3-Way Price War On Black Friday: iPad, Nook, and Kindle 230
destinyland writes "Black Friday has touched off a three-way price war between Apple, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble. Kobo readers dropped their price to just $99 to compete with the Nook, only to discover that Barnes and Noble was lowering the price on their touchscreen Nooks to $79, to compete with the new $79 Kindle from Amazon. And meanwhile, Apple has announced aggressive pricing on all Apple products for Black Friday, reportedly including $100 off on MacBook and iMac products, and a $61 discount on the iPad 2."
Price War? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Price War? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Price War? (Score:5, Funny)
At least there is SOMETHING cheap when it comes to apple products.
That is the jokes about their products.
Wait. My apologies. That was cheap :)
Funny - yes - but true (Score:3, Insightful)
Guys; the above, although funny, is exactly the business and marketing explanation for Apple products. Another example of this marketing a "lifestyle" is Harley Davidson Motorcycles. I'm just surprised Apple hasn't gotten into logo'd apparel yet.
Saint Steven Jobs was the greatest salesmen and marketer that has ever existed. And I'd dare say, St. Jobs will be the best that will ever be.
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Guys; the above, although funny, is exactly the business and marketing explanation for Apple products. Another example of this marketing a "lifestyle" is Harley Davidson Motorcycles. I'm just surprised Apple hasn't gotten into logo'd apparel yet.
Saint Steven Jobs was the greatest salesmen and marketer that has ever existed. And I'd dare say, St. Jobs will be the best that will ever be.
Apple doesn't need logo'd apparrel. They'd prefer you to just buy one of their products and wear it as a talisman :) That way they don't have to make as many sizes and styles.
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PT Barnum has him beat.
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I'm just surprised Apple hasn't gotten into logo'd apparel yet.
The iPod is logo'd apparel that you wear in your pocket.
Re:Funny - yes - but true (Score:5, Insightful)
It's really not. This is the excuse trotted out when somebody wants to flame Apple or Apple fanboys, but it really doesn't hold up to the slightest scrutiny. Take a look at their ads. They are all about what you can do with the devices. They are renown for focusing on what you can do with the devices.
Do you really believe that Apple is managing to brainwash people? That there isn't a more plausible explanation, such as the fact that they see an ad showing people using the devices in ways that appeal to them and want to buy them? That people try the competition and are less than thrilled, so they opt for the premium product that does what they want instead? If you really believe that marketing brainwashing is a more plausible explanation than that, I'm afraid you're the one who's brainwashed.
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Exactly, like dancing in silhouette.
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Imagine that - an advert for a music player that focuses on a person enjoying music. Yeah, it was stylised, but when you look at the bare essence of the advert, it's about what the product can do for you, not brainwashing people into thinking they are buying a lifestyle.
There's more to an ad than its bare essence. Probably their most famous campaign presents Mac as "the cool guy" as opposed to PC. Most of the ads focus on features, but the message is still there. Even in the ads that focus on people using Apple products in various way, it's always cool people using them.
Now, I agree that Apple has a lot of high quality products, but there are other companies that sell high quality, well-designed products, and Apple is clearly trying to get an edge over them by "selling a l
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"Take a look at their ads. They are all about what you can do with the devices."
Yes, I have an iPad2 and you're right.
Unfortunately however being able to randomly slide screens around, and use half-arsed versions of applications that only do 1/100th of what their counterparts on my PC or laptop do is the reason it's just sat uncharged because being arsed to plugged it in to charge it nowadays requires more effort than any resultant benefit the device can provide to my life to be worthwhile. I suppose if I d
Re:Funny - yes - but true (Score:4, Informative)
Apple II: For one, it came fully assembled with a keyboard, power supply, high-res color graphics, NTSC video output, and a case. Not much else in mid-1977 could make that claim.
