H_Hancock

I don't know where the information was gotten by the sales-lackies you talked to, but Microsoft has a firm date of January 31, 2008 as its closing date for Windows XP availability....NOT in two weeks. Methinks your chain was being pulled or they were either sadly misinformed or just trying to hype sales of XP. XP should and will be available until the end of January.... Microsoft's Windows Life-Cycle...OEM and Retail License Availability (end date) If you can get a license, you can get XP.....simple as that. And as for Vista and being stuck with it....Microsoft has always offered a downgrade option on some versions of Vista to XP; it's just been rather convoluted and difficult to utilize. Now, apparently, Microsoft has bent to public opinion and has started making it easier to downgrade to XP from Vista.....as long as you have Vista Business or Ultimate....Vista Home version users are stuck with Vista. http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=9027 A snipet from the above linked article:

Started BF'ing in earnest in 1986 when the sales were, not secret, but not well attended. So, guess this begins my third decade of BF'ing. Took 6 years, but finally got the BF bug to bite my wife and now she gets into the preplanning for the "big day," as it were. :) Oh, and I found this site from Anandtech when GD was opened and its opening was "announced" at AT.

We primarily electronics shop first and that means Best Buy first, again. Tried Circuit City a couple of years ago, but they were horribly disorganized and had to deal with those damned rebates to get the cheap prices. Since BB ended their rebates almost entirely on their doorbusters a couple of years ago, we end up there now first.....hate rebates.....and this BB is so well organized and the staff there goes out of their way to make what could easily turn out be a rather unpleasant experience into one that you can at least tolerate brings me back to that store year after year. When we finish at BB, we hit Sears......jewelry, clothes, etc. Wal-Mart....an afterthought every year. We stop by one half way between our house and the BB we frequent (the BB is 2 hours from us), and every year this Wal-Mart still has almost all its doorbusters still in stock at 1-2PM.....well, everything but laptops and computers. Last year, LCDs and plasmas were a big craze, as they probably will be again this year. This Wal-Mart had pallets of all their doorbuster LCDs left at 2PM. Probably won't be any different this year, either.

This year starts my third decade doing Black Friday sales....I began BF'ing in earnest in 1986. I've noticed that the time to show up was fairly consistent until this decade when the 'net began spreading the word out so much.....now every year the time to show up in line gets earlier and earlier. Two years ago, I tried midnight and ended up 35th at BB and 9th at CC (wife and I split stores when we have to.) Last year we concentrated on BB.....I arrived at 11AM on Thursday.....couldn't stand it any longer and finally gave in and drove the 2 1/2 hours it takes to get to BB from our house out in the sticks. I was first by a long shot.......but living so far out it's either go or suffer. This year....really depends upon what's on sale and where. Fry's, Microcenter both are over 3 hours away, and while both have good sales, their two stores they have in ATL are both in poor locations and I wouldn't trust either to have my wife sit outside any of their locations, which is why we usually bypass both stores. BB, though, is in a much better location.....nice shopping area in Augusta, GA.....and is usually where we end up. This is especially compounded by the fact that Sears, CC, CompUSA are all within a mile or so of BB. So makes it very easy to hit CUSA at midnight and return to BB....and then hit Sears after BB opens. Add to this that BB has stopped the rebate idiocy on almost all their BF items, and BB becomes an easy choice every year for us. But this year, looking at Wednesday evening for show-up time. Personally, I don't have a problem with being too early....it's too late that drives me insane. Was first in line at BB last year and intend to replicate that this year. Wife thinks I'm crazy, but I think it's fun and I'm willing to put up with the lonely hours in front of the store. And being first does have its rewards......become the de facto line marshal during the wee hours of the night. And you have first crack at every single ticketed item that's a doorbuster.....and at least our BB we frequent has no policy on limits on doorbuster tickets other than one ticket per item per person....so you can have as many different ticketed items as you want, just one of each. I just love BF!!! :)

