best buy

What to make of this Black Friday’s sub-$200 laptops

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s still a couple of weeks off, but we already know two retailers will be offering sub-$200 laptops on the day the United States gorges itself on bargains.

The question is, what do you get for your $200 on these minimalist laptops? I’ll answer those questions, then you can decide whether they’re worth $200 and braving the crowds, the weird hours, and likely the cold. (Yes, there are costs beyond the money you spend.) Read more

I hope BYOD 2.0 goes better than BYOD 1.0 did

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , ,

BYOD is “bring your own device.” It’s the hot new trend in IT, except it’s nothing new. But it was bound to happen, I guess. Companies are tired of buying computer equipment, so they want employees to provide it. And counterculture, nonconformist workers are (I guess) tired of using boring corporate computer equipment. (And here I am, a strong advocate of buying off-lease corporate computers for home use.)

So, since companies don’t want to buy computers, and employees don’t want to use company computers, what’s the problem?

How’s about I tell you a story? Read more

And another nail in Crestwood Plaza’s coffin

Dave Farquhar St. Louis , , , , , ,

The old 10-screen Crestwood Plaza AMC theater closed last month. It took two weeks for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to notice, and probably for many others.

As a sign that I’m getting older, the theater’s obituary called it “dated.” And I thought to myself that it wasn’t long ago that they built it.

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Best Buy needs to clone Micro Center, not Radio Shack

Dave Farquhar Retail , , , , ,

So Best Buy is planning to close 50 big-box stores, downsize others, and try to focus its efforts on selling cell phones, tablets, and e-readers.

Sounds to me like they’re trying to become Radio Shack. Read more

Best Buy has one foot in the grave?

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , , , , , ,

In a highly publicized article, Forbes argues that Best Buy is not long for this world.

I can’t disagree with any individual point in the article. Some of the problems Larry Downes identifies existed when I worked there in the early 1990s–I’d spare you the joke about being young, naive, and needing the money, but it’s too late now–but in the 1990s they could get away with that, sort of, because there were competitors who tried to get away with worse.

Sears/Kmart is a favorite whipping boy, but they have one very big thing up on the land of the blue shirts. I can make a five-minute trip to Sears or Kmart–particularly Sears Hardware–to pick up a couple of things, and I do so fairly frequently. I tried a couple of weeks ago to do that at Best Buy, and, like the author said, calling it a miserable experience is putting it mildly. Read more

First impressions of a low-tier tablet, plus why I don’t shop at Best Buy

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , ,

I received my Nook Color this week. I haven’t hacked it yet–I only just got an SDHC card for that, which is a story in itself–but to my pleasant surprise, I’m not certain everyone would need to. Yes, it’s marketed as an e-reader, but what I took out of the box is a viable entry-level tablet. It certainly wants you to read books on it, but aside from the e-reader, it also has a music player and a web browser. Out of the box, it does the basic things people buy tablets for.

I’ll hack mine, because supposedly it’s easy and virtually nothing can go wrong, and I like having maximum control over my devices. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

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Audio Express vs Best Buy car radios

Dave Farquhar Music
Audio Express vs Best Buy car radios

My oldest son and I broke my wife’s car stereo. He put quarters in the CD slot, and I broke it worse trying to get the quarters out. So it was time for a new stereo. So along the way I learned a lot about Audio Express vs Best Buy car radios, and I also found a sleeper option worth considering.

I hadn’t shopped for any kind of car audio since college. I found sales tactics haven’t changed a lot, but it seems pricing has. Or at least I found a pleasant surprise in what I could get for the money these days.

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15 years ago, at the home of the blue shirts

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , ,

Consumerist had some fun today at the expense of a Best Buy ad from September 15, 1996.

Here’s the kind of price deflation we’ve seen in 15 years.
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Cheap laptops and tablets: September 2011

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , ,

My brother in law told me he saw an 8-inch Vizio wifi-only tablet running Android at Costco for $285. Its reviews aren’t exactly stellar, but if you just want a basic tablet, it seems to be OK. I’d wait a few months and see what Amazon’s tablet plans are, though.

He also asked about laptops. And there’s some good stuff going on in the low end there too.

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Bombshell: HP pulls out. Of tablets and desktop PCs.

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , , , , , ,

And speaking of duds, it looks like HP has one on their hands in their Web OS-based tablets.

Best Buy has about a quarter-million unsold tablets in their warehouse and has only managed to sell 25,000 of them. And when Woot ran a special on them, selling them for $120 off, they sold a whopping 612 of them.

And now it looks like HP is just going to discontinue Web OS altogether.
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