Deal on Dells

Posted on by Michael

 Dell Black Friday AdBlackFriday.info has Black Friday deals posted early. Black Friday, in case you don’t know, is the day after Thanksgiving and is the biggest shopping day of the year.  I found this Dell ad there which shows the Dell Mini 9 for $299 – which is $50 off.  Interesting that an intel Core 2 Duo icon is right next to the ad when the Mini doesn’t have a Core 2 Duo it has an intel Atom. But I guess the logo is referring to the Inspiron 1525 in the ad above it.

Anyway, at first glance I thought it was a great deal but then I realized – that $299 price is for the lowest end configuration – which won’t be enough for Leopard.  We got $40 off ours and it was almost $500 by the time we configured it.  I chatted with sales support and they tell me that you can configure it at the time of ordering. To have a decent Leopard machine you’ll want to add the built in web camera, upgrade RAM to 1GB and upgrade the SSD to 16GB. The total will be around $425. Bluetooth, which you probably don’t need, is another $20.

In reality, once you configure it, the black friday deal isn’t much better than the deals that are available now. I just ‘built’ a system online starting with the $409 Ubuntu OS system, added the web camera and came up with $435 because right now the higher end configs are $40 off.  (By the way, for a Leopard install there’s no need to spend the $$ on Windows XP.)

This Black Friday deal will be best if you want to get a stripped version and trick it out yourself.  Only add the web camera which will get you to $324.  Then get a 2GB RAM chip from Crucial ($40), and a 32GB SSD ($100). But then you’re still up close to $500. Keep in mind that starting with the low end Mini config you’ll have to do put in that SSD upgrade before installing Leopard.

The above deal is not available today. But according to the ad you can place your order starting at 6am on Thanksgiving day.  Here’s what you could do:

  • Set your alarm for 6am – um.. yeah!
  • Go to http://www.dell.com/savebig
  • Enter in the E-Value code 16254-DNPHXD2
  • Configure, buy and wait-wait-wait for it to ship.

2 thoughts on “Deal on Dells”

  1. Why not buy the lowest end mini (+bluetooth/1.3 MP Webcam) at $394? Then, buy the $140 in Leopard necessities (RAM/SSD). That puts you at $550 for a Leopard Hackintosh with 9" goodness.

  2. Well.. I priced it both ways and it's always around the same price. One of my points is that the $50 off on Thanksgiving isn't much better than the $40 off now. However, the difference is that the $50 off Black Friday deal is for the low end model. Right now there is no other discount on the stripped version.

    Also one consideration is that the 32GB SSD is reported to have some speed issues.

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