Mac: At the time, it was the only usable GUI-based machine available at a reasonable price, and being 68000-based, it had quite a bit more CPU horsepower at its disposal than most other machines, had an 8-bit DAC as standard equipment, onboard SCSI, etc. The Lisa had been out for a short while with a similar feature set, but Apple had priced it outside the reach of most people. IBM's XT couldn't touch it performance-wise, and while IBM had introduced their AT around the same time, it was quite some time before any software could actually take advantage of the 80286 processor to do anything particularly interesting.
All the sex... (Score:2)
Re:Price War? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, you know, you could try one and have an informed position instead of just mindlessly slagging the product every time it's mentioned.
My manager just bought his son's, because it wasn't compatible with the stuff he needed to do at school (Windows only class stuff). In a week he went from "meh, who cares" to "wow, I love this thing".
Maybe people like them because they find them extremely useful?
So far, mine hasn't led to the glamorous lifestyle you seem to suggest ... but I'm old, fat, and un-hip, so that wasn't ever going to happen anyway.
But for business trips and being stuck on an airplane, it's an exceedingly useful thing. I can actually read my email from the airport wifi, and watch a movie on a screen much better than the one in the plane. Throw in eBooks, games, and a couple of other things, and I haven't used my laptop on a business trip in the last 7 trips I've made. Despite claims to the contrary, a netbook would not fill the same niche because it's still a clamshell with a keyboard. My iPad is about the size of a book.
Go to the lobby bar of a hotel in a business district, and count the number of people with iPads ... and then look at them and see if you think they're hipsters who have these things for fashion purposes.
I haven't used one, but I suspect what I say is true of any tablet ... it really is a nice form-factor.
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Funny thing though ... the original statement was that iPads cost hundreds more. In defense of iPads, you listed a bunch of activities that make iPads worth getting. Things that Nooks and Kindle Fires do quite well by all accounts and for hundreds less.
I think you just demonstrated why Apple may have reason to worry.
BTW, I've done 2/3 the stuff you listed with a $114 Kindle (email, books, games, plus web surfing and some encryption key calculations). I'm looking to upgrade to the $99 version soon.
Re:Price War? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, since there's neither anguish nor hostility, not so much with the irony.
But seeing people on Slashdot mindlessly say "Apple is teh suxor" is about as intelligent as saying it about Microsoft or Linux without having used them ... it's generally an uninformed opinion based on what people think they know as opposed to anything factual.
But, hey, all Linux fanboys are smelly virgins who live in their mom's basement, and all Windows fanboys must be corporate shills who don't know better ... right?
Or we could act like adults.
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"But seeing people on Slashdot mindlessly say "Apple is teh suxor" is about as intelligent as saying it about Microsoft or Linux without having used them ..."
But I do have an iPad 2 and it really is all hype. There's this mythical fantasy built up around them that they're easy to use, that they're flawless, that they're high quality, that they have loads of awesome apps, and it's simply all a load of bollocks.
Starting with build and design quality, the back of it scratches so easily, both mine and everyone'
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Well, I can always hope, misguided as that may be.
Re:Price War? (Score:5, Funny)
Fixed your "fix".
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Explaining is not the same thing as spicing up.
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I'll do you one better. I use whole beans-- and then, I, get this, I GRIND THEM.
The best of both worlds.
Re:Price War? (Score:4, Interesting)
For a one day sale yes, I'm not sure what Amazon gets out of it, but B&N desperately needs more mindshare going forward. I have one of the first gen Nooks, and it's really good hardware, but most of the time when I'm reading it nobody has ever heard about it. Granted that's in the general public, but still not good.
Any money they lose on them on Black Friday is almost certainly going to be money well spent. The hardware is well polished and of good quality, and I can go into a B&N store and read free books every day if I like. Really, they ought to be advertising it on TV the way that Apple and Amazon do.
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Let's just tag this one "slownewsday" and move along.
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This isn't a new price war between Apple and the others (who are selling products that are much more limited than an iPad).
In previous years, Apple has been known to discount iMacs and MacBook Pros by $101 on Black Friday; and also to discount iPod Touches (I think this discount was roughly 10%). A $61 discount on an iPad 2 would be roughly in line with this.
