proscriptus

But how badly did you get screwed on the price? Did you pay the two grand list price, or grab one at $1,199? http://dealnews.com/Loaded-HP-ENVY-15-Core-i7-Quad-1.6-GHz-1...

This practice of obscure and arbitrary discounting is at least as annoying as the obscure and arbitrary lineups.

I'll weigh in as a consumer, not a programmer--I'm a writer and photographer, and ordered a 16-inch Toshiba (Satellite A500-ST6647, based on reliability surveys) on Monday. I spent about three weeks revising a spreadsheet, trying to figure out just this, how they differentiate their consumer, business, gaming and multimedia lines. But even harder was trying to calculate actual price.

As I'm sure you've seen, there are insane discounting schemes, and base retail price means nothing. And then after scouring for coupons and coming up with a number, that number is only good for two days, because it was a Memorial Day sale and that's over, but wait, here come the Father's Day discounts.