Black Friday Bargain Hunting

Luke's Picks for Black Friday:

* Circuit City - eVGA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB PCI Express $89.99 after rebates

Fantastic price on an excellent card. Batman has an XFX 7600GT 256MB, and it rocks out.

* Circuit City - Acer Turion64 X2 Laptop with 1GB DDR2, 120gb HD and built in webcam

Awesome powerhouse laptop. Originally $899.99 -- $100 in mail-ins, $200 instant savings. Acer is a great brand for laptops. My current laptop is an Acer, and it has held up superbly.

* Circuit City - $9.99 Netgear wireless router, after $70 in rebates

Pretty cheap for a basic wireless setup. I prefer Linksys products, but this'll do, too.

* Best Buy - Compaq, AMD Athlon64 3700+ w/ 1GB RAM and 250GB HD, 15"
LCD, $399.97

If you're looking for a cheap desktop system, this one's hard to beat.

Combine it with the eVGA GeForce 7600 GT from Circuit City, and you have yourself a powerful gaming machine for less than $500. Best thing about the Best Buy deals? Instant Savings.

* Best Buy - Western Digital 250GB HD $69.99

From the picture, it appears to be an external drive, but it doesn't say explicitly. Either way, a good price.

* Best Buy - MAG 17" LCD monitor $79.99

Good deal on a 17" LCD.

* Best Buy - Virgin Mobile "Oyster" pay-as-you-go phone $9.99

Andy from NEW NET clued us in on this. The Virgin Mobile phones are a pretty good deal if you need a pay-as-you-go phone. Personally, I intend to get one so I can use it while traveling. I DOUBT you'll need to hit the stores at 0Dark:30 in the morning to get one of these though.

* Best Buy - HP Laptop, Intel Core Solo/Centrino Platform. 512MB ram, 80GB HD $379.99

Normally I like to stick to Acer, Apple, and Toshiba for my laptops. BUT, $379.99 is hard to shake a stick at. This one is rated "Vista Ready" but I'd say the heck with that. Run Windows XP on it, and you'll be much happier. If you want to run Vista on a laptop get the Acer Turion64 from Circuit City, and upgrade to Vista in the second half of 2007.


Luke's AVOID THESE DEALS:

* Best Buy - Nintendo DS $99.99

Not only is this the first generation Nintendo DS and not the newer DS Lite, but it's also the regular price for the unit. There's no reason to wait in line before the sun is up for this.

* Everywhere - Nintendo DS for $129.99

This is the 2nd generation, DS Lite. BUT, $129.99 is the normal price for it. There's no reason to buy it on Black Friday. It's a neat system, but wait till you can buy it without fighting the hordes.

* Anywhere - Any older videogame systems

Do your research, make sure you're actually getting a bargain. With the launching of the Sony PS3 and the Nintendo Wii, now is not the time to buy an older console. Wait awhile, and the prices will fall on the last-gen machines.


Final Thoughts:

"Black Friday" can be the source of great deals, or it can merely be a big headache. Do your homework! Know the regular prices of the items you're looking at are, and compare that with their sale prices on Black Friday. If you're not sure what the price on a piece of computer hardware or videogame system is, give us a call at 920-858-1377. We'll give you our opinion on that piece of hardware and whether we think it's a good deal. I didn't list them above because there were so many different deals, but this is a great time to get a 1GB or 2GB USB Flash Drive. Many of them are available for between $8 and $32. Remember to watch the ads for which are instant-savings and which are after-mail-in-rebate savings. Best Buy, under their policy of abolishing mail-in rebates, has some positively AWESOME deals that are in-store savings, at least as far as the ad-scans I've read indicate. Double-check with your local ads when they arrive, just to be sure. The above prices are from Black Friday websites, so there may be some variation from the prices listed above. Dress Warmly, and bring some hot chocolate or coffee with you. It can be a COLD wait out there in the dark morning of the parking lot.

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