Buying an Ipad advice (re:discount?)

[mcfc ctid]

I can't understand why people don't ask for a deal in the shop. When I bought my tv and home cinema system I asked for a discount 'cos I was paying cash, the guy said he couldn't do it so I said ok, I'm sure Comet will do me a discount if I'm spending over a grand, I got a hefty discount plus a stand thrown in. Discount came to around 20%. Got to have some neck and put them under pressure, I do it all the time these days, the wife walks off tutting but never moans when she sees how much I've saved.

beacause the bundle im after only aplies to the DSG Group (Dixons, PC World, Currys) so i can hardly say can if you dont give me discount i'll goto Dixons as its part of the same group

 

[BoyBlue_1985]

Cheers for all the advice guys n girls, lools liks John Lewis could be the one...I have used JL loads after someone pointed out to me last year they give you better deals on warranties than most other places!
Ps I wanted a small laptop/notebook instead of a tablet but mrs G wanted the Ipad and after using my mates in work, I think they are pretty good actually!
All I want it for is the internet and I also think the apple apps are very useful if not a little expensive!
Once again thanks for all the advice...Gaz

Baaaaaaa Dont be a sheep Gaz.If all you want it for is the internet and a few apps then why o why buy an ipad?The interface is sublime but restricted in terms of web use.Save yourself a bit of dosh and get a better web experience by going android.Have a butchers at the Asus EEE Transformer,Motorola xoom or the Galaxy tab 10.1 or 8.9.All Amazing tablets,not as expensive or restrictive as Apple and will be a lot better for what you want.Plus more free apps on the Android market.

Yes I know what your saying pal, and I kind of agree to some extent!
However, I have an android phone and dont rate it (or the apps for that matter!) and like I said earlier after using one at work for a while, I was very impressed with the speed, picture quality etc!
And her mum is also buying us the Ipad as a gift for our wedding anniversary, so dont really want to start asking for other stuff when its a gift (and remember I stated earlier that mrs G wants really an Ipad so it is her that is pushing it!)...ta

Get them at a phone store on contract for 18 months. Shite more expensive over 2 years but cheap outlay

 

[Sir peace frog]

bought the wife a kindle last xmas.about 2 weeks ago it looked like the screen was stuck because there was print from a book on the screen and you couldnt do anything,took it back to john lewis they said the screen was cracked.

anyway i couldnt find the reciept so went to jl who still it after doing a card search,top place to buy stuff from,they can never do enough for the customer in my experience,having said that,im getting the wife an ipad2 from tesco,the wife collects the points(we used them once to go to disney land paris for free) even though we did spend 1500 euros in 2 days ,fucking dear as fuck,anyway i digress,jl is a great place to buy from,but tescos just edges it for us

 

[Chris Mac]

I can't understand why people don't ask for a deal in the shop. When I bought my tv and home cinema system I asked for a discount 'cos I was paying cash, the guy said he couldn't do it so I said ok, I'm sure Comet will do me a discount if I'm spending over a grand, I got a hefty discount plus a stand thrown in. Discount came to around 20%. Got to have some neck and put them under pressure, I do it all the time these days, the wife walks off tutting but never moans when she sees how much I've saved.

beacause the bundle im after only aplies to the DSG Group (Dixons, PC World, Currys) so i can hardly say can if you dont give me discount i'll goto Dixons as its part of the same group

Insert any other electrical retailers then.........?

 

[MCFCinUSA]

this is an excellent and very serious write up on Apple, and explains a lot:

(but if your wife's speccing this stuff, enough said - do your duty or divorce her)

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/28/charlie-brooker-pfroblem-with-macs" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... -with-macs</a>

In 2007, I wrote a column entitled "I hate Macs". I call it a column. It was actually an unbroken 900-word anti-Apple screed. Macs, I claimed, were "glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy-cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work."

In 2009, I complained again: "The better-designed and more ubiquitous they become, the more I dislike them . . . I don't care if every Mac product comes with a magic button on the side that makes it piddle gold coins and resurrect the dead. I'm not buying one, so shut up and go home."

The lady doth protest too much. A few weeks later, I buckled and bought an iPhone. And you know what? It felt good. Within minutes of switching it on, sliding those dinky little icons around the screen, I was hooked. This was my gateway drug. Before long I was also toting an iPad. And after that, a Macbook. All the stuff people said about how Macs were just better, about them being a joy to use . . . it was true, all of it.

They make you feel good, Apple products. The little touches: the rounded corners, the strokeable screens, the satisfying clunk as you fold the Macbook shut – it's serene. Untroubled. Like being on Valium.

Until, that is, you try to do something Apple doesn't want you to do. At which point you realise your shiny chum isn't on your side. It doesn't even understand sides. Only Apple: always Apple.

