On Buying iPods

Now that it's Sarah's birthday and she knows what present she's getting, I can blog about my iPod hunting experience in Rockhampton.

It's been something of a long-running joke (started and maintained mainly by Sarah, of course :p ) that I should buy her an iPod for her birthday/christmas/random day of the week. Well, after tossing the idea around I decided an iPod would actually make a jolly good birthday present. The moment that sold me on the idea was when I was in the Mac Choice store and Trisha passed this tiny pink brushed-metal iPod mini across the counter for me to look at. They're so slick!
That was also the moment that I decided it had to be an iPod mini in particular, even though I could get a fully fledged 20GB iPod for only $40 more.

The only problem was that Trisha only had 2 blue iPod minis in stock, and I didn't really want a blue one for Sarah. So I asked her to let me know when she found out what else she was getting in stock soon, and I went off on a quest for iPod minis elsewhere.
To cut a long story short, there practically aren't any iPod minis elsewhere.
The Byte Centre had a single blue iPod mini, and no plans to get any more in because apparently they get a $20 profit margin on each iPod and the hassel of getting them isn't worth their while. With that attitude I would be reluctant to buy from them even if they did plan on getting more stock, but the bloke I talked to was at least happy to suggest other places I could get one.
Target don't stock or order iPod minis at all.
eBay had a few on auction, but the auctions close to closing were going for more than I could buy one from Mac Choice for.
Dick Smith don't stock or order iPod minis at all. The obnoxious salesman treated me like I didn't know anything about computers or music players (after I repeatedly showed that I did), and tried to sell me a Creative Nomad Zen instead ("but look... this one holds, um, TEN thousand songs!").
Finally, I called the online Apple Store and asked about availability: Minimum waiting time of about 4 weeks.

So in the end, it looks like I'll wait to see what Trisha gets in her next shipment and pick the best colour out of that. Should be sometime this week! Woohoo :D

And, after all that, Sarah didn't realise that the paper cutout iPod with "Sorry it's not here yet, it's coming!" written on it meant that I was actually getting her a birthday present and not just a card with a paper iPod :p