Recession relief: Getting geek on the cheap

As an Internet user, you should know you never have to pay retail for almost any gadget you might want. Internet retailers can sell much cheaper and they discount much more aggressively than their brick-and-mortar counterparts. Here are some of my favorite sites for getting great deals on geek sustenance—games and gadgets.

Games

Cheapassgamer.com- Maybe you want to save $5 or $10 on a game that’s launching soon. Maybe you want to find a heavy discount on a game that’s been out for a few months. Maybe you want the details on an upcoming game clearance at a retail chain. Cheapy D and the forum folks at CAG will hunt down the craziest deals and provide you with all the details. This site has been around for a while, and I don’t think they ever really miss. If there’s a deal, check out these forums and you will find it.

CheapCollegeGamers- Another forum for gaming deals. I only discovered this one recently. My favorite thing about it: the RSS feed is updated more frequently than that of Cheapassgamer and hits more of the deals where CAG only includes maybe one stellar deal per week. This feed has multiple deals every day. A great candidate for your Google Reader.

Half.com- eBay bought this site a few years ago. Almost yearly, eBay announces the site will be shut down, but the users just aren’t having it. So, the site survives. It is a marketplace for games, movies, books, and music. It’s sorta like eBay, but everything is Buy-it-now. All the auction foreplay is dispensed with. One really nice feature is the pre-order feature (now called Match My Price). Go to an item page, click Match My Price, and enter your desired price. When a seller lists an item, they will see they can sell it immediately for your requested price. If they choose to do so, it’s over. The item is yours and they are paid. You can set expiration for your pre-order for as little as two weeks, and you will receive e-mail updates to remind you that the pre-order is active. You can also manually cancel it at any time.

Gadgets and Gear

Woot- I’ve covered this one before, but this article cannot pass without mentioning it. Woot will give you one daily deal on a product. Most products are geek-friendly although there is the occasional golf club or espresso machine.

Slickdeals.net- The site has deals on all types of items, but much of what is posted is tech related. The RSS feed is great, but I find the deals are sometimes expired by the time they hit my reader. I guess if you really want to be thorough, you will have to keep the site open and spam refresh.

[H]ard|Forum- These are the forums of an excellent computer hardware site HardOCP. Check out the Hot Deals and the For Sale/Trade forums for nice prices on computer hardware and gadgets. You may find some gaming stuff here too. I actually came away with a 3DO console for practically nothing.

I know there are many more sites I may have missed. That’s where you come in! Post in the comments your favorite deals sites or even techniques for getting great prices on your geek gear. You may see an episode of the podcast in the coming weeks with some advanced online shopping techniques that will completely automate the process of finding deals online! Subscribe to the site feed or the podcast (iTunes) to stay informed.