A very helpful Apple salesperson saved me $750 and here’s how he did it. I’ve had a 15" MBP for a couple of years now, but it is just too big to use when traveling. I’ve been patiently waiting for new Haswell MacBooks, whether Air or Pro, for quite a while now, looking forward to a smaller machine with better battery life. When Apple announced the new MacBook Air at WWDC, I knew it was time for an upgrade. After a couple trips to the Apple Store, I decided that the 11" MacBook Air was for me.

I never buy the base model of anything, probably because I think that I’m some super geek that needs massive amounts of processing power and memory. Plus, Apple’s scheme makes it so easy to upgrade. Only $100 for double the RAM, $150 for the faster processor, and if you’re doing that, you might as well max out the SSD as well. It didn’t take me long to decide on the $1,749 11" MacBook Air Ultimate, primarily because I wanted the 512GB SSD for my rather large iPhoto library.

I walked over to my neighborhood Apple Store and found a salesperson to help. “I’m looking for a new MacBook Air. I’ll take the 11” model with all the options, please,“ I said. Most salespeople would have thought, "Bingo!,” and proceeded to upsell me on AppleCare. Instead, this guy asked me why I needed the i7 processor and 512GB SSD. I explained that 512GB would be necessary because I have a large iPhoto library and I figured the other upgrades wouldn’t hurt either. He asked what applications I use most and I replied, “Chrome, Twitterrific, Word, Messages, and Mail.” He explained that I’d most likely never notice an upgrade to the i7 processor, likewise with the 8GB of RAM, and that he had a much cheaper option for my photos. He grabbed a $80 500GB external drive and showed me how to transfer my existing iPhoto library to it and set it up on the new MacBook Air.

As one of my friends put it, he must have been a great salesman, because convincing me to downgrade is probably harder than convincing most people to upgrade. But it worked. I walked out with a $999 base model 11" MacBook Air, and I love it. I’ve been working on it for a couple days and it’s super fast. With my photos all on the external drive, I have almost 100GB of free space. Most salespeople would have sold the more expensive computer, but this guy took the time to explain why I didn’t really need it, and convinced me to spend much less. Apple recognizes what few other retailers do: customer satisfaction starts even before a product is purchased, and it is customer satisfaction that makes companies great.