Okay, so you’ve saved your pennies and with much enthusiasm you head out to buy the latest addition to your toybox. You drive straight to Best Buy, stroll through the door, veer off on a course that takes you directly to your target toy, and grin as you survey the choices.
Okay, now stop. Best Buy has a difficult time keeping up with their ever-changing sales. The price you see on the sale tag may not be the same when you get to the register. In addition, the new sale items are not always marked. New sales are noted first on the Best Buy website and may or may not ever be visible in the store. Keen awareness and a few extra minutes can save you quite a bit of money.
Quick steps to savings:
1. Check the Best Buy website for current sales and note model numbers and prices for items you are interested in. If you decide to buy one and it is not marked in the store, go to Customer Service to check out. Tell them the item is on sale on the website. The “associate” will scan the item and make sure you get the website price.
2. If an item is listed in the store as on sale, make sure you watch at the register. If the item is no longer a current sale, you may not get the price displayed. Let the cashier know if the wrong price comes up and after a bit of confusion you will get the sale price displayed in the store.
In my last 10 trips to Best Buy, I’ve saved money on every trip. The savings has been as little as $7 and as high as $82. If you forget to check the website before you leave, Best Buy has a computer set-up to let you check their website. If you don’t find it, ask!
Filed under: Misc | Comment (0)
These annoying bits of software pop up and tell you your machine is infected with 176 (any number will do here!) viruses and you need to do a scan right now! You attempt a scan and at some point you’re told you can purchase the program for $89.95 and your computer will be cleaned. What? Umm, you know you just paid your Norton renewal fee. Why would you need to pay for anything? Well, you don’t.
The author of the program just wants your money. Not much of a surprise there. The program disables your current Antivirus system and leaves itself free to beg for your credit card information. What can you do? Well, one free malware removal tool usually takes care of it. If you already have it on your computer, you just need to update it and then run it. If not, you need to get it installed and run it.
Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware takes care of the large majority of this type of program. Download the Free Version and get it installed on your machine. If you have no internet access, you can download it on another computer and save the file to a USB drive or write it to CD, then move the file to your infected machine and install the program.
Occasionally, your computer will not allow you to install it once the computer is infected. If this is true for you, turn your computer off, turn it back on and when you see your logo screen begin pressing the F8 key (once per second) until you are provided with a menu. You will see an option for “Safe Mode.” Select “Safe Mode” and your computer will continue to start. This is a no frills way to boot your computer and it may take a little while. Once you see a desktop, go ahead and install Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware. This is one of the few programs which will install in “Safe Mode.”
After running. Malwarebytes, your computer should be fairly clean of viruses. Go ahead and do a scan with your normal antivirus software just to verify!
Filed under: Virus-Spyware | Comment (0)
