It’s game on for bargain hunters. Black Friday is here, and so are the super sales. If you’re wondering what the latest tech deals are Friday, you’re in luck. While you’ve been sleeping off that food hangover, I’ve scoured the Web for the best and freshest deals.

HTC Droid Eris Phone (Verizon Wireless)

Key Features

• Fast 3G connectivity thanks to the reliable Verizon Wireless EV–DO, Rev A network
• Powered by the Android 1.5 operating system with deep integration of Google services and access to thousands of apps to customize your phone via the Android Market.
• HTC Scene overlay: Create and switch between Scenes that reflect different moments in your life, helping you design your perfect weekend, travel or pure play phone.
• 3.2-inch touchscreen with virtual QWERTY keyboard (320 x 480 HVGA resolution; 262K color depth)
• 5-megapixel camera with auto–focus and video capture
• Wi-Fi networking (802.11b/g) for accessing home and corporate networks as well as hotspots while on the go.
• Bluetooth connectivity (version 2.1) includes profiles for communication headset, hands-free car kits, and the A2DP Bluetooth profile–enabling you to wirelessly stream your music to a pair of compatible Bluetooth stereo headphones or speaker dock.
• Memory expansion via microSD card slot with support for optional cards up to 16 GB (8 GB card included).
• Multi-format digital audio player with dedicated Amazon MP3 Store app for over-the-air downloads. Includes compatibility with MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, and WMA formats and the capability to create and manage playlists on the phone.
• Real HTML Web browsing provides more pages and better Web content delivered efficiently to your phone; supports Flash Lite 3.7.1.
• Standard voice mail and compatibility with Verizon Visual Voice Mail (subscription required), which enables you to delete, reply and forward voice mail messages without having to listen to prior messages or voice instructions. Features include on-screen access to voice mail message status, save up to 40 messages for 40 days (or archive permanently), create up to 10 different caller ID-based greetings, and reply via call back, text or even voice mail.
• Text, Picture and Video messaging with threaded messaging feature
• Organizer tools including calendar, tasks, alarm, notes, stopwatch
• Airplane mode allows you to listen to music while the cellular connectivity is turned off
• Integrated Google, Exchange and Facebook contacts
• Speakerphone
• 3.5mm headset jack
• TTY compatible
• Hearing Aid Compatibility = M3/T3
• Memory: ROM: 512 MB; RAM: 256 MB

Related to Thanksgiving and Christmas

Black Friday is a term for the Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States, which is the beginning of the traditional Christmas shopping season. Because Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States, Black Friday occurs between the 23rd and the 29th of November.

Black Friday is not an official holiday, but many employees have the day off (with the exceptions of those employed in Retailing and Banking), which increases the number of potential shoppers. Retailers often decorate for the Christmas and holiday season weeks beforehand. Many retailers open extremely early, with most of the retailers typically opening at 5AM or even earlier. Some of the larger retailers (depending on the location) such as Sears, Macys and Walmart have been reported to open as early as midnight on the start of Black Friday in localized areas and remain open for 24 hours throughout the day until midnight the following Saturday. Upon opening, retailers offer doorbuster deals and loss leaders to draw people to their stores. Although Black Friday, as the first shopping day after Thanksgiving, has served as the unofficial beginning of the Christmas season at least since the start of the modern Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924, the term “Black Friday” has been traced back only to the 1960s.

The term “Black Friday” originated in Philadelphia in reference to the heavy traffic on that day (see Origin of the name “Black Friday” below). More recently, merchants and the media have used it instead to refer to the beginning of the period in which retailers go from being in the red to being in the black (i.e., turning a profit).

Source Wiki

For shoppers who are looking for the best deals on Black Friday. Laptops, Notebooks, Netbooks, Desktops etc…

PC makers this fall are trying to get consumers who want small laptops to move up from low-profit netbooks to larger, costlier models called “ultrathin” or “thin and light.” These models are lighter and thinner than many regular laptops, but they have bigger screens and keyboards than most netbooks do.

The slim portables tend to start at around $500 and many fall into the $600 to $900 range. You can easily find bigger, heavier laptops for less. But the manufacturers are hoping mobile consumers will be willing to pay a premium for sleekness and long battery life.