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so are other android tablets
the kindle fire will destroy the tablet businesses of most android tablet makers
Re:Price War? (Score:5, Insightful)
I work retail and I have had plenty of time to play with our display model. The UI is a bit too simple and it's content-focused. That's great if you plan to consume amazon content, but i'd rather have an android UI and navigation
Re:Price War? (Score:5, Insightful)
A few hundred dollars more expensive than what? The Galaxy Tab 10.1 16GB seems to be going for about $500 today, which is the same price as the iPad 2. You can't compare a 10" high-end tablet to a 7" budget tablet or e-reader, they're not the same class of device.
People rag on apple for selling expensive products. The perception is largely because, while Apple's products are generally priced roughly the same as similarly spec'd products from their competitors, Apple doesn't typically sell low-end or budget devices. That is to say, their product lineup starts in the mid-range to high-end. So, they're expensive, yes, but not overpriced.
Re:Price War? (Score:4, Informative)
You can't compare a 10" high-end tablet to a 7" budget tablet or e-reader, they're not the same class of device.
Oh, I think I can. Here, I'll do it. I'll compare the iPad 2 to the Nook Tablet.
Each is better in some ways than the other. iPad 2 has cameras and a larger screen; Nook Tablet is a convenient size for carrying, is lighter (400 grams vs. 601 grams!), and has longer battery life. Both have great screens. Both have a web browser. iPad 2 has more apps, but Nook Tablet has the apps I really care about; in particular, it has Netflix pre-loaded. Both have a 1 GHz dual-core ARM processor. The Nook Tablet has 1GB of RAM, twice as much as iPad 2, and has a claimed 11.5 hour battery life vs. iPad 2's claimed 10 hour battery life.
And Nook Tablet is literally half the price of iPad 2.
So I bought a Nook Tablet and I haven't bought an iPad.
P.S. I also have a Nook Color and I plan to root it and install CyanogenMod. It turns out that the Nook Color actually has Bluetooth hardware that was not enabled by the Nook software stack, so a rooted Nook Color makes a rather nifty little tablet.
If a bunch of Nook Color owners run out and buy a Nook Tablet, now might be a good time to pick up a used Nook Color for cheap. If you can get a new one for $200 you ought to be able to get a used one for around $100 or so. A used iPad 2 will be much more expensive than that.
I am hoping that the Nook Tablet also has hidden Bluetooth hardware, but I have not yet seen this confirmed or disproved.
steveha
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How about the screen and keyboard? Does your Toshiba have an unibody aluminum design?
I always thought Apple stuff was overpriced too, but there's a lot more to it than the CPU speed and how much memory is in a laptop. This coming from a guy who has never owned an Apple product.
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When I was in college I saw hardware failures on Toshiba laptops that I've not seen elsewhere. Most memorable: one with a hardware clock drifting by minutes per day, and another with dead peripheral ports. Obviously these events are not statistically relevant, but they are problems that easy to hide in advertising/sales literature. No laptop manufacturer touts mean-time-to-
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Then again, one of my co-workers has had problems with recent Apple purchases: dead pixels on screens, dust on the inside of his new iMac screen (cleaning it himself would void the warranty, and the replacement had the same problem), and customer service reps that wanted him to go away rather than fix the problems.
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And as a countervailing anecdotal data point I've been running IT departments for 20 years and can tell you that Toshiba, IBM/Lenovo and (recently) Asus laptops have been among the more solid devices for reliability in my experience. HP and Dell are in the mid-tier, Acer is on the lower end, and Sony is a definite NOT buy. In my experience. We've had Apple laptops at most of the companies I've been at and I would say in my experience they have a slightly better reliability rate than the Toshiba devices,
Re:Price War? (Score:5, Informative)
Squaretrade made statistics with over 30,000 laptops
http://www.squaretrade.com/pages/laptop-reliability-1109/?ccode=bs_war_buyerblog [squaretrade.com]
Asus came first, followed by Toshiba, in terms of reliability. Sony came better than Apple. HP was the worst. Even worse than Acer and Gateway.
