len_mullen

Good consumers are always shopping...buying is another thing. I maintain a list of things I am interested in purchasing including recent good prices, reviews, and other thoughts. This allows me to pounce on a good deal with out hesitation or reservation. For example, I am an OTA-first cord cutter. We have DVRs on all of our televisions. I had thoroughly researched DVRs in 2010 when we cut the cord and decided on the DTVPal. Last summer, a couple of the Pals started acting flaky. They were no longer available, so I engaged in a new research activity. I decided to buy the DVR+ mostly because the TiVo had a monthly fee and very high TCO. In May, they offered the TiVo Roamio OTA with Lifetime for $300 and I bought two. I have purchased low risk gifts in January for a birthday or holiday later in the year. Worst thing that happens is that you surprise someone with an unexpected gift.

I think it does. I have only ever had a Prime account for a few months here and there for free trials or because it came with a device. Right now, I have Netflix, but I have been looking for something better for five years I don't have a strong preference for the Roku or Fire TV user interface. Fire TV puts your most used apps right at the top of the screen and Roku lets you put the tiles in whatever order you like. Don't care for the ads on the Roku, but it's not a big deal. As far as content goes, Roku has better news content, but the Fire TV has an amazing collection of games and can use standard controllers (I use wired xbox controllers),

just noticed this is my eleventh BF on these forums and that my tenth anniversary is just around the corner (Member Since Oct 20, 2005). Time flies!

Are you looking for free content, to subscribe to Netflix or Amazon Prime, or to buy/rent from services like Vudu?

Virtually every device streams something -- it's not uncommon for televisions and BD players to stream the major services. Since you own one of the early Rokus, you probably have a good idea of how you feel about the Roku specific apps (channels). You may be interested to know that Fire TV has surpassed Roku in number of available apps (both in the thousands). Fire TV has a lot of really good games and supports a number of standard controllers. Are you a cable subscriber? Thinking of changing that? If so, you may want to check out Sling TV.

I think you mean Sager: http://www.sagernotebook.com/

^^ a mini in the bedroom. Everyone has one, no one admits it

I always check in before the end of August. This should be an interesting Christmas shopping season. People have been talking about all the drones being imported. Is this on anyone's shopping list? Is anyone still shopping for PCs? Windows 10 is supposed to boost performance 20-30% on the same hardware. I haven't felt that, but I haven't played any games since upgrading. Amazon is supposed to release a new streamer. Apple too. Anyone care? Anyone going to fork over $200 for Apple TV? Is this the year of wearables? Anyone shopping for an iWatch? I think we are going to be talking about TV again this year. With the demise of plasma and 4k hitting its stride, we might see some really irresistible deals. Looks like there may be a new TiVo lineup coming for Christmas. I expect to see eye popping 4k demos in the stores as well as 4k discs and players. Cord cutters may want to check into the TiVo OTA RIGHT NOW as TiVo is offering one for $300 with lifetime service. Last year Channel Master put their DVR+ on sale for $175 shipped. Expect that again this year and look for Sling TV on that box as well. Anyone shopping for a new phone? Nothing exciting in the mobile arena except that data is getting cheaper and contracts are going away. We switched from Verizon to AT&T last BF. Got three new phones, $150 credit per line, 15g of shared data, and rollover minutes for $140/month plus the cost of the phones. I have to go work on my haiku!

I see you are in Massachusetts. I am in Southern New Hampshire. Where were you shopping?

I went shopping tonight. It was my first visit to a retail store since Black Friday. I was thinking about waiting until Monday out of fear of the Super Saturday crowds. I need not have concerned myself with that. I parked within two rows of the door of each store I visited. I was all but alone at Staples. Wal-mart was not busy. Kohls was the only store I visited that had lines at the registers. Of course all of their stuff was on sale, everyone got 30% off sales prices if they paid with a kohls card and everyone got 20% kohls cash plus 10% in rewards. Seriously, I wonder how long it will be before they pay me to take their stuff! I doubt this is going to be the 'best christmas season in years' -- I suspect when the counting is done 2014 will prove to be a disappointment. Is this just Southern New Hampshire or are others seeing the same?

Watching oil and gas prices this fall, part of me thinks we should all stay home next year. If we simply boycotted next November, I think we would all have a merrier Christmas as desperate retailers slashed prices in December. Can I get a show of hands of all who are willing to stay home next November?

I'll start. We bought three iPhones from the AT&T store. We also bought three iPhone cases, two BD players, and eight BDs from Best Buy and I ordered three DVR+ DVRs from Channel Master. Most of our money was spent on the phones, which was a B&M purchase. The DVRs were purchased online. The stuff bought at BB was all ordered online with the phone cases being picked up and everything else delivered. I spent $0 and Amazon, Wal-mart, Kohls, or Target and I actually forgot to go to RadioShack to buy that UAV.

The Bonus Question is a short essay! If you spent more than $100, $500, or $1000 on one item or in one store, tell us where and on what you spent that money. For the item, I don't care if you bought ten of an item and for the store, I don't care if you spent $1000 combines from Thursday through Monday -- I'm just trying to pick out the winners.

