Pnambic

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)

the husband or the laptop?

Spend some time absorbing the mountain of solid information on this website: https://www.rtings.com/tv In particular, https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/fake-refresh-rates-samsung-clear-motion-rate-vs-sony-motionflow-vs-lg-trumotion Another of my favorites is this one (make sure to check out that red/green/purple/blue chart about half way down): https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-size/size-to-distance-relationship

And drop Roblox. Since making that game outlawed in my house, our instances of viruses/malware have dropped from seemingly all the time to (knock on wood) haven't seen one in well over a year.

I bought the 65" version of this TV back on Prime Day earlier this year (for $350 I think?). I had rather tempered expectations obviously, but for $350... I will say that streamed 4K media is nice from my seating position of right about 8 to 10 ft away. Viewing angle hasn't been an issue in a rather wide room. Likewise, lack of smart features wasn't an issue as I picked up a 4K Roku Premiere. Couldn't care less about the speakers as it's connected to a home theater receiver and some big old school Klipsch KGs. Weighs less than the 42" Plasma I moved into the bedroom. My only gripe thus far is that the black uniformity is really, really bad, though I don't notice it unless I'm looking at a really dark image on the screen and even then pretty much only when its a blank screen really. I'll try and take a picture later and post if I remember. In regular viewing, like watching football, or movies, or my 12 yr old hooked his PC to it to play minecraft in 4K (from 3 feet away), or my wife streaming Once Upon a Time, it does a pretty darn impressive job. Again, as I've preached for years, I think I would be just as impressed from a 65" 1080P, but as I couldn't get one of those cheaper than this one, I guess we'll never know. RTings hasn't tested Sceptre TVs unfortunately...

If you're done with that plasma, can I have it? I took a shot on Prime Day on a 65" 4K Sceptre from Walmart for $350. I know the WCG is lacking and HDR is weak, but for $350...come on. (shrug) I still don't have much 4K material to watch at this point (I think it's precisely one movie), so it's mostly just a big 1080P for me, and it's doing the job just fine. Thanks for the reminder on the freezer, I need to get one of those too.

Daddy made the switch from Apple to Android (Samsung Galaxy Note 10) a few wks ago so I need a new smart watch. Let's see a Fossil Sport for $99.99. Also looking to replace the head unit in the 2017 Chevy Traverse we just bought a week ago that has a touch screen radio touting Bluetooth THAT DOESN'T STREAM BLUETOOTH AUDIO!!!!! Why is that even a thing??? That's like buying a car and then learning after the fact that the gas tank is only 3 gallons big. I'd like to smack whoever the Chevy bean counter was who decided skimping on the bluetooth was a great idea.

To be sure, yea, which LG TV? The TV will have upscaling capability built in. Sometimes the TV does it better than the BluRay player, sometimes not. Hard to say. If you intend on buying 4K movies from now on, then that's a good reason to buy a 4K BluRay player. But I wouldn't buy one just for the upscaling unless I learned that a particular 4K BluRay player did a noticeably better job upscaling than the TV. One thing I keep in mind is that Sony developed BluRay, so technically, no one should do it better. But that's not always the way it plays out. The Samsung seems to be quite capable and does a nice job upconverting, but it is last years model and doesn't do Dolby Vision. - https://www.avforums.com/review/samsung-ubd-m9500-4k-ultra-hd-blu-ray-player-review.13705 The Sony ones are supposed to have Dolby Vision support (via firmware update) and seem to be well liked on avsforum. Looks like the LG does 3D (if you're into that), but also doesn't have Dolby Vision and may not have streaming abilities, but if you're streaming either through the TV or Roku or something else, that's probably not an issue.

Oh dang! That's a top notch TV. How's it look? Amazon has it for about the price of a Costco membership more in case you don't have a Costco near you. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B079TSV11D?tag=rtings-tv-ph11a-20&ie=UTF8

Don't want to get too off-topic here, but the thing is, none of us make it out of this life alive. So it was a good reminder to be thankful for the love in my life now and to do what I can to grow and spread that love. I got lucky and caught it and got to the hospital very early. I've had some really strange other health issues since that they're working to chase down, but life is good. ...Now back to your regularly scheduled Black Friday Television programming.

Close. Heart attacks suck. Pay attention to your health people. True, so buy two just in case. XD You talking about the front page one? If its the same screen as the one RTings tested...(https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/toshiba/amazon-fire-tv-2018) - very VERY narrow viewing angle - brightness isn't terrible, but it's less than you'd want in a main use TV, especially in a bright room - Lack of Wide Color Gamut is a bummer, but not surprising at this price point - lack of WCG means HDR is pretty much useless - it might be able to interpret the signal, but it only has the 24 crayon box to reproduce the picture, not the 64 crayon box - But as a 43" 4k monitor (pretty much like 4 22" 1080P monitors without the borders), it could be really interesting...

If you're honestly worried about getting a quality set, don't bother with anything that doesn't have a good rtings.com review. But if you're just looking for a big TV to put on the wall to impress the neighbors, go ahead and grab that door buster. Seriously, there are a ton of technological advances going on in TVs these days and its really hard to know which TVs are actually better than others. - Wide color gamut - High dynamic range - Quantum dot blacks - 4k - refresh rates ...and more. Rtings will set you straight if you're really worried about it. But in the end, chances are you can get something that will really make you feel good about yourself pretty cheap this Black Friday. Have you seen the Sceptre 65" 4K set at Walmart already available for $400??? https://www.walmart.com/ip/Sceptre-65-Class-4K-Ultra-HD-2160P-LED-TV-U650CV-U/48874705?u1=&oid=223073.1&wmlspartner=RjWYtCqO0*M&sourceid=32857873014015026907&affillinktype=10&veh=aff The brightness is on the low side, but not the lowest I've seen. The contrast is also on the low side. But 65" for under $400...come on now...and it says it's 10 bit!