The Starlight Blue Android 4.0 Tablet with 7 Inch Capacitive Screen (4GB,WiFi, 1.5GHz, 3G, Camera) for $69.99 (plus about $11 shipping) is almost their least expensive tablet, but it has strong enough specs that it ought to be able to show a YouTube or Netflix movie without stuttering. And if a 10-year-old granddaughter breaks it, replacing it won’t be overly painful. Add a bright red keyboard/carrying case combo for $12.99 and you have a machine that can do homework, too.

Just about any Android 4.0 tablet ought to be good for our girls — and your teens and pre-teens, too. Or even for you and me. These are not telco tablets. They access the rest of the world through WiFi, not a wireless carrier, so there is no monthly charge to use them. Just drop in at a restaurant or other business that offers free WiFi and you’re good to go even if you don’t have WiFi at home (or you’re on a camping trip or you’re homeless).

If you want to turn up your nose at these cheap tablets, you might want to check out this techradar.com article about the 15 best Android tablets in the world. They run $199 and (way) up. Not exactly what we want if we are worried about breakage, but there are times when we deserve rewards in the form of high-end toys, right?

Amazon.com also has a whole herd of low-cost Android tablets. Just about the top offering they have is the Coby Kyros 7-Inch Android 4.0 4 GB Internet Tablet 16:9 Capacitive Multi-Touch Widescreen with Built-In Camera for $97.83 plus free shipping (at the time I wrote this; Amazon prices often change radically without notice). This is a pretty decent deal. It may not be the world’s greatest tablet, but what do you expect for less than $100?

The big question is, “How good does a tablet need to be?”

To me, it’s a working tool. I don’t need super-high screen resolution. Even if I’m watching a movie, it’s a 7 inch screen. 880X480 pixels is more than enough for me on something that small. If I want a big screen, I have one. It’s called a 42″ Vizio high definition TV. It has great resolution, but it won’t fit in my pocket or even in a backpack.

In my life, in 2013, $100 is plenty to spend on a tablet, and 7 inches is plenty big. If I want something larger, I have a sub-notebook with an 11.6″ screen and a built-in keyboard. And Bluetooth and all kinds of cool stuff I hardly ever use. And if my notebook isn’t big enough, I have a desktop computer with two monitors, one of them 24″ wide, that I use for video editing — but not for writing stories (like this one) out on my patio, which is where I happen to be right now, using my notebook computer.

It’s easy to accumulate screens, isn’t it?

Maybe too easy.

I am sorely tempted, at this very moment, to buy that $98.99 Scorpius tablet from Lightinthebox.com for myself or perhaps as a Mother’s Day gift for my wife.

Hmmmm…. I’ll think about it for a day or two. One thing I’ve learned in the last 60 decades is not to rush into a purchase. If it’s worth buying today, it will be worth buying tomorrow.

And if it’s *not* worth buying tomorrow, I will be glad I *didn’t* get it.

I was happy to activate the new phone on my own via the Virgin Mobile website, but I mistakenly clicked a button for “activate” instead of for “switch my number.” Whoops!

I looked around for a way to undo my mistake, and kept getting told to call Virgin Mobile at 1-888-322-1122. So I called. And got stuck in an endless maze of voice menus, none of which held a solution to my problem. Being an American, I started punching “0″ while yealling, “Human!” at the recorded voice. And yelling “Operator!” Then I stated screaming obscenities at the phone, and after about eight minutes of that, I was connected to a person.

And the person not only failed to help me, but was hard to understand and, somehow, managed to switch me from the $35/month plan I’d signed up for (and paid for) to a $45/month plan, so that when I tried to make a call, my new phone still didn’t work because, it said, I had a zero balance in my account. Grrr….

I called again. Same insanity getting an actual human to answer, and once again a human in The Philippines, but this one was so flirty that if I wasn’t married, I would have asked for her home number. She was no more able to get my old cell number switched over than the first one, though. She put me on hold, where I waited and waited.

At least I have (as you probably do, too) a speakerphone, so I could set the handset down and do some computer work while waiting. Which I did. And when the phone call dropped… anyway, I called back. Screamed until I got another nice young lady, although this one was extremely hard to understand, and didn’t seem to have the slightest idea what I wanted, namely to have a working phone on the $35/month plan I wanted all along.