Apple did slightly better than the average, but given that what they call "premium laptops" (those over $1000), which include almost all Apple laptops, also did better than the average, Apple didn't score any better than the competition.
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Not sure what to say about that Sony ranking. Sony (across several companies I've been at) has become a byword for "pay too much and watch it break in less than a year".
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Why would you need a unibody aluminum case? For the cost of the case and pointless extras I could just buy a new ThinkPad when mine goes tits up, or get like 8 years worth of extended warranties on the unit.
I've contemplated getting a Mac in the past, I just have never been able to stomach the amount of money that I'd end up paying for shinies that have little to no impact on performance or reliability.
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Interesting... the Thinkpads I've been looking at lately are all pretty much just as expensive as a MBP. Are they so much cheaper than Apple stuff in the States?
Oh well, don't think my X200 will be dying any time soon... maybe I'll just wait until I get a chance to visit the States again :)
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Mine was, I ended up with an x120e because I need something that's going to be readily portable and durable. It has similar specs to the cheapest to the Mac Air that I could have bought, but even after upgrading to 4gb of RAM and adding bluetooth, it was still $400 or so less than the Mac. Also, I bought mine during a sale which helped, but not that much, I think it was only 10% off or sometime similar.
That being said, I do kind of wish it had a back lit keyboard, although it's more cost effective to just b
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There's a lot of stuff inside a computer that doesn't make it to the spec sheet, and that is usually described as "better building quality". Now, we can harp on about the sexy aluminium chassis, which frankly only matters if you're treating your laptop like crap. Or you can get down to stuff that's perhaps a little less obvious, but, at least in my case, much more relevant.
When I joined the company I'm currently working for, I was given a budget for a laptop. Given that budget, I suggested they instead buy
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If you want to see evidence of Apple overpricing, you need to look at the upgrades for Macbooks. Macbooks themselves, though pricey, are really, really nice machines. And if they cost more than comparable, slick, goodlooking hardware elsewhere (not sure if that's actually the case; there are other expensive laptops out there), then at least you get a really nice OS with it, and it all just works. But if you want 4GB extra RAM, you pay $200 extra. Replace the harddisk with an SSD? Pay $200 extra. 8GB of simi
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Longer than a run-of-the-mill Toshiba/Acer/ASUS/Dell? Yes, of course.
Longer than a Dell Precision or a Thinkpad T/X/W or HP Elitebook? Maybe not, but then again, those often actually cost more than Apple hardware...
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Not a cracked case, but creaky palmrests, keyboard keys becoming unresponsive, the touchpad buttons becoming loose... hell, I only had two regular laptops before switching to Thinkpdas, and both of them exhibited all those symptoms. I see it every day at university, where people are schlepping around creaky half-broken laptops with glossy screens, overpowered graphics and mediocre battery life instead of geting something that gets the job done.
Not only durability is a factor here - ergonomics play a huge ro
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These are all consumer and prosumer products - why would you expect to get anything other than anecdotal evidence?
As for Lenovo's reliability: I said Thinkpad, not Lenovo. You wouldn't lump in Alienware with Dell, would you? Yes, Lenovo has been making some unfortunate additions to the Thinkpad line (Edge, X1xxe, SL series...), but the workhorse T series, workstation W series and X220 are still pretty much unequalled.
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Um, third party statistic Companies do satisfaction and reliability ratings and surveys all the time. Your Google ain't broke. Apple is not always the most reliable in terms of hardware but it is typically top 3 in reports (Asus is often right with them). I have yet to see a report personally that does not have Apple as number 1 in satisfaction.
Most PC laptops are of garbage build quality. The case is the only thing that differentiates PC laptops from each other and can even be the single most expensive com
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Not only will it likely last longer, check EBay for resale values on Macbooks. You might be pretty surprised. My windows laptop, same vintage as my Macbook Pro, isn't worth much. My Macbook Pro, however, will earn me a significant amount towards the next version if I were to sell it today. If, that is, I were feeling like I needed to sell it, which I don't, because it's really pretty darned sweet. Illuminated keyboard, fast dual core, lots of ram, fabulous native display and drives a 2nd display without a p
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Apple's stock warranty is one year. Three years as a low-cost option (plus other support.) Me, I wouldn't know what the failure rates are, as my Macbook pro, Mac pro, our two iPads, four iPods, iPhone and and four minis of various ages are still all operating flawlessly.
