Save BIG money at the Guitar Center

The Guitar Center is a national chain that sells, well, guitars but much much more. They sell DJ equipment, lighting, computers, mixing boards, midi keyboards, sheet music, drums, and basically all things musical.

Sometimes it pays to ask and that's exactly what you do at Guitar Center. One of my friends works there and states that above their hourly salary, they make comission on sales. If you're nice and not obnoxious, simply asking for a discount in the form of, "What's the best price can I get on XYZ?" gets you to savings nirvana.

The salesperson will usually knock off 10-20% just like that! I've done this at three different Guitar Centers in Southern California and have not gotten less than 10% off. If you have a major purchase (say $500 up) they are more willing to deal, often deeply discounting one item.

A quick tip: Small items tend to have the highest markup and the deepest discount possibilites. For example, guitar picks, drum sticks, or some cables are often marked up as high as 200%! If you've got a big purchase...they will often throw this stuff in for free just to make the bigger ticket sale.

Oh by the way, this usually does NOT work over the phone. The floor salespeople will almost never give a phone discount but if you're in the store and ready to buy then simply asking will save you the dough. Also, if one salesperson is unwilling to give you a discount, especially on a big ticket item, then simply ask another salesperson or go to another Guitar Center. I have personally bought a $1000 priced guitar for $500 and the hard case for $70 just by asking nicely...the salesperson also threw in 30 picks for free!

So, this is truly the case of ask and you shall receive. Rock on!

Money's tight...save your dough...say Yes I Saved !!!

Apple MacBook Review

I recently purchased the Apple MacBook white. I hope you take the time to read this so that you can make an informed decision and possibly save some money to boot. I've been using Windows for many years now on both desktop and laptop models and decided to get a laptop just for my wife just to surf the internet. My wife is completely computer illiterate and wanted the easiest way to get on the internet and type occasional memos. By reputation, Macs have the easiest learning curve so hence the choice of the MacBook.

How it's configured: It came with a 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo, 512MB of RAM and a 13.3 inch TFT glossy widescreen display. It has built in wireless, 60GB Hard Drive (46GB available), two USB ports, one Firewire port and a slot loading CD Burner/DVD ROM (not a DVD Burner) drive.

Initial impressions on Presentation: WOW! This thing is beautiful. Apple clearly wins points on presentation. It is light and the "paint job" sure is pretty. I'm used to waiting for my HP laptop which is very basically configured take 3 minutes or more to boot up and being able to start using applications. I was surprised that the MacBook went from power up to using an applicaiton in about 1 minute.

What comes in the box: The laptop, power cord + power cord extender, a remote, a very sparse start up guide and a CD with the applications but NOT the Tiger Mac OS.

The Screen: Brilliant as advertised however the desktop feels very cramped and the text very small at the default levels...and that's coming from a guy with perfect 20/20 vision. The icons in contrast, are large bright and are no-brainer representations of the applications that they launch. For example to goto music or burn a CD there is an icon with a huge CD and a musical note over it. Click it and you're ready to rock. Want to see pictures? There's and icon with a thumbnail of a postcard with a camera on front of it. Again a no-brainer.

Navigation: Definately do purchase a third party mouse. Many features in the Tiger OS support "right clicking" but the trackpad has only one button. In order to "right click" using the trackpad you have to hold down the command key then click...pretty lame. This is easily rectified by purchasing a third party mouse. I was surprised to find that the two Microsoft wireless USB mice I tried (the notebook wireless and the optical laser mouse) worked without loading any drivers.

Learning Curve: After I painlessly connected to the internet (the MacBook found my secure network immediately and after typing in my username and password got me connected on the very first try), I handed the MacBook over to my wife and let her have a go at it. We both enjoyed the taskbar on the bottom...pure genius. It contains the most commonly used items and programs on it and visually displays on the right thumbnails of open web pages or documents. The guys at Apple seem to have gone through great pains to make things, well, painless and it shows. After showing my wife where all the applications were such as the Mac version of NotePad and the Safari application to get on the internet she was up in running in less than 1 minute...literally.

Value: I thought this would be the easisest part to comment on. If you judge by the specs compared to a Windows XP laptop, the Macbook is expensive at $1099 retail. At that price range, a comparable PC laptop can easily be found with 1GB or RAM and typically a 80GB or larger hard drive and a both a CD and DVD Burner. All this will cost extra on the MacBook...a lot more.