I could hear a male voice (a trainer?) behind the operator’s, and eventually I was told that I needed to get my account number from my previous cellular provider before they could move the phone number over.

Interesting. The prior provider only used my phone number, as far as I knew. In 5+ years, I never knew I *had* a separate account number. I called the old company’s customer service number. I don’t believe I had ever called it before. But guess what? Endless voice menus, none of which had an option for “retrieve account number.” So I screamed obscenities, and eventually I got a human (after a long period listening to a recording that said they were experiencing a heavier-than-usual call volume, I’d have a long wait, etc.) who gave me the account number.

Another call to Virgin. Fine. Screamed obscenities until I got a human. It was a Filipino girl I could understand. But she didn’t understand my problem with the $45/month charge vs. $35/month, and said she’d need to get a supervisor, could I please wait on hold, it will only be a minute, sir?

Except that after about 15 minutes on hold, it was midnight, and that’s when they close down, so I was cut off.

Note that at this point I have spent at least two hours on the phone, and my new Android phone is still not activated. I am not happy.

So I turn to Facebook and leave a nasty message on Virgin’s Facebook page. And a nasty message about #VirginModbile on Twitter. I had emailed after the first fruitless phone call, but had not gotten a response, so I did not try another email.

At this point, I was no longer a pissed off customer, but a journalist doing research. If I was going to go through all this irritation, at least, I figured, I ought to get paid for it.

And I learned something: that there is a crew of Virgin Mobile people they term “Virgin Angels” who monitor Facebook and Twitter and solve problems for upset customers.

Well, well, well. If I had known that in the first place, I could have saved myself a whole lot of irritation and frustration. And gotten a working phone a lot sooner, too.

So now you know this, and you know how to get customer service from Virgin Mobile without listening to useless phone recordings or being on endless hold. And in the end, thanks to help from two Virgin Angels, all my problems got solved and I even got a month’s credit for my trouble. Nice!

But what if you’re calling someone other than Virgin Mobile?

What you need to do, before making a customer service or tech support call is go to the GetHuman website and see what they say is the best way to get service or support from the company you need it from. There are other, similar websites, but none of the ones I tried came anything close to GetHuman, which had not just unpublished company phone numbers and tricks to bypass the awful voice menus that make us all so angry. (The trick for Virgin Mobile is to say “Live adviser” or “It’s something else” when you get a voice prompt)

GetHuman even has free iPhone and Android apps. Or you can just punch GetHuman.com into your Web-equipped phone’s browser and you’ll get a mobile (simpler) version of their site. Very nice!

Please save this advice and pass it on to friends, relatives, and coworkers. The amount of aggravation you save might start an entire new wave of niceness in America — and heaven knows, we could use one!

Everything at BestBuy.com ships free right now. BestBuy often charges more than other electronics retailers, but on some items they’re okay. With free shipping, they may be a slightly better buy on many things you need than a lot of others that typically offer better buys than BestBuy.

Wii U console – Suddenly $299 at Target, BestBuy, GameStop, and other stores. You couldn’t get one of these things *at all* a few weeks ago unless you were willing to pay a hefty premium on eBay. Now they’re on sale. BestBuy includes Nintendo Land for $299. And free shipping makes them a winner even if you don’t want NintendoLand — unless you want to go the store and get your console immediately. My local Target has Wii U units in stock while my local BestBuy does not. Your local stores may be different — and there are many stores online and off besides BestBuy and Target. Look around a bit before buying this or any other game console. One thing – Toys R Us seems to think a Wii U is worth $349, or $50 more than the low-price competition. Poor Geoffrey.

HP has a bunch of year-end deals going on. Laptops, desktops, printers… you can usually get HP computers from discounters for less than HP sells them, but not always. And the REDTAGPC coupon code might just save you $100 off whatever prices (over $799) shows on HP’s site. Well worth a look.

Non-timely tip for buying Lenovo computers: Even though Lenovo is now separate from IBM, IBM employees still get big discounts on Lenovo computers. If you have a friend who works for IBM, and you want a Lenovo product, your friend can get it for less than you can. Sony has a similar employee deal. Ditto many others. Something to check, just like routinely checking for online coupons.

