5 Tips When Buying During Black Friday

Hello and welcome to another Tech Advice blog. This week, in keeping with the Black Friday theme, I have five tips when buying during Black Friday. Some are specific to technology; others are more general.

Do you remember that Brexit thing?

UPDATE: As of November 2022, I have not encountered custom charges on any of the sites listed in this paragraph. I would still encourage you to be careful with UK retailers, similar to any non-EU retailers, as the smaller ones may still insist on the customer paying any custom charges. END OF UPDATE. I don’t know about you, but the word Brexit sounds familiar for some strange reason. In all seriousness, it is very important to be aware of it when buying online as many websites with a “.ie” on the end are not actually Irish. Some, as I will look at in the next section are in the EU, but many are in the UK. This is important because it can both cost more and take longer to deliver any product from the UK (the same goes for any non-EU country). Companies that deliver from the UK, but are not limited to, include: Amazon.co.uk, Argos.ie, Curry’s PC World (not entirely sure if they still dispatch from the UK), and Laptopsdirect.ie (or any store with direct.ie at the end)

Some European Union sites:

There are a number of companies based in the EU that deliver to Ireland some with “.ie” sites some without them. The downside to dealing with some of these sites is that delivery can take a few extra days and in turn cost more, and some of the sites have poor, or no English translation available.

Here are some EU sites that may interest you:

Paradigit.ie (Netherlands; Good English translations)
Caseking.de/en (Germany; English is hit or miss especially on product descriptions)
CustomPC.ie (Ireland)
Amazon.de (Germany; Translation is only an issue with some product descriptions and text placed on images) UPDATE: November 2022. Since the opening of a distribution facility a few weeks ago, some products bought from any Amazon site are dispatched from that warehouse reducing delivery times. END OF UPDATE.
Amazon.fr/.it/.es (France/Italy/Spain; No English translation available)

I have included a short video (30 seconds) below showing how to change the language of Amazon.de to English.

Changing the language to English on Amazon.de

Older devices are cheaper not newer ones:

Old Computer — Older devices can be cheaper but the quality can be worse

It may be tempting to buy the newest device with the sales going on, but the purpose of Black Friday is for a lot of the retailers to clear away stocks of older devices from the last few years. While this is not a big issue if you are comfortable with an older device and don’t require the newest and fastest version of it, there can be an expectation that everything is on sale. If you are one of those people who only uses a computer for typing, Netflix, and looking up things on the internet, Black Friday is the perfect time to get a budget laptop for your needs.

Cheaper is not always better:

While an older device can be better for some users, cheaper is not always better. This is because the cheaper devices are likely not selling due to low specifications or other issues that the retailer won’t tell you about. Additionally, some of the cheap laptops on sale may have the infamous 32/64 GB eMMC hard drives which render the device basically unusable very quickly due to Windows updates and even Windows itself being too large for them. In addition, such hard drives are soldered (similar to welding a piece of metal to something) making it impossible for most technicians (including myself) to upgrade such devices.

Consider an upgrade or repair:

A few weeks ago, I posted a bit of advice on Facebook (Tech Advice – Inistioge). In that post I suggested that people have the computer either upgraded or book it in for a Tune Up if it gets slow instead of getting a new one. This week more than ever I would encourage you to do so as it is better to spend a €100 on an upgrade than €500 on an equally slow, new one. In addition, I would ask that you see if a broken computer can be repaired first before spending money on a new device as some problems are not as bad as they might seem.

Conclusion:

To conclude, I want to reiterate one last time that you need to be careful when buying a device during Black Friday sales as most of the ones on offer are not worth buying no matter how cheap they are. Case in point, I have just seen a “laptop” on sale for €210, it has 64GB of storage space and runs Windows 10S; avoid these kinds of “deals” as you may very well regret them. To be clear however, these kinds of laptops have their uses as they can, for example, be very handy when travelling due to their light weight, the issue is that the manufacturer has cut a few too many corners when trying to keep the cost down.

So, with that little rant out of the way, I hope the advice given in this article helps you to get a deal or at least avoid a few bad ones. If you need any help in deciding on a device, Tech Advice offers a buying advice service for €15 an hour. In addition, if you need help setting up your new device give us a call or send us an email. As always if you have any suggestions for future topics post them in the comments.