry Things to feed. That doesn’t leave a lot of extra money left for expensive gadgets. <sigh>
Anyway, when CompUSA announced they were going out of business I thought that I should check it out to see if there was anything good going for dirt. I checked a few times, but the sales didn’t really get good until the last few weeks before closing. And by then, all the Apple stuff was pretty much gone. Or so I thought…
I used to work at CompUSA and some of the guys I worked with were still there. On one visit I joked with my friend — now the Assistant Sales Manager — about selling me their last demo MacBook (the black variety) for $200. He laughed and then pulled me aside. It turns out they still had a cache of Quad Core Mac Pros. The original 2.66 GHz ones, not the new 2.8 GHz 8-core Towers of Power, but still. He told me that he didn’t think they were going to move before closing and that they would probably go really cheap. Like 60% off or maybe even 50%.
Tempted as I was, I didn’t have the $1200 that would be needed for the best case scenario. Then it hit me. If I can buy 4 for $1200 and sell 3 at $1600 I get to keep one for free. Now the wheels are churning. I start researching the going price on eBay. It’s even higher than the $1600 I was talking about. Okay, let’s work up a spreadsheet to play with the numbers. Factoring in eBay fees and PayPal fees, what is the most I can pay and still pull this off. I consulted my dad, and talked over the figures with him. He thought the risk was pretty low and so I decided to go for it.
The day before the store closed I walked in to see what I could do. I found out that they still had all 10 Mac Pros. Good, the more they had the more leeway I had in my negotiations. They were still asking too much to just buy them so I talked it over with my friend. He talked to the General Manager and a deal was made.
In the end I got them for $1400 each and I walked out with 9 never-opened Mac Pros and the demo which was in good condition. A few weeks later, I own the demo free and clear. I kept that one for myself becasue Apple said they will still give me the 1 year warranty and the new-in-box units are easier to sell on eBay. I not only got a new Tower of Power, but the Wife was able to go to New York on a little Girls’ Weekend Out thing that happened kind of out of the blue. And the Mini is now the Home Entertainment Center.
I’m insanely happy with this beast and look forward to adding more RAM and hard drives. Just as soon as I can scrape together a few bucks.