Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

If you have a Best Buy giftcard, you might be wondering what to do with it. You could spend it at Best Buy, where they frisk you like a thief as you exit with your purchase, sell you overpriced goods, or force their “optimization” service on you when you try to buy a laptop. Or, you could try to convert your near-useless Best Buy giftcard into another currency. While cash is ideal, Amazon.com giftcards are almost as good. One way to do this is to sell your card to Cardpool, which take a 10% cut for the service:

Yeah, don’t do that, you’re literally throwing away your money. (OK–if there’s no Best Buy near you, maybe you have no choice…)

Did you know Best Buy sells Amazon Kindle gift cards? They do! Look for them in the accessories for e-readers section, near the Nooks, Kindles, Sony readers, and Kobos. At the Best Buy I tried out, they had both $25 and $50 denominations, making converting my $150 gift card a cinch. Even better, at least in NYC, there’s no sales tax charged on gift card sales–they’re treated as cash equivalents, I suppose.

So don’t trade your BestBuy.com giftcards in online for a 10% discount or sell them on eBay, etc. You can convert them to Amazon credit by simply going into the store and buying Kindle giftcards. The credit doesn’t appear to be specific to Kindle books–you can use it for anything sold on Amazon.

Since Engadget mentioned the Best Buy Mobile that just opened in Times Square NYC, I thought I’d drop by for a couple pictures of the store itself:

While I was there, I got to peek at a few older-gen phones, none of which impressed me much. The White Chocolate by LG is quite nice, but it’s bulky and clunky-looking, much like the Zune:

This Sony Ericsson Walkman phone is much the same–cool, but too big for my tastes. I want something sleeker:

Why is it that nothing substantially better in form factor and sexiness than the Razor V3 has hit US markets yet? I want a metal-cased phone, slim, contoured, with fancy edging and detail touches.

Here are the hottest deals from the Best Buy Black Friday Flier:

Computers

HP Core Solo Notebook 15.4″, 1024 MB Ram, 80GB Hard Drive, CD/DVD Burner (Doorbuster Item: 5am – 12pm Only) – $379.99
Intel Coro 2 Duo Processor E6300 w/17″ LCD Monitor & Printer – $699.97
Sony Intel Centrino Core Solo Laptop – $599.99

Movies

Arrested Development Season 3 – $9.99
CSI: Complete 3rd Season – $19.99
Entourage Season 2 – $9.99
My Name is Earl Season 1 DVD Set – $19.99
Prison Break Season 1 (DVD) – $19.99
Seinfeld Season 5 (DVD) – $9.99
Seinfeld Season 6 (DVD) – $9.99
Select DVD’s (Bad Boys 2, 50 First Dates, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Hitch, Groundhog Day) (Doorbuster Item: 5am – 12pm Only) – $2.99
Smallville Season 4 (DVD) – $9.99
The Office Season 1 (DVD) – $9.99

Television

Toshiba 32″ Flat Panel LCD HDTV Monitor – $799.99 ($200 off)
Toshiba 50″ Plasma TV (Doorbuster Item: 5am – 12pm Only) – $1699.99 ($1300 off)
Toshiba 56″ DLP Projection HDTV – $1199.99 ($700 off)
Westinghouse 32″ LCD HDTV (Doorbuster Item: 5am – 12pm Only) – $479.99 ($420 off)
Westinghouse 42″ LCD HDTV (Doorbuster Item: 5am – 12pm Only) – $999.99 ($500 off)

Video Games

Call of Duty 2 (XBox 360)
(Doorbuster Item: 5am – 12pm Only) – $19.99 ($20 off)
Superman Returns (PS2) (Doorbuster Item: 5am – 12pm Only) – $19.99 ($20 off)
The Outfit (Xbox 360) (Doorbuster Item: 5am – 12pm Only) – $19.99 ($10 off)

For more, check out Black Friday Info, where the full ads are posted, but are also a bit harder to sift through.