eye-popping Black Friday tablet, computer & tech deals

eye-popping Black Friday tablet, computer & tech deals
Apple iPads, latest Android and Windows machines all in for big discounts. Oh, and free snow globes.

Retailers large and small started leaking their Black Friday circulars even before trick-or-treating began this year. Websites like BFads.net do a great job of rounding up the deals, and we poked around those sites as well as retailers’ sites to pick out those most of interest to the IT pros who read Network World. You will want to double check retailers’ websites for exactly when they open in your area, and whether deals are available only in person, or also online (pages we link to won’t always reflect the Black Friday price because the pages haven’t been updated). Time to start making your list…

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Sears: Mach Speed 9.7-inch Tablet (G2-9)
$130 ($40 off)
This Android 4.1 tablet boasts 8GB of storage and a dual-core processor, has rear and front cameras, and WiFi connectivity. Sears will offer an Amazon Fire HD for $140 as well, if that’s more your speed.

Staples: Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone
1 cent (usually $100), but yes, you do need to sign a 2-year carrier contract
This popular Android 4.2 phone with a 5-inch screen and excellent camera comes with 16GB of memory, expandable to 64GB.

Toys R Us: SanDisk 16 GB Cruzer USB Drive
$4.99 (down from $24.99)
Cheap file storage from SanDisk.

Home Depot: Belkin WiFi Switch (2-pack)
$60 ($80 if purchased separately)
These plug-in devices work with a free smartphone app to let you turn appliances on or off wirelessly.

Kmart: Sylvania 7-inch portable DVD player
$40 (33% off)
This little babysitter has a rechargeable battery and provides music/audio wherever you go.

OfficeMax: 8 oz. gas computer duster (2-pack)
$8 (usually $14)
Ok, just a little stocking stuffer here to keep things tidy.

Staples: Google Nexus 7 tablet (2nd generation)
$199 ($30 off)
This 16GB tablet running the Jelly Bean edition of Android claims 10 hours of battery use for normal use and is powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro 8064 1.5GHz processor.

Staples: Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet with Windows 8.1
$280 ($50 off the usual price)
For those with daring people on their list who want to give Win8.1 a shot, this device (presumably with 32GB of storage) appears to be slick and fast, sporting a new Intel Bay Trail Atom Processor.

PetSmart: Motorola Scout 500-2 Pet Monitor
$120 (usually $200)
This video monitoring system lets you keep an eye, via a handheld monitor, on what your pup or kitty is up to when you’re out. You’ll need a PetPerks card to take advantage of this deal.

Walgreens: Call of Duty Ghosts (PS3/Xbox 360)
$40 ($20 off)
The newest in the popular CoD series of first-person shooter games mixes in aliens. Walgreens chops the price by a third for those who didn’t need to have this game, rated Mature, in early November.

JCPenney: Free snow globes
OK, not a tech gift here, but apparently the very hottest items of the season are free snow globes that JCPenney doles out to the very earliest birds on Black Friday. JCPenney ruined the holidays for some last year by not giving out the knick knacks. There was even a Facebook page dedicated to the cause.

Walgreens: iHome Radio Alarm Clock with Apple charging dock
$49 ($30 off)
Take your pick with this alarm: Wake to iDevice music, FM radio or buzzing. Of course, you might want this to wake yourself up BEFORE Black Friday.

Microsoft Store: Dell Inspiron 15Z touchscreen laptop
Price: $399 ($450 off regular price)
This 15.6-inch touchscreen laptop boasts an Intel Core i5 processor, 6GB of RAM and 500GB hard drive. It runs Windows 8.

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eye-popping Black Friday tablet, computer & tech deals

eye-popping Black Friday tablet, computer & tech deals
Apple iPads, latest Android and Windows machines all in for big discounts. Oh, and free snow globes.

Retailers large and small started leaking their Black Friday circulars even before trick-or-treating began this year. Websites like BFads.net do a great job of rounding up the deals, and we poked around those sites as well as retailers’ sites to pick out those most of interest to the IT pros who read Network World. You will want to double check retailers’ websites for exactly when they open in your area, and whether deals are available only in person, or also online (pages we link to won’t always reflect the Black Friday price because the pages haven’t been updated). Time to start making your list…

Certkingdom Unlimited Life Time Access Membership
$50 USD
Certkingdom.com provide the best exam preparation tools Q & A, Study Guides, Preparation Labs, Case Studies, Testing Engines, Audio Exams preparation & Videos Tutorials for over 3000+ exams of most in-demand certifications that can boost your career in just one week.
Target: iPad mini & iPad Air
$300, plus $75 Target gift card; $480, plus $100 Target gift card

Retailers aren’t allowed to discount Apple product prices but get around this by offering gift cards, as Target is doing here with doorbusters on the Apple iPad mini (non-Retina display) with WiFi and 16GB of storage and the WiFi model of the iPad Air with 16GB of storage.