Here's a familiar, mundane scenario: you've got an iPhone with loads of music on it. And you've got a laptop with a new album on it. You want to put the new album on your phone. But you can't hook them up and simply drag-and-drop the files like you could with, ooh, almost any other device. Instead, Apple insists you go through iTunes.

Microsoft gets a lot of stick for producing clunky software. But even during the dark days of the animated paperclip, or the infuriating ".docx" Word extension, they never shat out anything as abominable as iTunes – a hideous binary turd that transforms the sparkling world of music and entertainment into a stark, unintuitive spreadsheet.

Plug your old Apple iPhone into your new Apple Macbook for the first time, and because the two machines haven't been formally introduced, iTunes will babble about "syncing" one with the other. It claims it simply MUST delete everything from the old phone before putting any new stuff on it. Why? It won't tell you. It'll just cheerfully ask if you want to proceed, like an upbeat robot butler that can't understand why you're crying.

No one uses terms like "sync" in real life. Not even C3PO. If I sync my DVD collection with yours, will I end up with one, two, or no copies of Santa Claus the Movie? It's like trying to work out the consequences of time travel, but less fun, and with absolutely no chance of being adapted into a successful screenplay.

Apple's "sync" bullshit is a deception, which pretends to be making your life easier, when it's actually all about wresting control from you. If you could freely transfer any file you wanted onto your gadget, Apple might conceivably lose out on a few molecules of gold. So rather than risk that, they'll choose – every single time – to restrict your options, without so much as blinking.

Sure, you can get around the irritating sync-issue, but doing so requires a degree of faff and brainwork, like solving the famous logic problem about ferrying a load of foxes and chickens across a river without it all ending in feathers and death. And even if you find it easy, it's a problem Apple don't want you to solve. They want you to give up and go back to dumbly stroking that shiny screen, pausing intermittently to wipe the drool from your chin.

Apple continually attempts to scrape even more money from anything that might conceivably pass through iTunes' tight, leathery anus. Take ebooks. Apple's own iBook reader app may be nauseatingly pretty, but it's not a patch on Amazon's Kindle, which, far from being just a standalone machine, is a surprisingly nifty cross-platform "cloud" system that lets you read books on a variety of devices, including the iPhone and iPad. It even remembers what page you were on, regardless of whichever machine you were reading it on last. (It does that by "syncing" – but we'll forgive it that, because a) it happens seamlessly and b) you never, ever lose any of your purchases.)

Now Apple, typically, are no longer content to let people read Kindle books on their iPhones and iPads without muscling in on some of that money themselves. So they've changed their rules, in a bid to force Amazon (and anyone else) to provide in-app purchases for their products. What this dull sentence means in practice is that Apple want a 30% cut each time a Kindle user buys a book from within the iPhone Kindle app.

So 30% less for authors and publishers, and 30% more for the world's second-largest company. And that's assuming they'll let any old book pass through the App store: given their track record, chances are they'll refuse to process anything they consider objectionable. Still, if they start banning books, never mind. Winnie the Pooh looks great on the iPad.

Every Apple commercial makes a huge play of how user-friendly their devices are. But it's a superficial friendship. To Apple, you're nothing. They won't even give you a power lead long enough to use your phone while it's on charge, so if it rings you have to crawl around on your hands and knees, like a dog.

So I no longer hate Apple products. In fact I use them every day. But I never feel like I own them. More like I'm renting them from Skynet.

 

[Blue2112]

I was all set to get the wife an Ipad 2 for her birthday/christmas present (Tesco doing a 6 month interest free payment) but having read this thread i'm just not sure now.

Neither of us are that well up on this sort of thing and I think she would find it very useful for her work. So confused now thanks !

 

[MCFCinUSA]

I was all set to get the wife an Ipad 2 for her birthday/christmas present (Tesco doing a 6 month interest free payment) but having read this thread i'm just not sure now.

Neither of us are that well up on this sort of thing and I think she would find it very useful for her work. So confused now thanks !

The ancient Masters
didn't try to educate the people,
but kindly taught them to not-know.

When they think that they know the answers,
people are difficult to guide.
When they know that they don't know,
people can find their own way.

Lao Tsu



ah so grasshopper..

;o))

 

[1.618034]

I'm reliably told that even suppliers like Orange have to pay the full price for iPads..

I'm upgrading to an iPhone 4S and iPad2 64GB/3G for £66/month +£50 from Orange... Great deal IMO.

 

[Blue Maverick]

I'm reliably told that even suppliers like Orange have to pay the full price for iPads..

I'm upgrading to an iPhone 4S and iPad2 64GB/3G for £66/month +£50 from Orange... Great deal IMO.

Is that over two years?

 

[1.618034]

I'm reliably told that even suppliers like Orange have to pay the full price for iPads..

I'm upgrading to an iPhone 4S and iPad2 64GB/3G for £66/month +£50 from Orange... Great deal IMO.

Is that over two years?

Yeah and then it's yours. Ordered it today.