Want to try a 3D TV? Dell is selling a 32″ Vizio 3D TV for $298. If that’s a D too many for you, look at the right side of that page for a 32″ 2D Vizio, with Wi-Fi built in, for $278. But if you don’t need Wi-Fi in your TV, you can get a 32″ Vizio from Wal~Mart for $228. If you want a really big (but only 720p) computer monitor, you can use this item as one, in addition to using it to watch TV. Hmm…..

How big an external hard drive do you need? If you do a lot of video production, 6 TB is not beyond the realm of possibility. What if you could get a major-brand 6 TB USB hard drive for $339? You can, from B & H photo. Such a deal, assuming you store that much data.

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In general, this is a great time of year to shop for electronics. We aren’t seeing a lot of technical advances right now (topic for another column) so buying today what you might not need until tomorrow may not be a bad idea if the price is right — and if you look around, it probably is!

Good bye for now. See you in 2013…

Answer: A gift card from Tiger Direct, the Florida-based company that absorbed the CompUSA and Circuit City brands. I know this seems like kind of an ad, but I like Tiger a lot. In fact, I bought the HP computer I’m using to write these words from them. Ditto my Vizio home theater sound bar and a number of other items. So this is not only not an ad, but an unpaid and unsolicited recommendation.

If you haven’t gotten a gift for someone on your list, you can send them a CompUSA gift certificate from Tiger on Christmas Eve or even on Christmas Day via email and they’ll get your gift on time. If that doesn’t make for a Merry Christmas, I don’t know what does!

For example, I wanted some knee and elbow protective pads. I shopped for them online, and found a set I wanted at a store we’ll call Sorts Athoritee for $17.99. I went to said store, and found that most of the knee and elbow pad sets there didn’t have prices on them. With the help of a sales associate, I found that the ones I saw online for $17.99 cost $34.95 in the store. For real? No kidding? Oy!

“The website is totally independent from the stores,” a Sorts Athoritee sales associate told me. “The prices and merchandise are often completely different.”

Good to know. I obviously won’t shop as much at Sorts Athoritee’s website in the future, will I?

The store where I’ve run into the most differences between web and in-person prices is K-Mart/Sears. Their site(s) don’t do a good job of making it clear what items are stocked in their stores instead of only in a warehouse for online sale, either. Unless you check very carefully, you may make a drive to the closest Sears or K-Mart for nothing.

K-Mart/Sears is not alone. An increasing number of national merchants now have notes on their websites saying that this item, or that item, is sold and shipped by boogaloo deals or some other bogus company, not by the famous-name store itself. Target does this, Wal~Mart does it, Best Buy does it, and so do others. These stores have spent years or decades building up their brands, and now they’re denigrating those brands to take in a few bucks in affiliate fees from the sub-merchants. I’m glad I don’t own stock in any of these companies, because their managements don’t seem to be thinking about their companies’ long-term futures.

In general, Best Buy is decent when it comes to selling items in the store for the Web-advertised price. The mouse for my main computer started acting squirrely a few days ago. I went to the Best Buys site and settled on this one, on sale for $5.99. Their site said it was in stock at my local store, so I zipped over there and bought one.

While I was at Best Buy to get my $6 mouse, a vendor associate told me about the wonderfulness of this HTC EVO V 4G cell phone and the no-contract $35/month Virgin Mobile plan I could get with it. As it happens, I have been thinking about replacing my 1997-era Motorola i335 phone and leaving Boost, which I was on because they only charged me a dime a minute — except they’ve creepd up to a quarter a minute recently, which is kind of like saying, “Miller, we don’t want you as a customer any more. Go away.”

So okay, Boost. Away I’ll go. In fact, I think I’ll go to Virgin Mobile, which my wife is on and likes a lot. They have a $35/month unlimited data and text plan that includes 5 hours (300 minutes) of talk. And I had been looking at exactly the $249 phone the person in Best Buy was pushing…. except I recalled seeing it for $189 on Virgin’s website.

