Cyber Monday 2022

[Daehawk]

Seems some really nice stuff in this video. The stand out to me was getting a year membership to Sams Club for less than $20.

$19.99 at Sams website
$15 at Groupon

All deals shown are listed in video description.

[Daehawk]

I discovered I had $8 around the 4pm mark. But I didn't find anything Id want even before I knew I had a little cash. I kinda am still looking around. But its just for the excitement of cyber monday. Its a little change from a normal bleak day.

[YellowKing]

I grabbed the Sam's membership. We already have a Costco membership but for $20 it's nice to have the alternative option. Picked up a couple of other things for Christmas presents.

Overall I scored quite well this year on Black Friday/Cyber Monday, particularly compared to previous years. I don't know if it's because the sales were actually better, or if they just happened to coincide with things I was looking for. I tend to believe it's the former, because I think retailers may be anticipating a below-average season due to inflation.

[Kraken]

I bought a new office chair on Friday. Hadn't intended to, but Facebook showed me a tempting ad, and after reading a bunch of reviews I decided it was a genuinely good deal on a better chair than I have now. The faux leather has almost completely worn off of my current chair, and when I lean back I hear some early warning sounds that a bolt is getting ready to snap. The new chair is an Ergoal One. Nominally $1200, it's routinely "on sale" for $600, and they had another $200 off for Black Friday. I figure $400 is about what it's really worth. And by buying it through my company I can use before-tax dollars and reduce my taxable income (a.k.a. profit) by $400.

For Cyber Monday I bought a couple of DLC add-ons to Civ6 that I didn't have. For $9 it's now fully decked out. It ain't much but I haven't bought any games for a couple of years, and Civ is just about all I ever play.

Apart from that, I can't think of anything I want or need.

[Blackhawk]

I'll just say that if you're going to have a motherboard die, Cyber Monday is the second best day to have it happen. The best day is...

Spoiler:

...the day before Cyber Monday so you don't have to power-cram on the research!

[em2nought]

The Sam's Plus membership used to, don't know if it still does, come with a really good perk of free tire repair regardless of where you got the tires. If you have a few vehicles and a couple trailers it's a nice perk to have.

[Daehawk]

You have about an hour left on these 50 Amazon deals. They even have that GoVee mood lighting kit for $8.50 and I cant get it lol.

[Carpet_pissr]

Couldn't resist a Lavazza AIO Espresso (Capsules) machine. $140 with a welcome kit of "pods" and an extra vessel (needed apparently if you make coffee for more than one person at a time). Latte heaven here I come (hopefully). I've been watching this for a while, and it's been several months since it's been this low, maybe since first of year. The capsules are also on sale with coupons.

https://slickdeals.net/f/16261909-lavaz ... vessel-140

I was trying to buy a "real" Breville espresso machine, but all the best deals for these were via using crazy coupon shenanigans with Bed Bath and Beyond or QVC, and they nixed that loophole before I could submit an order (or ran out of stock - QVC)

[Max Peck]

I splurged this year:

• Another 50 FFP3 respirators, which should last me through to the end of 2023:
  
• An underdesk treadmill (that will actually be used while watching TV):
  
• A replacement for my 16+ year old espresso machine that has been slowly dying for the last year:
  

Oddly enough, each of them was on sale at 20% off.

[coopasonic]

I picked up a couple things in the steam sale, but nothing else. I only gift shop for 3 people. 1 is done, the other two I have no idea what to get.

[Kurth]

Got a small 32” Hisense TV at Costco for $70 and an Amazon Fire Stick for $25.

Now my home office is going to be set up well for keeping tabs on the news (ie, watching sports) while working at home!

[Daehawk]

Heh I remember when 32" tv was the big tv. We had 27" ones mostly through the 90s. We were going to buy a 32" plasma in 2010 but it was sold out so we upgraded our plan to a 36" or 38" LCD tv.

[YellowKing]

I once paid $2800 for a 42-inch plasma. Ouch.

For what it's worth though, I still have that TV and it works great.

[Daehawk]

If Im not mistaken I think those 27" crts in the 90s got down to like $125 or so there before we stopped buying them. I now see 50" tvs for that or a little more.

[telcta]

I once paid $2800 for a 42-inch plasma. Ouch.

For what it's worth though, I still have that TV and it works great.

My last TV was a 42" plasma and I loved that thing. Samsung if I remember. Is that what you have? The color and contrast was just unmatched at the time and even this TV doesn't come close in picture quality although it's already about 5 years old (SUHD Samsung). I just cannot get this TV to look the way I want. I either have banding in gradient areas of the picture when using 4:2:2 or areas too dark to see any detail.

55" seems to be the best size for me, don't really see a need to go bigger in my living room. I've been so out of touch with tv technology that it'll take months of research see what I would buy next.

As for Cyber Monday, the only thing I bought was Linksys MX5300 Velop AX wireless router. I noticed my 10 year old router speeds were limited and I wasn't getting anything near what my download speeds should be. Plus one device could consume the the entire bandwidth of the network when downloading.

[YellowKing]

Mine was a Panasonic. But yes the black levels were *chef's kiss* on that thing. I can understand why they went out of fashion because they were energy HOGS and heavy as lead, but they were awesome for their time.

