That's right, I was one of the horde at Best Buy this morning. There were at least 500 people on line to get in the store at 6:50AM when I arrived. I had to part the sea of the crowd to get in a parking space then freeze my chomes off waiting to get in.

Once inside, it was a madhouse. Somehow, I managed to snag one of those CD-RW drives they had for $29.99 after rebates. Someone had just set theirs down on top of a stack of other stuff in the same aisle they were passing them out from atop a ladder. The guy would hand them down and a crowd not unlike that of the front rows of a heavy metal show were tipping them back and forth until someone got a firm hold. The drives were all gone within the first five minutes. I'm still pinching myself.

Checked the Dreamcast stuff next. $7.99 VMUS so I grabbed one for me and two for my Canadian friend. Those $7.99 games they had listed were mostly there except the one I wanted, Metropolis Street Racer. Bummer. I don't think they ever had any to begin with.

Finally, I lucked into that 110 pack of PNY CD-Rs for FREE. A cute drone was announcing she had a few more boxes of them and to "come this way". Like a lost puppy that just found its mother, I stumbled through the morass of people and got my box. Time to head for the register.

The lines were already ten deep. It took me about thirty minutes to get out. When I got to the register, it took the girl less time to ring me up than it did for the reams of paper to be generated for all the rebates. I spent $156.81 and I'll get $85 of that back in the mail. Ridiculous!

I stopped in Circuit City to see if they put any DC games on sale. Nothing of note, but the people in there were everywhere and with their absolutely stupid checkouts in each department, I have no idea how anyone knew where to go to pay?! There were no lines, just clumps of people with goods in their hands. Best Buy was organized chaos at least.

--Dave

Damn. And here I am hoping that my pal will be able to pick up that 99-dollar Geforce 3ti200 that he promised he'd get for me while he was there. Guess I shouldn't hold my breath.

The GeForce3 cards were gone before I even got into the store. The hard drives went pretty quick too. On the plus side, I didn't have to wait in the ludicrous checkout lines. *heh*

- Alan

I got in line at 06:20, in B-ham Alabam. The little blue door prize tickets didn't even make it to me in line. Walked in... walked straight to the GF3 cards... already two people there looking for "more of them." The story was that people had camped out since 02:00.

Oh well, I found the GF3 Ti200's for $137 on pricewatch. I guess that will have to do it.

Good luck getting a rebate from PNY,they tend to screw you out of them.Make sure you have copies of EVERYTHING they ask for.

-Monkeybutt

Why would anyone want to shop at a store? A REAL one? I don't get it? :)

Thanks for the info on PNY rebates. I've done these things a few times with other companies but not them. I'll be sure to check and double check everything before I send it out.

I got Metropolis Street Racer at Best Buy then anyway. They must have had them in the back room and never put them out on Friday. I went in last night to get a dishwasher and snuck over to take a look and sure enough, they had about 5 copies there with a bunch of empty spaces for more. $7.99 is like theft for a game this good.

--Dave

er, not from being around the .us, what exactly was happening at best buy - they go out of business or something?

Traditionally there are deeply discounted sales on the day after the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US, as this is the traditional start of the Christmas shopping season, and the retailers are desperate to get people buying things in the current economy. So, they lure us in with big sales like this (which in many cases end up being a virtual bait-and-switch con, given that the only way to get the cheap stuff is to camp out overnight in the Winter air like an insane idiot).