But that's exactly the point: removing the charger, windows and buying ram elsewhere is exactly the comparison that makes sense if you have a good charger, don't run windows, and don't mind your ram coming on a different day of the week. Ymmv as I said.
If you want to quibble with words, you're right that I could have hedged more in my original comment, e.g. "cost can be competitive depending what exactly you are looking for". I'm not denying your experience for what you wanted, but for what I wanted, the costs were pretty close.
If you want to quibble with words, you're right that I could have hedged more in my original comment, e.g. "cost can be competitive depending what exactly you are looking for". I'm not denying your experience for what you wanted, but for what I wanted, the costs were pretty close.