Firstly, I appologise for the mis understanding.
okay, just to let you know, I sell HP Laptops. But I am down in Australia.
And my passed experiences with HP and COMPAQ (especially on their Retail Models - HP Pervillons and Compaq Persarios) is that the computer store buy price and the distributors sell price leaves about no margin for resellers (such as myself). HP/Compact Deliberately do this as that the retails stores (Like Sears, Coles-Myers, Office Works, WalMart) and your local computer store (such as myself) have different products to sell.
This is commen with HP Pervillons and Compaq Persarios. Only big name retail store or authorised came purchase them from HP. If I am not one of these authorised computer stores, then HP MIGHT sell them to me, but my buy price might not be as good as I am not a authorised reseller for HP Pervillons and Compaq Persarios.
So if the computer store at Best Buy can not match the offical HP price, there is a perfectly good reason. And that is because distribution channel for that product is screwing them over.
Mind you, I can get my hands on other HP Notebooks (in fact a lot more) that the big retails stores can not get their hands on
So if I was you, I would do 2 things :-
1. See what else the Best Buy might have to offer from HP (or some other respectable notebook computer company)
2. if you are still not satified, then place your order directly with HP.
In short, it the HP Dealer Distribution channel that is screwing over Best Buy.