I’ve been testing three examples of the new class: the Toshiba Satellite T135, the Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) Pavilion dm3t and the Lenovo IdeaPad U350. All came equipped with bright 13-inch screens, power-sipping Intel (INTC) processors and Windows 7 Home Premium. The particular configurations lent me by the manufacturers for testing were priced at $600 for the Toshiba, $840 for the HP and $700 for the Lenovo.

I found the trio a mixed bag, with notable pros and cons for each. These trade-offs left me unable to declare a clear winner. The one you’d like best would depend on your own weighting of various qualities, like the feel of a keyboard or touchpad.

Nevertheless, I found that all three were capable, easy-to-carry laptops. In my tests, each easily handled common consumer tasks at acceptable speeds. The three weighed between 3.5 and 4.2 pounds. All were about an inch thick, or a bit less, at their thinnest points.

I ran all three through my tough battery test, where I turn off all power-saving features, set the screen to maximum brightness, leave Wi-Fi on and play a continuous loop of music.

The Toshiba Satellite T135

The Toshiba and the HP turned in excellent results in this battery test, while the Lenovo was disappointing, mainly because it comes with a smaller standard battery. In a re-test, with a $50 optional larger battery, the Lenovo also did very well, but at the cost of added weight and thickness.

In normal use, with power-saving turned on, the Toshiba and HP could easily last for a full work day of typical activities, and the Lenovo could, too, with the optional battery.

Toshiba Satellite T135

This is a sleek, glossy machine that starts at around 3.9 pounds for the 13-inch models. It got the best battery life of the three with a standard battery: five hours and 38 minutes, which I estimate would easily translate into more than seven hours in normal use. It also cost the least, at $600, of the three I tried. My test model came with three gigabytes of memory and a 250-gigabyte hard disk. It was very fast at resuming from sleep, but took more than two minutes to perform a restart with just three common programs running, and nearly two minutes to start up cold.

My main beef with the Toshiba is its keyboard and touchpad buttons. The keyboard felt too rubbery and flexible, and the buttons under the touchpad were in the form of a single, slippery, hard-to-use bar.

HP Pavilion dm3t

This laptop, the most expensive of my test models by far, at $840, was also the heaviest, at 4.2 pounds. The chassis is metal, instead of plastic. Its battery life clocked in at five hours and two minutes in my test, which means you could easily exceed six hours in normal use. My test model came with 3 GB of memory and a huge 500 GB hard disk.

The keyboard felt solid, but the fatal flaw of the dm3 for me was its metallic touchpad, which made the cursor move slowly and even stop at times. Like the Toshiba, the HP took a long time to get going: almost 2.5 minutes for a restart and about two minutes for a cold start.

The HP dm3 also is available for about $100 less when equipped with AMD (AMD) processors, though HP says those have weaker battery life.

Lenovo IdeaPad U350

In many ways, I liked the U350 best. It was sturdy, but thinner overall than the others because it lacked a bulging battery. The keyboard is firm and well designed, and the touchpad and buttons are comfortable and easy to use. It came with 4 GB of memory and a 320 GB hard disk for its $700 price. It was the only one of the three to restart in under two minutes. It also weighed the least, about 3.5 pounds.

But the IdeaPad’s downfall is its small, flat battery, which offered only two hours and 38 minutes of life, or maybe 3.5 to four hours in normal use. With the optional $50 battery, the battery life in my test zoomed up to nearly six hours, which means maybe 7.5 or eight hours in normal use. But that extra battery brought the computer’s weight to four pounds and made it thicker.

These thin, light, machines perform adequately and can last a long time unplugged. But I urge you to test them personally before choosing one, to make sure you’re comfortable with their designs.

