Another computer bought

No not for me I just bought a telephone jack splitter and some more telephone wire cable so that we can plug in our fax machine.

No my nephew who is starting college this year needs a laptop so my mother asked me to start looking at laptops and find the best deal. Of course it all boils down to price, so I had to find out what she wanted to spend on him. So she asked me for prices, cause she knows nothing about computers. So I quoted from $500-700 would get him a decent computer.

So off I go to start looking for computers, its got to be available right away so internet stores are out, looked at some smaller stores to see what they had available and nothing really that good, the big box stores had better deals. In the end it was between Best Buy and Futureshop. Not the greatest, but they did have the best deals. I did notice something though, both stores carry ‘slightly’ different computers. This way you can’t go to them with a flyer from the other store and look for a deal, they won’t match it because its not the same computer. I came across this in getting my mother a computer for christmas as well.

I finally chose a computer at Best Buy for a few reasons. The comparable computer at Futureshop had 2gig less ram and only an increase of processor speed by .2. Personally I’d rather have more ram.

Best Buy computer

Futureshop computer

It was a little more expensive than my mother wanted to spend, but when I asked my brother what he was looking to spend his top end was $800, which that falls in under. They went together to buy it for him.

The benefit with the Best buy one was also if you bought the Office 2010 student version you also got Outlook, Publisher and Access for free, which actually brings that Office suite up to the Professional level (a $500 value in total for $99). The Futureshop one was just the basic Office 2010.

Both places were that if you bought a HP computer you got a free Xbox 360 as well. My brother rolled his eyes when I said that, cause he doesn’t want his son playing games while at college, but I told him that its free, and he can keep it at his apt and watch dvds on it, now he doesn’t need a dvd player. Plus I said he could get some golf games and play those (he loves him some golf games).

Overall my nephew is happy, my brother is happy, my mother is happy, and the oldest nephew is a bit jealous cause his laptop is about half as powerful as his younger brother’s. lol But he is happy too. I’m happy because I was able to be around to help them out and make sure my nephew got a computer that should hold well hardware wise.

Not being around for most of their lives I am trying to be as helpful as I can. We’ve driven them around looking for jobs, had them over for dinner, helped them with their resumes, and in general just being around for them. My brother and sister-in-law have thanked us a number of times for all the help we have given them with stuff, but we’re family and this is what we do for family. Well I suppose if you like your family you help them out. lol