I'm truly sorry you feel this way, however our return policy is clearly posted on our website. I believe you will find that we are not the only big camera store in NYC with this policy!

If I can explain; 'free' outbound shipping isn't actually 'free'; it is paid for by Adorama - it is our gift to you. However, we do believe that if an item is returned that the 'gift' also needs to be returned!
If an item is returned because it is faulty, or if a customer requests an exchange for a different model, there would be no deduction of the charge.

I hope this clarifies the situation; if not - or if you have any additional questions or concerns, you are most welcome to email me directly: Helen@adorama.com. I'm here to make sure that all your experiences with Adorama are fantastic:)

Lightroom does not make use of a scratch disk, but you might want to keep your catalog and possibly plugins and or presets on your SSD to maximize performance.

http://www.computer-darkroom.com/blog/will-an-ssd-improve-adobe-lightroom-performance/

I recently added a 240 GB Thunderbolt external SSD to my Mac and put Lightroom, Bridge & Photoshop on the SSD. I also moved my catalog for Lightroom to the SSD as well. All my images remain on another spinning hard drive connected via Thunderbolt.

Loading Lightroom & Photoshop was sped up greatly. Any access to the catalog also improved - it is a tad slower to bring in a large image from the spinning disk to edit, but still acceptable.

For me, I did not place my system files on the SSD, my Mac still boots from the SATA internal, but I hardly ever shut my Mac down, just let it go to sleep, so I only placed copies of specific apps on my SSD with links to launch them on my Dock.

Typical launch times:

Lightroom, 600 MB catalog - internal SATA, 20-30 seconds from launch to editing

Lightroom, 600 MB catalog - Lightroom and catalog on SSD, 5-7 seconds from launch to editing.

I just spent over an hour on the phone with an actual person. I must say they were very helpful in helping me decide what to go with. Long story short, they passed the first test. You can actually get real support and they have stores all over. One is very close to my house.

If I do it, I'm leaning towards a 21.5" version that has decent upgrade options, but is limited to 16gb ram. This is within my price range and close to what I have today. For about $500 more I can get the base 27" model and then be able to upgrade to 32gb max ram later. Frankly, I think 16gb would do me just fine.

Again, it's a matter of $ and personal preference. You can always spend more to get more. The question is do you need it? Right now I don't do a lot of video and photography is more of a hobby, not so much business.

Everything they told me price wise was based on Apple store prices which would be the highest (+ tax). But then you do get the access to the store services, expertise and support.