Archives for February 2017

Seller Refurbished 32GB Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (unlocked GSM, 4G LTE, S-Pen included) for $150

If you want to get your Samsung Galaxy Note smartphone fix while waiting to see what the follow-up to the ill-fated Note 7 (which may have been the best smartphone of all time – ironically), the used market is one way to go. Among the latest eBay Deals, you can get the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 in seller-refurbished condition for $150 with free shipping by QualityCellz on eBay (99.4%, ships from Southern California). This is model N910, with 32GB on-board storage, microSD slot, and unlocked 4G LTE. No contract – you own the phone upfront!

NOTE if you are planning to use this with a cellphone plan (not as a Wifi-only device), make sure you check the bands are compatible with your carrier(s) of choice. If not certain, check the various Android/smartphone forums, or use your favorite search engine.

The S-Pen is included per the ebay listing. Some claim the Note 4 was the first in the Note series to “get it right” but of course that’s always subject to debate. It came out in 2014, with a Snapdragon 805, and 3GB of RAM which is nice (assume 1GB is eaten up by “TouchWiz”).

NOTE #2: the Note 4 is not currently among the first wave of smartphones supported by CyanogenMOD-Reborn, aka LineageOS. I wish they gave it a better name. LineageOS sounds like an ancestry-obsessed fan club 🙂

February 7, 2017 Filed Under: android Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Buy 4 Makita 18V LXT bare tools, Get FREE Battery 2-pack

It’s tool time at Amazon. The latest Makita promotion that went live over there is like this: you buy four Makita 18V LXT bare tools (from a list of eligible products), and you get a free battery twin-pack. You have to add the tools and the battery pack to your shopping cart, and while this promotion is running (ends 3/31/17), the price of the battery pack will be automatically deducted from your order total when you reach the “Checkout page” (that’s the last page before the order is placed). All items in the order MUST BE sold and shipped by Amazon actual. These are the Eligible Products…

February 7, 2017 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With:

T-Mobile Tuesdays for 2/7/17 takes a Valentine’s theme

It’s a Valentine’s theme for Tuesday February 7, 2017 offers for current T-Mobile customers. It is a trio of offers, all three of them coupons really. The centerpiece is $15 off and free shipping at 1-800-Flowers. Then, the date continue with a $25 off coupon at restaurant.com (mostly useless), and a $2 movie-theater ticket through the Fandango proper service (not to be confused with their TV/movie FandangoNOW service which is M-Go rebranded).

Overall, a rather meh Tuesday – in my opinion that is 🙂

February 6, 2017 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , ,

Free Samsung Books choices for February 2017 are out

If you have a participating Samsung device, and you have installed the Kindle app from Samsung’s own Android app store (not Google Play or Amazon’s), you may be eligible to get one free e-book every month from a choice of four. Some devices are eligible for this benefit for the life of the account/device, while others only have it for a year. You can tell if you are eligible by looking at the price of the ebooks, if it’s $0.00, you are eligible 🙂

Unlike Kindle First, the Samsung Book Deals are NOT new releases. Almost all of them are previously released ebooks that are part of Kindle unlimited. The plus side of this is that most of them have a handful of customer reviews, so you can use those to help you select which one of the four to get for free.

So without further ado, here are the four choices:

  • “Lily Love” by Maggi Myers
  • “Artful” by Patrick David
  • “Plea of insanity” by Jilliane Hoffman
  • “Lord of the Nile” by Constance O’Banyon
February 3, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , ,

500GB TiVO BOLT DVR for $155 (subscription required)

If you like the TiVO service and don’t object to paying for it on a monthly or annual basis, the new condition 500GB TiVO BOLT DVR is currently on sale for $155 with free shipping at Amazon by Amazon actual. You can use this with a cable subscription or an over-the-air antenna, but you still have to pay TiVO a monthly or prepaid subscription. It averages 3.9 out of 5 based on 369 customer reviews.

If you use antennas only, and you are a cordcutter (no cable subscription), and you hate the idea of paying TiVO a monthly subscription, they have a different product, the TiVo Roamio OTA DVR goes for $370. Think of it as prepaying the TiVO service for the lifetime of the device. It also integrates some of popular online streaming services.

