The thing is that gold-plated mouse might be making up for the 30% discount on the desktop it was attached to. If you've been a Dell corporate customer you can always tell when the end of their fiscal quarter is coming because your personal rep will be calling you with excellent deals to pad her numbers. And if you are reasonably good at vendor poker you can get some real deals simply by saying "Well, we're thinking about ordering x in a couple of weeks." Because that's too long for the reporting period; and this quarters numbers are all that matter to the person on the other end of the line.