Doug Aamoth has worked for just about every consumer electronics store in the history of retail but have you ever worked in one of those stores around the holidays? It takes the fun out of gadgets! Also, after he graduated from college a long time ago his parents were like, "Now you should go get a real job. Like blogging, for instance. That's so hot right now. You'll make thousands of dollars."
Black Friday is just two days away. If you have what it takes to wake up at the crack of dawn, brave the crowds, and spot the best deals, there are plenty of savings to be had. Here’s a quick list of some of the best deals from the most popular product categories being offered by brick-and-mortar stores, followed by a few prestigious awards that have been given to various retailers.
The nostalgic gamer — you know the type. Maybe you are the type (I’m definitely the type). The nostalgic gamer is in his or her late twenties to early thirties, was brought up on the Nintendo Entertainment System, and sometimes longs for the good old days when controllers featured only a few buttons (at most). Here’s a list of gift ideas for the nostalgic gamer.
If you’re like me, you’ve got a fair number of family and friends who don’t quite share the same level of enthusiasm for technology as you. But the thought of buying someone a gift that wasn’t a gadget? Insanity. Pure insanity. In that spirit, here’s a list of products that ought to make easy-to-use gifts for the technologically ambivalent in your life.
Not content to merely offer competitive pricing on Black Friday, Amazon has gone ahead and somehow turned Black Friday into an entire week. The online retailer will be offering plenty of deals every day – some better than others, with the best ones selling out quickly.
Short Version: A universal notebook adapter with retractable cabling that extends to almost ten feet in length, comes with nine adapter tips, and features two USB charging ports.
Target will be running a special Sunday-to-Wednesday circular this weekend full of pre-Black Friday deals. Most of the deals are okay, if unspectacular – 32-inch LCD TV for $398, $20 giftcard with Wii system purchase, etc. – while the 10.1-inch Acer Aspire One netbook ought to sell out pretty quickly at just $199.
You may recall that back in early September, we brought you news of this steering wheel table. Well, the customer reviews on Amazon’s product page are pouring in and it looks like this may be the sleeper hit of the season!
GameStop will be opening at 6AM on Black Friday, a good 10 hours before most hardcore gamers normally wake up. The good news is that you can basically just stay up an extra couple hours, make your purchases, and then go home and go to bed.
If you prefer warm, indoor shopping to cold, outdoor, middle-of-the-night Black Friday shopping, then you may be happy to hear that Best Buy “is bringing the excitement of Black Friday a week early this holiday season.” How is this possible? How can one retail store bend the fabric of the time-space continuum in such a way?
If you thought that the whole point of the common digital photo frame was to make old-school photos a thing of the past, it looks like you were wrong. I was wrong too, so let’s take comfort together in our wrongness. If the folks at iMo have their way, we’ll look at a digital photo on their digital frame and say to ourselves “I want that photo on some sort of card stock and I’ll stop at nothing to get it!”
Imation today officially starts shipping “the world’s first Wireless USB external hard drive,” the Imation Pro WX.
Amazon is running a deal on the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi, selling the new-ish Sprint smartphones for $80 and $25, respectively, with a two-year contract and free activation.
Ooh la la, this looks to be an interesting machine right here. Starting at $750, MSI’s latest “Wind Top” all-in-one features a big 21.5-inch 1920×1080 multi-touch LCD, NVIDIA ION graphics, Windows 7 Home Premium, and a wireless mouse and keyboard set.
Yeah, seriously. Who wants to wait for Black Friday? Not Kmart! Even though the store will indeed be having a Black Friday sale, you’ll also be able to get your gravy-covered mitts on a bunch of goodies Thanksgiving day. So choke down that turkey, scoot your chair back, and head to the store before the tryptophan has a chance to kick in. Here’s a list of the geek-centric items:
Remember the good old days when video game machines ALWAYS came with a free game? Sometimes even two! Nintendo had Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt, Sega had Hang On! and Astro Warrior. Well that gravy train ended a while ago but you can hop back on, today only, as Amazon is offering a free game or headset with the purchase of a white Nintendo DSi.
Short Version: A faithful recreation of the arcade classic, Jakks Pacific’s Big Buck Hunter Pro TV Video Game is a nice alternative when you’re too lazy, broke, or inebriated to make it out to your local watering hole to play the real thing.
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Ah, gaming consoles. They pick up where TV left off. Back when TV was still entertaining, it served as the perfect babysitter.
“You kids watch Full House and Urkel until your mom and I get home from our key-swapping party, okay?”
“What’s a key-swapping party?”
“Okay, gotta go!”
Now consoles are here to fill that void. Well, and Facebook. Whatever the case, if you’re looking to buy your kids (or yourself!) a console this holiday season, here’s some info on a bunch of the available options in no particular order…
You guys use them newfangled corn star machines? Oh, Coinstar – that make more sense. I know I do, and I know longtime CrunchGear reader Johnal does because he sent in this tip.
When you dump in more than $40 worth of change between now and December 6th and you opt to receive your payout in the form of store credit at one of Coinstar’s participating retail partners, you’ll receive a $10 bonus gift card by mail.
There’s no shame in wanting to punch a medical epidemic right in its adam’s apple. Punch sickness, not people. That’s what I always say. If your white-hot hatred of Swine Flu still hasn’t tapered off, though, it’s gonna take a lot more than a little virus punching to get you the satisfaction you deserve. Might I suggest — and hear me out – murder? Yes, murder.
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Pocket-sized camcorders continue to grow in popularity thanks to falling prices, shrinking form factors, and enhanced video quality. While there are plenty on the market to choose from right now, this guide will focus on models selling for less than $150. That seems to be a good price ceiling that allows you to get plenty of features without spending too much.
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The Year of the Netbook. That’s 2009. You can’t walk into a consumer electronics store without seeing netbooks everywhere. Actually you can’t really walk into a consumer electronics store, period, since they’re closing up faster than costume shops the day after Halloween. But that’s another story for another time.
While traditional netbooks sales will almost certainly see a decline in 2010 as they make way for the new class of low-voltage ultraportables, there’s still plenty to choose from this holiday season. Here’s a handful of purchase-worthy netbooks – in no particular order — for your perusal. The only real rule for this list (besides having to be a netbook) is that screen resolution must be greater than 1024×600. Those 1024×600 netbooks are so 2008.
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The common portable media player has a tough existence. It’s expected to handle many tasks well, while being rugged enough to withstand daily (ab)use. It’s expected to look nice, it’s expected to provide more-than-decent battery life, and it’s expected to provide a simple enough interface that it can be operated almost exclusively while on the go. If the world’s greatest mom were a consumer electronics device, she’d be a portable media player.
And while there’s no shortage of portable media players in existence, here’s a quick list of some worthy gift options (in no particular order).
I have no backwards R key on my keyboard and I don’t have the wherewithal to figure out the tricky Wingdingy ALT+numpad+four digit code voodoo it’d take to produce it (if it’s even possible), so let’s just say “Toys R Us” and enjoy the store’s Black Friday ad.
Oh, I get it. It’s called “Shack” Friday at Radio Shack instead of Black Friday. Because “shack” sounds like “black” and “shack” is part of Radio Shack’s name. So basically, they just switched the two words around. I get it.
Know what else? The damn sale starts on Thursday! What a world! “Most stores open at 10 AM Thursday,” says the circular. And then they open at 5:30 in the morning on Friday! That’s Shack-rilege! See how I worked the name of the store into that one?
