I finally bought my PowerBook — it’s been about 6 years since I bought a Mac.

Those who know me know that I will go to great lengths to get a deal. I was especially concerned with this purchase because I figure that with the Intel transition, prices will drop a lot over the next year. So I wanted to protect my purchase by insuring that I paid as little as possible but got the machine as soon as possible.

I ended up structuring a deal through Amazon where I actually paid less than the Apple employee price (which is 15% off the Apple Store price). I got the 12.1″ PowerBook with the SuperDrive, but the deal is even better percentage-wise if you get the DVD/CD model. Here’s how to do it:

• Start using Amazon’s a9 search engine. After three days of using it, you’ll automatically get 1.57% off your Amazon purchases. This was the hardest part because I didn’t want to wait 3 days.
• Open up an Amazon Visa. I had one a long time ago before they switched card providers so I was eligible to open a new one. You get $30 off your first purchase using the card. You also get 3% rewards on Amazon purchases.
• Buy the PowerBook. There is a $150 rebate on both 12″ models, which is why it’s a better deal percentage-wise to get the cheaper one.

The net effect of all this is that you pay (in my case) $1699 – 1.57% (a9 deal) – $30 (visa) – 3% (visa) – $150 (rebate). The big wins are the rebate, which doesn’t seem to apply to Apple Store orders and the fact that you don’t pay tax (technically, you should pay use tax at the end of the year though).

As a bonus, you don’t even have to pay it off right away. You get 0% financing on the Amazon card automatically (it’s unclear whether this is for 6 months or a year). So in addition to the best possible price on a PowerBook at the moment, you can also pay it off whenever you feel like.