Costco: HP Envy Touchsmart 15.6-inch laptop with Windows 8
$800 ($200-$400 off)
This touchy bad boy has 16GB of memory, a 1TB hard drive and a fourth generation Intel Core i7 processor.

Best Buy: Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7-inch tablet
$99 (usually double that)
For Android tablet fans who don’t need the new HDX model and can put up with the special offers ads that appear on the lock screen, this is a sweet deal.

Target: Element 50-inch 1080p LED HDTV
$229 (regularly $600)
A 50-incher for $229? Element might not be the biggest brand name out there, but this Target deal should be hard to beat.

Best Buy: Asus 15-inch touchscreen laptop with Windows 8
$250 (half price)
This Win8 ultrabook boasts 6GB memory and a 500GB hard drive.

Walmart: iPad Mini (first generation) 16G version
$299 (the usual price, but you also get a $100 Walmart gift card)
Expect Apple to slide in late in the game and discount some of its products, but you often will get better deals from other retailers who throw in decent gift cards.

RadioShack: 2200mAh Portable Power Bank
$10, regularly $30
Keep your devices powered up, even when there's no outlet available, with this device. It provides up to 6 hours of talk time and charges quickly from any USB port. Most RadioShack stores will open at 8 am the day after Thanksgiving, but local store operators will have leeway to open earlier.

Gamestop: Battlefield 4 for the PS3, Xbox 360 or PC
$30
GameStop ((look to replace link with black Friday link) is knocking $30 off the usual price of this new first-person shooter game being published by Electronic Arts.

Toys R Us: Impecca Portable Dual-Screen 7-inch DVD Player
$99.99 (down from $129.99)
Toys R Us is offering this DVD player with headphone jack for both screens; built-in stereo speakers; SD MMC cards reader; carry case and bag included.

Best Buy: LG 55-inch LED TV
$500 (half price)
This big TV boasts 1080p resolution and a 120hz refresh rate, plus built-in WiFi and Internet readiness.

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4 reasons email will never die

Kids may no longer embrace email, but it ain't going away any time soon. Here's why.

Forward-looking social media enthusiasts like to predict the end of email as we know it. Indeed, there are plenty of signs that millennials, in particular, prefer other methods of electronic communication, using email primarily to communicate with their clueless parents and various other Luddite institutions. In fact, I know of one teenager who lost his place at University because he didn't check his email for months, and thus never saw -- or paid -- the tuition notices he was sent.

But even if the younger generations drive the technology choices of the future, email is not about to go the way of the carrier pigeon.

Let's look at four reasons why email will be around for the foreseeable future:

1. Email is permanent.
Except in cost-obsessed corporations that strictly enforce those 200MB limits on Outlook mail storage, most people hang on to their emails indefinitely. Thus it's easy to go back and dig up messages and documents sent months, years, or even decades ago. That tuition message the college student never saw? It's still sitting there in his inbox. That message the CEO sent authorizing the bank to sell loans it knew were dogs? Still in the system, even if it got deleted from individual mailboxes. Email creates an ongoing record of communication, that the law increasingly recognizes. That can cause problems as well -- just ask General Petraeus -- but it's a huge differentiator from all the social media communication alternatives.

2. Emails are scalable.
Sure, you can post pictures along with your text or status update, but email lets you attach multiple large documents to your messages. That means it can include everything from images to presentations to highly formatted text documents -- or just about anything else you might need to share. New technologies are coming online that make it easier to share files held in a central repository, usually in the cloud, but even then, they usually use email to alert folks that the files are there.

3. Email is a great low-cost marketing medium.
Marketers love email because its relatively easy and cheap to broadcast messages to lots and lots of people at once. (Sure, the spammers love email for the same reasons, but that just shows that email marketing actually works.) Once you gather a list of addresses -- opt-in, please -- you don't have to pay big bucks to reach them every time. Try that on Facebook or Twitter!

4. Email is a ubiquitous standard.
Unlike all the competing social media networks, all the email services actually work together properly. If you send someone an email, you know they're going to get it, no matter if they use Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, or a corporate system. And even if those kids don't check their email much, it's pretty likely they at least have an email account. Pretty much everyone does, even if some of them are on Facebook and others are on Twitter and others prefer Snapchat. Email is the place where they all come together. And I don't see anything about to usurp that place at the center of conversation.

Sure, email has plenty of problems, and I'll take a look at them in an upcoming post. But make no mistake - email remains the cornerstone of online communications. Now and forever.

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