tomorrowland.com » Deals

Comcast Digital Cable Ad Missed The Mark

Michael — Thu, 21 May 2009 06:33:30 +0000

“12 Months!?!”

A new ad starring Ben Stein and Shaq promoting a special price for Comcast Digital Cable totally misses the mark by showing the two handcuffed together and then making a point to emphasize that they’re going to be shaq-led for 12 months. The idea is supposed to be that Shaq represents “Being the best” and Ben represents being frugal. But instead all I get is that I’d be locked into the deal for a year. It doesn’t help that after the two are handcuffed they are shocked to discover the duration of their deal…

Ben – “I know about being smart with my money…”

Shaq – “…and I know about being the best”

Ben – “and we’re being handcuffed together to show the two sides of Comcast’s Offer on digital cable with HBO.”

Shaq – “The best entertainment on demand, whenever you want it.”

Ben – “For just 29.99 a month, a price that you can lock in for…” (shocked) “12 Months!?!”

While it might actually be a decent offer, the ad comes off as sounding like I’m going to be handcuffed to a contract for a year. Of course the fine print verifies this by saying “Minimun 1-year agreement required. Early termination fee applies.” Fail!

Blue Tag Bluray Deals at Best Buy

Michael — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 07:00:13 +0000

What is happening to DVD Tuesdays? Twilight was released on Saturday and Bolt was released Sunday on Blu-ray (regular DVD releases Tuesday). I stopped at Best Buy to get a copy and found an array of blue tag specials on Blu-ray titles. Needless to say I ended up spending a little more than I planned on. If you want to add some low priced titles to your collection, head over to Best Buy sometime this week, before the deals are gone…

As you can see in the photo below, there is a decent selection of high def flicks starting at just $14.99. A few examples are: Replacement Killers for $14.99, Under Siege for $16.99, and Casino Royale or RoboCop for $19.99.

This is probably the most blue tag specials I’ve seen at Best Buy at one time. Better check it out!

Deal – Sony S350 $200

Michael — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 08:40:40 +0000

I believe that despite the current economic troubles this holiday season will mark a huge jump for BluRay traction – especially if this deal is any indication of what’s coming. If you’re in the market to upgrade to BluRay NOW is the time to jump on it. MacMall has the Sony S350 for $199.99, which is half the original retail price and $100 less than the current sale price at the Sony store. This player is fully BD 2.0 capable and has an ethernet port on the back for all those useless BD-Live features and firmware updates. This is THE player to get unless you’re going to opt for the PS3. And 199.99 is the price we’ve all been waiting for.

Deal on Dells

Michael — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 02:00:44 +0000

BlackFriday.info has Black Friday deals posted early. Black Friday, in case you don’t know, is the day after Thanksgiving and is the biggest shopping day of the year. I found this Dell ad there which shows the Dell Mini 9 for $299 – which is $50 off. Interesting that an intel Core 2 Duo icon is right next to the ad when the Mini doesn’t have a Core 2 Duo it has an intel Atom. But I guess the logo is referring to the Inspiron 1525 in the ad above it.

Anyway, at first glance I thought it was a great deal but then I realized – that $299 price is for the lowest end configuration – which won’t be enough for Leopard. We got $40 off ours and it was almost $500 by the time we configured it. I chatted with sales support and they tell me that you can configure it at the time of ordering. To have a decent Leopard machine you’ll want to add the built in web camera, upgrade RAM to 1GB and upgrade the SSD to 16GB. The total will be around $425. Bluetooth, which you probably don’t need, is another $20.

In reality, once you configure it, the black friday deal isn’t much better than the deals that are available now. I just ‘built’ a system online starting with the $409 Ubuntu OS system, added the web camera and came up with $435 because right now the higher end configs are $40 off. (By the way, for a Leopard install there’s no need to spend the $$ on Windows XP.)

This Black Friday deal will be best if you want to get a stripped version and trick it out yourself. Only add the web camera which will get you to $324. Then get a 2GB RAM chip from Crucial ($40), and a 32GB SSD ($100). But then you’re still up close to $500. Keep in mind that starting with the low end Mini config you’ll have to do put in that SSD upgrade before installing Leopard.

The above deal is not available today. But according to the ad you can place your order starting at 6am on Thanksgiving day. Here’s what you could do:

Set your alarm for 6am – um.. yeah!
Go to http://www.dell.com/savebig
Enter in the E-Value code 16254-DNPHXD2
Configure, buy and wait-wait-wait for it to ship.