Pnambic

$24 Regulation size Table Tennis all the way baby!

I noticed a lot of things already set up and apparently Black Friday priced at my Home Depot over the weekend. Quite a few things in the aisles with shipping labels and tags indicating Black Friday specials.

If your 11 yr old grandson wants to play games, then there just isn't a $100 option. If its for checking email, browsing the Internet, maybe doing homework, then this might work. Does your grandson really require the mobility of a laptop? You're paying for that in the form factor where a desktop computer will generally get you more for less (and provide for an upgrade path as well). For a gaming laptop, you want discrete graphics, and that alone is generally $300 and up just for that option. But fingers crossed Black Friday brings us some deals. This is the most interesting one I've seen so far...reg. $900 marked down to $550 for BF. https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-ideapad-gaming-3-15-6-fhd-laptop-ryzen-5-5600h-8gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-3050-ti-256gb-ssd-shadow-black/6513216.p?skuId=6513216

I could be biased (OK, I'm definitely biased), but I think the difference is data. Store and companies have SO MUCH MORE data at their fingertips these days, logistics details, customer behavior data, etc. I don't think anyone has the perfect answer, yet, but all of these companies are pouring far more into understanding this data and acting intelligently using it than ever before. They're able to identify trends that make them more money (extending "Black Friday" deals to more people by extending days and making them available online) and identify trends that cause them to lose money (like maybe Walmart's first sale this year perhaps?). 40, 30, 20, heck 10 years ago, you had Sales and Marketing guys making their best guesses in meeting rooms and just hoping it would work. After it was over, they had access to the big numbers and tried to infer what worked and what didn't based on anecdotal evidence. But today, they have access to each product's performance in each store, by the minute. They're getting smarter. Customers also have SO MUCH MORE data at their fingertips. We can check prices and reviews from our phones. We can participate in great online communities like GottaDeal. We can review sale ads before they're live and figure out where to get the best deal and when. In the past, I think we were much more likely to see stores throw out a few massive "doorbuster" loss leaders in order to get customers in the door hoping they'd do the rest of their shopping in the store while they were there as fighting the crowds to check out and leave and get to another store and fight their way in was such a hassle. With the change in customer buying behavior, stores have predictably changed their game plans to minimize losses (probably no real loss leaders anymore) and maximize revenue. I don't see stores going back to one day sales. Sure, it was sometimes fun for the few customers who succeeded in getting that awesome limited deal, but it probably ended up in 10 times more customers disappointed in not getting the deal and taking their money elsewhere. Stores are looking to find that perfect balance that gets them the most revenue without trimming the margin too much. Its a tough target to hit, but when you look at the data, I think you'll see they're getting better and better each year. I remember the last time I waited in line for a Black Friday doorbuster - Best Buy 2006. I was the second to last person to score the awesome Panasonic Plasma HDTV I was on the hunt for. There was a line of 30 or more people behind me that weren't so lucky. There once was a neat little company called Woot! that basically tried a doorbuster every day mentality. When they started, it was one item, started at midnight central time (as they were out of Richardson, TX IIRC), sold for a ridiculously low price, until they ran out. Often times they sold out sometime during the day, sometimes within just a few hours. They embraced a schtick of funny and irreverent product descriptions, limited purchases to 3 items per person, flat $5 shipping, built a bit of a cult following. But they were struggling to find that balance between the excitement of limited product availability at low margin while still maximizing revenue. Eventually, they were bought by Amazon and today the Woot site has hundreds of items on it. They throw up a few new items each day, but most deals are available for weeks or months even. They've pretty much abandoned the original business model - I suspect because it just wasn't optimized for maximizing revenue. I think Amazon may have envisioned creating a digital version of the Black Friday doorbuster driven excitement and hoping the customer stuck around and bought other product while they were there, but the digital customer can switch to a competing store too easily. But, its still going, so there must be some money in there somewhere.

MAKE SURE ALL CHERISHED VOICEMAILS HAVE BEEN SAVED OFF OF THE OLD PHONES BEFORE ACTIVATING THE NEW ONES. And you're freaking retiring in May, Len? Congrats man! Real happy for ya!

The chip shortage is hitting ads too this year it seems... I hear there's a 6 month delay. We should see them sometime in late April.

Or you could try picking up in store?

Hey Nate, are you volunteering? I tried a few years ago to help but its a lot of volunteer work.

I don't know how I missed this thread... Looks like you worked out a solid deal. But I love putting computers together - that's the best part!

Newegg has a couple. Not knock your socks off deals though.

For the record, the $129 Apple Watch at Walmart is the 38mm Gen 3 version (the small one), not the 42mm. The bigger one (also gen 3) will be $160. I have a gen 2 that was given to me a couple years ago and would have never spent the money on it myself, but I loved that watch. Hated to let it go when I switched to a Galaxy Note earlier this year. Now I'm in the market for a Galaxy Watch Active 2 as it has the (as yet not activated) built-in ECG functionality...and works with Android.

TCL makes some good TVs. I picked up a 42" TCL Roku last Black Friday and it has been superb for the kids room. Looking at RTings.com (https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/best/by-size/32-inch), they seem to like TCL (and Samsung) as well. That said, why limit to 32"? Space limitation on the wall? Walmart has a 40" 1080P for $98.

I'd start with Crutchfield. (https://www.crutchfield.com/) Great website to help you find what fits your car. You enter the year, make, model and sometimes some other pieces of information and they will filter their catalog down to what fits. You can then filter down even further to the feature set you want (ie. Apply CarPlay). They sell the installation kits with great instructions and even pre-done wiring if you want. They also offer rather good customer support with people answering the phones that actually seem to know their products. At the very least, its probably the easiest way to find the model of radio you want that you can then maybe find at Best Buy or some other place and have them install it if you're not in to doing it yourself.

SSDs are much faster than traditional spinning HDDs. However, their reliability, especially the cheaper SSDs, is less than traditional HDDs. If you're playing games and framerate is important, then go SSD, and do regular backups if there's important data you don't want to lose. If you're only browsing the internet and checking email, maybe streaming a couple thousand hours of Disney+ content, then an old school HDD is fine. You should still do backups to be safe though. External USB CD/DVD drives can be had for $20-30. (not even a Black Friday Deal - https://www.amazon.com/LG-Electronics-Portable-External-GP65NB60/dp/B00ODDE33U/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=cd+drive&qid=1573572902&sr=8-6)