Smart Marketing

Part I:
Bought a laptop from Dell recently. They are forever running special promos; free this or that or free upgrades in an effort to entice a sale. I bit on the slightly above basic laptop and what contributed to it was $150 savings, free printer, free internal wireless and upgraded shipping. The same unit is $100 more without the printer or wireless right now, but maybe cheaper next week or at the small business store or by checking the /tv store.

I hooked up the free Dell 720 color ink jet printer tonight to replace my old Lexmark Z12 which was like $30 when new several years ago. Of course the free printer included the trial size ink cartridges which made me leery about running the alignment test and sample page for fear of using most of the ink up. Dell was nice enough to include some software that will let you know when your ink is low and instead of just popping a warning from the task tray it will launch IE and take you to the Dell supply page…

Part II
Last couple of years at tax time I have used H&R Block’s Tax Cut. I used to use Turbo Tax but switched after reading about Intuit’s digital rights management features that were crashing PCs of a couple years ago. I am happy with Tax Cut and was thinking about getting it again this year. But I don’t have to think anymore, in today’s mail was a silvery looking DVD sized case with Tax Cut Deluxe and one standard state program. Plus all the usual free with rebate software and/or electronic filing you normally get. I just have to load the CD and give them $29.95 off of my charge card. No going to the store and maybe choosing a competitor’s product…