Buying in America?

PhilipMarlowe

Not a mac user yet but have my eye on the PowerBook G4 of some flavour or another...

On the Apple iestore, the top model is basically €4,519
On the US store, it's $3,439 ex. sales taxes....

Seeing as I will be in America in December, is there any reason why I shouldn't buy one there instead of here?
I presume a laptop through customs isn't a problem, especially if I wear a suit

Thanks,

Mark.

Synkronite

Apple Europe prices are outrageous- there's no harm in getting it from America if you can make do with the fact that you wont have the € symbol on your keyboard.

Laptop through customs is no problem- hmm, hide the box maybe? Ill bribe the customs guy if you smuggle me another laptop

No seriously though, a number of my friends have done it- hassle free. They all would neatly fold their boxes in their bags and put their laptops in their new carry cases and act all businessy first class like *cough*

Id love a Powerbook

If you can wait till January try that though- cos chances are they might be updating their lines around then. But you'll still offset the difference in prices.

And remember VAT in Ireland is 21% Whereas in America Sales tax wont be anymore than 10% (Way less from what I hear)

Best of luck!

PhilipMarlowe

Thanks for that.

I was wondering about the keyboard layout and stuff like warranties etc....
Plus they have some better software offers in the US too it seems?

Certainly from the money point of view it's a no-brainer....

DannyD

I worked for Apple in Cork previously.Warranty for powerbooks and ibooks is world wide.Keyboard laybout will be US but you can detach that and stick in a EU one.

Synkronite

Why are Apple Europe's prices so much? Even without VAT its so much more expensive. Can it be due to Apple being an American company? I thought Apple Europe would not have to pay import duties as they already pay tax to Ireland on their earnings- so they are technically a "local" company? Many big companies get around importing stuff..

My next Apple is going to be American Im afraid to admit.

Dr_Teeth

hmm, a friend of mine has a US powerbook G4.. a while ago his power supply died so he picked up one here in Ireland where he now lives. Apparently the mix of US powerbook and Irish power supply didn't work too well and his motherboard died a few weeks later.

It could have been something else, but that's what he claimed it was after getting the board replaced.

Teeth.

Dun

Maybe it's the fact that Irish power supply is about 240 volts while the American version is 110?

You can easily get converters though.

DannyD

The powerbook mentioned is a laptop.All (Apple) laptops have both 110v and 220v power supplies.

PhilipMarlowe

Prices seem better at the moment... with their memory promotion.

Though:

The new 1ghz Powberbook with 1gb ram: (nyom nyom btw)
€3,333 here ex. vat
$3,039 in the US ex. sales taxes.

Dollar & Euro are effectively at parity atm.
Almost 10% higher than in the US
€294 to get the euro symbol on your keyboard

Taking the latest Power Mac G4 Dual 1.25GHz with 2gb RAM as an example:

€5,243 here ex. vat
$4,339 in the US ex. sales taxes.

Almost 21% higher than in the US

I was preparing to write an email to apple about pricing. I would consider moving our business machines mostly over to apples over time if I liked them but with those kind of price differences there was no chance.

Synkronite

If you're nice to them- they'll give you upto €200 discount (On the ibook- could be more on the powerbook / powermac).

Either way-- Im really impressed the way Apple has cut prices across the board. Fair play to them- Cant wait to order my 800Mhz 12.1" iBook now!!

And I hear Douglas is on the ADSL list...

Ahh.. Christmas come early!