Circuit City, alas, won't be around to participate in the flat-screen pricing wars but its liquidation appears to be generating some of its own heat. "What happened to 30%? Lies!" shouted customer Gabriel Ifrah, 52, at a Circuit City in Los Angeles yesterday, where most items were priced at 10% off. Indeed, tensions have been running high at many of the chain's 567 U.S. stores, reports Andrea Chang, with customers apparently expecting much lower prices on the merchandise than they are seeing so far. Several Times readers wrote in emails and blog comments that they were being "scammed." …

Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Microsoft are trying to figure out whether pint-sized netbooks -- which caught fire last year -- are just a flash-in-the-pan, Byron Acohido reports. "HP is experimenting with consumer models and promoting netbooks for limited business-use scenarios. Dell isn't saying much about what it has in mind. And Microsoft is hedging its bets, readying all versions of Windows to run on netbooks," he writes. Apple's cheapest notebook, meanwhile, sells for $999, reports Forbes' Brian Caulfield, and the only piece of hardware it introduced at MacWorld earlier this month was a $2,799 …

The crash-landing in the Hudson last week presented US Airways in a very flattering light, but PR and branding experts have some words of advice for management: Leave it alone.

Good thing Elaine Wong chose business journalism over copywriting. Her lead begins: "Fiber, the chewy, gummy, indigestible substance ... not known for its taste...." But evidently that's not stopping General Mills, Kraft and Kellogg -- no doubt among others -- from touting new products that are filled with the good-for-you stuff and, the ad copy avers, they taste great, too. General Mills is breaking a spot this week for Fiber One Frosted Shredded Wheat cereal in which a man tells a neighbor that the cereal "tastes way too good to have fiber." The commercial ends with the tagline, "Cardboard no. …

As I was reading Rita Chang's story this morning about Apple possibly leaving $80 million on the table this holiday season because would-be gift-givers of iPhones could not sign the two-year contract with AT&T that's required as past of the transaction, I kept thinking: What makes the iPhone different from most other phones? As if she were on the other end of my thought on a crystal-clear connection, Chang answers: "There was hue and cry because, well, it's the iPhone, with its attendant cult following common to all things Apple." Piper Jaffray estimates that Apple could have sold …

In the way that president Bill Clinton gave a boost to McDonald's and Ronald Reagan doubled jelly bean sales, President-elect Barack Obama has given a boost to Research in Motion's BlackBerry with such pronouncements as "they're going to pry it out of my hands." "They" -- the Secret Service - may do so once Obama takes office. "The moment it becomes known that Barack Obama uses his BlackBerry 8830 World Edition, you know that a significant share of Russia's signal intelligence and China's signal intelligence and cyberintelligence budgets will be targeted to break it," says Roger Entner, an analyst …

A decision by European regulators to reopen their antitrust charges against Microsoft could help to tip the balance in the rivalry between Microsoft and Google for leadership for the next generation of online services, write Richard Waters and Nikki Tait. The complaint -- not yet made public but confirmed by both sides -- takes issue with Microsoft's inclusion of its Internet Explorer browser in Windows. Although is has nearly 60% market share in Europe, the fact is that Microsoft's Explorer browser is no longer as dominant as it was, with the open-source Firefox gaining in particular. Plus, Google entered …

There's no rest for the unenergized, wrinkly staff here at "Around the Net" on this long Inaugural Weekend but, if we were off, we know where we'd be first thing tomorrow morning. At a Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Saks, Neiman Marcus or a few other department stores which are giving away the likes of Clarins Energizing Morning Cream as part of the 2004 settlement of a class-action lawsuit. The suit accused retailers and cosmetics manufacturers of violating anti-trust laws by fixing prices on cosmetics, writes Mike Hughlett. The companies deny wrongdoing, but as part of the settlement are giving away $175 …