How You Can Pay the LOWEST Price for Electronics, Computers and Cameras

Live your life for less . . . How to live above your means without Debt!

You decide you need (or want) a new 42" HDTV, or laptop, or a digital camera. That's OK- its part of taking advantage of technology. What is not OK is paying too much for the privilege.

First, we will go over some basics, then go to the real way to painlessly get the best price and finally provide you with a way to (possibly) save even more on your best deal.

First, some basics. Try not to buy a technology product when it first comes out. Techno-geeks and other early adopters will keep prices high (the iPhone sold for a $500 premium the first week it was out; within a month you could get discounts). I usually buy electronics that are one-to-three generations removed from state-of-the-art. Optimal purchasing is the marriage of performance (that you want and value) and price. Some products like computers have huge prcing differences for tiny differences in performance (which become "invisible", as technology advances, in months). I remember when I bought my first computer- I splurged for the extra 128 meg of RAM (a rounding error within a year)! A lesson learned for "only" $145! Anyhow, the optimal (or close to) price performance targets for:
- Computers: one generation (only the hottest, newest commands any sort of premium)
- HDTV's: two generations (close-outs at 30-40% off for 3-5% "value" difference)
- Camera's: two generations (close-outs at 40-60% off with a 5-10% "value" difference)
- Video game systems: One generation (still current, but 50% off, with lots of available used games)

For most technology, you can determine generations by looking at the features being promoted in the newest models. Speed or RAM on computers, lines and sound on televisions, megapixels and "recharge" time on cameras, etc. Find the state-of-the art, which is usually completely irrelevant once you actually use the product, and look for one-to-three generations back. This is where the sweet stop of price and performance meshes. Real life example, I'm typing this on my Toshiba laptop with only 1MB of RAM, which works 100% as well as the Dell with 2MB of RAM (and a faster processor) that I have in my office (and was purchased a few months later for about 100% more). And to prove, I'm not perfect (my wife will be happy to provide more examples), my mother bought a similar laptop six months after I did- and paid about 20% less!

More basics. Determine which product(s) you really want. For example, I recently bought a digital SLR camera for my wife's birthday. I did research in a camera magazine and on-line. I narrowed my choices down to three targets and went looking for the best deal. At the end of the day, most products are roughly similar in function and quality. In this example, I liked the Canon (probably because they did the most advertising and I was familiar and "comfortable" with the product). However, in my research I noticed the Olympus was very strong. When I was buying, I was able to get a much better deal on the Olympus and "saved" over $200 for what, in my mind, was a virtually identicle product (which I love). By the way, I bought one generation old, 8 megapixels vs. the then state-of-the art 10 megapixels.

Well you get the idea.

OK- now hear comes the meat and potatoes of this post. All electonics (and most products for that matter) are essentially commodities. They all have UPC codes. At the end of the day, you don't care where you buy your new camera, all you care about is how much it costs. Here is what you do. Go to a price comparison site. My favorite is CNET (www.cnet.com). Pricegrabber (www.pricegrabber.com) is another site. In the search box enter the UPC code of the product you want. In seconds, you will learn the cheapest place what you want (and likely save big bucks and a lot of time).

The site will search its database with the UPC number you entered and show you all the stores selling in its database that sell your camera (or whatever you want). Most of these stores also have a consumer experience rating. Find the cheapest product (make sure you enter your zip code so the site can calculate shipping), from a store with a high rating (very important); virtually all on-line stores that do any sort of volume will offer good service. Also, make sure you are comparing new products to new or refurbised to refurbished. There are fantastic deals on refusbished products- just make sure you know what you are buying.

If you have plenty of time, you can try a more general search, like 8 megapixel SLR. You will see various products matching your description with the cheapest price for each. Using this technique, I learned that I really did love the Olympus (as it offered everything I wanted for a significantly less money). Still remember the caveat to only do business with stores with a strong consumer ranking- let others be the guinnea pig, you just want to save money.

In the extremely unlikely event, you don't get what you ordered (or its damaged, etc.), return the product (certified mail) and dispute the charge on your credit card (I have never had to do this, but you should know and take comfort in the procedure).

Want to make this an even better deal? Go to a rebate site (more about these in another post) like ebates (www.ebates.com- if you want, you can tell them homebrew65@yahoo.com sent you!). In the search box, type in the store with your product. Depending on the product, you have a 30%-70% chance of saving an additional 2%-5% (not big bucks, but enough to make 5 minutes of clicking worthwhile).

Take care and good saving-

Tony