You know..........I've heard that they do that, like CC does, too, and CompUSA and Newegg and such. But personally, I've never ever had to pay a restocking fee to return anything anywhere, and I've returned stuff to everywhere under the sun. After years of buying, one cannot but help buy things that don't work or you find out it was the wrong thing. I do personally think the restocking fees come into play according as to how the customer approaches the return. I've seen people, and esp. younger people, approach the return desk with something like a chip on their shoulder before the transaction even begins, almost wanting a confrontation. My best guess.....treat the customer service counter worker like dirt or an adversary and you'll get exactly what you give. Case in point.....had a gift card from BB last year. Didn't really want anything but wife needed a new chair so we bought one.....and were told there would be a restocking fee to return by the teenager who helped get the box off the top shelf. It rightly sucked as far as seating so it went back......and no restocking fee. We were nice to them from the beginning and they returned the favor.......through all three chairs we took home and returned. Eventually bought something else entirely different and the chair from OD. So, despite the stores saying they ALL charge restocking fees, most rarely seem to follow through unless you're a complete butthead towards the staff. That's from our personal experience and from many of our friends. I guess being older and more patient and polite does have its advantages instead of treating the situation as an entitlement situation.

We've been fans of Sterns & Foster mattresses for years now. Cannot comment on Serta because Sterns is all we have in the house.......and love them all!

The ad states this about the coupon: "Coupons are first come, first served. Limit one (1) coupon per item. Limit one (1) coupon total per household. Coupons will be distributed - until gone - to customers in the line prior to store opening, or in order of entering the store. Coupons must be redeemed by 3 p.m. on 12/26/06." This is in small print just below the PowerSpec 6655 desktop computer's picture.

The next big TV sale will be the week or two preceeding the Super Bowl....not after. :)

I'd think the same thing.......with your tuner acting up and you've had it 8 days, I would think replacing it, even without an extended warranty, should be the first thing they consider doing.

Great pics!!! Wish we'd had that many shopping carts to work with at our BB, though. We used what carts BB left outside to make essentially a barricade for the people in line to prevent line crashers. We used the carts like this: We started a line of carts between the entrance and exit doors straight out until they were even with the concrete pilings, then turned the line of carts down the front of the store, parallel to the store, on the outside of the concrete pilings. Left plenty of space for walking, chairs, whatever, but absolutely prevented the parking-lot late-comers from crashing the line at 4AM. If you go to the link below, you can see in one of the pictures, and I know they're small, sort of what we did with the carts. Sorry, I didn't think to take pics. In one or two of the video interviews, you can see the line of carts we used.....just too bad we didn't have as many as y'all did. :) http://www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/4752916.html

Have to agree with that....the links in a lot of cases refused to load for me, too. Had to do the exact same thing and strip out the referrer link to get the link to load the correct page. Other than that, your site was excellent!!! Cannot thank all of you for all your great and tireless work during this season and year. Thank you!!

We avoid buying anything with rebates because of some rebate houses just rejecting for no reason, having to "give" the money to the store to use for months before returning it....sort of like an interest-free loan on my part to them, etc. In our experience, OM was always the worst with denying rebates for any reason at all, usually incorrectly. But, our local OM manager always made good on any rebate submitted and rejected. But OM rebates were just too much of a problem to continue to use them. The stores with the best rebates, at least for us, always had been Best Buy and Circuit City. CompUSA did pretty well, too. Staples was usually good with theirs and OD was fair at best. TigerDirect was and is dismal at fulfilling theirs. Fry's usually comes through with theirs but can be slow as molasses in winter. Had never been turned down by BB or CC on a rebate. But since most of BB's products the last two years are without rebates, we prefer to shop there despite the fact that the product may be a few dollars more. I'd rather pay a little more up front instead of waiting months for a rebate that may be rejected, have to be resubmitted, etc. Rebating is just not worth the problems anymore.

We bought one for my wife's father's Christmas present. Opened it, ran it through its XP setup screens, put his name and such in it, charged up the battery and repacked it last night. Worked quite well....played a 007 DVD I had to check out the player and screen....looked good. Should be quite nice for him. BTW.....how were the Atlanta BB's this year and which one did you go to? We did the Augusta, GA BB again this year and had a great time....best run Best Buy we've ever been to. But I've always wanted to go to the Fry's off Pleasant Hill Rd. on BF and have the wife do the BB right there, too. Just wondered if you know how safe the BB there really is.

Actually, if you need todo a recovery on HP/Compaq computers from the recovery partition, you hit F11 until the recovery program runs. The recovery program reformats the "C" partition then reinstalls the OS and all originally loaded software....basically reimages the hard drive back to its original shipping state.

Quite right.........and neither did they have the equipment necessary to analyze the Cell processor in any form or fashion. You're right..............his post was one of the funniest I've read in days!!! Anywhere!!

