shopping rambling

[renegade600]

Yesterday (Saturday) I decided to go to town, well a town about 10x larger than the one I live in.  first went to home depot, found tcp connected bulbs 10 bucks apiece in the discount rack.  This is scary and at the same time made me mad.  The scary bit is it makes me wonder if tcp connected bulbs are not selling that well so the company could be getting ready to pull a revolv.  I already have 14 of those bulbs.  It made me mad because I already have 14 of those bulbs and paid 17-21 bucks apiece for them.  I did purchase several of those 10 dollar bulbs just in case I needed them later. 

Went to a Walmart Supercenter that is a couple times larger than the walmart supercenter in my town.  Found Wemo switches for 20 bucks apiece in their discount aisle and the seals were still on the box.  the switches was the older model but who could resist.  I needed a couple so I got lucky.  It did not matter they were not the smaller insight switches. 

Went to best buy and found they had several echos on stock - regular price.  Too bad they were not the dot, then I would have gotten one more.  While at best buy checked out the new ipad pro 9.7 - it was nice but so was the price so I did not get one, besides everything own is android.  I was considering getting the ipad because a few years go I had the iphone and purchased several apps and there are a couple that is not available for the android.  Not sure if they would be compatible with the latest ios so I held off - for now.  I have the original note 10.1 tablet and it is beginning to show its age - so it is time for a new tablet.  Would like to get another note 10.1 table but it seems Samsung no longer manufacterer newer models. 

that was it for my gadget shopping... The point of the post is, it seems several major chains are starting to put echo compatible devices on clearance.  Might be good to check the clearance aisle in your favorite stores.  If you find some, post it here because who knows, others may also find the clearance device in the same stores in their area. 

[mike27oct]

If you want to get an iPad, this is what I did a few years ago to get one:

The day the new model was announced by Apple, I went shopping online for the suddenly "older model" known as the Gen3.  I had already pre-shopped for the thing a few weeks before and saw the online prices.  After the announcement of the newest model, the online prices had dropped.  I bought mine from a big Amazon seller, and ended up getting an iPad with 64GB (largest capacity at the time) for $125 LESS than Apple store was selling it the day the new one was announced.  My cost included paying NO sales tax of 10%.  My iPad has always worked perfectly. 

I was in an Apple store this week and saw the newly released models (iPad Pro) and also the one that preceded it called the iPad Air.  Apple has a history of quietly dumping their excess inventory into alternate markets like big online sellers.  I would not be surprised that this practice has gotten bigger today, now that it is all in the news that Apple sales are down greatly for the first time ever this past year.  So, go shopping!

The iPad models have a lot more capacity today, but my 64GB capacity will serve me well for some time to come , because I store NO media on my tablets and phone.  I have always streamed my media via my network to the devices, and it works great; even when done remotely.  Over a year ago I got a large (8TB) capacity WD My Cloud NAS to store my growing digitized media file collection, and for folks with a lot of media, a NAS is the way to go these days.  This NAS is also set up as a RAID box so that one drive mirrors the other, so my effective capacity is half; just 4TB.

[renegade600]

I did consider getting the Ipad Air2 but for a hundred dollars more, I get something a year in a half newer, faster processor, better screen and without the problems being caused by the latest ios update.