[telcta]

Yes, I swear the heat the plasma put out helped warm up the room.

[Daehawk]

And hot. Could cook on top the vents.

[Max Peck]

• A replacement for my 16+ year old espresso machine that has been slowly dying for the last year:
  

This did not end well. It was supposed to be delivered on 5 December, but Amazon dropped the ball. The tracking indicated that it was delivered, but I never received it. Normally Amazon deliveries include a proof-of-delivery photo on the tracking page, but there was none in this case. It took a couple of go-arounds with Amazon customer service, but I finally got an email today saying that they are issuing a refund. I'd have preferred that they replaced it, since it was on sale when I bought it, but a refund is better than nothing. Hopefully I can find something similar during the Boxing Day/Week sales.

[Daehawk]

Well that sucks. Sry.

[pr0ner]

I once paid $2800 for a 42-inch plasma. Ouch.

For what it's worth though, I still have that TV and it works great.

I paid $2300 for a 55" Sony rear projection TV in 2007. Having to buy replacement lamps for that one was fun, but it lasted me almost 9 years before the yellowing of the screen (a known problem the KSA-A2020) got too much to deal with.

Then I went into the 4K era with a 55" Samsung KS8000, one of their early quantum dot LEDs, in 2016 during Black Friday pricing for $1000. LG's 55" B6 OLED at that time was $2000.

I just bought a 65" LG C2 OLED for $1700. It's easily the best TV I've ever owned, and it's pretty remarkable how much TV pricing in general has come down over the past 15 years.

[Daehawk]

I see 55" ultra whatever smartTVs at walmart name brand for under $300. Its crazy cheap compared to the old days .

[Kraken]

I just bought a 65" LG C2 OLED for $1700. It's easily the best TV I've ever owned, and it's pretty remarkable how much TV pricing in general has come down over the past 15 years.

It's equally remarkable how short their life is. It seems a modern TV is failing or obsolete in considerably less than 10 years. We had CRT sets last 20, 30 years but replaced our first flat-screen TV in less than 10. Its successor was 50% larger and cost half as much. Now that one's just four years old and I'm already starting to think about its successor.

[pr0ner]

I just bought a 65" LG C2 OLED for $1700. It's easily the best TV I've ever owned, and it's pretty remarkable how much TV pricing in general has come down over the past 15 years.

It's equally remarkable how short their life is. It seems a modern TV is failing or obsolete in considerably less than 10 years. We had CRT sets last 20, 30 years but replaced our first flat-screen TV in less than 10. Its successor was 50% larger and cost half as much. Now that one's just four years old and I'm already starting to think about its successor.

Yep. I probably kept that Sony TV longer than I should have, but that was 9.5 years. The Samsung still works, but the One Connect box no longer outputs sound through HDMI so native streaming apps are the only way to watch anything with sound right now.

With how much technology changes (not just picture technology but HDMI type stuff), you almost have to buy something every few years if you want to stay on top of things.

[Carpet_pissr]

TV’s past their ‘life span’ may still turn on and you’ll still get an image, but the problem (for A/V freaks like me at least) is that your image quality has degraded over time.

Less so with modern LED’s since no one is really using fluorescent backlights anymore, but definitely with plasmas.

And the thing is it does it so slowly you won’t really notice it (color shifting, brightness, not sure about ‘sharpness’ but probably that too).

When I replaced my higher end plasma with an LED that cost much less than half the plasma’s cost (and very much a ‘middle tier’ model), the difference was stunning. I’m very sure if I had been able to find an exact, new replacement plasma, the difference in PQ would have also been stunning.

Interesting note on plasmas: a 55” plasma running a white screen draws approx 800 watts IIRC.

[Blackhawk]

*Looks awkwardly at the 12-year-old low end 42" LCD he watches almost every day in the bedroom, which looks a little like I'm watching with sunglasses on*

[Max Peck]

• A replacement for my 16+ year old espresso machine that has been slowly dying for the last year:
  

This did not end well. It was supposed to be delivered on 5 December, but Amazon dropped the ball. The tracking indicated that it was delivered, but I never received it. Normally Amazon deliveries include a proof-of-delivery photo on the tracking page, but there was none in this case. It took a couple of go-arounds with Amazon customer service, but I finally got an email today saying that they are issuing a refund. I'd have preferred that they replaced it, since it was on sale when I bought it, but a refund is better than nothing. Hopefully I can find something similar during the Boxing Day/Week sales.

I pulled the trigger today on a replacement for this. I upgraded from the stupidly fancy Philips Saeco EP3241/74 to the ridonculously fancy EP5447/94 but instead of buying it through Amazon, I ordered it from a specialty kitchenware store that had it on sale for 10% off, with a holiday coupon code that gave me another 10% off the sale price, with free Fed Ex shipping and an extra water filter tossed in for free. Normally it would arrive within 2 days of placing the order, but with the storm slamming everything for the next few days, I doubt I'll see it until next week.

[Max Peck]

The shop in Toronto that I ordered from shipped it yesterday at 4 PM and FedEx delivered it today at 9:30 AM. It's a Festivus Miracle!

[Hrothgar]

Get it to him quick before he comes to his senses.