Savings – swan tron dot com

April 1, 2011

Best Online Shopping

As I am an expert on all things internet-y, it should come as no surprise that I am a proponent of online shopping. A staunch proponent, in fact. Don’t get me wrong…I am all about grocery shopping. One of my dream jobs is to work in a butcher shop; maybe I can make that happen when I retire from this code stuff. If I ever hit the lottery, it will be a tough call as to whether or not I drop of an application at Orange Julius or the Meat Shop. Time will tell.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Tracking down items online. It really isn’t that hard. One of my daily rituals on the webs is to check the deals at Savings.com. For those not in the know, Savings is sort of a hybrid between Woot and Amazon. Good stuff.

saving money — I need to spring for a better drawing setup

Instead of offering a limited deal of the day, a la woot, or a selection that is somewhat static, a la Amazon, Savings.com is an aggregate of deals from all over the place. Mothers Day flowers…you bet. JCP and Target…you also bet. The cool part of this is being able to associate a store’s deal with what you need. Take my t-shirt wardrobe for instance. If J C Penny’s is having 25 percent off of men’s ware, I can snag those suckers for two bucks per unit. Not too bad, right.

Hit that link up there to see what is available. Tell them Joe sent you.

November 1, 2010

Nerd Wish List

Black Friday is right around the corner. Not to offend anyone, but going to brick and mortar stores for sales is sort of ridiculous. Getting up in the middle of the night, standing in giant lines, jockeying for position, standing in more giant lines…all for the sake of saving money on a set amount of big ticket items. The marketing is blatant…’while supplies last’ is likely to mean that there will be roughly a dozen of the cheap LED LCD TVs that look so attractive on paper. You probably got up and did all of that for nothing.

Take a note from my book: avoid the giant hassle and shop online. I popped over to my perennial favorite http://www.savings.com for a few ideas. As usual, they didn’t let me down.

I am a pretty simple nerd. I have to buy my components on a per-project basis, so my small ticket items are taken care of. I really only have three items on my list, and savings.com has screaming deals on two of three.

Item one…Android Tablet

For development and general coolness, I want a tab. Badly.

Item two…new Android Mobile Device

Read: phone. I want a new one…also for development purposes and general coolness.

Item three is the new Zelda game for Wii. I have a feeling Katie will get me that…but chances are good that she could save some loot by checking savings.com first.

Anyhow…take a look and save yourself a trip.

October 28, 2010

I Love Newegg, You Should Too

You know that part of your brain that makes you do stuff unconsciously, but slowly enough that you have to wonder if it was deliberate?

Case in point…

You are watching TV, and some botox-faced newscaster mentions something about a stolen wallet. Your find your hand checking the contours of your pockets, making sure that your wallet is still where it should be, by your junk. You feel yourself reaching for it, and try to take control from the brain stem…take charge…you got it. Nope. That was impulse, dog.

Well, I don’t rock a wallet in the traditional sense. I use a binder clip to keep my credit cards from migrating to the floor. I also have the same knee jerk reaction to computer part prices as most would have with the wallet example. Hear of a computer type product…look on Newegg.

Remember that HP touchscreen tablet I was pining about a few days ago… check this out:

newegg is nice — when did robot become a bro...nice?

That is 20 USD cheaper than I saw on HP’s website, and that is without a NewEgg promo code. Get a promo code and we make that twenty dollar savings from the HP site looks small. Small, like my wallet, which once again, is a binder clip.

Even writing about my binder clip makes me check my pocket for my binder clip. I feel for you wallet folk. Check out Newegg…it’ll work itself out. If you feel really bad, check out Savings.com on the regular. The Newegg promo codes are just one of many that those guys toss out there.

FWIW, I want that HP even more. Gutted with Ubuntu Unity…that’s the stuff dreams are made of. Nerd dreams are dreams too…nerd dreams are dreams.

May 24, 2010

Shop Like Swantron

I’m either the best shopper or the worst shopper in the world. I love a deal as much as anybody, but I absolutely hate the process of mulling over purchases. Stores make me uneasy…the pressure to buy impulsively mixed with the people mixed with the smells and sounds drives me up the wall. People watching is fun, but not fun enough to shop recreationally.

I am the type of dude who knows what he wants. Moreover, I know how to conduct product research. More moreover, I am pretty dang good at cross-referencing, research, and comparison in general. That aspect suits me incredibly well for online shopping…which has become my main means of purchasing goods. Yours truly, for the win.

Shop like swantron. I have had it with sites like deals.woot and slickdeals. Too much garbage, too little quantity. If you are truly looking for some online [link removed], hit the link and check out savings.com. Maybe I’m jaded, since I’m a techno-fiend. I don’t think so, though. I have made zero attempt to cover up the fact that I am a Dell fanboy…savings.com has [link removed] that make my offers from Dell themselves look pretty lousy. Don’t jump to conclusions, though…they also frequently push out Verizon deals that smoke the verizonwireless deals out of the water. Just saying.

Long story short, this is exactly the type of site that makes my day, shopping-wise. I can sit back and look for deals that I have been considering, without spending any time physically looking for stuff of this nature. Aggregation in it’s finest. Now, the thing that remains is figuring out how to budget more effectively…that might be where [link removed] comes in. Personal finance is the best finance, so it seems.

I’m off to check for deals on earbuds. My Skull Candys are out of commission. One earbud is one earbud too few, when you are living ghetto fabulous in a 4×8 cubicle. Offices, for the loss.