It all makes sense now, and unfortunately I’m not pleased at all.

The other night when I purchased the 2GHz G5 at a much lower than expected price, I told the Apple store people “grab me the base model, I don’t need any RAM or HD upgrades”. I knew I could get RAM cheaper at Fry’s (which I did today) and that I’d buy a new HD when I needed one down the road.

What I didn’t know is that Apple sells a 2GHz Dual G5 with a cheaper video card than the ATI Radeon 9600 (the cheapest they show on their website). And now, after writing that, I wonder if I got one of the newer G5’s at all! It did come with Tiger, so something must be right, but the G5 I have came with the GeForce FX 5200 with 64MB of RAM (a fact I just learned) and not the expected ATI 9600 with 128MB of video RAM.

I’m not at all happy, and I’m pretty sure it’s not my fault. It’s not readily apparent on the box what video card comes with the system, and in the chaos of the Tiger premiere, the only confirmation of what I was getting from the Apple folks was that it was the new 2GHz G5. I literally asked the woman 3 times if the price was correct for the base 2GHz model, and she confirmed it three times. If not for the chaos of the store, she might have picked up on my concern that something was not right.

I’m not even sure if I should even consider trying to get what I went to the store for or not. I’m thinking it’ll be a tough battle, but ultimately I think I’m willing to pay for what I wanted in the first place, which no one should have a real issue with. I’ll be pretty unhappy if they do something tricky with my 10% discount.