Skylarking

TigerDirect has sent me a list of exclusive deals for the readers of Skylarking. These are TigerDirect Exclusive Deals, Limited Time Offers, Act Now And Save! Click the link at left to see a complete list of special deals. And remember, this are only available at these prices for a limited time. The link will let them know that Skylarking sent you.

Some noteworthy items are:

Maxtor Black Armor 160GB External Hard Drive: $59.99 (After $10 savings).  I like external drives for storing my music files, particularly my iTunes library. By storing my iTunes library on an external drive I won’t have any problems when I get a new computer. I’ll just disconnect the drive and connect it to my new computer. Voila!

D-Link DSS-16+ Recertified 16-Port Network Switch: $39.99 (After $20 savings). This is great for a small office network (or a big home network).

HP Photosmart C4580 All-In-One Color Inkjet Printer with Wi-Fi: Refurbished $79.99. Imagine wireless color photo printing and standard printing of 23 to 30 pages per minute on your home wireless network. It also has built-in copier and scanner functions (but no fax). This is a refurbished unit. This printer costs over $120 new from your major retailers.

Acer X203H bd 20″ Widescreen LCD Monitor: $129.99 (After $40 savings). This monitor has a 10,000:1 contrast ratio and 1600×900 pixel resolution.  You can use either a VGA or DVI connector.

There are many, many more items to choose from. So check out the rest of these TigerDirect Exclusive Deals, Limited Time Offers, Act Now And Save! And remember Tigerdirect offers $1.99 for shipping for orders over $100 but less than 20 lbs.

Note:
There’s been a lot of chat on the Internet and in the press concerning bloggers getting paid to review products and web sites. (Most notably in the Wall Street Journal last month). I get approached a few times a week to write about particular products and web sites, but I always offer my honest opinion in my posts. I have turned down many, many more offers than I’ve accepted.

The same applies to the products in this post. I have only highlighted products that I think are worthwhile and provide a significant savings compared to their regular price.

Hello, everybody!  Sorry for the delay in posting today, but I’ve had a rough weekend. I had to get an emergency tooth extraction on Friday, and you can image how difficult it was to find an oral surgeon the day after a major holiday, and heading into a holiday weekend.

I thought I just had a head cold all week long, but it turns out it was all from an infected tooth. I had tried finding a physician on Friday, with no luck, so I tried calling my dentist since I remembered I had a tooth extraction pending. He was able to get me in to see Dr. Steven D’Abundo in Merrick before closing for the day, and he removed the tooth in a few minutes.

He also prescribed an anitbiotic which I take every 6 hours. He had also prescribed a pain killer, but it seems, surprisingly, I have had little need for that.

Borders Bookstores, Off-line Savings

Though Skylarking has concerned itself primarily with online savings offers, I’d like to alert you to an off-line savings offer. The Borders Bookstores chain is having a multimedia sale this week. All CDs and DVDs are being sold at 30% off their regular list price. (I corrected the discount.  originally I said it was 40%, but it is actually 30%). The sale has already begun, and it ends on January 4, 2009. So if you’re looking to save on some last minute, year end shopping, or if you have some gifts you forgot to pickup, go to your local Borders Bookstore and take a look.

VistaPrint

I frequently order my business cards and customized stationery items and calendars from VistaPrint. Right now they are offering up to 90% off their regularly low prices. Now’s a good time to save on holiday cards for next year. Save yourself from rushing to the store next year, and save yourself a lot of money, too.

TigerDirect

Here are some TigerDirect deals:

SAVE $50 – HP Compaq Notebook: AMD Sempron 2.0GHz processor, with wireless networking, 1 GB RAM (Memory, DDR2), with a 120 GB hard drive (Storage), a dual layer Lightscribe DVD burner, and a webcam. Uses Vista Home Basic $379.99* after $50 mail-in rebate, rebate expires 12/31/08. I particularly like the Lightscribe DVD burner. If you purchase blank Lightscribe DVDs, you can flip the disc over after burning data or video to it, and then have the burner burn a label onto the surface of the disc. It’s fantastic.

