At Wal-Mart, Black Friday comes early
It's happening again.
If you thought one minute past midnight the day after Thanksgiving was too early to choke out your fellow shoppers in the name of a great deal, you were wrong.
An Acer laptop will be one of the featured items offered at Black Friday-like prices Friday, November 2, in its stores.
(Credit: Wal-Mart)Following last year's decision to offer a $398 laptop several weeks ahead of the traditional Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), Wal-Mart is planning on slashing prices on five items--in its stores, not online--beginning at 8 a.m. this Friday. One of them will be a $348 Acer laptop with 1GB of RAM. The other four items and their prices will be kept secret until Friday morning when the sale officially begins. At that time, the prices will be available on the Wal-Mart Web site. The retailer will still hold a traditional Black Friday sale.
The secretive nature of revealing the pricing online at the very last second is likely an attempt to avoid what has become ritual among retailers and Black Friday fans. More and more, Black Friday Web sites have made it their business to reveal retailers' circular ads before they are officially published.
It's caused some retailers, like Wal-Mart, to threaten legal action. Earlier this month, Wal-Mart sent notices to 10 Web sites that the retailer says it will sue if the ads are published before November 19, the official release date.
But will the strategy of starting the holidays earlier and earlier bring more change to Wal-Mart's coffers? In past years, the evidence of success has been "mixed," according to consumer retail analysts. In general the lower-priced items do well, but products with higher price tags, generally over $500, are still a tougher sell.
Erica Ogg is a CNET News reporter who covers Apple, HP, Dell, and other PC makers, as well as the consumer electronics industry. She's also one of the hosts of CNET News' Daily Podcast. In her non-work life, she's a history geek, a loyal Dodgers fan, and a mac-and-cheese connoisseur. E-mail Erica.
Forget the Acer laptop, I think the best gadgets are going to allow you to Twitter and change Facebook info while blogging and listening to music.
The iPhone and hopefully soon-to-be-released MacBookFeather will grace the shelves of stores for an instant before getting gobbled up by hungry techheads.
Just my $.02.
More opinions at http://www.stegdag.com (we know gadgets backward and forward)
It is the only 1GB Ram, Celeron M, Acer laptop listed.
Link below:
http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/acer-travelmate-2480-2196/4507-3121_7-32510031.html?tag=specs
Acer Aspire AS5315-2153 very similar specs. For more details go to Walmart's website. It currently sells for $448. Link below:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?dest=9999999997&product_id=7812644&sourceid=23877406182690812123
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by Kinsella5
November 1, 2007 10:13 PM PDT
- HD-DVD is probably going to lose the format war. I have not jumped in myself so I am not some Blu-Ray advocate saying how great it is. I go based on the facts, and Blu-Ray outsells HD-DVD 2 to 1 still, and most of the major motion picture studios are backing it. Sure, both formats could stay for a while, but the word on the streets is this holiday season will help decide who will win. Many consumers are still on the fence and dont want to jump into it, probably because the VHS/Beta thing from the 80's still is fresh in people's minds. I am leaning Blu-Ray myself, but not for awhile yet.
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