KEY POINTS:
Is it just me or is the Christmas discounting, bundling and two-for-one type activity a little underwhelming this year?
We always pay a premium in the run up to Christmas - apparently it will be slightly down overall this year due to interest rate hikes and our general indebtedness.
But usually there are some reasonable deals to lure us in. This time around, you're definitely better waiting to see what January brings.
In the meantime, the latest mountain of junk mail delivered to my letterbox has revealed a few more promising offers:
- Several retailers are selling the PS3 at $599 (with catches). There are numerous variations on the deal but Gamesman is offering it at that price when you trade in your old PS2 console and a couple of old games PS2 games. S
till be careful there. The cut-price PS3 doesn't have backwards compatibility for playing your old PS2 games, so if you have lots of them lying around, you'll want to hang onto your PS2.
Also the slimmer PS2 is selling for $129 when you trade in your old bulky PS2 - that's a sound deal.
- LV Marin is doing a 40 inch Samsung LCD TV (1366 x 768) pixels, 3 HDMI ports - for $2799. Or for $2499 you can get a Sony Bravia LCD with very similar specs to the Samsung for $2499 with a portable DVD player thrown in.
Also, if you're a fiend for recording TV for later viewing, Philips have a 400GB DVD and hard drive recorder at LV Martin for $599. It has video upscaling and HDMI.
- SanDisk's 2GB Sansa music player debuts at Bond & Bond for a reasonable $129. It's a nice little player with memory card slot for expanding capacity and full-colour screen. Buy any Samsung music player and get a set of Bluetooth headphones for $60 (normally $149).
If you want a decent entry-level video camera, Canon's DV-tape camcorder is selling for $398, which is a very good price. Also, Bond & Bond have two good TV clearance deals - a TEAC 32 inch hi-def model with 2 HDMI ports for $975 and a Philips 42 inch HD TV set for $1993.
So what's with Vodafone's Secret Santa freebies when you buy a new mobile phone? According to the website, the secret prize you get "...could be a frisbee, it could be a telly. It's totally random." As long as its not totally lame.
Has anyone scored anything decent from Secret Santa? Any superb deals at the retailers you've come across and want to shout out?