SAVE $50 – HP Compaq Notebook: AMD Turion 2.0GHz processor with wireless networking, 2 GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. It alkso has the dual layer Lightscribe DVD burner and webcam. Uses Vista Home Premium $499.99* after $50 mail-in rebate, rebate expires 05/30/09.

More LCD flat-panel monitor madness: SAVE $30 – eMachines 17″ Widescreen LCD Monitor Refurbished 1440×900. Black $84.97.

SAVE $120 – Garmin Nuvi 265T GPS 3.5″ Touch Screen with Text To Speech and Bluetooth. Now $179.99.

SAVE $120 – EVGA GeForce 8500 GT Video Card: 1GB GDDR2 Video memory onboard, connects to a PCIe (PCI Express) slot. This board is SLI ready which means if you buy and install two of them they can work together for double the power.  This is great for 3D video gaming such as World of Warcraft. It also has connections for DVI, standard VGA, and HDTV. Now $39.99* after $35 Mail-in rebate, rebate expires 12/31/08.  You need to check if you computer has one or two available PCIe slots. Contact me if you hagve questions about this.

SAVE $30 – XFX GeForce 9600 GSO Video Card: 768MB DDR2 onboard video memory, uses a PCIe 2.0 slot with Dual DVI. It, too, is SLI Ready $79.99.

Sharp 52" Aquos HDTV

Need storage? Need a new hard drive? SAVE $10 – Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB Hard Drive. Uses a SATA-300 connection. $49.99. Computers over 3 years old probably won’t be able to use this drive. An internal SATA card connector would be needed.

SAVE $1100 – Sharp 52″ Aquos LCD HDTV: Sharp, a leader in LCD technology, establishes a new standard for LCD TVs. With a screen size of 52″, the AQUOS® LC-52D64U fits a large screen into an incredibly small footprint. They changed the layout of circuits inside the LCD panel, reduced the number of parts, and developed the slim-line design therby reducing its depth by 25%.  It uses a proprietary Advanced Super View / Black TFT Panel with multi-pixel technology providing 10,000:1 Dynamic Contrast Ratio  and a 4ms response time. It has built-in ATSC/QAM/NTSC tuners and includes 3 HDMI (version 1.3) inputs, compatible with 1080p signals, a PC input and 2 HD component video inputs. Side terminals are included for wall-mounting convenience. $1399.99

Thank You

I received an unexpected gift over the holiday weekend. Almost 250 new readers in one day!  On Friday December 26, 2008, my Google Analytics report showed 468 people had visited the site that day. That’s almost 250 more than usually visit in a single day. The most popular posts that day were the Sears Heroes at Home program, Great Advice for New Computer Owners, and the Optoma PK101 Pico Projector.

Post Comments or Questions with the link below. Keep up-to-date with Skylarking: By Email or RSS Newsfeed or on Twitter. You can also send questions with my email form.

Anyone who’s purchased a large home appliance such as an air conditioner or refrigerator has probably seen or looked for the EPA’s Energy Star logo. Personal computers are also rated by EPA Energy Star standards, and in July 2007 the EPA revised those standards, with the PC in mind, for the first time in 15 years.

The result: Energy Star 4.0, which indicates a computers positive effects on the environment due to reduced energy consumption.

If you’re a home owner or small business owner looking for a new computer, and you’re concerned about your energy bills, you might be interested in checking out Hewlett Packard’s Compaq dc7800 Ultra-Slim Desktop PC. The base unit has a Intel Pentium Dual-Core CPU, 1 GB RAM (memory), and a 80 GB hard drive (storage), with Ethernet, and the robust and stable Windows Vista Business edition operating system. The base model starts at $789, but Buy.com is offering it for around $690. Neither price includes a monitor, but you can use your existing monitor.  (If you’re looking for a flat-panel monitor, I’ll include some links at the end of this post.)

My minimum recommendation is the package priced around $870 which doubles the hard drive size to 160 GB, and the memory is increased to 2 GB. The lower priced package played CDs and DVDs, while this package adds the ability to burn DVDs. If your budget is tight, or you have no need to burn DVDs, go with the $690 package. You can always upgrade the parts further down the road if needed.

Post Comments or Questions with the link below. Keep up-to-date with Skylarking: By Email or RSS Newsfeed or on Twitter. You can also send questions with my email form. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.