Macintoshes are the BMWs of the computer world. Everyone wants one (okay, not everyone), but not everyone can afford one. They look great and generally work very well. When you look at things like “total cost of ownership”, a Mac may actually save you money in the long term, but not everyone can pony up the upfront money so that they can save in the long term. Even if you can, it’s nice to save a few bucks if you can.

Apple exercises tight control over Macintosh hardware prices, so you won’t usually find a new Mac discounted by more than a few dollars. But you may well find decent rebates and bundles and special pricing from Apple itself. Here are a few of the things I’ve seen that may be helpful to you.

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This week instead of offering 99 cent rentals, Amazon is offering free rentals or purchases of downloads of 24 “classic” films. These movies can be played under Microsoft Windows, compatible portable devices, and on networked Tivo Series 2 and Series 3/HD boxes.

First, the films you can outright purchase for free. If they behave the way other films from Amazon do, you’ll be able to re-download them again later and they won’t expire once you’ve downloaded them.

Click on the title to see the movie’s listing at Amazon.

Charade
His Girl Friday
House on Haunted Hill
Love Affair
The Man With the Golden Arm
My Man Godfrey
Penny Serenade
The Snows of Kilmanjaro
Till the Clouds Roll By
Under Western Stars

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Amazon has six more cheap (99 cent) movie rentals for download this weekend. These prices are good until midnight Sunday November 4th. They’ve both reduced the total number of cheap movies they’re offering and reduced the amount of horror now that it’s post-Halloween.

As usual, you can direct the download of these movies to a Tivo that’s been associated with your Amazon account, or you can view them on Microsoft Windows or a supported portable device.

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Amazon has eight more cheap (99 cent) movie rentals for download this weekend. These prices are good until midnight Sunday October 28th. There’s even more horror available. I wonder if they’ll keep doing this post-Halloween?

As usual, you can direct the download of these movies to a Tivo that’s been associated with your Amazon account, or you can view them on Microsoft Windows or a supported portable device.

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This is pretty cool. If you check out Amazon’s top selling software list, “MacOS X Version 10.5 Leopard” is the top seller, and “MacOS X Version 10.5 Leopard Family Pack” is the number two top seller.

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Amazon has eight more cheap (99 cent) movie rentals for download this weekend. These prices are good until Sunday October 21st. It looks like they’re hitting the horror a bit for Halloween.

As usual, you can direct the download of these movies to a Tivo that’s been associated with your Amazon account, or you can view them on Microsoft Windows or a supported portable device.

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Amazon has made several movie downloads available for rental at only $0.99 via their Unbox service.

Downloaded movies can be viewed once within 30 days of the rental date. Once you start watching one, you have 24 hours to finish it. You can view them on your Windows PC, a compatible Windows mobile device, or a compatible Tivo unit (which must have a high speed Internet connection) which is registered with Amazon.

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The start of the fall TV season means lots of free stuff at the iTunes Store. Click on the link to see it at the store, and remember that some things stay free for a long time, some don’t:

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Amazon is offering a nice discount on iLife ‘08 and iWork ‘08 for Macintosh. This is the best price I’ve seen on them, and Amazon ships them for free.

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Shiny Things is now running on Dreamhost. It was running on a server shared with a couple of other projects, and in order to reduce the memory footprint on the server I decided to move it elsewhere. Dreamhost is well-regarded and offered a good environment and excellent price for hosting it, so I decided to take it there. Moving it required only about 10 minutes of work and downtime. If you tried to access it during the move, I apologize for its unavailability.

If you’re interested in Dreamhost hosting, you can use the promotion code BFR50 in order to get $50 off various hosting plans that they offer. That gets you a discount and me a kickback.
[tags]dreamhost, shiny things, server, move, promotion[/tags]