electronics retailer

Lucky you. Santa delivered a new computer, digital camera, iPod or cell phone under your Christmas tree.

Now for the reality check. How are you going to care for and maintain this shiny -- and expensive -- device to help ensure years of trouble-free use?

We asked the experts at Yahoo! Tech, CNET.com, Geek Squad and the Virginia-based electronics retailer Crutchfield. We also checked the Internet.

We found loads of advice, including general words of wisdom.

As deserted malls and department stores struggle to court cash-short consumers with steep discounts this holiday season, a similar and even more ferocious price war is being waged online.

Internet retailers, trying to navigate what is shaping up to be the first truly dreary holiday shopping season on the Web, are engaging in price-cutting and discounting so aggressive it threatens their profit margins and, in some cases, their survival.

Within three days of its release, Apple sold 1 million iPhone 3Gs.

Such widespread excitement over a product means that scammers have a new opportunity to rip off unsuspecting consumers, and the Better Business Bureau is providing advice on how consumers can protect themselves from the many schemes associated with the product.

When it comes to hot, new technology that has everyone buzzing, consumers can get caught up in the craze and let their common sense lapse.

Before they ship computers to retailers like Best Buy, the largest electronics retailer in the United States, computer makers load them up with lots of free software. For $30, Best Buy will get rid of it for you.

That simple cleanup service is threatening the precarious economics of the personal computer industry.

Software companies pay hundreds of millions of dollars to computer makers like Hewlett-Packard to install their photo tools, financial programs and other products, usually with some tie-in to a paid service or upgrade.

Will Circuit City join the long list of electronics retailers, like Tweeter Home Entertainment and Harvey Electronics, that have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the past year? Given that shares of the Richmond [Va.] company are trading at just over 2, Wall Street is betting that could be a possibility. "Circuit City is in very serious trouble, and any scenario is possible today," says Nick McCoy, senior consultant at TNS Retail Forward, a research firm.

Under pressure to help dispose some of the electronic waste it helped create, Best Buy Co. is testing a free program that will offer consumers a convenient way to ensure millions of obsolescent TVs, old computers and other unwanted gadgets don't poison the nation's dumps.

The trial, expected to be announced Monday, covers 117 Best Buy stores scattered across eight states that will collect a wide variety of electronic detritus at no charge, even if the Richfield, Minn.-based retailer didn't originally sell the merchandise.