Well, I had been planning for the Black Friday specials for about a month or longer. I read a bunch of articles on this site as well as many others in trying to assemble a decent list of parts for my budge/midrange computer. Anyway, when the time came, (most of my purchases were to be made at newegg) the specials offered were either (a) not that special, or (b) well, there is no (b), because they weren't that special. There were a few discounts on some parts, such as motherboards, hard drives, flash drives, etc. that I purchased. But the savings were nothing compared to all the hooplah surrounding other more mainstream items, such as big-screen TVs, or netbook computers. In essence, the savings that I got didn't seem unique to the Black Friday myth. They could have been a weekly promotion, not unlike those seen in those BestBuy newspaper circulars. Also, the free shipping deals weren't nearly as extensive as the media hyped it up to be. In newegg's case in particular, they applied to some items, but not others. So I wound up spending quite a bit on shipping alone. And don't get me started on taxes.

I don't know if the mood I'm in now as I write this is more from the disappointment stemming from the lack of deep discounts on my purchases, from the conflicts with my credit card company which locked my credit card for possible fraudulent usage with such impeccable timing that by the time the card was restored the items I tried purchasing at the discounted price were no longer available, or from buyer's remorse that rears its ugly head whenever collectively large purchases in a relatively short timeframe are made. There goes my savings again.

"Did many of you find any decent deals on Black Friday? Has the recession really impacted retailers’ willingness to cut prices further? Buy anything cool? Please feel free to share in the comments below."

I found Enemy Territory: Quake Wars at Bestbuy available for about $8 after instant savings + shipping and taxes. I'm too cheap to shell even that low amount of money though lol! =P

EDIT - It was at Circuitcity, not Bestbuy. The deal still looks to be good if anyone is interested...

I wasted 12 hours watching the tigerdirect/compusa event. They promoted it as a sale.....but in reality the quantities they had were so limited that it was more like a crappy radio station contest where you have to be the 20th caller to get a chance to buy something. Within 2 seconds every item was gone. I got through all the busy signals once when they announced the i7 920 for $150 to listen to elevator music for 10 minutes, then they hung up on me. Of the 7000+ people in thier chat room only 1 got to buy an i7 920. Very disappointing, I will never waste my time on any event that they do in the future.

I wasted 12 hours watching the tigerdirect/compusa event. They promoted it as a sale.....but in reality the quantities they had were so limited that it was more like a crappy radio station contest where you have to be the 20th caller to get a chance to buy something. Within 2 seconds every item was gone. I got through all the busy signals once when they announced the i7 920 for $150 to listen to elevator music for 10 minutes, then they hung up on me. Of the 7000+ people in thier chat room only 1 got to buy an i7 920. Very disappointing, I will never waste my time on any event that they do in the future.

I did notice that CircuitSilly charged more sales tax than Best Buy did for the same item...$339.99 was $17.00 at BustBuy, was $20.40 at CC. Are they skimming off the top to pay a government loan!?

Because of the bad economy, many companies have already slashed their prices before Black Friday. When everything is already 20~30% off, how much discount can you expect.

I didn’t participate in any Black Friday event, just one purchase on eBay for a Lenovo T61; fast and easy.

I thought it sucked that we don't get those kinds of deals here. It doesn't look that way though, since you can't actually get anything at those prices

I got Bioshock, Assassin's Creed, Empire Earth II Platinum, and Command & Conquer 3 Deluxe for $10 apiece from Best Buy. Also got Quake Wars and Sims 2 Deluxe for $5 apiece from Circuit City.

I regard getting six mainstream games plus expansions for $50 as a pretty good deal.

I've avoided black friday like the plague for the past two years; using my time to rather camp out inside all day working on various projects that have previously been half done. I did however get to participate by spending just over an hour in line trying to buy a gallon of milk.

I've been waiting for about 5 years for the perfect HDTV, and finally couldn't hold out any longer--bought a Sony KDL-46Z4100 for $1539 on Thanksgiving day. It dropped to $1499 the next day, and I was able to cancel the original order because it hadn't shipped, then order it at $1499. I'm feeling 'thankful'