On the other hand, if you are the second paragraph, but hate paying that much for a device, and don’t watch a lot of TV, you can get single-tuner chinese OTA DVRs for around $30. These have primitive user interfaces, and remind of VCR programming usability, but the price is right. I have tried and reviewed one of these devices if you want to get a feel for them, here’s my unboxing (text/pictures only) and my review summary of the Mediasonic HW-150PVR.

February 2, 2017 Filed Under: tech Tagged With: ,

Outlander Season 2 Collectible BluRay set with Extras for $33

Sing me a song for a BluRay set that is exclusive and not gone! Amazon currently has on sale an exclusive Outlander Season 2 Blu Ray set for $33 with a limit of up to three sets per customer. This includes the Bluray discs (obviously) along with these extras:

  • bonus disc with 20 minutes of extras
  • a 32-page physical colorful book from the show and its production
  • sneak peek at book #9 in the book series by the great Diana Gabaldon
  • collectible box that holds everything mentioned above
February 2, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , ,

FREE until February 7: The Tor Monthly FREE eBook

Good until February 7 (2017), you can get the ebook “The Bloodline Feud” for FREE in DRM-free ePUB and .mobi by signing up for the Tor emailing list at the Tor eBook Club. They offer a new ebook every month, but the catch is that you have to claim it within the first week of them. Unlike Kindle First which runs for the whole month.

PS: if you are already signed up for their emails, page further down on the download page and look for the “Already Registered?” section. You enter your email (the one you used to sign-up for the list) and then you get the download options.

February 2, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , ,

$20 off order of $100+ in Bosch Woodworking Tools

If you are a fan of Bosch woodworking tools, or the craft in general, good news, Amazon is running a promotion until 3/31/17, if you purchase $100 or more from a list of eligible woodworking tools, the shopping cart will automatically give you a $20 discount at the top right side of the Checkout page. There’s no coupon code to enter. The offer is only good for new condition products where Amazon actual (not marketplace sellers) are the actual sellers of record.

A total of 40 products are currently eligible for this promotion, with prices ranging from $19 to $380. You can get to $100+ with any combination, be it one item or a combination of items.

February 2, 2017 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With:

Two free Star Wars digital comic books with Rogue One digital pre-order

If you place a pre-order for the Star Wars Rogue One movie in digital HD at Amazon Instant Video, you are entitled to receive two free digital comic books at Comixology. They are two specific #1s, of Star Wars (2015-) and Darth Vader (2015-). Amazon owns Comixology so you can just login with your regular Amazon account there, you don’t need to create a new one.

The promotion runs until April 30, in 2017, so it will also be good after the movie gets released (purchases instead of pre-orders). Here are the terms of this promotion.

February 1, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: ,

Kindle First choices for February 2017 are up

Time flies these days and we are now in February 2017, which means, among many other things, a new round of six pre-release e-books are loaded up on Kindle First. These will be released to the general public on March 1st, but if you are a Prime member, you can get one of those six RIGHT NOW and start reading it RIGHT NOW for FREE. If you are not a Prime-member, you can buy one right now for $2. The rest will be available to everyone on March 1st for $5 each. Many of these end up appearing in Kindle Unlimited, so if you are a subscriber to that service, you can bookmark them until then…

So, without further delay, the six choices are:

  • “Extracted Trilogy Book #1” by RR Haywood in Scifi (yes, scifi is back at Kindle First!)
  • “The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter” by authors JS Drangsholt, Tara F. Chace in Contemporary Fiction
  • “Only the Truth” by Adam Croft in Suspense
  • “Signature Wounds” by Kirk Russell in Thrillers
  • “In Farleigh Field: A Novel of World War II” by Rhys Bowen in Historical Fiction
  • “Duck and Hippo in the Rainstorm (Duck and Hippo Series Book 1)” by Jonathan London, Andrew Joyner in Children’s Picture Books

You have until February 28 in 2017 to make a choice, but don’t wait until 11:59pm of that day. Having said that, I tested it in January, I made my pick late on the 31st, after 9pm pacific time, and it was all good. Amazon is in the pacific time zone, so things on their website chance on the pacific time zone day-change – such as the Gold Box deals.

February 1, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , , ,