New laptop!, Squee! Options

[mipadi]

So as some of you may know, I work as a systems programmer/IT manager for an engineering lab at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I came into work today and lamented to one of the other programmers that I had to do all my development work on my aging iBook, and how I was thinking about getting a new MacBook. So she asked the director of the lab if he'd buy me a laptop, and he said sure, I just had to pick what I wanted and have the purchasing agent sign off on it.

I asked how much money I had to spend, and the other programmer told me I had to spend at least $3000. "Wait, at least? Don't you mean, up to $3000?" I asked. She said no; because of the way purchasing works, I had to spend at least $3000 on my order in order to have it qualify as an "equipment purchase", which avoids some sort of fee imposed by RPI on its labs' purchases.

So I bought a new 13-inch MacBook Pro. It's a pretty decent machine:

• 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 8GB of RAM (Yes, EIGHT f*ckING GIGABYTES. Anything less would've made my order drop below $3000, so I sprang for the $900 RAM upgrade.)
• 256MB nVidia 9400M gfx card
• 500GB hard drive
• dual-layer DVD burner
• iWork '09
• Final Cut Express (since I do some video work in the lab)
• VGA adapter
• DVI adapter
• Accessories:
  • Apple Remote
  • 1TB external hard drive (for Time Machine backups)
  • VMWare Fusion (since I write some software targeting Windows, unfortunately)

Needless to say, I'm pleased as punch.

[karmakiller]

Is there a limit on how many of these free laptops you can get? Not that I'm saying CBers will be your best friend for one, but I'm just asking 'cause you could make money.