How I got a Core 2 Duo at a Core Duo price

If only this was a pretty story, but alas it is not. It ends well enough, with me getting what I paid for, but it was a less-than-humorous comedy of errors to get there. First thing, if you want to save money on a Tablet PC, keep an eye on eBay and be patient. That's what I did. Twice. Got my Scribbler refurbished at less than half the new list price when Electrovaya unloaded a bunch. This time, I'd been watching the Toshiba R25 for a few months. Took a while for the first few [Core Duos] to appear and by that time the Core 2 Duos were being rolled out. Figured I wouldn't see a Core 2 Duo R25 (http://tinyurl.com/yem8pa) until after the holidays. I was wrong. As it happens, a guy was unloading his apparently vast collection of gadgets ahead of his military deployment, including a Core 2 Duo R25 (http://tinyurl.com/yem8pa) he had just gotten two weeks earlier. Buy It Now price was $200 below list. The model had barely been out for a month. I had just received an unexpected sum of money, in addition to what I'd been saving. It was too good to be true, and it almost was. The seller was solid and honest, but I think he was overextended. All the delivery information he sent me the first few days was fouled up in one way or another. It turns out it was just the info that was wrong; the package arrived after a week. But I wanted to be quite certain everything checked out before settling in and calling it my own. But then I had the surge in tutoring work, followed by family business, in addition to my previously scheduled activities. Thus, I wound up sitting on my new tablet until my sponsorship campaign (http://sumocat.blogspot.com/2006/11/sss-sumocat-seeks-sponsorship.html) was ready to launch. Sorry for the non-disclosure, but I plan on making up for it with a lot more info than I shared of my poor little Scribbler, which is now semi-retired as a print server and media player.

CateGoogles: Tablet_PC Mood = pleasant