Posted 04/08/2009 at 04:49:43pm

I honestly have absolutely no idea how I should take that.

Posted 04/08/2009 at 06:47:28am

I'd just like to point out that at least one point in this commercial has been jiggered.
The Apple store and Best Buy she visited were both in California (Specifically, the Apple store is in Santa Monica (Check out the Google streetview for 1248 3rd St Santa Monica, CA and compare the railing and chairs for the cafe visible to 0:13-0:14 in the commercial. The Best Buy is in Culver City, check out Google StreetView for 3830 Midway Ave Culver City, CA and compare the Ralph's building to 0:59-1:01.)
(As a complete side note, I'd like to point out that the model of computer she bought is likely to be the HP Pavillion dv7-1245dx, not the dv5, as was suggested earlier, since the dv5 only has a 15" screen, the dv7 is listed on Best Buy's website as being priced at 699.99)
Now, the whole point of this is that at 0:55 in the video, we see a display on the register of "Balance Due: $699.99". California has a 8.25% sales tax and Culver City has an additional 1% supplementary tax for a total sales tax of 9.25%. Which means that the final sales price would infact have been $764.74. Likely what transpired was that after ringing up the computer, a partial payment of $64.75 was made, and bringing the balance due back down to the pre-tax price of 699.99. Now, while I will admit that this is less than $1,000 dollars still, it does show a lack of complete honesty on the part of the commercial.  This bothers me.
Oh, and for the record, I'm nominally an Apple user, though my current computer is an Acer laptop which I purchased for it's price point.I consider it an inferior replacement, but at the time my computer was in need of replacement, I could not afford the luxury good that is a Mac.
(By the by, the use of HTML appears to be on the fritz, otherwise I would have linked all my references, sorry about the lack of them.)