I suppose the out-of-stockness is regional. I just put it in my cart and am at the commit to charging my credit card screen.....no mention of it being OOS.

Sorry, but since the Turion and Turion X2 cpus use more power than Core Solos and Core Duos, the battery life will be a bit longer in the Intel machines. Without a doubt, the Core Duo is the battery-life champ. With two processor cores, two megabytes of Level 2 cache, and the ability to streamline operations, it balances raw power with extensive battery life. Toss in an Intel-made Wi-Fi radio and an Intel chipset, and the Core Duo is part of the Centrino Duo triad. Intel's Centrino Duo mobile platform (previously codenamed Napa) comprises the Core Duo (Yonah) processor, the PRO/Wireless 3945ABG wireless networking module and the 945 Express chipset. Running at up to 2.16GHz, Core Duo notebooks run rings around the competition, and many offer over four hours of battery life. Intel's Core Solo processor is very similar to the Core Duo, however, it uses single as opposed to dual processor cores. This results in decreased raw performance, but it also means that the chip consumes less power -- 5.5-27W compared to the Core Duo's 15-31W. The Core Solo runs at speeds of up to 1.83GHz The Turion 64 X2 is the Core Duo's main competitor. Like Intel's version, it offers two processor cores for increased performance whilst multi-tasking. It also boasts AMD's PowerNow! power management technology, which AMD says can extend system battery life by up to 65%. Built-in anti-virus protection is included, and the processor comes in speeds up to 2GHz. Its power consumption is slightly higher than that seen on Core Duo processors, and ranges between 31 and 35 watts. The Turion 64 is a cut-down version of the Turion 64 X2. It offers all of the same features as the X2, but like Intel's Core Solo, only includes a single processor core. Its power consumption ranges between 25 and 35 watts, with speeds up to 2.4GHz.

True, Toshiba, thankfully, still provides a recovery disc with their computers. But more and more of them are using a recovery partition on the hard drive and a program allowing you to burn one set of recovery discs from that partition. I remember HP doing this years ago, the first to start this I believe. Now, more and more manufacturers are following suit as it is a cost-savings measure.....it's much cheaper to slap a program into their HD image suite of programs and image them over and over to all the hard drives being installed in the computers vs. having to invest in CD or DVD burning machines and burning thousands and thousands of discs to include with the machines. While one machine's cost to include a disc is probably less than a dollar, after 100K are done, the savings add up.

J_Man, I do understand time is money. I usually don't mind paying retail for what I want now. I also understand the concept of throwing away a day for a few bucks, but in my case, we ended up, considering retail pricing at the best we could find the month or so before BF, over $1200 with what we purchased on BF. So, the lining up was worth it....at least I feel that way, at about $100/hr. As for why? That is hard to answer, but here's what I managed to get out of people. And I think it's a lot to do with this and other BF sites and their exposure, actually. One thing was the internet and sites like this. Brad, Ross, and others at other sites have been promoting these sites on various media outlets for the last two years. While the various stores had their ads leaked on the internet for a few years longer than GottaDeal, BFads, etc. existed, they were in areas rarely visited by the internet-illiterate. You had to know where to go to find them....and where they were wasn't in mainstream areas. Now, though, CNN, CBS, newspapers, etc., all are touting the BF madness and the fact that this site and others have the leaked ads for viewing up to weeks before BF.....and every Tom, Dick, Harriet, and Susan with a computer and internet connection can now see what is on sale and plan. So, why do I think the BF sites are a major factor in the lines becoming longer earlier? Take this site...it's been up for now, three BF seasons, starting in '04. The first year it got little media exposure and was only really known to forum surfers "in the know," so to speak. The lines at BB, CC, etc. didn't start forming until their usual 2-3AM, like in the years before then....if you showed up at midnight, you were lonely until 2-3AM. Last year, the second year of these sites, they began to get more mainstream media exposure. Their registered member list began to grow and a lot more visitors began cruising them. I showed up at BB and CC at midnight, early I thought, only to find at BB we were going to be 25-30th in line, and CC had about 7 people in line. (Our CC is never as popular as BB.) This year, the websites for BF began to be heavily exposed on the mainstream media outlets. My midnight arrival, while a bit late last year, would have put me over 100th in line at BB.....CC, on the other hand, maybe had 25 people in line then, but again, an increase. Asking people how they found out about the sales, GottaDeal, BFAds, and the other websites promoting ad scans, were mentioned time and again. But, considering many of the items given as doorbusters are essentially the same as they were for years in the past and at similar prices, I just don't think it was the laptops or desktops that were bringing them out.....it was the exposure to the excitement and the volume of people who were viewing these sites that drove people out earlier and earlier each year. So, while Brad, et al, have enjoyed a dramatic increase in traffic and popularity in their sites, the increased exposure has also had a dramatic effect on lines and when the form. And while media exposure about BF has increased, most exposure seems to be in response to sites like this and their increasing use and growing membership. So the sites are growing off their media exposure as more and more mainstream people find out about them, and the hype and such in the postings on these sites affect an increasing number of people each year.......and most figure out, correctly, that with the limited numbers of items available, it would behoove them to get out early. And it has. So maybe while these sites are great and all, their popularity is a double-edged sword. They are at least somewhat responsible for what we see as the increasing insanity on BF, and maybe more than a little responsible.

