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It's the best deal I've seen on a GPS: $190 at Belk (regular $300) during the store's night owl/early bird hours (today from 4 to close and Saturday, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.).

Myguide includes voice navigation, which means you can keep your eyes on the road while a computerized voice tells you when to turn right, then turn left.

Happy trails.

From Bargainjack: A one-day only sale on a Dell laptop - Vostro 1000 Athlon X2 Dual Core XP Home 15.4" 1GB/80GB DVD+-RW notebook for $500 (regular $695).

It's going to cost more to get from point A to point B. But at least prices on those GPS portable travel gizmos continue to fall, as in big time.

As part of its grand opening at its new store in Greensboro on Thursday (close to Macy's), hhgreeg has a Jensen portable car navigator for $100 (regular $200).

(Offer good only on Thursday, starting at 3 p.m.)

Big shocker: Nearly two-thirds of downloaders paid nothing for Radiohead's newest album called In Rainbows after the band invited people to name their own price.

Some did fork out some dough. An Internet monitoring company found 38 percent of those ponied up an average $6.

Americans were more generous, paying an average $8.05.

Harris Teeter: Two-for-one stuff including: Brawny paper towels, Edy's ice cream, Hormel bacon, Cap'n Crunch and Life cereals, Nestle cookies, 12-packs of Pepsi.

Food Lion: Two-for-one stuff including: Dole salad, navel oranges, Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, Birds Eye veggies, Chips Ahoy cookies.

An ad in Xbox Magazine caught my eye about a Web site offering a "Free Xbox 360!"

The ad proclaims: "Absolutely free. Guaranteed. No Gimmicks. No Hassles."

Too good to be true?

Waiting until Black Friday for steals and deals?

Don't have to.

That's because amid poor sales in October, many stores hoping to jump start the holiday season are already offering door busters and big discounts.

Parade Magazine inside today's News & Record has a column called "Secrets for buying (cheap) wine."

Tips include picking wines with less popular grape varietals, checking out less known wine regions and looking into "second label wines."

I remember going to Big Lots and watching dumbstruck as this guy and a teen - guessing his son who's probably an athlete - load about five freakin' cases worth of energy drinks onto the counter by the register.

What's going on here? Mystery solved when you look at the price - 50 cents a pop. Pretty good deal when you consider some of these energy drinks go for $2 to $3 a pop.

A sampling of deals at Triad area grocery stores this week:

Harris Teeter: Two-for-one deals on stuff including 12-packs of Coke, Breyers ice cream, Sara Lee pies, Birds Eye veggies, Planters mixed nuts, Folgers coffee, Ocean Spray cranberry juice.

Wal-Mart: Butterball frozen turkey breast is $1.84 a pound, fresh turkey hen for .97 a pound, complete holiday dinner (serves 8 to 10 people) for $38.

Get the low down on video games in this week's GameBuzz.
Mike Fuchs (left), Ashley Hawkes and Louis Bekoe

You don't have to be Nostradamus to have seen this coming: U.S. sales of the PlayStation 3 more than doubled in the weeks after the company recently cut the video game console's price by $100.

"It's the breakthrough we've been anticipating," Sony Corp. CEO Howard Stringer told The Associated Press. "We've been holding our breath."

Holding our breath?

Fighting over parking spaces and standing in long lines on Black Friday ain't your cup of tea either?

OK, maybe shorter lines this year if you believe all the gloom-and-doom retail fortune tellers regarding predictions of sluggish sales this year. But they've been wrong before.

Regardless, why not get a head start? Deals aplenty out there, as in right now.

A few ideas:

Best Buy has the Magellan Maestra 3200 GPS on sale for $170 (regular $260) now until Wednesday.

Circuit City has an Olevia 32-inch 720 P LCD HDTV on sale for $480 (regular $600). You may not have heard much about Olevia compared with more popular brand names, but customer reviews have been favorable.

Despite Grinch-like predictions about weak holiday sales this year, Black Friday fever is alive and well folks, at least from what I can gather anecdotally.

A co-worker, for example, said she and her boyfriend are planning on going to Best Buy in Greensboro early Friday to nab an Xbox 360 package featuring a guitar controller and a Guitar Hero II video game (not to be confused with the recently released Guitar Hero III) for $350 and she wanted some advice.

