Slightly Useless Shop

I went to the Apple store in Regent's Street this afternoon, keen to buy a Power Mac. So I found a guy who could help me spend my money.

‘I'm looking to buy a Power Mac’, I said, ‘what are the options?’

‘Well, it depends what you want to do with it. You have 4 processor options. The bottom two can have up to 4Gb of RAM, the top two can have up to 8Gb. In addition they come with a bigger hard disk.’

‘I don't want a monitor as I've got one already that I want to re-use but what about keyboard and mouse?’

‘It comes with the standard white keyboard and mouse.’

‘What about the wireless keyboard and mouse you have?’

‘We can't provide you with that.’

‘How come?’

‘It needs to be fitted with Bluetooth for that and we can't do it in the shop here, we don't have the ability to fit internal extensions. If you want this, you need to order your machine from the online shop.’

‘So you mean if I want a machine customised in any way, you can't do it here, you can only sell me the basic system as is?’

‘Yes, that's right.’

So I left and ordered online tonight. To be honest, if they actually want to sell the top of the range hardware in that shop, they should be able to customise it, especially the Power Mac. Asking for more memory, a bigger hard disk, Bluetooth or AirPort can't be that unusual. Nevermind, at least it was easy to do in the online store and they were very happy to take my credit card details. I reckon I'll get a call from HSBC Fraud Detection Department tomorrow, asking me about that transaction.