I‘ve been watching Dell’s “12 Days of Deals” holiday promotion with interest, and so far they have featured the Inspiron Mini 9 twice. Monday they advertised a price of “$299 after $50 instant savings” for the Linux system, but then they charged an extra $25 for red or pink colors, which they didn’t do before the holidays. Total savings: $25.
Today, they have a Win XP version for “$399 after $90 instant savings.” This configuration includes a 1GB RAM upgrade (normally $25) and 16GB SSD (normally $40), but they are now charging an extra $30 for colors. This same configuration was $449 before the holidays. Total savings: $20 if you want pink or red, $50 otherwise. Unless I do some really creative math, I can’t make the 12 Days of Deals savings equal $90.
All I can say is that this is typical Dell – promote something as being “on sale” and then jack up the price of the options. Do they think we are stupid? Sure, a $20 discount is better than no discount, but don’t pretend it’s anything bigger than what it is – especially when HP, Lenovo, Acer, and other netbook manufacturers have actually dropped their prices by $50 or more.
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