Pnambic

The Chromecast is a little thumb sized device you plug into the HDMI port of the TV. Then you can use most any smartphone, tablet or laptop to "cast" stuff to the device and thus watch it on the TV. There are many Chromecast enabled apps to make it easy too. For example, Netflix has one. Just bring up the Netflix app on your smartphone, find the show you want to watch, tap the Chromecast icon and you watch it on your TV.

Try a $30 Chromecast.

I have several kids who have been playing Roblox and Minecraft for quite some time as well, and if you child stays in their own personal world, you'll be fine. But when/if you get into the multiplayer servers, I doubt the Black Friday door buster will be able to keep the frame rates at a decent level. But either way, I wish you luck.

The nice thing about tablets, is if you want the screen to appear bigger, just hold it closer to your face. Poof! Bigger screen!

Generally speaking, discrete graphics for a laptop (dedicated video card) will add several hundred dollars to the laptop all by itself. With project work, the saying is, "You can have cheap, fast or good....pick two." Well, with computers, it's now, "You can have cheap, fast(ish) or portable...pick two." There simply are no cheap laptops with dedicated graphics cards. That's the unicorn of the gaming world. Your suggestion from the BestBuy guy is pretty much right on point. If your kids are new to Minecraft, then a generic laptop with integrated graphics will get them started, but once they get sucked in (it'll take about 5 minutes...trust me), and they start joining these Pokemon worlds and Hunger Games worlds and all manner of other multi-player worlds, that integrated card is just not going to cut it.

Now that they don't have to compete with plasma, they're pushing all those 60hz LCD poc's as hard as they can.

The Beats were originally designed and built by Monster. Monster just bet the farm on getting big endorsements to sell them and got royally burned on the deal when Beats took the design and walked after Monster signed a ridiculously naive deal to get Dr. Dre's endorsement. Beats are fine headphones if that's the sound you're looking for, but they probably have the largest marketing budget by a healthy margin of any headphone company out there. Guess who pays for that? You do. Here's a good read and some good education on smart/stupid business deals depending on what side of the deal you're on. http://gizmodo.com/5981823/beat-by-dre-the-inside-story-of-how-monster-lost-the-world If what you want is to have people look at you as you're wearing your headphones and either say, "Wow, cool headphones man!" or, "Wow, did that person overpay or what?", then the Beats are your ticket. If you want the best bang for your buck, go audition some headphones by Sony or Sennheiser. I like the Klipsch Image ONE personally. (edit - Sony makes headphones from the $10 cheapies all the way up to the many hundreds of dollars studio reference ones. Look for a set of MDR-V6's.)

Despite several sites (KMart, Sears, TigerDirect) indicating that it has an "HD" screen, that Trio Stealth G4 has a rather low pixel count - consider it anti-retina. Technically, to be considered "High Definition", the screen should be able to display more than a million pixels (720P knocks on the door at about 920k pixels). The G4's 1024 x 600 (614k pixels) is woefully short of that. If I were you, I'd try hitting the store and laying eyes on it in person. I suspect that if reading is a primary purpose for the device, you may want to have a better screen to try and avoid wear and tear on your (or her) eyes. The processor is probably sufficient. The RAM is on the low end, but likely sufficient. I wouldn't consider anything less than 1GB RAM.

Woot just had some nice Klipsch bluetooth speakers a couple days ago. You just missed it. I like and trust JBL and Klipsch when it comes to speakers, but there's no substitute for listening to the speakers in person. I too would generally steer clear from Beats. You're paying to support a very large marketing department there... I might be tempted to try something like this as well... http://www.yugster.com/deals/63262-vizio-32-inch-home-theater-sound-bar-with-bluetooth

A "Retina" display is a marketing term that Apple uses to indicate the display has an exceptionally dense pixel density - generally above 300 pixels per square inch. Pixels are the little individual dots of color that make up the pictures we see on TV screens and tablets as well. We don't want to see dots, we want to see pictures. The more dots there are in a given space and the smaller they are, the harder it is for us to see them. It makes the images appear more "real". Apple's "Retina" concept means they've made the pixels small and dense enough that the average person shouldn't be able to see those individual dots from a normal viewing distance (a foot or so for phones or tablets). We're all familiar with HD resolutions, right? For example, 1080P? A true 1080P signal means the image is 1,920 pixels across and 1,080 pixels tall. A 1080P 20 inch screen displays the same number of pixels as a 1080P 50 inch screen. However, in some instances, bigger isn't always better. You'll be able to see pixels on the 50 inch screen from farther away than you would looking at the 20 inch screen. Now, Apple copyrighted the "Retina" name (they copyright everything they do and even lots of things they steal from other companies), but that doesn't mean they're the only company to make devices with really sharp screens. For example, the iPhone 6 Plus has a really awesome screen advertizing true 1080P (1920 x 1080) on a 5.5 inch screen. There's no denying, that's pretty awesome. That gives it a pixel density of about 401 pixels per square inch. However, one of the iPhone 6 Plus's biggest competitors, the Galaxy Note 4, has a 5.7 inch screen with a massive 2560 x 1440 resolution. That means it has an even higher pixel density (more than 500 pixels per square inch) and thus should sport an even sharper screen. So yes, a Retina screen is really nice, some might even say the bomb-diggity . But just because it says Retina on it doesn't make it the best.

