As usual, all the Black Friday ads have leaked onto the web from various sources, and others have leaked the Best Buy ad. You can download it at the bottom of this article…

Best Buy for years has been known for people camping outside their stores, just like all the other retailers. The main reason tech-savvy users like to camp outside of Best Buy is two-fold. One, they have great prices on Black Friday. And two, arch-rival Circuit City actually lets you do an in-store pickup on most Black Friday items, making it more optimal to camp outside of Best Buy, and then drive over and cut to the front of the line… with the items at Circuit City waiting for you.

Best Buy this year has chosen a different route. Their ad has revealed that all Black Friday specials will have no mail-in rebates. This is in-line with a policy the company set forth earlier this year to eliminate mail-in rebates. However, it has hurt Black Friday prices hard…

Last year, a 32-inch LCD HDTV was $499.99 after rebate. This year, $449.99 (but no rebate). Many were expecting the post-rebate price to fall by at least $100. PC specifications have barely increased over last year’s deals for the same prices (though laptops in this year’s ads do have much larger hard drives, and Vista Premium is a much better deal than XP Home). But if you were expecting to see prices fall dramatically from last year’s deals… you’re in for a disappointment.

That’s not to say that there are not good deals, and if you hate mail-in rebates, this is actually a net positive. Just don’t expect a $299 laptop under that Christmas tree…

Best Buy Black Friday Ad Scan (PDF)

Front page of the ad got you really down? It’s not that gloomy… scroll to the bottom pages where the five-hour-sale items are listed.