I researched many local appliance sales and Best Buy had the model with the features I wanted. I was able to negotiate 10% off the asking price of a boxed fridge (possibly because one of their rivals was having a 10% off sale that week), but not anything extra off the already-lowered floor model price. They would not negotiate on the extended warranty fee, which was ridiculously high ($250).

I took the computer into the store and described the problem. They charged me for a diagnostic (about $60) and said it would be a couple of days before they could get to mine. Two days later I got a call saying they were done. Apparently all the hardware checked out and they made some system tweaks and it was working. When I got the computer back home and started it up, it continued to freeze repeatedly. So I took it back and they continued working on it. Thankfully, they were very courteous and professional about having to work on my computer again, and the additional work was covered under the original charge. Several days later I got my computer back after they made some more tweaks to the BIOS and... it's sort of working now. I still have no sound after the computer's been on a few minutes (one of the issues I originally reported) and it sometimes doesn't boot up correctly the first time. I'll probably take it back there again and have them keep at it since it's not costing me more money at least... As a software developer I fully understand that these things can be really hard to diagnose sometimes, but they could stand to do better at knowing whether the problem's actually fixed.