From yesterday’s post I was debating whether or not to buy the Dell XPS M1210. It’s currently at it’s lowest prices but all technology goes down in price while improving in specs. People always think they got a good deal until a week or month later when they feel ripped off. The fact is you can never wait long enough because something better always comes along.
I was on the phone with a sales dude from India for 30 minutes and he was a tough cookie. He wouldn’t budge on the components or pricings. He wouldn’t even give me a free upgrade from a 6 cell battery to a 9 cell battery. In the end, this is what I ordered:

Intel Core 2 Duo T5600 (1.83GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 667 MHz FSB)
Windows Vista Home Premium
12″ Widescreen WXGA Display with TrueLife
2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz (2 Dimms)
100GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capability
256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400 TurboCache
85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 Internal Wireless
Integrated Webcam and Mobile Broadband Antenna

The system came out to $1409 Cnd before taxes and it was already “on sale” as Javid, the sales guy, put it.
In true salesmanship, he was lying to me at every turn saying it was impossible to remove the built-in webcam even though it was optional a week ago. He claimed that he couldn’t be Windows XP on it because all the systems came pre-installed with Vista and there’s nothing he can do about it. In the end, I got him to knock off $100 from the price but it’s not as though I won the bidding won. I also lost 30 mins of my lunch while I was on the phone with him.
It was a good lesson in negotiating and I will have a lot to learn. Practice makes perfect and I will need it when I buy my new car in the future.