[ltp] Linux Foundation discount questions

[linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org]

On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 11:08:22AM -0700, Ben Pfaff wrote:
> According to
> http://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/join/individual/join, by
> paying $99 for a 1-year Linux Foundation membership I can save
> "up to 40%" on Lenovo products.  But I have not been able to find
> any information on how much I can actually save or what I have to
> do to get the discount.  I'm reluctant to fork out $99 before I
> know more.
> 
> Has anyone here received the Linux Foundation membership
> discount?  Is it on top of other discounts or instead of them
> (i.e. right now ThinkPads have pretty good sale prices anyhow)?
> What did you have to do to get it?

The LF membership discounts are instead of the sale prices, but they
tend to be better than those available to the general public.  They
tend to be the same as what IBM has offered to shareholders (although
they don't always do that, and they haven't done that since Lenovo has
been spun out) and the IBM "friends and family" employee discount.  At
this very moment, Lenovo has a get-the-employee-discount-promotion
which ends on April 21st, so at least for _today_ there's no
difference between the LF discount and what you can get publically.

In general, the discounts are the lowest on the very newest hardware,
and the highest (I've seen up to 50%) on models where it's pretty
obvious that Lenovo is trying to clear out inventory now that the
newer, more desirable mode has become available.  So for example, when
the T410 was new, you could get incredible deals on the T400.  (And at
the time, I preferred the T400, since it was compatible with my
T60/T61 dock, so I got a machine which was 95% of the T410's
capabilities, at 60% of the cost.)

Hope this helps,

						- Ted