It’s Monday! Time for some handpicked gadget deals.
Windows 7 Professional Upgrade: $30 for students at Microsoft
What can cost upwards of $200 in a retail store can be had for $30 if you’re a student. And by "student," that means you have a .edu e-mail address. Maybe you’re a teacher or have an alumni e-mail address that ends in .edu—I don’t know—but one thing’s for certain, you’ll need a .edu e-mail address to get this deal. Maybe you’re friends with someone who has a .edu e-mail address—I don’t know—and won’t use this deal. It’d sure be a shame for it to go to waste, right?
MacBook Pro: $1,000 at Micro Center (in-store only)
It costs $1,200 direct from Apple but only $1,000 from your local Micro Center store. Therein lies the rub: You may not have a local Micro Center store.
If you do, you can go there and save $200 on the new MacBook Pro. And what’s more, you can reserve it online first so you don’t make the trip for no reason. Win? Win.
Refurbished Bloggie HD camcorder: $50 at Sony
Use coupon code OUTLETPM5W to cut the price of the refurbished Sony Bloggie 1080p HD camcorder from $127 down to $50. That’s cheap for a 1080p camcorder.
The Bloggie has a 270-degree rotating lens that allows you to record yourself or whatever’s in front of you, and there’s a flip-out USB connector and built-in software that you can use to upload your videos to streaming video sites.
Compaq 15.6-inch laptop: $280 at Office Depot (in-store only)
Office Depot is selling the 15.6-inch Compaq CQ62-410 laptop for just $280 after a $140 instant discount and a $30 mail-in rebate. Oh, and you have to go to the store to get it. After all that, though, it’s a stellar deal; a full notebook for the price of a netbook, if you will.
The machine runs Windows 7 Home Premium and has a 250-gigabyte hard drive atop two gigabytes of RAM. Battery life is pegged at over four hours, the thing weighs 5.5 pounds, and it’s got a Celeron processor. Remember those? There’s a DVD burner, too.
PlayStation 3 160GB console with Killzone 3: $300 at Amazon
For the price of the standard, no-game 160-gigabyte PS3 console, you can get Killzone 3 thrown in with it so you’ll have something to play when you get home. Otherwise you’ll be like, "Man, I should have bought some games. This thing would be a lot more fun with games."
And your friends would come over and be like, "Don’t you have any games? You should have bought some games."
And you’ll be like, "Don’t you think I already figured that out?! And take your shoes off! How many times do I have to tell you to take your shoes off?! You know my mom and Craig get mad about that. Well, don’t bother now. You’ve already tracked a bunch of dirt in here."