Answering a Twitter challenge issued Tuesday by Jake Dobkin to beat his $26,820.90 Mac Pro configuration, Jason Kottke over at Kottke.org was able to crank up the price of his Mac Pro to $27,340.90. Not bad.

Jason admits to throwing in all the optional software and accessories, but still, that there is $27,000 computer – which Apple says qualifies for free shipping. As he notes, the really expensive accouterments were the 32 GB of RAM ($9100), the NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 video card ($2850), the four 15,000 RPM hard drives ($800 each), the two 30-inch Cinema Displays ($1700 each), a Fibre Channel Card ($1000), and the unlimited-client copy of Mac OS X Server ($999).

We here at EPICENTER love a challenge (if we can cheat), so I decided to try to beat Jason's price and maybe put Al Gore's Mactastic rig to shame, too. In the end, I'm happy to report I was able ring up a $29,889.53 bill. My secret? Expedited shipping, fools!