dissident

results are not surprising, people are basically voting on the place they went to first. Since I only went to wal mart, and had a pleasant experience, I can say that I'll do wally world again next year.

The HP laptops are selling for more on ebay then the toshibas from best buy... for me, I would rather have a longer battery life and efficiency in my laptop then speed... I'm so glad I ended up at the nice, warm super wal mart with their bathrooms and food to buy and eat while waiting to get the HP.. I love this thing... it does everything I need for the price, and really has a nice look to it as well... black in the inside, a nice grey on the outside... to me the toshiba was ugly looking. I like the full year warrenty on the HP as well. I'm sure they were both fine laptops though. It's dell that I've always been more skeptical with. My favorite games are old NES, SNES, N64, and PS1 roms, so I'm in heaven really with this lappy.

yep, I'll go to the same wal-mart I went to this year, around the same time, pending the store stays open all night like this year.

wal-mart was great... I'm glad best buy ended up being so full and I ended up with that HP... in hindsight it seems like the better of the two models for what I'm using it for, the basics.. better processor, better battery life, one year warrenty, and much better looking, not to mention there were more in stock and the store was open all night.

spent $575 379 laptop 400 with tax 100 tv with tax 75 .. misc stuff.. with tax

that would make me angry if a large group of people came in ahead of me later that night because of one person saving their spot... I wouldn't allow it.. after hearing these stories I'll stick to wal mart supercenters that remained open all night I think. Seems like the more hardcore a person is, the more likely they are to pull this crap of allowing 5 "friends" into the line later that night just because....

left at 10 PM, got home at 6AM

thanks to the sweet young lady who was working the 4PM to 5AM shift at best buy in sioux falls who kept her cool during all the madness. :)

50 of them... sioux falls, sd........ I decided to drive to the wal-mart supercenter a couple miles north of Best Buy... got there around 11:30 to find that is was open all night and somewhat busy but mostly normal shoppers from the night before... it got quieter and was quite calm around 12:30 AM, and there was no line for the 50 laptops they had selling for $379, so I decided to do some shopping for normal items then wait in my car a bit. Around 1:45 I went back in and the first couple people were in line, so I decided to get in queue. The casher who was working a 4PM to 5AM shift and had been there all night told us we could pull up some folding chairs, so we did and the first 5-10 of us created a blockade on one side of the asile and the line formed back in electronics. People were coming in at a slow pace until about 3:30, when they really started to come in at larger numbers. At around 3:45 to 4 was when the line for the laptops was finally full. For the next hour you had some furious women that would abandon their carts and walk off when they heard all the laptops were accounted for (around 4:15 they issued numbers to everyone to prevent skipping.. I was number 2) ... it was fun watching the madness as I waited for 5 to roll around. Got my laptop, a 23 inch TV, and left... I'm laying in bed using my new laptop to post this...

same here, need a 512 module of DDR for my wallie world laptop, cheap... will keep my eyes opened.

after doing the wal mart thing I love it, if the supercenter remains opened all night, I survey the area, and plan my strategy, kind of like war games. Not all wal marts are good for this though, but in our store all the pallets were marked with their contents... they were not wrapped in black, it was merely cardboard covering with stickers displaying what the items were... employees were guarding all key items and individual lines formed for the bigger items (laptops, mp3 players, and computer systems were all behind counters handed out by associates) nothing was ripped into, and there were security guards in the parking lot too... I know where I'm going next year... I found a supercenter that has it's act together.

yep mines the same. Once I uninstalled the junk and disabled the useless xp services it ran alright, though I'll be using opera on it until I get more ram because firefox uses too much ram. Great laptop! Ram is the bottleneck, but that's easy to fix.

yeah, the wal-mart supercenter route will be what I do from now on, as long as they leave them opened all night.

meh, how is wal-mart supposed to control shady and violent buyers? They handled it much better then circuit city did from what I've read. In our group we all kind of policed things and made sure nothing out of order happened... we acted like employees in a sense to help keep the peace...worked great. Letting the people in the store beforehand to survey things and form lines really is a much better idea then having them stampede in all at once with no idea where anything is. Our supercenter handled it well.. all things considering.

wouldn't change anything. Because of best buy being so crowded, I end up at a wal mart with 50 lap tops and plenty of time to shop before I get in line, and when I go get in line, I get a chair, television, and shopping cart to rest my head on... not to mention bathroom and food breaks because of a sense of family within our group... it was great.

$379 laptop at wal-mart 23 inch television wal-mart some other assorted non BF items. Wal-mart had some nice HD-LCD 15 inch televisions, 12 of them, along with about 30 of a lessor brand... was gonna nab a good one if there was any left after buying my laptop, but they were gone.. there were 10 or so lessor brands left when I got there around 5:10

I left for sioux falls at 10 and arrived at best buy around 10:45 only to find that there were already too many people in line to get a laptop, and keep in mind it was cold out, about 20 degrees or less. I guess by 8 already there were 10 to 15 in line. I decided to drive to the wal-mart supercenter a couple miles north of best buy... got there around 11:30 to find that is was open all night and somewhat busy but mostly normal shoppers from the night before... it got quieter and was quite calm around 12:30 AM, and there was no line for the 50 laptops they had selling for $379, so I decided to do some shopping for normal items then wait in my car a bit. Around 1:45 I went back in and the first couple people were in line, so I decided to get in queue. The casher who was working a 4PM to 5AM shift and had been there all night told us we could pull up some folding chairs, so we did and the first 5-10 of us created a blockade on one side of the asile and the line formed back in electronics. People were coming in at a slow pace until about 3:30, when they really started to come in at larger numbers. At around 3:45 to 4 was when the line for the laptops was finally full. For the next hour you had some furious women that would abandon their carts and walk off when they heard all the laptops were accounted for (around 4:15 they issued numbers to everyone to prevent skipping.. I was number 2) ... it was fun watching the madness as I waited for 5 to roll around. Got my laptop, a 23 inch TV, and left and here I am. :) How fun indeed. My first black friday. It seems that leaving the store opened kept things MUCH more orderly... people had time to prioritize which items they wanted and form lines distributed throughout the store instead of a mad rush at the door.

that's pretty sweet... so bb employees can get anything, they just have to wait a bit longer... interesting.

meh, if they wait in line like everyone else I have no problem. I was wondering more about the "inside deals" and them being reserved and taken before they even hit the line.

precisely... if they give out only 5 of the 10, I'll still get one...

has anyone ever been nearly first in line and not gotten a doorbuster because perhaps they were reserved by employees and their friends? Is there a chance that could ever happen? Say a best buy only has 10 laptops, seems to me they would have to sell at least 10 to customers at the door to avoid legal troubles, or am I wrong? Just wondering. :) happy thanksgiving

laptop, television...

both services have their flaws when it comes to music programming. XM's playlists are too obsecure and sirius well I'm convinced they just don't know what they're doing with playlists, as they'll play some songs 6 8 times a day while ignoring other popular songs completely.... I have sirius right now for the record, but only because I can't really get an FM station in out here.

I'll be going alone, plan to be near first in line... I'll be fine.. a bit cold perhaps... perhaps I'll sell some hand warmers... I've got 50 or so of them in the trunk... wear a few of them since it will be about 18 degrees out.

unless they open culvers at 5AM on black friday, probably Mcdonalds or nowhere.