Laptop Black Friday Specials ]]> http://www.blackfridaylaptopsales.com/2009/11/12/laptops-are-very-sleek-toshiba-satellite-t135-lenovo-ideapad-u350/feed/ 0 http://www.blackfridaylaptopsales.com/2009/11/05/intels-culv-laptops-thin-light-cheap-fantastic-new-product-for-black-friday/ http://www.blackfridaylaptopsales.com/2009/11/05/intels-culv-laptops-thin-light-cheap-fantastic-new-product-for-black-friday/#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:39:09 +0000 admin http://www.blackfridaylaptopsales.com/?p=450 Intel’s CULV Laptops: Thin, Light & Cheap

It’s like the geeked-out version of West Side story. You have netbooks, which simply took the world by storm, bullying bigger laptops into rethinking their game, slashing prices, and taunting others about long battery life. Then CULV laptops rolled into town, snapping their fingers and bragging about how their bigger screens and batteries make them the ones to beat. And somehow, these two groups are rivaling each other and are now running the entire ultraportable scene. Well, that’s how I’m portraying it.

CULV, which stands for consumer ultra low voltage, isn’t a new technology for Intel. In fact, these processors commanded high premiums two years ago and were found in ultraportables that range upwards of $2,000. With CULV, Intel merely re-branded these processors, created new ones in the process, and began selling them in laptops that are less than an inch thick, average 13-inch widescreens, and don’t necessarily include optical drives. Most compelling of all, CULV laptops cost between $600 and $900 and delivered great battery life.

TheMondayCynic

Believe it or not, there is a bigger software question this holiday season that “Do I need to upgrade to Windows 7?” (For those struggling with that question, we have a To Buy or Not To Buy guide for Windows 7 and a Guide to the Editions to sort out which flavor of Windows 7 is right for you.) But for the largely issue, what software stocking-stuffers should you buy for a new (or old) PC? Below we rate the best software application in six key categories — Security, Office Suites, Photo Editing, Video Editing, Online Backup, and Personal Finance — and offer free alternative apps in each sector for those of you shopping for software on a recession-friendly budget.SECURITY

Kaspersky Anti-Virus — In our 2009 Antivirus Buyers Guide, Kaspersky took home the Editor’s Choice award on the strength of being the fastest and most proactive antivirus solution we tested. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of some of its competitors, but when it comes to blocking malware without wasting time or slowing down other applications, Kaspersky is the frontrunner. Kaspersky has released a more recent version since our original review, and they’ve only improved on their strengths.

Free Alternative: Microsoft Security Essentials — For anyone running a “genuine” copy of Windows, which to say anyone who has a Windows Genuine Advantage verifier installed, MS Security Essentials is a totally free, dead-simple security suite. It’s a little slower than the third-party security apps, but its Windows intergation means it’s very efficient and doesn’t hog system resources. For those of you who don’t truck with Windows Genuine Advantage — or Microsoft’s less than stellar security record — there’s always AVG Free Antivirus, which is slightly slower but still a solid security app that’s solidly free.

OFFICE SUITE

Microsoft Office Home & Student 2007 — MS Office is the heavyweight in the productivity software department for a reason; it’s the app with the most features and (yes, really) the most polish. Moreover, Microsoft is going to force the new Ribbon interface into a market standard, so you need to get used to it now. The Home & Student version of Office is almost always available for a steep discount, and it includes the three classic apps — MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, along with Microsoft OneNote. If you absolutely must have Outlook — which is increasingly an exception in the age of Web mail — you can move up to MS Office 2007 Standard, which trades out OneNote for the signature Microsoft e-mail app, though you won’t find nearly the discounts for Office Standard. All that said, if you can afford to wait until next year, MS Office 2010 comes out and it will be much more polished than Office 2007, particularly where the ribbon is concerned.

Free Alternative: OpenOffice 3.1 — Open Office 3.1 is like a great cover band version of MS Office 2003 — it hits all the notes you’re used to, it just feels a bit different. Perhaps most importantly, OpenOffice 3.1 doesn’t have the controversial Ribbon interface, but it does have all the classic MS Office features and it locates them in familiar menus and layouts. Best of all, it’s completely free, so for all those power users who actually notice the quirky differences between OpenOffice’s and MS Office’s upper-end features will be satisfied knowing they didn’t pay a serious cover charge to enjoy the imitation performer.

