[NBLUG/talk] When to buy a laptop? Where's the "sweet spot" these days?

[William Tracy]

On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 9:12 AM, Steve S. <northbaygeek at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> @William - "Cyber Monday" (usually) beats "Black Friday", you say?
>

For Black Friday, the retail stores advertise a handful of
deeply-discounted "door buster" deals. There's usually a very limited stock
of those products on hand, and those all go to the people willing to camp
out overnight. The rest of the products in the store are rarely
discounted--and some retailers have actually been known to hike prices on
Black Friday to catch unwary buyers.

If the product you're interested in isn't advertised as on sale, it
probably won't be. If it is advertised as on sale, it will probably be out
of stock before you get there. (The big exceptions to the last one are
products that the stores have a big surplus of and are desperate to
move--you can usually recognize those as products that have consistently
bad reviews online!)

At least, that's the pattern I've seen so far, and I'm not eager enough to
brave the crowds to look for exceptions. If you have nothing better to do,
knock yourself out.

FWIW, though (RE camera's, an arena where I also geek):
> MSRP isn't really the relevant number to figure how steep the
> discount.


Agreed. I think I actually saved more like 20-30% off retail price. But 40%
off MSRP sounds better. :-)


>   (2) if the vendor really *IS*
> legit, buy it !
>

The camera in question is a Canon SX40HS, and I did go home and research it
before pulling the trigger. It's a good camera. :-)

Actually, that's a good piece of advice there for *any* electronics
purchase: Research before you buy!

William Tracy
afishionado at gmail.com
(408) 685-4819
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://nblug.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20141116/94030974/attachment.html>