pricing

Price Protectr is a service that monitors online stores and alerts you to any changes in price within 30 days of buying a product. If it sounds simple it is, and frankly that's the way it should be.

Nobody likes finding out they could have saved money if they had paid attention to price drops, but it's easier said than done. Price Protectr does the work for you. All you have to do is give them the URL of the product you bought and your e-mail, and it will keep an eye on it for 30 days. If … Read more

We told you so. Vizio had promised to come out with a 47-inch LCD television with the highest resolution (1080p) for under $2,000, and it has.

The $1,900 TV is the latest of Vizio's "Gallevia" line, as well as the latest salvo fired in its trench warfare with other relative newcomers in the flat TV business--namely Westinghouse, which has a competing product around the same price.

In a recent interview with News.com, Vizio CEO William Wang said, "We don't believe anyone can call $3,000 affordable" for a 1080p TV. For … Read more

If you were thinking of buying a high-end, high-definition TV, you may want to wait a few weeks. Vizio says it will come out with a 47-inch LCD TV with 1080p resolution for under $2,000, its first set with that level of definition.

TVs with the same resolution and screen size from other manufacturers now sell for around $2,500 to $3,000 at mainstream retailers, though some independent dealers advertise lower prices. (The Vizio set pictured here is a plasma TV; photos of the LCD model weren't available.)

"Before, 1080p wasn't affordable. We don't … Read more

Samsung has been pretty consistent with putting out quality MP3 players, but its two newest devices--the YP-K5 and the YP-T9--really take the cake in my book. They're super sleek, packed with features, and sound fantastic. That's why both players top my holiday wish and gift lists this year. And it looks like I just got lucky: Samsung recently dropped the MSRP of both players. The YP-K5 has gone from $260 to $229 for the 4GB version and from $210 to $179 for the 2GB. The YP-T9 has dropped from $199 to $179 4GB and from $149 to $… Read more

Circuit City is celebrating the holiday season with price wars.

The retail chain will try to best Wal-Mart and Staples with a Compaq notebook for $299 after rebates, or $99 with rebates and a 12-month subscription to Vonage, according to Black Friday 2006. The bargain-hunting site posts scans of Sunday advertising inserts before they're delivered with newspapers.

Wal-Mart and Staples have come out with $398 and $399 Compaq laptops. The Circuit City notebook is similar, though it comes with a Celeron processor from Intel rather than a chip from Advanced Micro Devices. It also contains a drive that burns … Read more

Sound the horn and unleash the hounds of bargain hell!

Earlier this month, Wal-Mart unveiled a $398 Compaq notebook. Staples is now doing them one better by offering a similar notebook for the same price but tossing in a free printer, according to Black Friday 2006. The regular price for the laptop is $730. Consumers have to put up $69.98 for the printer but you get a rebate for $70. Despite the bad reputation for rebates, I've received every one I sent in for in the last two years.

The notebook comes with a Turion processor, a 60GB … Read more

It's one of the perennial problems of the digital-music era. You buy a couple of songs from an album at 99 cents each and, after listening to them a few times, you think you might want the album.

Trouble is, you've either got to buy the other nine tracks individually or pay the full $9.99 for the album. Either way, you don't get any credit for the songs you've bought.

A source tells us that Apple Computer and the record labels are onto this. Supposedly, iTunes customers may soon be able to buy the album … Read more

This Christmas, Sharp Electronics is going to hunt down its enemies.

Last year, the Japanese electronics giant lost some footing in the LCD TV market, in part because its rivals had moved to a different standard of manufacturing that allowed them to come out with cheaper, bigger sets.

Those days are over, one Sharp employee told me. The company is already making TVs out of glass from its eight-generation Kameyama plant. The sheets of glass from this plant measure 2.16 meters by 2.46 meters. Six 52-inch LCDs can be popped out of a single sheet. The smaller glass … Read more

No, that's not a typo. In a world where ultraportables regularly hit the $2,000 mark, Averatec has created a niche with its small, inexpensive systems that are loaded with some pretty compelling components for the price. Thus it is with the just-announced Averatec 2300, a 4-pound system with a 1.6GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-50 processor, a 12.1-inch WXGA display, a 100GB hard drive, and a built-in double-layer DVD burner, all for the low, low starting price of $849.

We're eager to see whether the new laptop improves upon its predecessor, the Averatec 2260, which … Read more