In contrast to this, all of our Dells have had problems, some of them DOA within days of receiving them (though warranty has covered all of that); one custom-built machine has been back to the builder three times, once for a dead parallel po
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Macbooks and iMacs and, well, most of their personal computers are the exception. But his statement holds true for "ultrabooks" and phone and tablet markets. Apple's main bread and butter.
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When did you your Toshiba i5 and what are its exact specs?
Because Apple only has a few product lines and each price change is widely announced, we ought to be able EXACTLY how much the equivalent MBP cost. I doubt it it was $2500.
$2500 could be accurate (Score:2)
17" MBP at Best Buy. Regular price $2500, now on sale for $2300.
Currently uses i7, but in mid 2010 it would have been an i5.
The MBP is also just about the only laptop left with a 1920x1200 pixel screen. Just about everyone else has gone to 1920x1080.
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Let's actually compare the real specs between what the Toshiba unit he actually bought and a comparable Apple at the date of purchase.
People give examples of 100%+ prices differences all the time, but once you actually start comparing specs, they usually end up in the same ballpark. Let's talk about the display panel, the GPU, ports, etc.
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Absolutely. The problem with Macbooks is that the bigger the screen gets, the higher the specs of every other component. Why can't I have a 17" with a cheaper CPU and a smaller harddisk? If you want to spend more, you've got to spend more on everything, it seems. Though the (overpriced) upgrades give you some customization options.
Still, that doesn't mean that there are cheaper alternatives for Macbooks. Well, maybe old Macbooks. But OS is a big part of the choice too. If you prefer Windows or Linux, you wo
$2500 is possible (Score:2)
The current 17" MBP has a regular price of $2500. Mid-2010 it would have had an i5 processor.
While expensive, it's one of very few laptops offering a 1920x1200 display. Even most of the other "high end" ones are offering only 1920x1080. That's 10% less vertical capacity.
stupid slashdot...it gave me an error (Score:2)
so I reentered the text only to find that the first message had gone through...
Re:Price War? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.beyond-black-friday.com/2011/11/24/amazon-announces-a-black-friday-sale-on-the-kindle-dx/ [beyond-black-friday.com]
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Yes, it's more expensive, does more, does it better, and has 90% of the market.
Playbook as well (Score:4, Insightful)
The Blackberry Playbook has it's price slashed, and it is a signal of the end.
Android/Apple price slash - PRICE WAR!
Re:Playbook as well (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Playbook as well (Score:5, Funny)
Trust me, you don't want to find out. D-:
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What's a Blackberry? :-D
A Blueberry that's been told twice.
61 off the highest end iPad 2 (Score:2, Informative)
It's hardly a price war.
Give it a rest (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not a price war. The Kindle dropped their prices a while ago, not as part of some Black Friday promotion. And the iPad is in a completely different class of devices. I guess you might say that they're offering the sale to dissuade people from getting the Kindle Fire this Christmas, but the more likely scenario is that all of these are just standard Black Friday deals. This is less of a story and more like one of those snail mail sales flyers they spam out every week.
But hey, it will give all the fanboys a reason to argue over which device is best, which I suppose was the whole point.
Re:Give it a rest (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything is a war these days, every new product an [other product]-killer; people don't disagree with someone, they "slam" them or "destroy" them.
Let's face it, if it's not totally over the top and blown out of all proportion, very few sections of the media will care enough to publish it.
$79 Kindle with "Special Offers" (Score:5, Interesting)
The Nook is $79 with no ads.
I have no interest in either, but I wonder how many people are going to be WTF!? this christmas with their Kindle's as they didn't notice the "Special Offers" thing.