Well, tell you what. After suffering a Thanksgiving north of Saigon in 1972, raining, mud everywhere, and such company of people to enjoy the meal with (including those that kept plinking us about every 5 mins. with random shots), then you'd understand why eating in front of Best Buy with a group of people sharing a delightful experience of waiting, with my wife, is vastly better than most of what I had as a teenager. Actually, I probably had a better Thanksgiving experience, despite eating in front of BB, than the vast majority of the world that day.........considering what is happening in so many various locations in the world (war, famine, strife, etc.), I counted myself lucky to be able to do what I did with the people I did it with.

Fairly comparable notebooks....the Turion cpu isn't quite as fast a cpu as the Core Solo, will definitely use more battery power while running, but in the end you'd probably not notice the speed difference at all. The battery life, maybe. Otherwise, nice it already has a GB of RAM, same type screen, same DVD burner, etc. Fair deal, I'd suppose.

True, there are some good deals all year, but BF just happens to coincide with our work bonuses and Christmas Clubs arriving a week before, so we have the extra blow money just then. Add to that the fun to be had in a nice line....one where the people act like adults and not petty, spoiled children as some of the posts lead me to believe happens, and you can have a good experience. I have yet to see a 32" LCD HDTV for $480, or a 22" LCD monitor under $200, or a 250GB WD MyBook external hard drive ANYWHERE for $70, or the Canon MP160 all-in-one printers for $20. Or the Linksys $20 wireless-g router. The laptop deals......well, you can slam the Toshiba $249 deal all you want. But it was only $250. The $380 HP was a very good deal.....everywhere I've been looking for a similarly spec'd laptop runs $680 and up, so $380 is quite a deal. Now, it's true that the doorbuster items tend to be lower-end products that they can sell for a price that will be guaranteed to draw a crowd, but if one is realistic about what one is getting for the money, there is nothing to regret or be down about. I read about how little people that wait in line for this stuff actually save if compared to working....but I've been off all this week, with pay, so had absolutely nothing planned. I did get my Thanksgiving turkey dinner, but it was delivered piping hot by my wife as I sat in line....was nice, actually. So I spent into the four figure range, but figure I saved about as much as I spent. Figured out per hour and I saved more per hour than I make per hour at work, so I do not regret for one second the time I spent in line this year, last year, any year, nor the time I shall spend in line next year. Oh, if you haven't noticed, I do take BF seriously and do almost all of my X-Mas shopping on this day and save a ton of money to boot. So I shall always camp out for the doorbusters until I'm too old to handle the cold, and at 52, that time is far from happening yet.

Well, he is correct, partly at least, in that HP/Compaq at least do not include recovery discs with your computer. On the other hand, when you first boot the PC, the machine will ask if you want to burn a set of recovery discs. HP/Compaq has a program they load that will burn one set of recovery discs from its "secret" hidden recovery partition. My Best Buy wanted $58 to burn the discs....I did it this morning for the cost of 3 blank DVDs and some time. What a bargain!!

Unless another store comes up with something spectacular, it's back to Best Buy for us.

What didn't I get this BF? Sleep! I camped BB from 11:30AM on Thursday......got home at 9:15AM Friday. I was up at 5AM on Thursday (my usual waking time....I wake up at 5AM every morning for work and do the same on weekends. Darned routine!!!). So, I was up for about 29 hours over Thursday-Friday. Dang, I'm still tired! But it was fun and worth it!!!