Too Good to be True

About a week ago I walked into IBeat, the authorized Apple reseller at The Mall, and told them I wanted to buy a new iMac. I built the iMac I wanted on the ordering screen. They saved the info in a webpage capture, telling me it would take 3 to 5 weeks. About 4 days later, I got a phone call telling me my iMac would be ready on Friday. When I went to The Mall Thursday to get my teeth cleaned, Jim and I checked at IBeat. My iMac was in!!!

They seemed anxious for me to pay for it and take it home. No offer to open the box and set it up for us. They open the box and plug in every single electrical object I have ever bought here, including light bulbs. Does this raise any alarms or questions in your mind? It did in ours. Upon checking, we saw it was indeed one of the newest iMacs (1 Firewire port, 4 USB ports). We insisted it be started up so we could check the system specifications. They dutifully booted it up to the hardware diagnostics screen. Sure enough, it was the stock high end model of the new iMac, not the one I ordered.

The only difference is the video card, but I definitely want the ATI Radeon 4850 instead of the NVidia GT130. Why? Because I was wholly unable to find any information about the GT130 (or the GT120) on the NVidia website. This causes me to suspect it is for the iMac only, and won't be well supported by PC game manufacturers. does it even support DirectX? I couldn't find out. The ATI Radeon 4850 was available for both PC and Mac, and had excellent reviews as the sweet spot of price vs performance.

We pointed out that this was not the computer I had requested. They acted as if they had never read the specification list. I had specifically pointed out to them, several times, the upgrade to the video card. So now they say I will get my computer in 21 days. I think it will be the right one this time.