DRU 500A in Canada!

[coolestnitish]

For all the Canadian members, I thought I'd share the information. The Sony DRU500A is here in Canada. FutureShop is selling it for $599.99+tax=$688.85 . That's way out of my budget, but if you got some extra cash lying around Christmas time, you can expect a bit of a price drop and after all the research Veff has done, it certainly looks like a great unit for Christmas. I don't know how much BestBuy is selling it for, because I haven't been there in a couple of weeks but I'd guess FutureShop and BBuy would have similar prices as BBuy owns FutreShop.
The good news is that as this burner is here and it will increase more competition. Retailers will probably decrease prices on the HP 200i as this Sony drive is a multi format and the HP isn't. If you are seriously thinking of buying this drive, I would say wait till local computer stores get retail versions of this drive as their prices are a lot less and you could save some $$.<edit>link to the dru500a at futureshop here -
http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?logon=&langid=EN&dept=1&WLBS=fs%2Dweb1&sku_id=0665000FS10022319&catid=&newdeptid=1

[ajp32]

That's the same price ($599.99) that Sony is selling it for direct from them online or in their Sony stores. I get the impression (from the fact that not a week after release you have a better chance of finding Elvis than one of these drives in the stores) that the price will probably remain the same until the competition stars shipping dual format DVD burners.
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