Sometimes the best deals are easy to find. Like when the guy at the grocery store check-out asks you if you need toothpaste for $1. "Yes, thank you," I reply, because the regular price of $3 is unreasonable to me, and hey, how convenient is it that they're pushing the good deal that I actually want right here at the cash register?
Other times, great deals seem hidden and surprisingly unknown - so much so that when you stumble across them you wonder if there are some sort of undesirable strings attached.
Janssen and I recently purchased a new desktop computer from Dell. It cost $578.63 (including sales tax), and has all the hardware we need (and a little bit more, including a beautiful 22" wide screen flat panel monitor). Many thanks to our good friend who works at Dell (you know who you are) for donating his friends'/family discount coupon to the cause.
That, however, is not the deal I want to focus on (even if that 22" monitor rocks my world). Great deals on Dell desktops are always available. But software has always seemed inordinately expensive to me, especially when there are free software packages like OpenOffice readily available to anyone with an internet connection. OpenOffice is compatible with Microsoft Office and other applications, and for a few months I've been thinking I'd never buy Microsoft Office products again.
Until this morning, when I discovered that I could get Microsoft Office Enterprise (which has pretty much the full suite of applications, sans Visio) at school for $35.72. No joke. I researched and read carefully the sales agreement, and as long as I graduate from UT, the software is mine to keep (if I don't graduate, I forfeit the software. That's how open licenses work for college student purchases).
The funny thing is that I heard there were good deals on software when I first enrolled last summer, but I never actually looked to see how much it would be and nobody ever said anything about it. I was content to believe the deal wouldn't be good enough to make me interested. My mistake. My question is, why have I not heard about this from other students? This software package is worth at least $400 if not more (though to be fair, we'll probably only use $150 worth of the applications it comes with).
This experience makes me wonder what other great deals on needs and wants are flying under my radar.
Owl
7 hours ago
6 comments:
Bart, I was just about to get off the computer when your new post showed up. I'll ask my husband if he knows anything about this. It may be tomorrow or the next day, because he won't be home until really late tonight.
As an Open Office user, how do we find out about that at the University of Rochester?
PS - I just remembered something from a job my husband had to do for a student. Be sure to find out if you get hard copies of the programs and if they are transferable to a new or different computer. You wouldn't believe how many computers crash, and the owners don't have access to the programs that were on the "old" (sometimes brand new) computer.
Just wait until you officially start with PwC. You gotta dig a bit to find out the deals, but we got Office for my computer for under $20. And when Janssen has a baby, have her call me so I can tell her everything she can get!
I love awesome deals! It's funny how you can miss them just by thinking they aren't going to be that great. On the other hand, I often spend money I wouldn't have spent just because it's a good deal. Roger hears about lots of good deals from his work too....like the Microsoft package we got, though maybe not as complete as yours. Wahoo for good deals!
Bart,
2 words: Adobe Photoshop. You can get it for a song as a student, if you want to pay the really really discounted rate.
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