Prices have been falling my friends and that is a good thing for me. My wife and I, through the help of our huge tax return this year, managed to take advantage of some of these fallen prices. Now what I use for my price comparison is mainly Best Buy. They are the perfect big box store to reflect retail pricing. The other source for prices I typically use is Newegg.com. I prefer Newegg over anything else because I’ve used them for years and have never had a bad experience from them. Also their prices are almost always below retail and shipping often times is free.

For Example:

My wife wanted one of these…

Now of course I objected. The last time I heard anything about them they were going for $400. Well, wait a second. Didn’t my parents say they just my brother one for x-mas for half of what they paid for my mom’s? And my brothers in a 2nd Gen so it has the built in speaker and full iPhone application compatibility? Maybe we can look at those. So look we did. The absolute cheapest place we found one online was at the Apple refurb site. I can’t seem to locate that site at the moment but the price was somewhere around $175 for a refurbed generation one unit. No dice on that. I want the cool one if we have to get one.

So we head out to our friendly local neighborhood spiderman Best Buy. The iPod price is obviously very carefully controlled by Apple so it’s not exactly like they can rip us off on it. Also I have a rewardzone account so it’s mucho points for me. So this is what we bought for $229.99.

 

Next I decided that my wife needs a cellphone. She’s been more active and outgoing lately because her health has been better. Also she’s notorious for getting lost and ending up way out of her way trying to turn around or find a phone. Also, I’ve been considering dropping my long distance plan with my landline company for awhile now. So it was worth a shot to atleast check out the plans.

Problem number one is that I (we) don’t have the greatest credit score in the world. I figured a plan would almost certainly not approve us. Especially considering that we just bought a house. Then I found out I get an employee discount for AT&T because that’s who my company uses apparently. So I had some “premiere” offers to consider but knowing I’d probably not be approved for any. So then we started looking at prepaid plans.

Here’s AT&T’s idea of a prepaid plan. Basically you can either pay 10 cents per minute and be charged $1 per day for a service charge, or you can pay 25 cents per minute and forgo those charges. Plus you don’t get to text and only calls to other AT&T cellphones are free. So This one was pretty much out.

We looked at several more but I want to get to the point on this one. What we ended up going with was Boost Mobile. They have this awesome monthly unlimited plan for $50. All you do is pay $50 a month via their website and you get unlimited minutes for both voice, text, and data! The downsides are that for one, the phone selection is very limited. We picked ours up at Best Buy for $99.99. We ended up with the i776.

 

Next I am moving on to Monitors. Speaking of which, why the heck am I blogging on my small monitor? Grr… There fixed. This new monitor rocks. I’ve been wanting to get a new widescreen monitor for awhile. I’ve just been waiting for the price break to drop again. I’ve had my sites set on a 22″ WS of indeterminate brand. For a long time Newegg was having atleast one 22″ monitor on their website for $150. So one day I was feeling a little jealous of my wife getting the new iPod and the new Phone, I decided I needed alittle electronic pick me up. I figured I could bring home a decent 22″ monitor for around $300 and I wanted it right away. Well I get to Best Buy and head straight back to their Monitor display and I am almost shocked. Here, in the store where two years ago I paid $270 for a 20.1″ standard monitor, are 22″ monitors marked for $150-$250. Holy crap! When did those prices come down so much? Wait a second, what’s this over here on the shelf next to the 22″? Why it’s the 23″ model and it’s only $230. OMG! a 24″ for $299. Didn’t that guy I game with say he paid over $600 for his? Damn.

So here’s what I ended up with. I decided not to stress the budget more than necessary to appease myself with having spent as little as possible on a decent upgrade. So I picked up an Acer H233H 23″ Widescreen @ 5MS with a 40000 to 1 Contrast ratio for $229.99. My 20″ only has a 5000 to 1 contrast ratio. When the two are running side by side the difference is astounding.

Check out this bad boy here for $229.99! Don’t forget to check out those prices. I think the LCD size standards may be changing. The best part is, as I often do after buying things at Best Buy just to see how stupid I was, I checked out Newegg and bam. There price is only $10 cheaper and I didn’t have to wait for it! Also, Best Buy had even matched them by having a cheapie 22″ for $150! That almost never happens.

So if your in the market for an iPod, a Cellphone, or a bigger LCD monitor so you don’t have to squint at your dim 17″ anymore, now is the time to take advantage. Money willing and spouse approved of course. My wife just happens to be cool like that.