Re:$79 Kindle with "Special Offers" (Score:5, Informative)
The ads are fullscreen as a screen saver only... The rest of the time it is a little banner on the screen, except when reading, then the ads are not seen at all. You can also disable the ads anytime you want and Amazon will debit the amount to match the price of an unsubsidized model.
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The Nook is $79 with no ads.
It also appears to be in-store only (Black Friday special?). Foo.
$40 kindle (Score:2)
I bought the $80 kindle last week. At checkout, amazon offered me another $40 off if I'd apply for an amazon credit card. I did that, so I got a $40 device for reading public-domain books while traveling. I will never buy a DRM'd book from amazon.
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I might be missing something, but isn't the Kindle power adapter just a standard micro USB cable with power adapter? From the looks of it it's almost identical to the one that came with my Nook, apart from different branding.
At this stage as things move more and more to a standard cable, it makes less and less sense to pay for an extra power cable when you probably have a half dozen ones sitting around already.
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Not exactly. The power cable is a standard micro-USB cable which comes with the device.
The 10$ part is the USB AC adapter, which frankly seems a bit expensive, but it's not necessary as long you have access to a USB port or a modern cell phone charger.
Apple's pricing: "announced" or "reportedly"? (Score:4, Interesting)
"And meanwhile, Apple has announced aggressive pricing on all Apple products for Black Friday, reportedly including $100 off on MacBook and iMac products, and a $61 discount on the iPad 2."
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Not exactly.
It may be that Apple said "We will be aggressively pricing products for black friday".
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The Pedantic store called (Score:2)
and they're running out of you!
Anywho, $60 to $100 is brazenly aggressive from what's normally expected from Apple.
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Anywho, $60 to $100 is brazenly aggressive from what's normally expected from Apple.
Not really. $60 off the iPad 2 is quite aggressive when compared to the only previous Black Friday sale after the original iPad was announced: last year, the discount for iPads was $41 [macrumors.com].
But it's deffinitely not the first time that Apple offers discounts of $100 for Macs: it happened at least last year (see previous link) and on 2009, 2006, and 2004 [macrumors.com].
$61 off iPad (Score:2)
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How does the nook touch beat the kindle touch in hardware? Seriously because I want to get an e-reader but want the best value.
Re:Kindle Touch is still at $99 (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon missed the boat on one feature. With my Nook Touch I can hold it in one hand and press the hardware buttons on either side to turn the pages. With no hardware page-turn buttons on the Kindle touch you must tap or swipe the screen to turn a page, so it takes two hands to read a book. But, maybe I'm the only person who sometimes holds their e-reader with one hand.
Re:Kindle Touch is still at $99 (Score:4, Funny)
But, maybe I'm the only person who sometimes holds their e-reader with one hand.
ASCII porn certainly isn't what it used to be.
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Perverts. Binary pron is the only respectable pron. "You're the one!" "the power of two!" "Shift a bit left, would you? Ah, that's twice as good..."
Thanks, I'll be here all day. Try the veal.
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The old palmpilots were great for that. Hold in one hand, use your thumb on the scroll buttons.
Yes, I used to walk to university (50 minutes) reading off one. And on the way back, at night, with the backlight on.
Re:Kindle Touch is still at $99 (Score:4, Insightful)
I got the Nook Simple Touch because I really wanted a physical button for turning pages. I have been quite happy with the device.
My Nook is currently on loan to my father, whose hands shake a bit. He has real trouble with any touchscreen device; touchscreens are designed to do things when you touch them, and with his hands shaking he keeps doing things he didn't mean to do. With the Nook Simple Touch he can hold his hands on the bezel and use the hardware buttons to flip pages. (He's still having some trouble with it, but I think once he gets used to it he won't have any more trouble. But any device without hardware buttons is ruled out for him.)
Also, I really like the way Barnes and Noble designed their Nooks to take standard protective covers. You can choose from a variety of covers, with various features and colors and price points. I got a simple cover that can be secured with a permanently-attached elastic band, so that if I throw it in a backpack, the cover will stay closed.