PHOTO EDITING

Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 — Corel has a long history in image editing, but what let the old veteran displace the current heavyweight Photoshop Elements I our rankings is Corel’s Learning Center, a highly effective interactive tutorial  system that eases even novice users into Paint Shop’s high-end filters and effects. The Learning Center combined with Paint Shop’s near pro-grade feature set let Corel take home the Editors Choice selection in our 2009 Photo Editor Buyers Guide. Give it a whirl.

Free Alternative: Picnik — Flickr users will recognize Picnik as their photosharing site’s built-in photo editor, but Picnik actually has a life of its own. This Web-based app offers all the basic photo editing and correction tools you’ve come to expect, but in a clean interface that’s very user-friendly. The red-eye correction in particular is dead-simple to use and its basic autocorrect tool fixes most common point-and-shoot mistakes. Power users and serious photographers won’t be satisfied with Picnik’s basic feature set but the average holiday and family-function photog will do just fine. And you can’t beat the price: Free.

VIDEO EDITING

Pinnacle Studio Plus 12 — Pinnacle is the consumer version of the professional grade Avid video editing software, but that’s not why it took home our Editor’s Choice award in our 2009 Home Video Editing Software Buyers Guide. Pinnacle Studio Plus 12 was the most user-friendly editing application and it boasted the most effective user tutorials. Given how complex most video editors can seem, and how many features are often lurking under the hood, being easy to use makes Pinnacle the soundest investment of the bunch.

Free Alternative: JayCut — Believe it or not, there are actually several free Web-based video editing applications out there, but JayCut outshines most of them in two key areas. First, JayCut is exceedingly simple to use despite having a decent feature set; you can trim a video timeline and perform basic edits and corrections. Second, and perhaps more importantly, JayCut is one of the few video-editor web apps that lets you download your finished products back to your local hard drive, rather than locking them up on its own Web servers. Combine ease of use with that freedom, and you’ve got a nice, lightweight video editor that will serve the average home user quite well until they graduate to a more serious solution.

ONLINE BACKUP

Mozy — You have to like an online backup service that gives away the first two gigabytes of storage for free and then prices additional storage at competitive rates. Consider it a try-before-you-buy option on the service. Mozy offers solid Windows integration and was the overall Editors Choice selection in our 2009 Online Backup Service Buyers Guide. While not the most-feature rich online backup service, Mozy has a commitment to customer service that impressed us, especially the option to ship you a DVD-ROM copy of your backed-up files via FedEx, just in case you want a hardcopy of your data. Very nice.

Free Alternative: Microsoft SkyDrive — Somehow Microsoft has failed to adequately tell the world that anyone with a free MS Live account (which means anyone with a Hotmail account) can post up to 25 GB of files to an online datastore for free. This service is called SkyDrive and it’s got all kinds of hooks into MS Office 2010 (due first half next year) but for now this is like having a shared network drive out on the Internet. It isn’t as seamless or automated as a classic file/folder online backup product, but it’s massive and it’s free and it will only get better as Microsoft starts gearing up for SkyDrive’s central role in the new Office product lineup.

PERSONAL FINANCE

Quicken Deluxe 2009 — Quicken took home the Editor’s Choice award in our 2009 Personal Finance Software Buyer’s Guide. It also ran Microsoft out of the personal finance app market this year by forcing the discontinuation of MS Money. In many respects, Quicken is the last man standing in this space, and it’s got the features and — most importantly — the online bank and investment service interactivity to stay there for a while. The in-program advertisements can be annoying, particularly the constant pokes to sign up for a Quicken Visa card, but on the whole Quicken Deluxe 2009 is a solid financial planning app that will get your household budget in order with a minimum hassle.

Free Alternative: Mint — Mint was considered the free, online Quicken-killer, so much so that Quicken maker Intuit bought the company lock, stock and barrel earlier this year. Mint is the ultimate online bank statement, automatically downloading all your transaction data from credit cards, bank accounts, and online bill-pay sites and aggregating it into a single interactive budget. Its analysis tools are basic but easy to use. Mint is also light on active budget guidance, and you can’t directly pay bills or move money around using Mint, but when it comes to providing a global view of your finances. Mint is solid. It’s also free, which means you’ll be shopping smarter the minute you use it.