UPDATED: Black Friday Picks

By Timothy R. Butler | Nov 26, 2009 at 0:53:56

Trying to sort through the noise and find a few good deals online for Black Friday? Here are some of the most interesting deals that are available right now, including great deals on MacBooks and KitchenAid stand mixers. Updated at 5:30 p.m. (CST) on November 27

Note: this article will be updated as we become aware of more deals of interest.

Amazon.com
The retailer's AmazonMP3 service is giving away $3 with of credit for its MP3 store as a Black Friday promotion. You can get the discount by going to this page. Amazon has reduced the price of many best selling albums to $5, as well. The $3 credit can be used for individual tracks or albums, but does seem especially interesting when combined with the $5 album sale to yield $2 albums (Note: OFB is an Amazon affiliate).

Verizon
Verizon's 3G wireless enabled edition of Gateway's 10.1" netbook, the LT2016u, is now selling for a very low $29.99. Even for Black Friday, we've seen the non-3G versions of this netbook going for around $199, which makes this an enticing deal if you are willing to pick up a data plan. A review of the Gateway is forthcoming here at OFB. In the mean time, our current testing with the machine leads us to appraise it as a highly promising netbook. Its glossy screen offers good picture quality, its keyboard is comfortable for a netbook, and it offers very good battery capacity.

Wal-Mart Wireless
Relatedly, Wal-Mart's online wireless phone store is selling HTC's Droid Eris (for use on Verizon's network) for a really amazing $30. The Eris offers a great implementation of an Android OS phone with HTC's well thought out Sense UI additions. The phone easily gives the more expensive Motorola Droid a run for its money, and while it doesn't do everything "Droid does," it has a few unique tricks of its own that actually may make the Eris a better choice than the Droid. At less than one third of the going price, this is an excellent choice if you are looking to jump on what OFB has forecast to be one of the two dominant smart phone platforms over the next few years (the other being iPhone OS). A full review is forthcoming.

Bing.com Deals
The deals below, from PCMall/MacMall, HP and Sears can be made even better using Microsoft's Bing.com Cashback service. Essentially, you sign up for an account at bing.com/cashback, use the links in the Cashback Store Directory to access the retailers you want to shop with, and you will receive cash rebates back 60 days after you make purchases that you do not return.

HP Home & Home Office
Right now, HP is offering 20% off its products via Bing.com Cashback; the store also has an additional $20 coupon available via coupon code "SVMY478761." As an example, this coupon brings the HP MediaSmart EX490 server, a very handy Windows Home Server, which can be used to backup and share information between both Windows and Mac systems, down to $479. Assuming HP is willing to combine Bing.com Cashback and the aforementioned coupon, the EX490 could be purchased for just $383.20.

PCMall/MacMall
This company is offering the white MacBook (2.26 GHz) for just $884.98, the lowest price we'd seen until the even lower price at MicroCenter came out (see below). If you use the PCMall link on Bing's cashback web site, you will get an extra 3% off, bringing the cost down to an even lower $855 - an unusually good deal on a current model Apple laptop. OFB Labs has found the nVidia 9400-based Macs to be especially good performers and this model even includes a larger, 250GB hard disk than the aluminum clad Pro model that is the next step up.

MicroCenter
If you live in a city with a MicroCenter, you can get the same MacBook mentioned above for just $799 after $200 mail-in rebate. Note the rebate does come in the form of a pre-paid Visa gift card.

Sears
Sears right now has a KitchenAid 4 1/2 quart stand mixer for $134.99. Additionally, if you start your session at Bing Cashback, you can get 13% in cashback for an amazingly low total of $117.44. (Note: to use Bing Cashback, follow the link on the Cashback site to Sears and then search for item #K4SSWH.) With the KitchenAid stand mixer line standing as the gold standard of mixers, this seems like a perfect deal on a perfect gift for the aspiring chef in your life.