Great Prices Here

What is better than a bargain, a discount, a good deal, an on-sale item? A Freebie, that’s what! Economists, however, would disagree with me, because the theory is that if a thing is free, its intrinsic value for the customer will be reduced. Whatever! I love freebies so lets go shopping. Without any money!

Freebies Archive is a site that claims to offer all manner of things free, including free laptops and free iPhones. Now that made me very suspicious so I delved a bit. Lots of pages regretted to inform me that the offers were no longer available or had expired; others redirected me to pages where I saw that in order to get the alleged ‘free’ iPhone you have to do all kinds of things and the rules stated:

“Please note Sponsor offers may require you to sample and/or purchase products of interest and/or take other actions such as applying for or obtaining a loan or extension of credit (including credit cards), transferring a balance, or similar steps. In order to remain eligible for your gift, you must complete all of the sponsor offers that require you to sample and purchase products of interest within 180 days of signing up for our service.”

Hmmm, not free after all. I looked with rather less suspicion upon the free samples sections. However a lot of these also redirected me. My desire to get 6 free toothpastes took me to a site called Brandrama (wonder if this one was named by someone hung up on the ghastly 80s band Bananarama) where I was firstly asked for my email address and the home page told me that the six tubes would be mine if I “took a survey and completed participation requirements where I sampled and purchased products of interest”. Most of the offers ominously informed me “Participation required”. Lots of strings there, and sounds like work to me.

Frankly disheartened I clicked on the free antivirus software, very hopeful that at least this would yield a genuine freebie? Nada, me hearties! The page offered zilch, it came up blank! Thoroughly dejected I ploughed on to the free Books and magazines section. A free magazine subscription offered me “the opportunity to participate in health surveys and polls.” And in all probability it will be an email subscription, so my ebbing enthusiasm evaporated entirely. Then there were free fonts to be downloaded, which I did, but my computer informed me that I would need to go and find the appropriate program to open the damn thing.

I hereby, most gloomily conclude that there is no such thing as a free lunch. But you know what, I am an eternal optimist and my quest for the freebie shall continue, I will bring you good tiding about it anon!

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Tags: Best Deals, Humor, Money Saving, freebies by Nicole Price
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I was thinking about what topic to write on for my next post, and nothing came to mind: I was fresh out of ideas! Then the song that was playing on my computer at the time gave me an idea: the song was the Beatles (anyone who is a regular reader here will know that I am a Beatles nut) song Money, That’s what I want so I thought I would make my own compilation of all the best ‘Money’ songs that were made!

I may be a Beatles nut but my fav money song ever, has to be the iconic Money by Pink Floyd. What a song! Contrary to what a lot of people believe, I think Dark side of the Moon is the best Pink Floyd album.

New Car, Caviar,
Four Star Day Dream
Think I’ll buy me a Football Team

A song that I practically grew up with is the pop classic from Abba, Money, Money, Money. This song is all that’s good about pop music. Good tune, beat, and great vocals.

Money, money, money
Must be funny
In the rich man’s world
Money, money, money
Always sunny
In the rich man’s world

A song that is perhaps my introduction to real rock would be the Dire Straits song from Brothers in Arms, Money for Nothing. Irreverent, humorous and almost self deprecating, this song remains a personal nostalgia piece. Great track!

Look at them yo yos, that’s the way you do it,
Play the guitar on your MTV,
That ain’t working
Money for nothing and chicks for free

Since Beatles are my fav band ever, I picked two of their songs (I didn’t pick Cant buy me love) to include in the list: song Money, That’s what I want and Baby you’re a rich man too. The latter is a bizarre song with random lyrics like:

Baby you’re a rich man,
Baby you’re a rich man,
Baby you’re a rich man too.
You keep all your money in a big brown bag inside a zoo.

Any money songs you can think of which should have made it to the list?

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Tags: Entertainment, music by Nicole Price
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In my last post I talked about desktop computers and laptops. Today let’s look at all the things that go with a PC, such as printers, scanners, external storage devices, flash memory cards etc.

Most people now want to go in for an all in one device that will serve as a printer, scanner and copier, negating the need for separate appliances to perform these functions.

I have quite a bit of brand loyalty for Hewlett Packard products, so I would recommend this Printer/Scanner/Copier at Amazon which comes for the discounted price of $112.33. For just over a dollar more, you can combine this purchase with a Startech 6ft Premium USB 2.0 Ab High Speed Certified Device Cable . You can add a 2 year replacement plan for $21.99 ($11.99 for a one year replacement plan) when buying this product. You may not require a printer with so many functions, in which case you can buy a printer that only prints. This HP Printer will cost you $69.00 plus shipping.

For people who store a lot of data on their computer, it is always advisable to back up your hard drive by storing all your data on an external or removable hard drive in case your computer crashes, a virus corrupts data etc. This Samsung 200 GB hard drive will cost you $54.99 and comes with a three year warranty.

