Banned In Massachusetts?

Well, the deed is done.  I mentioned earlier the need to have Vista on a machine, to properly know the OS and be able to try things on it.

I’ve had waiting a case, power supply, DVD and DVD burner drives, and 200 GB hard drive.  Mice, keyboards, floppy drives, speakers and monitors aren’t really an issue, though I would like an LCD sometime.

Thus I was waiting to select and buy a motherboard, CPU, RAM and, unless I used Linux, OS to complete a shiny new machine for myself.  Originally the main idea was to give myself a good, current primary new box to replace my P3 1 GHz with Windows 2000, which has been my main machine for several years.  I just finally added a spare drive to the old machine, as I kept flirting with falling below 3 GB drive space free.  The camera card holds 1 GB and I almost filled it a couple times recently.  At least the drive crisis was averted, and 40 GB on the added drive is occupied by the directory structure that contains the pictures, plus all my MP3 files.  Heh.  Taking a look, the drive that was full has 38.7 GB free, while the added drive has 37.8 GB free.  But I digress.

My objective was to maximize performance at minimal cost, which led to my abandoning the plan to get a dual core P4, the prices of which seem to be inexplicably high.  I did, however, order a motherboard that supports dual core, should I desire later.  I ended up spending $315 for a motherboard, 3.2 GHz CPU, fancy cooling unit, 2 gigs of 800 MHz DDR2 RAM, and another 200 GB hard drive.  Shipping is $18, the RAM comes to almost $100, the cooler is $15, and the drive is $44, to give you an idea how low the CPU and motherboard actually were.  I checked after adding them to the cart, and Google didn’t show me anything cheaper.

Darn Microsoft, though… It’s a crazy thing, software being so disproportionate to hardware.  I have some sympathy, having been known to write software, and running into the same mismatch providing services that can’t realistically be less, but can easily result in it making more sense to replace hardware that oldfangled $5 an hour labor could salvage.

I managed to get Vista Ultimate edition 32-bit on DVD (which is apparently the norm) for $189 with free shipping.  That is the same as my cost if I got it from a vendor via the old business.  Except the vendor changed hands, so I would have to fill out all the paperwork needed - it may happen yet, but not for one copy of Windows - and drive a good ways to pick it up.  Or get it from the other vendor, possibly the same price, but a good chance a little higher, with a much longer driver required.  Someone will ship it to me for the same price?  Sign me up.  It’s close to $100 more to get the non-OEM, which is cool in that it’s not officially tied to one machine forever.  In theory, installing it on the one machine means that retiring that machine retires the copy of Windows.

I knew, yet had forgotten, that I would need to spend the money on this.  It really hurts, though.

The title refers to the fun part.

Where I order the hardware, I noticed under CPU accessories they had heat transfer paste that goes between the CPU and heat sink to aid its efficiency.  I am long since out of that stuff, so the reminder and the ease with which I could order some was welcome.

When I added it to the cart, I saw it said the item was shipped FedEx and dropped direct from the manufacturer, which made me shrug.

When I tried to check out, it reiterated that and added something along the lines of not being able to ship out of the country, but it could be shipped anywhere in the 50 states… except Massachusetts, so I had to go back and remove it from my cart and try checking out again.

WTF, over?

I haven’t searched the intertubes yet to get to the bottom of it, but that’s pretty weird.  And yet… this is Massachusetts.

Update:

It appears to be a “thing” of indeterminate nature between the specific manufacturer, located in Ohio and Canada, and the state of Massachusetts.  The same “thing” seems to apply to a small number of other manufacturers, and seems to relate to their shipping direct to this state from their locations.  Weird.  Strikes me as possibly a sales tax collection or regulatory dispute.  It appears that the same products, if shipped from reseller inventory, may be shipped to Massachusetts without issue.

It also appears that the notice about Massachusetts was on the item’s page the whole time, and I just didn’t notice that part.

Posted by on 07/13 at 07:35 PM

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