Well, I probably clicked the refresh button over 250 times last night. After about 1 hour and 45 minutes, I finally finished checkout. How long was it before you gave up or finished checkout?
Same here, I got 2 boxes from the website after 1 hour and 45 minutes.
took me two and a half hours. Still got one!
I had no problem. The only thing wrong was the Who’s Online times were wrong, but other than that It was normal.
Really?!?! I had a very different experience, lol.
You guys realize this is WHY the server was having so many problems, right? If you repeatedly request a response from the server, it bogs down. It doesn’t “forget” your previous request. So all you did was overload the server with requests and it choked.
I was a network admin for 3 years and now I teach Comp Sci. I got a box and a bag (and made both purchases separately) because I didn’t refresh. It took a couple of minutes for each page to load, but everything worked fine for me. I made both purchases in less than 45 mins.
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The source of the server problems is spot on. Too many requests crashed the server, and a frenzy of refreshing just kept it down.
You got lucky that you didn’t have any time outs. Or did you configure something on the client side to give you longer timeouts? Unlike some other people, you knew that it’s important to not interrupt your EXISTING request in order to refresh. You know that if it’s spinning for a while, that means it’s getting “some” data and being kept alive… all positive motion forward!
But pure patience wouldn’t have done it for everyone. I know networking protocols very well also, and trust me when I say that for most of us a certain amount of refreshes were necessary. The servers actually went down for a while and couldn’t process ANY requests, period (so you would have had to refresh just to initiate the request once they came online!). You are a lucky anomaly. 
Knowing not to interrupt an existing request ultimately worked for me, as well. But then again, there was still a finite amount of product, even if we all handled our requests perfectly!
1 hour and 45 minutes. ;D
Bag. 2 hours 45 minutes.
3.5 hours. Squat.
Well, I did get booted at checkout the first time I tried. But that just means I made it that far 3 different times. That’s doesn’t sound like luck to me.
Of course when the server was down, this required refreshing to display the page once the server was back up. And maybe I know a few things about Firefox and servers that proved helpful, but ultimately, once I was on the page for the box, I never had to refresh again. Most browsers don’t time out unless they haven’t gotten a response from another source for a few minutes. As long as I waited, the page would load after a minute or so.
Also, when clicking on a link, Firefox shows a spinning black dot rotating around a circle in the tab (sending data). When it receives a response from the server, it turns blue (receiving data). If someone refreshed at any point during this time, they put themselves at the back of the request line.
So my luck was determined by all of those people who willingly put themselves behind me in the request line by refreshing. And that really is it. 600 people on one server making one request each wouldn’t have put a server (that I’m familiar with) over the edge. 600 people making 250 requests each (that’s 150,000 requests you guys)? Yeah, that would kill any single server.
It’s not like I just kept pressing refresh when it was still loading. Once it said it had stopped, I refreshed it again.
Bag, 3 hours
Sent from Ice Cream Sandwich Eatin’ Optimus V
Exactly. And I’m sure many others (not all!) were like us.
Mike, it WAS partially luck for you. I didn’t do anything differently than you. Refreshed only when I actually had to and even then sometimes I wouldn’t bother. My requests DID time out, and I’m sure many other people’s did as well. The server barfed up failed MySQL requests via PHP, which is also a completed request requiring a refresh.
Be happy in your luck, but don’t be overly dismissive of other people’s ability to navigate network traffic and still run into issues.
Gave up in 10 minutes.
I’m not being dismissive about anything, Greg. I’m actually trying to make people aware that they can cause they’re own delay issues and maybe help them in the future. Maybe they could improve their luck as well.
Apologies, then. 
Certainly understanding how the whole thing works can only be helpful to people.
I gave up after 45 mins. Dang, I wish I knew they were still in stock long after this. I happily would have stayed up late. Well at least I know how to do it next year!