The Slimmest Black Friday Ever
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Black Friday is a special time of year for geeks. It’s a holiday just for us; when governmental taxation policies force retail outlets to purge their stock or be penalized for not selling. It’s also generally the first day of the year that retail outlets start running into the black (i.e. making a profit). All our favorite whizmos and gadgets are on sale on the cheap. High end computer parts, stereo equipment, viewing screens, networking supplies, anime, movies, game consoles, and you name it are on sale for 50% off or more. It’s enough to make the geek in anyone shout: “VICTORY FOR ZIM!” Sometimes.
Unfortunately, this year, was generally a bust all around. And everyone I’ve talked to has said the same. Either that or they bought one thing for under $10 on sale and seemed content that waiting in line outside the store in the early morning was good enough.
This year I rounded up my little sister, and Online Editor Jon Neuneker and headed North to the once technological bastion of Fry’s Electronics. Because of us wanting to get some sleep, we didn’t arrive at the store until around 4 a.m., and even then we had as good of a place in line as I got last year arriving at 2 a.m. The line was maybe half the size it was last year, and judging from the people standing around me, it was their sale ad that did it. Their sale ad sucked, to be Frank and had little to nothing of value. It seemed like the “Black Friday Deals” were just regular prices. Was it the economy? Gas prices? I didn’t know. I decided to wait and see what doorbusters and steals were inside.
The line marched slowly onward and we kept pace, crowded to the people in front of us and kicking their heels as we bypassed the shopping cart ramparts and hit the store. First we dashed to the graphics cards, but to achieve them, we had to wait in a line to buy a computer and then hop out at the last minute. Once we got to the cards, at first we were elated to see they still had some in stock, until we saw the prices…almost double what the internet would charge us.
Next was the CPU/RAM/Mainboard/Hard Drive area. Again, all the prices were pretty damn high. We dinked around in the mouse and keyboard section, looked at overpriced soundcards and then hit anime, noting one Black Friday special in the adult section.
Dismayed and disgruntled we headed to Circuit City, Staples, and finally to Best Buy. It was a wasteland of overpriced crap with pretend “sale prices.” Finally at Best Buy I discovered a Linksys WRT110 Wirless N router. Since my Wireless G router was broken I took the hit and upgraded for a decent price ($40) to the “new” N.
It was about 8 a.m. so we shambled over to the packed Shari’s where my sister and Jon both managed to offend the waitress, after we’d gotten our food, luckily. It seemed to invigorate us enough to drive home from Salem.
Jon surrendered on Black Friday, but Amy and I refused to give up. We cruised over to http://www.newegg.com and scoped out their deals. I scored 4 GB of Dual-Channel 1200Mhz OCZ “Fatal1ty” RAM and an Asus P5Q full-feature motherboard that puts my current one to shame. They should be here shortly.
Black Friday wasn’t a total loss. Thanks to t3h powar of t3h intarwebz! And there was a “Victory for Zim!” moment! We were all shocked and appalled by the lack of real world deals and cheap instant gratification. Black Friday is the one day of the year you can score cheap computer parts and use them that same day. I’ve been pondering over and over in my head why, but I’ve yet to figure it out.
All the deals this year seemed to be in TVs and Blu-Ray players. Which I have little interest in. I have perfectly good high-quality LCD monitors at home to watch movies on. And Blu-Ray? I can’t tell the difference, even on a fancy-schmancy $5,000 spiffy-diffy TV. I suppose the audio-visual geeks had a hay-day, while the rest of the technology world yawned.
Do better next year! I waited an entire year for that technological victory and it was snatched from me. Just like the Alliance, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
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