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"I suppose, but its a sort of knowledge I'd rather not spend my time obtaining. I'd just assume buy from the company that prints the lowest price rather than obtain a written quote and getting a $5 lower price, since the company that prints the low price is doing me the favor of enlightening me with the truth." You mean the truth about how low they would be willing to go? Fine, you just express the opposite of the bargaining mentality, and it is true that a lot of Americans hate to bargain. It's not in the culture, but someone willing to bargain will almost always be able to do better. That's life. THe Wall Street Journal did an article a few years ago (in the height of the recession), and found they could bargain everywhere, at gas stations, at department stores, at restaurants. It was quite amazing. I bought a power book at Rockwell a few months ago. The price on the power book was good, but they wanted $899 for memory. I told them too much, that I could get it from CDW for $699. They were willing to match, given they would be selling the power book. If you can do it (I certainly am not good at it), you can save a lot of money by bargaining in the computer field. It's easy to see the dynamics. Suppose someone buys a memory card for $500. They figure that to pay the rent, overhead, salaries, and make a profit, then need, given their estimate of the competition and elasticity of the market, to sell the card at $700, so that is what they advertise. Now if someone comes along, bargains hard, and offers $550, it is worth it on a single shot basis to sell one unit at $550 and make a small incremental profit of $50. But that does not mean that the "truth" is that they can afford to sell all the boards at $550, on the contrary, they might well go broke doing it. So you see, the "truth" in this kind of pricing situation is an elusive thing. I know this is a bit off topic for the Thinkpad mailing list, but perhaps not so *very* much off topic, when obviously a lot of people are concerned with getting the very lowest possible prices. One thing that will help is for people to post deals they have managed to make. This mailing list is small enough that we can do that without disrupting the market. Of course if you advertised the prices you got on national TV, you would blow the deal!