Category: Inkjet Printers / Photo-quality Printers

Great Prices Epson and HP Photo Printers

If you are interested in getting a photo-quality inkjet printer, Ritz Camera has some price reductions and rebates that can nab you a printer for nothing or next-to-nothing:

HP Photosmart 385

The Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 385 is a compact (4" wide) photo printer that can print borderless 4×6 photos, 4×8 photocards or 4×12 panoramic shots at up to 4800×1200 dpi. With a pop-up 2.5-inch LCD screen, you can apply effects and print directly from memory cards.

This printer is $129.00, but with a $29.99 instant rebate and a $50 mail-in rebate, the price goes down to $50.00. If you purchase a digital camera at the same time (4 megapixels or more), an additional $50 rebate applies, bringing the price of the HP Photosmart 385 to ZERO. (NOTE: Make sure you send in BOTH rebate forms.) Even better, if you use Google Checkout to pay for your order by December 19th, they kick in $20 with their $20 off of $50 promotion, letting you get a free photo printer AND put $20 in your pocket as well.

Click here for more specs & information on this deal.

Epson Stylus R220

The Epson Stylus R220 is a full-size photo-quality printer that can print borderless prints in frame-ready sizes of 4×6, 5×7, 8×10, and 8.5×11 at up to 5760×1440 optimized dpi. It can also print on printable CDs and DVDs to give you vivid labels as good as professional printers create.

The price for this printer is $89.99, and a $50 mail-in rebate reduces this to $39.99. Again, if you use Google Checkout to pay for this purchase (thru Dec 19, 2006), your final price is only $19.99 for an excellent photo and CD/DVD printer.

Click here for more specs and information on this printer deal, or visit the Ritz Camera home page to see all their deals on digital cameras and electronics.

UPDATE: Over the Thanksgiving 2006 weekend, the $20 for $50 promotion has been discontinued for Gift Certificates. (Apparently, 40% off was too good an offer to resist for thousands of purchasers.) The promo is still running until December 19, 2006, but you must purchase a product — $50 or more — using Google Checkout other than a gift cert. Also note that if you use this promotion too many times, your Google account will be flagged and its use either limited or canceled.

Ritz Camera online and our favorite search engine (that rhymes with bugle) have combined for an incredible holiday promotion that can save you 40% on anything Ritz sells: Digital cameras, MP3 players, plasma HDTVs, and over 70,000 other photo and electronics products. This offer is good at RitzCamera.com and WolfCamera.com, as well as Ritz’a outdoors equipment sister sites – BoatersWorld.com, eAngler.com, ShopAtShark.com and OuterBanksOutfitters.com – for those of you who love boating, camping, fishing, golfing, etc.

Basically, the offer is “$20 off of any order $50 or more,” as long as you use Goo-gle’s Checkout to pay for the purchase. Here are the two keys that makes this such an incredible offer (and one that may not last very long):

• The 40% ($20 off $50) offer can be used multiple times, and
• The offer can also be used for $50 gift certificates.

So your $50 certs only cost $30 per, and you can use them in the future anything that Ritz sells online. (NOTE: These certs cannot be used at Ritz Camera centers or other offline stores. They must be used online.) You can use the certs as gifts, use them to buy gifts, or use them to buy yourself that latest gadget at a reduced price.

Once the word gets out, this incredible offer may not last, so don’t delay.

Category: Home Entertainment / Plasma TVs/Displays

Prices for plasma HDTVs keep coming down, and RitzCamera.com offers many of the best specials. For this week only, the RitzCamera.com electronics store is offering a Sylvania 42" plasma HDTV monitor for $799 (plus $165 truck delivery). Although this HDTV isn’t the latest technology or offers the highest contrast picture, for this price it would make a great monitor for a smaller room, such as a bedroom.

The good things about this HDTV:

• Widescreen (16:9 aspect ratio)
• High Definition Television (HDTV) compatible; Can accept 720p and 1080i HDTV signals
• Jacks for S-video input, composite video input, and audio input/output
• 16.7 million color display
• Wall mount kit ready
• Less than 5" deep
• Stereo speakers

Could be better:

• 1000:1 contrast ratio
• Separate set-top box or tuner needed

Category: Fishing / Fishfinders

This is a special find for all of you advanced anglers out there: Boaters World has a limited quantity of the advanced Lowrance LCX-111C HD color fishfinder/GPS for an incredible price. Regularly around $2000, BoatersWorld.com is offering this high-tech, sonar fishfinder for $1299.99; a $700 savings! (I haven’t been able to find anyone else that comes anywhere near this price.) BoatersWorld.com also gives more perks: Free shipping, no sales tax, and if you order through Google Checkout you can get another $10.00 off… making the final, out-the-door price $1289.99.

For those of you not familiar with this piece of high-technology designed for the angler truly serious about their fishing, it is a high-definition, TFT screen with thousands of charts of coastal waters (including Alaska and Hawaii), the Great Lakes, and many large inland lakes built into it. It also has advanced sonar/sounder technology to locate and map fish onto the background topographical information. The result is that not only can you find and track the trophy fish, but you also see the topographical data — depth, bottom features, etc — of where the fish are.

Now this equipment — especially at a price of around $1300 — isn’t for the casual fisherman. But for serious fisherman, especially those that frequent the Atlantic or Pacific coastal waters or the Great Lakes, technology like this is extremely valuable, and can make the difference between a great outing and a dud.

