Turkey Tech Toys

So I couldn't resist a quick trip to the store this morning to buy some new tech toys. For those international types, yesterday was the Thanksgiving holiday, whereby we eats lots of food and watch plenty of (American) football. And today, the day after turkey day, has become something of a shopping holiday, where the stores open at 5am (or earlier!), offering "incredible" deals. Generally, I don't bother with it, as I think the deals are vastly overrated.

But Friday is one of my hockey mornings, so I'm up early anyway, so I checked out the deals at some of the tech stores. And found some sweet ones at CompUSA and Staples, which just so happen to be next to each other in a little plaza on my way back from hockey, so it worked out nicely. I grabbed six things, and now I just have to worry about getting the rebates in before they timeout. Here's what I got:

• 200gb Maxtor EIDE drive (US$20) - yup, you read that right - 200 gigabytes for $19.99, after rebates. I didn't even need another hard drive, but I couldn't resist


• Saitek Gamers keyboard ($20) - My keyboard and mouse were getting a little long in the tooth (I use them about 10 hours a day usually), so I'd been thinking about upgrading. I just couldn't pull the trigger on the fancy Logitech gamer's keyboard, with the little LCD screen. It was $50 while the Saitek was only $20. Both are backlit, so that's pretty cool. But I'm a "Natural" keyboard guy, so I'm not sure I'm going to be able to use this fulltime. But at least when gaming.


• Logitech G7 Laser mouse - with the money I saved on the keyboard, I splurged on the mouse. Very nice 2000dpi laser mouse, with on-the-fly sensitivity adjustment and two batteries. Very nice looking mouse (nope, this keyboard just won't work full time. My fingers feel cramped and my arms are already tired. Gonna have to splurge on a new Natural one).


• 5 outlet strip (free!) - can always use another one of these


• 60 pack DVD-R ($3) - don't really use DVD-R much, but for a nickel each, I can learn to do backups with them. I noticed my BootIT NG will make an image of a partition using one too.


• 2 1gb SD memory cards ($20) - My wife's Treo uses SD cards and this was a real deal. Will make a great stocking stuffer (can you tell she isn't interested in my blog?)

So it was a very productive morning. Like I said, I don't think this keyboard is going to work out as a full time one, but it should work for my gaming needs. I reboot into Windows to play games, so it won't be hard to just plug this USB keyboard in on the way.