Black Friday
 

Did anyone go out and brave the mobs to get Black Friday deals? Here's my insane story.

Got home at 11:30 pm from a day of wedding stuff, surfed the Internet, forgot it was Thursday night and FF was due, threw that together, stayed up all night, left the house at 3:30 am, lined up at Circuit City from 3:45 am 'til 5:00 am when they opened, fought off crazed bargain hunters, got home at 6:00 am.

The in-between part was expensive. Most people were there for a loss leader Toshiba notebook for $199, which was really $450 if you didn't sign up for a year of AOL. They passed out vouchers for the hot items so that those who lined up got rewarded. They ran out of those notebook vouchers early and when they announced it, about two dozen people around me left. I must say that everyone I dealt with was very nice. Nobody tried to stab me or take my Cabbage Patch kid or Tickle Me Elmo.

I wound up buying a 15" HD ready LCD TV with S-video and component video inputs for $188. Perfect for my bedroom. I was on the hunt for a laptop and since the $199/$450 one was gone I opted to get the next best deal. For $800 I got an Acer with a 15.4" widescreen LCD, AMD Turion 64-bit Mobile processsor (1.6GHz; the ML version which is supposedly more powerful than the M version of the Turion), 1 GB of DDR333 RAM, 100 GB HD, intergrated 802.11g, built-in dual layer +/- DVD/CD burner, and I got a "free" Epson printer and "free" D-Link 802.11g wireless router. It's not what I call a super smoking steal but it's pretty good. I didn't get a $1200 laptop for $200 as we all wish we could but I figured I saved a couple hunder bucks. What do you think? :dunno:

Just for reference, the Toshiba they had for $199/$450 was a 15" LCD, Intel Celeron 370, 512 RAM, 40 GB HD, intergrated wireless g, and DVD-ROM/CD-RW.

nice.. too bad we had to work.. :(

I looked through the sale ads on Thanksgiving day and didn't see anything that was worth braving the 10 degree (below zero wind chill) temps and stand in line for :tsk:

I woke up around 9am. Got to Best Buy around 10am. Got my hands on a SuperG Router and PC card from Netgear, got both for $30 (Still on a linksys B router from years ago :( ). Also got a Seagate 120gb hd for $30. All this after rebate of course. I'll find a away to get rid of the pc card and plan on exchanging the router for a regualar linksys g one. I came home and read that this router drops the connection a lot, before I even opened the box.

The only thing i was bummed out about was that they ran out of the Sony DVD burners before I got there. Still not worth standing in the cold though. I don't know how your areas are, but CompUSA consistently has good deals when the weekand rolls around.

Unfortunately there in no CompUcrap around me. :( You got a great deal on that HD though. G routers are dirt cheap these day and I got one for free after rebate with my new laptop. What do you think of the laptop I got? It's not a ThinkPad or Lifebook but what the hech. Thoughts?

You didn't get an off brand notebook. It's still a Toshiba. At that price, there's no such thing as going wrong.

That's not a bad price. I got the Toshiba for $499 though at Office Depot without the AOL rebate as a Christmas gift for my sister. Good enough price for me. I bought this same system for $900 year and a half ago. Got there around 9am, not even a line! But of course not a great but only a fair deal.

This afternoon I spent 4 1/2Bens on 3 cases of mixed reds at one of my fave wine stores near daKidz, here in CherryHill, NJ. "Normal" sale items there at Total Wines, and no door buster deals...shopped the net again today for that 60" Sony SXRD LCoS TV; about to pull the trigger if I can get my courage up: I am not an early adopter on this kind of stuff. Ordered another new hotrod Dell 'puter for the FLAHouse, too. Spending money like we print it in the fooking basement.

I need a hightech xpert adviser sitting on my right shoulder and a fiscal restrainer sitting on my left, lol!

Great to see and stay w/DaKidz, granddaughter, et al. Tarred after that haulazz drive yesterday. I'm getting a tad long in the toofies for these 6-700 mile days.

BR,Pops... phoning home from South Joisey

PS: PNG: sounds like good stuff you copped; I think I jacked your thread. What an old fool, here ;>)

MD - Ever try Joe Canals? Excellent selection, very good prices....on Rte 73 in the Mt. Laurel area.

On a different note - I was in BestBuy at 6am. Mostly for the fun of it - knew the $149 desktop and $379 laptop would be gone by then. One of the employees told me that the line started forming at 4:30PM! That's right - 4:30 yesterday afternoon. They opened at 5am this morning. No f'ing way....
Anyway - left there - went to Target, Staples, etc - picked up some misc stuff here and there.

Friend of mine went to Circuit City (Moorestown NJ) - things got out of hand - police had to escort some people out of the store - incredible.

Who needs the mall when you have Craig's List!

JV