A small portable storage device like a pen drive that you can carry everywhere you go can be a very convenient item especially for those people who carry work home. This 16 GB USB Flash Drive costs $61.49 and comes with free ground shipping.

If, like me, you listen to a lot of music on your computer, good speakers are a must have. I invested in some good speakers earlier on. Whenever I am doing other stuff around the house, the music is always on (with the monitor off - don’t forget this energy saving tip). The speakers are good ones, so I can hear the music in every corner of the house. Logitech makes a lot of computer accessories and their speakers produce good quality sound. This three piece speaker set from Logitech costs only $32.99.

I found pricewatch to be a very good one stop site for all your computer related needs. It finds you the best prices on any of many well segmented items and also points you in the direction of the best sellers.

Do let me know what your favorite brands for computer accessories and peripherals are. Any brands that you have had a bad experience with? Do leave me a comment.

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Tags: Accessories, Best Deals, Electronics by Nicole Price
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Or perhaps you want to buy a laptop in addition to your PC? In the past few posts I have been talking about other things connected to money, such as advertising (good and bad), currency etc. because it is after all, all about the money, honey! Hope you have enjoyed them, I shall keep them coming interspersed with my usual bargain hunting quests. So this one is about bargains again, because I (and my significant other) have been toying with the idea of either upgrading our computer or buying a new laptop. So I thought let me do a survey before we take a decision.

A one stop shop for all your computing needs is discount PC. This offers an IBM NetVista 8305 - Pentium 4 2.4 GHz - 256MB - 40GB Hdd - CD - Windows XP Pro Installed - Desktop Case for $155. Good deal I thought, but if you do want to go in for a new computer I would go for a bigger hard drive. So this Acer Aspire T180 Athlon 64 3800+ 1GB 160GB DVD±RW preloaded with Windows Vista Home sounded better to me at $299.

Yes these are all very nice, and I found more PCs (discounted and otherwise) at directron.com, cheap stingy bargains, etc, but I kind of have my heart set on a nice compact sleek laptop, notebook, thinkpad whatever it is that they call it.

Look how pretty this Lenovo Think Pad is, which, after a coupon discount is just $596.70!

Talking of pretty, ever since I saw Oprah generously gifting everyone in the audience a Sony Vaio, I have thought it a very good looking laptop. I thought this deal for a Vaio was fabulous at $679 until I saw the ‘refurbished’ sign below the picture. Ah well, searched some more to find this deal for the Vaio at $862, also great!

Then this Toshiba Laptop from Newegg costs you just $499 which is after a $100 rebate. Discount Laptops has a wide selection as well and a discussion area, which may be useful for you to check out too.

Now I am thinking refurbished may not be a bad idea, simply because these items are not really used and have then been double checked and sanitized (don’t know why a computer would need to be sanitized, but whatever) before being placed in a buyer’s hands. Hmmm now I am reasonably confused so we shall leave accessories, peripherals etc for my next post. Meanwhile my significant other and I shall confer.

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Tags: Best Deals, Electronics, Money Saving by Nicole Price
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If, like me you love to read, then e-books are a great idea being supported by people as a green way to read. Simply because this way you decrease the demand for the paper on which books are printed and consequently save trees! Also, with eBooks you don’t have to pay for shipping or wait until the book is shipped to you. It is a good idea, (though I still feel that curling up with an actual book is the best way there is to pass the time) so I wanted to take a dekko at the eBook sites on the internet.

This free eBook site gives you the option of downloading for free, all kinds of eBooks, on subjects as diverse as education, philosophy, fitness, business, fiction and many, many others. I wanted to download and finally read The Doll’s House which was an extremely influential play of its time; it was easy to do, after a relatively painless registration. The fun thing about this site is you can even upload your book on to this site to share with others. You know what they say, there’s a book inside all of us!

This site gives you access not only to books (you can search by title or author) but also gives you access to news and public domain material, features such as celebration of women writers and banned books and more book links.

With the success of eBooks like The Daughters of Freya books by email is a concept that is really catching on. Daily lit is a site that offers to periodically email you books part by part. Classics are usually mailed to you free of charge, while you pay for reading the more current books (The Daughters of Freya is $4.95). You can even gift these books (including the free ones!). Thought this was a great idea.

If, however, you are still convinced that holding a book in your hand and turning the pages is the best way to read, there are of course a lot of sites that offer big discounts on conventional books as well. Book close outs is a site that offers up to 75% discount on books. Swim with the Sharks without being Eaten Alive, for instance is available at a 69% discount. Amazon also has a bargain book section where you can buy bargain books for under $5, $10 and $20 and so on. The All Discount Books site promises to find you the best prices for any book that you want, though this site leans more towards providing access to cheap text books.

I think books can be our best friends, and one of the best habits we can pass on to our children is the habit of reading. What do you think?

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