My wife has been a long time Keurig fan. And since she buys all her Kcups from Green Mountain, they have replaced her brewer twice for free (once, it started making some terrible noise and no coffee would come out and the second time, the water pump stopped working). I'm a big fan of Keurig customer service.

Nintendo hasn't begun selling separate gamepads yet. It was something that was talked about, but for some reason it never happened. It would be SO awesome to have multiple gamepads for games like Madden. The WiiU can use the same controllers the original Wii used. So if you have those, they will work just fine.

My parents solved that by hiding gifts at the neighbor's house. He was a grumpy old guy so I avoided him at all costs as a kid. Dang my parents were smart... My uncle has 4 kids and he used to rent a small storage unit Nov and Dec. I think he told me that a lot of places run specials this time of year for exactly this where it was $1 for the first month and $30 for the second? Something like that anyway...

It has pretty good reviews on Amazon and was reportedly listed at $749 there two days ago, though I don't think anyone was successful ordering one before that price disappeared. (Accidental sneak peek maybe?) http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-UN55H6350-55-Inch-1080p-120Hz/dp/B00I94IPTW Here's more than 500 posts on it from people who really live and breathe this kind of stuff. http://www.avsforum.com/forum/166-lcd-flat-panel-displays/1524487-official-samsung-unxxh6350-owners-thread.html If you do score one, make sure to read this info on calibrating it. http://reviews.lcdtvbuyingguide.com/samsung-lcd-tv/samsung-h6350-picture-settings.html

http://www.cnet.com/news/buy-the-last-great-plasma-tv-while-you-still-can/

I was totally a skeptic, but all of my kids have loved (heck, probably still love) the Pokemon games. My twelve year old actually downloaded a song to his tablet recently that he was telling me was the soundtrack to one of his favorite scenes from one of his favorite Pokemon games. If your sons likes Pokemon, I can't see getting a tablet over a DS game system. A tablet can't do Pokemon....at least I don't think it can.... And we bought almost all of our Pokemon games from Gamestop used for between $10 and $20.

1.) Probably Walmart 2.) 90% online, 10% in store, both days probably, depending on the deals. 3.) You mean they haven't started already?

Beware, many stores offer price matching guarantees, but many of these stores expressly exclude Black Friday promotional prices. I remember being told this by managers at Target and BestBuy when I went to do the same thing. Circuit City DID price match for me, but look where that got them... You should check the details of their price matching promotion with a store manager.

Deodorant, people. Use it. Use it lots. A shower before heading to the line would be appreciated as well.

http://forums.gottadeal.com/topic/230805-official-black-friday-hdtv-discussion-thread/?do=findComment&comment=1269498

I just bought 7 packs of these for $7.99 ea. about two weeks ago. Using them as a floor in our tent.

My boys say playing Minecraft on the PC is a far better experience. The ability to access all kinds of custom servers and install mods and the like make the PC a better platform for the game. They'll have Skype running in the background so they can chat with their buddies and just go to town for as long as me and their mom will let them. So if all they want is to play Minecraft, I wouldn't get a console game system.

1. Alright! Who wants to conga? 2. Argh! My arms are stuck like this from 5 days of trying to keep people from cutting in line! 3. Five days waiting in line listening to Christmas music non-stop! I can't get it out of my head! Make it stop!!!

All DVD drives read CD's (so far as I know). You'll want to look at the suggested system requirements of the games you like to play in order to be sure to get a laptop with enough video capability to play those games. Pretty much any gaming these days, whether on a desktop or a laptop, requires a dedicated video card, so that it uses its own processor and own memory instead of sharing resources with the system proper. This is sometimes referred to as a "discrete" video card on laptops. And as a general rule, a "good" gaming laptop will cost several hundred dollars more than a "good" gaming desktop. An "awesome" gaming laptop will likely cost more than $1000 more than a comparable gaming desktop.

Alienware used to be all about the best components for the best performance, no matter the cost. But Since Dell bought them, they've basically become Dell's top end "gaming" division. Still nice computers, using good components, but they're more restricted to Dell parts bins now than using whatever was the best option on the market as they used to.