so I held a ak at the gun shop the other day.  it was a romainian ak fo $400.  I though about getting it , but the sights were such shit, that I decided not to.  Do you guys just deal with crappy sights, or is there an alternative to a scope or red dot? I am very new to AKs.

You can get a ghost ring sight for them.

www.krebscustom.com/CustomParts.html

The Williams company makes a nice peep site I plan to get soon. Cheaper than Dirt has them for a good price.
Barring that, I may mess around with machining my own peep and soldering it to the rear site! I'll run some 'speriments with bubble gum first though before I go wrecking a stock site.
These middle aged eyes of mine don't care for the stock sight either!
Middle age is heck. Until a few years ago I had better than 20/20 sight! I started getting far sighted at 40 and it gets worse every year since.
I tried shooting with both my reading glasses and the mild "distance" glasses I use when driving.
If I can see the sight well, the target blurrs to nothing! If the sights are a blurr, I can see  the bullseye.
In spite of this my new AKM was shooting 4" groups from the standing position at 75'. Not bad for a blind guy. I literally could not see the bullseye on the paper. But I could see the paper and aimed for the middle!
If any of you have some solutions for this, I'd love to hear them!

just learn to use the force, works for me

Quoted: You can get a ghost ring sight for them. www.krebscustom.com/CustomParts.html

The Kreb's peep sights are great.

The peep, or aperture sights offer a better sight picture for more precise shots.  But the standard AK sights are incredibly rugged, easy to use and quick to acquire.  They are very easy to shoot well, believe it or not.

Quoted: The peep, or aperture sights offer a better sight picture for more precise shots.  But the standard AK sights are incredibly rugged, easy to use and quick to acquire.  They are very easy to shoot well, believe it or not.

I agree that the standard notch sights are very rugged, but so are the Kreb's peep sights. The standard sights can be very effective, but, as you stated, the peep sights offer a much better sight picture and much faster target aquisition.

I have had mixed results with the Peep sights. They are easier to see but for me not any more accurate than the notch sights. So they are different but I am not sure if they are better than the notch sights.