If you are going to buy this particular laptop DO NOT upgrade from Apple as their prices are sometimes DOUBLE what you would pay by purchasing the parts from Best Buy, Comp USA or NewEgg. For example, Apple sells the 2GB RAM upgrade for nearly $600 big ones...ouch! Going to any of the retailers I mentioned you can buy name brand quality RAM such as Crucial or Corsair for half...yup half. By the way, the MacBook uses PC5300 DDR2 200 pin SoDimm Notebook RAM if you are looking for it. Apple has made upgrading RAM yourself a snap. You just flip out the batter, unscrew 3 screws, remove the plate, move a lever holding the RAM in place, and voila! The RAM pops out. You pop in your new RAM and reverse the process. Save your money, there is no need for a tech guy or Geek Squad to install your RAM and it takes about 5 minutes of your time. Here's a link to a video showing you just how easy it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-S29Wg693E&mode=related&search=
You can get cheaper RAM here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145012

Unfortunately, the "superdrive" DVD burner seems to be a proprietary Mac part that is difficult to obtain elsewhere but an apple retailer. So if you want an internal DVD burner you gotta pony up and pay Apple. However, I suggest you save some dough and buy and external USB DVD burner.

Upgrading the hard drive is a bit more difficult and if you have no experience doing this I suggest paying the tech guy or Geek Squad to do it. Again, purchase your hard drive from another vender than apple and save your money. Unfortunately, since the laptop does not come with a full version of the Tiger Mac OS you will have to purchase a copy of it separately in order to install it on your new drive...shame on apple for not giving you a copy of Tiger.

I feel if you paid for the laptop, you should at least get a disk image of the OS. This is a common gripe I hear from people who buy apple stuff...they feel like they're being nickel and dimed. For example, if you are going to hook your MacBook to an external monitor you have to purchase a separate $20 mini DVI to DVI dongle. Most PC Laptops allow you to hook up to an external monitor right from the laptop without any adapters for free.

Another small thing of note...if you want to hook up TWO external monitors then do NOT buy this laptop, instead buy the more expensive MacBook Pro. The MacBook only has ONE monitor out and after asking the Mac Genius at the Apple store, he confirmed that only ONE external monitor is supported by the MacBook. I'd think that this is no biggie for 99.99999% of you guys out there since most laptop users don't even hook up a single external monitor anyways but if you absolutely gotta have two external monitors then the MacBook is not for you.

This next part of value cannot be directly measured...the so-called "Apple Experience". If your time is precious and you don't want to take time to figure things out and have things working almost all the time right out of the box then definately buy Apple. I can't tell you how many times I've installed a piece of hardware and have to "tweak" settings in the control panel under Windows XP to make it work. My experience with the MacBook was just the opposite. Installing a printer and an external DVD burner was painless. After buying the mini DVI to DVI dongle I was able to hook up to my LG flat panel monitor without the need to install any drivers! I literally just connected it, turned on the laptop and external monitor and it worked.

I was definately feeling the Apple love and can see why "Mac people" require you to pry their mac stuff from their cold dead hands. However, if money is strictly the issue you can definately get more in terms of RAM, hard drive space, more USB ports and other features in a PC counterpart.

Apple futhers entices people to switch over to Macs since it has switched over to Intel chips. This allows macs to run windows natively just like a real PC without software emulation. So if you look at the bigger picture you might rationlize for a little more money you can get two laptops in one...both a Mac and a Windows laptop in one package. So Apple is essentially letting you have your cake and eat it to. You can do this by downloading a FREE public beta of a program called BootCamp which will allow you to boot directly into Windows XP natively. You will need to purchase a separate FULL copy of Windows not a Windows upgrade. Also, since the MacBook comes with only a 60Gb hard drive and boot camp requires you to dedicate space on the hard drive on a Windows only partition, then you can quickly run out of hard drive space...another reason I suggest you upgrade to a larger hard drive...at least 100GB if you are going to run boot camp. Some things of note: not all things runs perfectly unders Windows XP, there are some driver issues etc., so keep in mind that you are not truly getting a perfect Windows XP environmet as compared to a "true" Windows only laptop. You can get boot camp here'
http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/

Conclusion: So there you go...clear as mud I'm sure. What I thought was going to be a cut and dry easy review turned into a dilemma. You can't compare (pardon the pun) Apples to Apples or in this case Apples to Windows Laptops directly. In a nutshell, if you are comfortable with Windows and are on a strict budget then I suggest go with the true Windows laptop. If you got a little more in your budget and willing to do with less right out of the box in terms of hardware specs but want the easiest most painless computing experience then definately go with MacBook hands down. Enough said.

Money's tight...save your dough...say Yes I Saved !!!