Black Friday 2009

It seems every year last minute we would decide if we are going to attend the coveted Black Friday event at a our local Walmart. This year my brother in law’s laptop was giving some problems, being that it was 3 years old, he decided he want a new laptop. I told him about Wally Mart’s laptop deal made by eMachines for $198! So we decide let’s go and get this laptop so I asked “What time do you want to leave (as he was driving)?” He said “4 am…” He then called me back 15 minutes later and said “Better make that 3:30 am…” Another 15-20 minutes later… “Better make that midnight… we’re leaving at midnight…” I said “Midnight…!?! (Pause) OK, I’m game…” See I’ve been to couple of the Black Friday Wally Mart sales what I remembered was just waiting in a long line in the dark and it was cold… and did I say that the line was really long? Most times by the time you get into the store the item you waited for or wanted was sold out as Walmart just brings in a limited amount of the sale items.

This year was the first year I went 5 hours before the sale started and to my surprise Walmart was open when we got there. Apparently they were open 24 hours that day and had the entire sale items wrapped up in cardboard with signs on them saying “(Item Name) for 5 am Sale” and you could not purchase the item until 5 am. How they handle the big-ticket items like laptops, flat screen TVs, game units, etc. they gave you a ticket number where each ticket corresponds to one item. In the $198 sale model laptop there were only 30 available! And my brother in law got the last one!

Walmart had aisles roped off (in some case they had more than one item per line) for each of the big-ticket items when you got a ticket you had to wait in a line and could take 15 minutes bathroom breaks, but you had to turn in your ticket if you don’t return in 15 minutes your ticket will be given to someone else.

I have to confess something I got caught up in the moment and bought one these $198 laptop. I always heard about people buying stuff on Black Friday and Ebaying it on Cyber Monday. So I gave it a shot with this laptop (but that’s another story).

I set up the eMachines laptop for my brother in law that we got from Walmart and I was really impressed with that model especially for that price tag. It was a very capable performer it did everything my brother in law needed it to do (and more!). I ended up taking some video with my Nikon L5 digital camera of the set up I was planning on using it for my eBay page you can see the video below...