I paid $140 for my Nook and I am satisfied that it was money well spent. I might just go pick up one of the $80 ones tomorrow.
steveha
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,br/> "God rest ye merry merchants may ye make the yuletime PAY!"
"Angels we have heard on high, tell us to go out and BUY!"
"Hark the Herald Tribune sings, advertising wonderous things...."
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I saw Christmas stuff in the stores a full two weeks before Halloween. We actually received the Sears "Spring Preview" catalog earlier this week.
It has definitely gotten absurd.
Re:Do you have to live in USA? (Score:4, Informative)
Depends for what store. A lot of Canadian stores have Black Friday deals, even though Thanksgiving was over a month ago here. Some US stores which operate or ship to Canada have the sales, like NewEgg (although their sale this year for Canada sucks).
Steam's prices are the same in every country, and they've got some amazing deals. Yesterday had Mass Effect 2 (or 1) for $5, Portal 2 for $10, that sort of thing. That sale is over, but there's a new set for today, and there's some less aggressive sales that are valid all week.
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Portal 2 for $10? Dang, I knew I forgot to check something yesterday, that was it. Time to see if they'll do the same around Christmas, I have a week off and a need to get my game on :)
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I just started Steam to check it out and according to what I'm reading, it's Portal 2 at half-price (14.99$USD) and that special price is still valid for another 21 hours and 30 minutes.
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How are we supposed to know about these sales? I didn't receive any email about it.
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And...you know....Playbooks. Not sure why RIM always gets left out of the equation when their device is just as good as anything non-apple.
Has RIM rewritten its OS so the Playbook is no longer partially crippled unless you also carry a Blackberry with you? Because, if not, it's only "as good as" those other devices if you're a Blackberry owner - and there are fewer and fewer of those every day.
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I was holding out for the next gen Asus Transformer but I just picked up a 32Gb Playbook for $299 and I've never owned a blackberry product in my life. The only crippling I can see is the native email client requires a blackberry but that's suppose to change in OS 2.0. Even with that there are links to Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail even Aol directly on the main screen and at least with Gmail, the mobile page looks as good as any app.
The only real drawback is because they launch through the browser you don't get n
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As far as I can tell the Playbook only really uses a Blackberry phone for it's native email app and since all mail is accessible through the browser anyway, that's hardly a deal breaker. There's even suppose to be a new email app with no Blackberry phone requirement in OS 2.0.
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I care about the Apple restrictions -- they bother me quite a bit, in fact. As do some of their upgrade policies and the iPad's intentionally limited hardware connectivity (no memory slot, no really effective USB connection.) But those things don't bother me nearly as much as the difference in usability and apps between the Androids (I have Kindle E-ink and Fire devices, a recent Droid, and an enTourage Pocket Edge) and my iPad. The iPad is simply a *way* better device. I use my iPad all the time. All day,
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I'm going to tell you guys an important secret: nobody except nerds wants a non-iPad tablet. Everybody wants the iPad, and if you buy somebody a different tablet, they will be secretly angry about you. You can nerd-rage about this all you want, but it is true. As has been said before: there is not a tablet market, there is an iPad market.
Meh. I doubt that's true. A friend of mine (very non-geek) has an iPad, and her son recently came home with a Nook Tablet. She likes it better than the iPad.
Unfortunately, it looks like Amazon is going to sell a lot of Kindle Fires to non-geeks just because they have better marketing, and a lot of people won't look at or even know about the Nook tablets, which are much better products.
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Is e-ink really waterproof? It must be hard taking a shower while holding your Kindle.
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It's spelled "ketchup", not "catchup".
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I played ketchup once. Ruined my clothes and stained the walls red. I don't advise it.
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lol -- what are you smoking?
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Being smart would be buying on Black Friday and saving a shit ton of money.
It's only smart if the time you spend camping outside of the store and fighting the mob inside the store is worth less to you than the difference in price. My time is valuable; wasting it on Black Friday shopping is a poor choice, IMHO.