People have been speculating that lower gas prices would revive the economy. They haven't checked the prices on eggs, milk, and ground beef, I guess. Besides, people who can spend freely already have two of everything, there is nothing new out there, and BF sale prices were, in general, not much different than any other sale price. My big spend this week was to change carriers and buy a bunch of iphones. I got some accessories for those phones, a couple of BD players, some BDs, some DVRs, and a coffee maker. No TVs, no computers, no video game consoles, no tablets. I sensed less enthusiasm here as well as well as a lot of contempt for Thursday Openings, Black Ten Days, Black Month, and other expansions of Black Friday. It will be interesting to see how things go today and whether the Big Sales start this month.

The problem with Wednesday is that people work.

I would like to see 6:00am openings on Thanksgiving. Go out and do a little shopping, come home and start the dinner, watch some football, and get to bed early.

I was in the Wal-mart in Plaistow New Hampshire Thanksgiving around 7:00pm. The parking lot was full and they were letting people in 20 at a time as 20 came out. There was a steady flow of merchandise through the exit doors. From chatting with people in line, I can tell you that many were from Massachusetts where Blue Laws prohibit Thanksgiving openings. They came a good distance to participate. This was in the midst of a major blackout that saw 200,000 300,000 families without power Thanksgiving and Black Friday. (I stopped in to Wal-mart while getting gas for my generator.) A lot of people DO enjoy Thanksgiving openings. No doubt about that. This definitely dilutes BF sales. So does the early shopping. One of the reasons BF came to be is that families received their Christmas Club checks in November. Before there were sales, there were consumers trying to get their shopping done on the last long weekend before Christmas. With the introduction of layaway and credit cards, the arrival of the Christmas Club checks has become less important. That's OK with me. I got what I wanted without standing in line (I didn't want anything at Wal-mart).

I stopped into Wal-mart Thursday night and they were managing the number of people in the store and access to the door busters nicely. Didn't buy anything. I stopped into Staples around noon Saturday. They said they were not very busy at all at opening. I didn't get anything there except for some stationary products not on sale. Market Basket (local grocer), the Verizon Store, and the AT&T Store were all very busy. Of course, a lot of us lost power Wednesday night, so that may have influenced spending/shopping priorities for BF.

Got three DVR+ DVRs from Channel Master this morning. $175 plus free shipping with the addition of Pandora, YouTube and other new features was pretty irresistible. It's a great deal for OTA'ers who balk at TiVo prices and commitments.

I went in Wal-mart last night. I was driving past the store a little before 7:00pm and things were busy. I decided to take a peek since there was no line at the door. There was no line because the front doors were locked and everyone was coming in through a side entrance. The line was entering the store twenty at a time as people departed twenty at a time. The gatekeeper assured me that anyone in line before 7:00 would get the guaranteed items, so I made my way into the store. He lied. I walked around and saw people already queued up for the 8:00pm items. They marked the queues with balloons. The whole event was pretty well organized though a little too busy for me, so I left empty handed.

Please post your zip code and both good and bad carriers. This would be a really good crowd source project.

We lost power yesterday. I have a generator. On a whim, I plugged in my ONT and guess what -- we have internet. This morning, I started going through my email and found a note from Best Buy saying their door busters were live online, so I hopped in and purchased the Sony - Smart 3D Wi-Fi Built-In Blu-ray Player (Model: BDPS5200/SKU: 3416003) for $59.99. I got this for my brother whose BD player crapped out just last week. If you are in the hunt for a BD player or even a streamer, you should take a look at this. My favorite thing that distinguishes this from a Roku or Fire TV is that it has an inactivity time. If I fall asleep watching a movie, the player shuts off after the movie and my tv shuts off when the player shuts off. Here is a review of a similar model which I own and love... https://freetvforme.wordpress.com/2014/10/04/sony-bdp-s5100-review/ Detailed specs here. Review of this model here. This is the same price via Amazon and Sony.com. I chose to purchase from BB via ShopDiscover for the cash back (5% + 5%).

I'm sure you will get this before Christmas. They know why you are ordering this week.

You can compare the components, but that is a lot of work and not particularly helpful if you do not understand how the components impact performance. There is no 'best' laptop. By definition, the laptop is a compromise. If you get a faster cpu or gpu or a larger screen, battery life goes down and price goes up. The best laptop for gaming is a desktop. A $100 gpu will perform better than most mobile gpus. You can run things fast and hot because there is no constraint on the power available to heat things up and cool things down. If you want a laptop, the first step is to determine required specs. You do this by making a list of the recommended specs for each application you want to run. The highest spec in the list for each characteristic (memory, cpu, gpu) except for disk or storage which is the sum of all requirements. Then it's simply a matter of comparing the specs of a laptop to your list. If you are mostly interested in running one app well (minecraft), google the word minecraft plus the model of the laptop. Chance are someone has posed the question, "Can this laptop run this app," and someone who has tried has responded. Generally, if you want to play games on a laptop, you are going to have to get a laptop with discrete graphics. For those, google the graphics chip plus minecraft to see how things go. For basic gaming, A8/A10 based configurations do better because they have better integrated GPUs.

I think that the general consensus is that a laptop with dedicated graphics is the best bet. Here are some recommendations and explanations... http://www.toplaptopreview.com/good-and-best-laptops-for-minecraft/ As for brand, I think a $300 Lenovo is more like a $300 HP than a $700 Lenovo. The most expensive laptop I have purchased was an HP -- had it serviced twice under warranty. I get a lot of Acers. I had one of these serviced twice under warranty. Specs, aesthetics, and price matter more than brand.