And then came a real kick in the pants: That phone — the exact same HTC EVO V 4G — was now only $149 online through Virgin. Naturally, I looked for online coupons that might cut the price down even more.

I see one for Radio Shack — for $169. And a couple of the deal newsletters I get mention the $149 price from Virgin. Amazon? Not even close: $249 with the Virgin plan, $149 with Boost, but Boost doesn’t want me, do they? So Virgin it is. The phone I want at what seems to be the best possible price. A pretty good (for a cell phone) camera and video recorder, and a good monthly price for all the voice time I’m likely to need — and unlimited data and text bandwidth, which may be throttled if I use a bunch of it, but still a decent deal.

Why we shop instead of just buying… Look at the difference between the Best Buy price and the Virgin Mobile price for the HTC EVO V 4G: $100!

That’s a bunch of money! People who nod their heads and buy what the people in the store tell them to buy without checking elsewhere get reamed — unlike those of us who have the Cheap Computing mindset.

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PS – There was a Dick’s Sporting Goods next to my local Best Buy. They had a fine set of knee and elbow guards for $21. I bought them. Once again, I shopped instead of buying, and saved some money in return for a tiny bit of extra effort.

A 7″, $89 (refurbished) Android tablet: It’s called the “Nook,” and you need to do a little work (but not much) to add the Android OS alongside its original one. This is still going to be primarily a book reader and video watcher, although with a micro-USB adapter and your “Noot” or other root kit, you can hook a keyboard to it and use it for writing, too.

Spotted while checking Nook prices: Hot 7″ Android 4.03 Multi-touch Capacitive Tablet PC Dual Cameras 2MP A13 1.2GHz on eBay. Is it any good? We don’t have the faintest idea. But it’s a “60 days money back, buyer pays return shipping” item, so all you’re risking is the time to pack it to send back if it doesn’t work out. Probably best, given the unknown nature of the device, to buy it for yourself instead of as a gift for someone else.

Olympus E-P3 4/3 Camera. It’s a 12.3 mP still camera. It’s a full HD video camera, and because it’s a reflex-type 4/3 still camera at heart, it can give you the depth-of-field goodness you see in film but rarely in video. All this for $499 from Adorama, including a zoom lens that sells for $299 at Adorama, B&H or Amazon. This is probably going to be my next camera. I wish I could afford to buy it today, but I can’t. Want to send me one as a Christmas or Hanukkah or Festivus gift? Didn’t think so. But if you have a budding (or even budded) photographer or videographer on your list who doesn’t have a 4/3 camera already, get them this Olympus and prepare for MUCHO thanks.

A $10 Inflatable Minigun Arm from ThinkGeek. Wear this and George Zimmerman will not dare to attack you! Usually $30. On sale for $9.99. Comes with a lifetime supply of imaginary (inflatable) ammunition. Create your own sound effects with your mouth, like “blam blam blam blam” or “Nyowm! Shoop! Whack!” It’s all up to you and your wetware. The strange thing is, ThinkGeek seems to see this as an adult toy rather than as something for kids. But so do I. Notwithstanding this marketing failure, a kid with a decent imagination could go nuts with this thing, without anyone getting hurt or using expensive batteries.

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It’s obvious that there are lots of gifts out there that are truly good values. I’ve only mentioned five out of thousands. Remember: Whenever you buy online, check for coupons or discount codes. It’s amazing how many of them you’ll find (and how much money you’ll save) by getting into the coupon-checking habit.

Another note: According to dealnews (one of the bargain-hunting newsletters I get) Free Shipping Day Is a Bust. Their writer, Laura Heller, says:

• “…one of the stores included in the list, Shopbop, has been offering free shipping every day for several years. Best Buy is another store that’s noted to be participating in Free Shipping Day, but when we checked the hundreds of deals we’ve posted from Best Buy in just the past two months, a whopping 93% of them included free shipping. So why would you wait until December 17 to order?

  “Waiting, in fact, could be harmful if your aim is finishing holiday shopping. Christmas delivery deadlines are fast approaching, so holding off until December 17 to take advantage of free shipping that might be available to you now anyway, isn’t smart. Instead, search for free shipping promotions and be aware of stores’ shipping deadlines for Christmas Eve delivery.”