WFMY is reporting about cleanup efforts concerning more than 210 tons of trash on land owned in southern Alamance County by a former appliance repair man.

Here's the kicker: He could actually turn a profit from the money generated from all his trash that can be recycled.

So let me get this straight because this is one of those stories that's really hard to believe. You refuse to clean up your property, according to WFMY. The county gets a court order to clean it up. You're fined and you don't have to lift a finger to clean it up because inmates are doing the work and private companies are donating trash removal equipment.

Yet you could actually make money when all is said and done?

Is this is a great country or what?

From a Web site that keeps tabs on Black Friday deals: Sears.com currently has the Hitachi 42-inch 1080 P plasma HDTV with 3 HDMI inputs for $776 with free pickup if you choose in-store delivery.

"This is an incredible deal," the Web site bfads.net gushes. "There is only one 42-inch Plasma HDTV that is cheaper (only by $25) this Black Friday and it is an off-brand Staples door-buster deal."

Deals o'plenty tomorrow from the comfort of your own recliner or office chair (shhh. Your secret is safe with me.)

Savvy Shopper columnist Lanita Withers gives you the 411 on Web sites that keep tabs on all those deals Monday, including CyberMonday.com.

So you and your wallet have survived Black Friday and are holding your own on Cyber Monday. Congrats. But wait. There's more.

We're talking Bargain Box Friday, people.

The Bargain Box, a used clothing and accessories store run by the nonprofit Junior League of Greensboro, is celebrating its 60th birthday by having a huge sale this Friday.

Items including housewares, clothes, linens, toys will be 40 percent off from 10 a.m. until 9 p.m. at its store at 122 N. Elm St. in downtown Greensboro.

The store is also having a series of smaller sales leading up to Friday's event.

The Bargain Box has helped fund nearly $3 million worth of community projects since it was founded in 1947, according to the Junior League of Greensboro.

So you're sitting there eyeballing the distance to the pin. Should you take out your 8 iron or 9 iron? Remember, three skins are riding on it, so no pressure. So you take out your 8 iron and - whack - you just overshot the green. Congrats. You just lost $10.

How about taking out the guessing game with one of these handy-dandy portable GPS gizmos you can take with you on the golf course? Short-term pain - it's going to set you back a few bucks (unless you can get Santa to pitch in). But think of how many bets you won't blow because you're a terrible judge of distance.

A sampling of grocery store deals in the Triad this week:

Aldi: Butterball 12-14 pound turkeys at 89 cents a pound; fully cooked 10-12 pound smoked turkeys at $1.49 a pound, 5-pound bags of red grapefruit for $1.99.

Food Lion: Two-for-one deals on stuff including: Canadian maple ham (per pound, regular $6.49), Frosted Flakes and Cap'n Crunch cereals, Food Lion bags of frozen split chicken breasts for breast tenders (regular $11.99 each), Nabisco crackers ($2.29 each).

Harris Teeter: Two-for-one deals on stuff including: Red raspberries, blackberries or blueberries (4.4-6-ounce packages), Capri Sun drinks, 24-pack of Dannon spring water, Alpo dog food, Mayfield ice cream, Barber chicken strips or nuggets.

Let's face it. The idea of watching your holiday home movies - unless a squirrel leaps out the Christmas tree and starts attacking your relatives - is boring.

But your out-of-town relatives might find video of your little sister's overheated and very annoyed cat trying to wiggle out of a tiny holiday sweater fun to watch, so why not post it on the Web?

What You Tube and similar video sharing Web sites offer are the ability to post this stuff for all of your relatives and friends in one fell swoop. All you need to provide them is the Web link. Best of all, it's free.

And easy. A crash course on uploading video to the Web:

As mentioned at the Taking Stock blog, the creators of Coupon Cabin, which aggregates lists of coupon codes to help you save when you shop online, have built a new comparison shopping site called Cheap Uncle.

Big Lots has a factory reconditioned Cuisinart automatic grind and brew coffee maker for $50 (regular $120). Includes the manufacturer's warranty.

Save two buckaroos on the price of admission if you go to the North Carolina Zoo during the winter months.