This offer is for a limited time/limited quantity, so if you’ve been shopping for a high-tech fishfinder, hightail it over to this URL before they’re sold out:
http://www.boatersworld.com/product/319392908.htm

For those of you who just can’t get enough of the Jellyfish Smack Shopping Deal of the Day, they have announced that there will be a 24-hour SOTD marathon on Black Friday. (For those of you not in the retail industry, that is the Friday after Thanksgiving… November 24th this year.)

The sales are supposed to start at 6:00AM Eastern (3:00AM Pacific) and run at the rate of approximately one every two hours for 24 hours straight.

If you’re not already planning on standing in line at Walmart or BestBuy early Friday morning — if you’d rather stay inside with your warm cup of coffee, tea or hot chocolate — you should check it out. The daily Smack Deals so far have been pretty good, with discounts ranging from 30 percent to more than 80 percent off. As an added incentive for gamers that can’t wait for the new Sony Playstation 3, Jellyfish has already hinted that at least one of the sales will be for a limited number of PS/3’s.

Click here if you want to read our previous review of the new Jellyfish Smack Shopping game.

Well, the Jellyfish Smack Shopping “Deal of the Day” has been live for approximately one week… let’s take a look at how the new game has been going.

As we posted earlier, Jellyfish is offering a limited quantity of a single product, per day, in a real-time, Dutch auction. After logging in to your Jellyfish account, you watch a counter reduce the price (at approximately 1 cent to a few cents per second), and when you feel you’ve gotten a good enough deal, you place your order to lock in that price. Obviously, the longer you wait, the more you save…. but the trick is not to wait too long, or the limited quantity will be sold out. When you buy, you end up paying the sponsor’s full price for the product, and the discount is credited to your Jellyfish account. You can get paid by either check or PayPal after a waiting period, typically around 60 days.

Overall, the game is a rather entertaining experience, if you can spare the 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours it typically takes for the product to sell out. (Note: Jellyfish begins each game auction at 1:00PM Eastern/10:00AM Pacific, presumably to allow working folks to play & buy during their lunch hours. The psychology of the game is rather addicting, however, so I suspect that quite a few people are taking extended lunches. Bosses, send your complaints to Jellyfish!)

One of the most interesting aspects of the game is watching the chat comments that appear while the price is ticking down. The verbal group frequently encourages each other to hold out for a lower price, but as the discount grows, this becomes more difficult as — I am sure — each player envisions the available inventory flying out the door. It reminds me a little of the prisoners’ dilemma; should I stick with the group (so we can all benefit more), or should I buy — possibly ending the game — to ensure that I get the product (benefiting myself)? Since all of economics is based on predictable behavior, it’s not surprising that the game usually ends before the group’s “target price” is reached.

So how have the deals been? Here are the products that Jellyfish has offered in it’s Smack Shopping Deal of the Day so far, and the last (i.e. lowest) price paid:

• Day 1: Apple 2GB iPod Nano – Silver (Store price $149.00) A large group of lucky people actually got 100% off, but this was due to technical difficulties. Apparently, on this first day of the live auction, all of the bugs hadn’t been worked out. Different prices were being shown to different parts of the country, and some people were seeing — and getting — the iPod for free when others were being shown a much smaller discount. (The technical difficulties still haven’t been completely fixed; see below.)
• Day 2: Canon Powershot SD450 5MP digital camera (Store price $199.95) No freebies this day; the best price gotten was $98.46, a 50.76% discount.
• Day 3: Toshiba SD-P1700 portable DVD player (Store price $179.99) Best price was $62.45, a 65.31% discount.
• Day 4: Apple iPod Video 80GB (Store price $348.95) Best price was $204.37, a 41.43% discount.
• Day 5: Microsoft Xbox 360 Core System (Store price $325.12) Best price was $173.45, a 46.65% discount.
• Day 6: Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop 3.0 Keyboard & Mouse (Store price $64.91) Best price was $11.73, a 81.93% discount. There was a huge cry of disappointment (and a lot of smart remarks) when this product was put on the reverse-auction block. After the series of iPods, digital cameras and Xbox systems, a keyboard/mouse combination didn’t cut it. (Even when they are getting a great deal, apparently people only care to see products that they actually want.) In addition, people noted that the original price of $65 was way out of line; it was possible to get it online for much less. Product-wise, this day was definitely a stinker… even though only 35 were offered, this product still went for a discount of more than 80%. (Several chatters said they werent going to buy no matter how low the price got.)
• Day 7: Sony DCR-SR40 Digital Handycam Camcorder (Store price $479.95) Best price was $289.64, a 39.65% discount. The relatively low discount today makes me wonder… as this site becomes more popular, are the discounts going to be less? Probably; I don’t think Jellyfish is going to increase the number of items available, so the Dutch auction bidding can only get more competitive.

So far, the Jellyfish-subsidized deals have been quite good, so you may want to Sign Up and play along.

One thing that Jellyfish needs to fix as soon as possible is their real-time price display. I do not know what technology is being used to implement the “real-time” counter, but it was clear from the comments that different people were still seeing drastically different discounts. (Yesterday, one chatter was seeing 98.5% off when the others were seeing a discount of around 50%.) Although the Buy It Now page corrects the price, it’s not a good experience when visitors think they are getting a huge discount, just to have it taken away.

Jellyfish’s game is fun and the deals have been encouraging… but they need to get their technical platform more accurate and reliable for this to be a completely enjoyable experience.