<p>Suppose you're buying the cheapest laptop recommended for Wharton (899) and the office software (69). They want you to pay $25 for delivery and sales tax equivalent to what you'd pay if you went to a store and bought in your state. MD: $25 for the delivery + $58 for tax. You cancel the shipping and do pickup and that gets you a higher total price because Penn sales tax is 7%. Only way to reduce cost is delivering to Delaware (no sales tax). Time + gas for delivery driving from upenn (say nothing of the inevitable path from MD) is still less than the sales tax (unless you, the undergraduate student, is making more than like $50 per hour...)</p>
<p>Question: does anyone know a secure delivery destination or if not, have an idea how we, the undergraduate students can cooperate to get a decent saving on this venture? If we get a number of people, we can reach an economy of scale by having 1 person fetch from Delaware (me because I pass it on the way to upenn anyway) and we all split a warehouse cost or whatnot. Anyone up for it?</p>
<p>Wow, you really are a Wharton student. Just buy the computer and have it delivered home (you must gain some utility by having the computer delivered to you and not having to drive a hundred miles to pick it up). Do that or just go to Best Buy or some other computer store and by something there. If none of those meet your needs customize one online and have it delivered (they can be cheaper than the ones Penn sells).</p>
<p>Also, those Wharton recomendations aren’t necessary. So long as you have a computer that can run Office and <em>maybe</em> some extra software like Matlab, you should be more than fine. You can def. find a cheaper computer that does all the stuff you want to do.</p>
<p>I live in Rockville. As for the computers, I’m not that tech savvy and I don’t want a headache with getting something unorthodox. I’d really prefer to get the $899 one. But I refuse to pay that damn tax! They are jacking up the price of pc + software by ~$75 with their tax and delivery!</p>
<p>As someone from Potomac, the 2+ hour drive to somewhere in Delaware is not worth saving $75. You’re a smart kid. Either save up some cash and spend the extra $75 or research about computers and find or build a comperable one that is cheaper.</p>
<p>But you would need a POBox or something else in Delaware to have it delivered there. If that hassle is worth $75 to you go for it. Do you have a friend going to UDel in the fall with a movein date before we have at Penn? Maybe you could have the computer delivered to him and you pick it up on the way.
On top of that, it’s nice to have the computer before you get to school. You don’t want to spend NSO setting it up and making sure it has no bugs.</p>
<p>don’t do it through campus express, I called them using a contact number on the computer connection’s actual website. For the delivery, it doesn’t cost you any more, they reduce the price of the laptop by $25 and and $25 in delivery fees. The tax you just have to deal with</p>
<p>^^ wow!! I’m really starting to lose trust in Upenn’s services. Thanks for the tip. Now if I can get it delivered to Delaware, I got a tax-free and free delivery purchase!</p>
<p>Uh, I don’t quite understand your beef from “upenn’s services.” I mean yeah, if you order it off the Connect thing you pay shipping and your own state tax…but if you order any computer offline <em>anywhere</em> that’s going to happen regardless. I dunno, maybe if you’re getting a Dell you can’t get the education price except from a school, but at least for Apple you can go in the store and get the education price and thus avoid delivery costs.</p>
<p>Dont buy those recommended laptops…There are so many great deals out there at Staples, best buy, walmart, etc. I got my dell studio for under 700 bucks and it is actually not a low-end laptop. 4gig ram, 250GB core 2 duo, sleek style (looks and feels like a mac, without the price tag)
And just get openoffice, no need to spend extra on software.</p>
<p>Btw, i am from maryland too. Germantown. I assume you went to one of the W schools? Whitman,wooton, walter johnson?</p>
<p>… you could do the Campus Express… or you could do something from Best Buy that is virtually the same but $500 instead of $900… For all of Penn, all you really NEED is a computer that works. Microsoft Office helps, but even Office is unnecessary – OpenOffice works just fine.</p>
<p>If you’re going to be an OPIM concentration, that’s another story. But if you’re anything else, I really wouldn’t worry about it.</p>