The Cheapskate

Here we go: one week until Black Friday. Am I excited? Pumped? Polishing the ol' credit card for a day of deal-crazed madness?

Eh.

Don't get me wrong: I enjoy BF as much as the next cheapskate. But I'm weary of the month-long hype machine, what with all the "leaked" ads, pre-Black Friday sales, and so on.

What's more, I have never, and will never, set foot in a retail store on Black Friday. I don't enjoy crowds, especially the deal-crazed variety. Oh, and 5 a.m.? That's sleep time, not stand-in-line-in-the-freezing-cold time.

My other issue: Like last year, the deals I've seen so far just aren't that great. Know why? Because everything's already dirt-cheap all year. Regular Cheapskate readers have seen the $50 GPS, the $80 Blu-ray player, the sub-$300 32-inch HDTV. Sadly for retailers, there's just not much room to go any lower.

All that being said, what kind of cheapskate would I be if I didn't give this hallowed shopping holiday a little love? So here you go: five deals/offers/promotions I'm liking this year. Want more? Dealnews has some of the best Black Friday coverage around--including these tips on using price-matching in retail stores.

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TGIM!

After a weak and disappointing Black Friday as far as deals go, we've arrived at Cyber Monday, when stores pony up their online-only deals.

And guess what? The pickins? They're not so slim. Here's a list of some decidedly worthwhile bargains:

• Newegg has the Jawbone 2 Bluetooth headset for $79.99, plus 4 bucks or so for shipping. That's at least $20 less than I've seen it elsewhere.
• Best Buy has an Insignia Internet-connected GPS for $199.99 shipped. A built-in cellular modem lets you tap Google local search and other nifty features. One year of service is included.
• Buy.com has an HP Photosmart C4460 multifunction photo printer for $19.99 shipped. This is a two-cartridge printer with a color LCD! Update: already sold out.
• Staples has the Acer X213WBD 21.6-inch LCD monitor for $139.99 shipped. It has an HDCP-compliant DVI input and a three-year warranty.
• Newegg has the 2GB Sansa Clip MP3 player for $24.99 shipped. Way more features than the iPod shuffle, and less money.
• eCost has a Navigon 2100 GPS for $64 plus shipping (after a pair of mail-in rebates). Yeah, the rebates bite, but that's the lowest price I've seen on a text-to-speech GPS.
• eCost also has a 1TB external hard drive for $89, but again there's a mail-in rebate involved. Still, $89!

Remember, all these deals are Monday only, so shop on, cheapskaters!

Wow, what a colossal disappointment this Black Friday has been. I've spent the better part of the morning looking for eye-popping, never-before-seen, gotta-have-it deals, and you know what I've come up with (besides a sentence ending with a preposition)?

This: Amazon has a 16GB iPod Touch (1st-generation) for $199.99 shipped. Whoop-de-do. I mean, that's pretty good, but I just couldn't muster much excitement for anything else. There's Guitar Hero: Aerosmith Edition for $59.99 (Xbox 360 or Wii). Yeah, OK, not bad. But everything else? Meh.

Now, if you were crazy enough to pitch a tent at Wal-Mart at 10 o'clock last night, maybe you snagged a Memorex Blu-ray player for $129--far and away the best deal this Black Friday had to offer. The thing is, I think margins are so razor-thin already, and so many e-tailers offer so many bargains year-round, the best the retail stores could do was match their online counterparts.

What do you think? Did you score a fantastic deal today? Or did you find Black Friday '08 as disappointing as I did? Either way, hit the comments and share your thoughts.

The rotten economy notwithstanding, Black Friday will undoubtedly produce the usual levels of retail insanity.

If you're intrepid enough to brave long lines and deal-crazed crowds on the day after Thanksgiving, well, I salute you. And I offer you BlackFriday.info, a site that rounds up Black Friday ads well in advance so you can plan your shopping (i.e. figure out where you want to show up at 4 a.m.).

As of Friday, the site has ads for about two dozen stores, including Best Buy, Radio Shack, and Staples.

Truth be told, I'm not seeing any deals that are vastly superior to the kind of stuff I post daily. That's not me being self-congratulatory. It's me being surprised that stores aren't stepping up with lower prices. I mean, where's the $150 Blu-ray player? Or the $500 42-inch HDTV?

Maybe we'll see better deals emerge as the big day draws closer. For now, I'm unimpressed. But if you find anything truly Cheapskate-worthy, by all means hit the comments section and let everyone know.

I may be cheap, but I'm not crazy enough to line up at 5 a.m. in the freezing cold on that glorious day known as Black Friday. Well, at least, not at the big-box stores. But I might just take a drive to Staples (how bad could the crowds be?) for a $79.98 Maxtor OneTouch 4 500GB. That's half a terabyte of external hard-drive goodness. And with the amount of digital video I'm shooting these days, there's never enough storage space.

Head to the aptly named BlackFriday.info for the full list of Staples' Black Friday deals, along with those of many other stores.