What's coming up at Staples next week? (11/11 to 11/17)

It is Dell week at Staples next week as the mail-order company "discovers" yet another brick and mortar chain. And Staples celebrates this marriage of convenience by giving Dell their front page ad in their Sunday paper weekly circular.

Of interest is a 22" Dell widescreen LCD monitor for $270 without rebates even, a Dell Inspiron 1521 laptop for $780, also no rebates, and a Dell Inspiron 530MT PC bundle for $750.

The Dell Inspiron 530MT PC bundle includes a 19" widescreen monitor, and a tower PC with Intel Core 2 Duo E4400, 2gb memory, 500gb hard disk, supermultiformat dvd burner, 13 in 1 memory card reader, Vista Premium, and lots more.

Staples was smart in not putting rebates on these offers, even though Staples Easy Rebates rebates are among the best in the industry. A significant number of people are allergic to rebates and some hate them with a passion, so offering their debut Dell deals rebate free makes them the ideal doorbuster. Expect excitement and perhpas long long lines at Staples next Sunday morning. If nothing else, this should be good training for Black Friday and the start of the holiday shopping mad rush! Black Friday is almost here shoppers! Get ready! I recommend hiring a fullback to help you push everyone out of the way. And I am not kidding :)

The Staples very weak rewards program continues to instist on 10% on ink, toner, paper, copy and print only. I guess since they have one of the best rebate programs in the country, they had to have one of the worse rebate programs to balance things out :)

If you like free after mail-in rebates, Norton Internet Security Suite 2008 is that, but beware these are mail-in rebates, not Staples's online Easy Rebates.

However Acer is trying to steal Dell's thunder with the Aspire AS4520 notebook at $500 even, and without rebates. This is a nicely featured notebook, with the usual features, including dvd burner, webcam, memory card reader, dual core processor, Vista Premium, but it has a 14.1" wide display so that may be a turn off for those who like 15.4" displays. And if you do like bigger displays, the Acer AS7720 for $750 has a 17". Ouch for Dell, someone is trying to crash their party!

If you are interested in office furniture on a budget, they have a page full of chairs and all-in-one workspaces that won't break your budget, but they also won't make you look like a Fortune 500 CEO. And with good reason, because very few are :)

Have too many cds and dvds all over the place? A 50pk of slimline jewel cases is just $9 from Memorex. Also, a 2gb PNY attache is $20 flat.

Last but not least, you get a free Epson R280 printer when you purchase any of the three cameras advertised in the Staples circular. They all include a free 1gb memory card with purchase. The biggest deal is the Sony Cybershot S700 (with the free 1gb memory card) for $150. Not bad for brick and mortar! The printer is free after the award winning Easy Rebates, so you don't have to mail stuff in!