A complete guide to Black Friday deals, advice, and Ratings

We’ve been busy here getting ready for the holiday shopping season, which—despite its early start this year—traditionally starts on Black Friday. In addition to following deals and offering shopping tips here on the Electronics Blog, our reporters and testers have been updating the buying advice for a host of products at ConsumerReports.org. They’ve also been hard at work in our labs, as the flood of new product Ratings within the last week and a half can attest.

If you’re among the brave ones venturing out in search of deals this Black Friday weekend, we hope this buying guide will help prepare you. For buying tips and deals throughout this holiday season, be sure to check back with the Electronics Blog periodically. Check in also with Tightwad Tod, who is following deals for a number of products and offering useful shopping advice.

BLACK FRIDAY DEALS
Our reporters have combed through a number of Black Friday deal sites and retailer circulars. Below are the fruits of their labor. Many deals carry through the weekend. Even if they’re only valid on Black Friday itself, you might be surprised at what a little haggling can accomplish. And be careful of tempting bundled or package deals—sometimes they aren’t as great a value as they appear.

• LCD TV deals
• Plasma TV deals

Black Friday computer deals not so hot

Where are all the computer deals? We started flipping through the Black Friday sites and circulars in search of tempting laptops, desktops, and netbooks. The results? It’s a mixed bag.

You’ll have to work hard to find the best deals. Our favorite so far? The Sony VGN-NW235F/W that will be on sale Friday at Best Buy. Normally priced at $999, on Friday limited quantities will be available for $399. But you’ll need a ticket to be eligible to make this purchase.

Best Buy will also have a $197 HP laptop with a 15.6-inch display. It uses a Celeron processor, which is a lesser performer than the processors used in most laptops. If you're interested in this one, think of it as a netbook-like performer in a larger laptop package. Actually, at that price it’s a pretty good deal for the kids or the grandparents.

Here are Best Buy’s instructions for getting a ticket:

Each store will decide when to hand out tickets in the two hours before store opening. Stores base their decisions on multiple factors, including the length of the line, the weather, and store personnel levels. Tickets will be handed out until they are gone. Lines tend to form early, and Best Buy is unable to guarantee that all customers will receive a ticket.

My local Best Buy opens at 5 a.m. You do the math—don’t bother going to bed.

New Ratings of laptop, netbook, and desktop computers

The new iMac, now in our Ratings.

The holiday shopping season is about to hit hyperspeed, and as you’d expect, there’s news to report on computers of every stripe. Our new computer Ratings (available to subscribers) should help you sort things out, but before you start shopping, here are a few things you need to know.

First, our Ratings include a range of computers—laptops, netbooks, and desktops—most of which run Windows 7, the latest iteration of Microsoft’s operating system. Two days before Microsoft introduced Windows 7, Apple debuted several new Macs, including a big-screen 27-inch iMac.

Next, don’t expect a big performance boost from Windows 7. Compared to Vista computers, Windows 7 systems didn’t perform any better or worse. But the good news is, Windows 7 systems don’t necessarily cost more than Vista laptops or desktops.

Here’s a look at the news from each category.

Netbooks. We added eight new Windows 7 models to our netbook Ratings, including two with 11.6-inch screens. The others have 10.1-inch displays, and run Windows 7 Starter, a version of Windows 7 that doesn’t include the Aero 3D interface. We didn’t find any notable differences between Windows 7 Starter and XP netbooks, although the Windows 7 systems showed a slight performance hit but a slight gain in battery life. Our advice is to make your buying decision based not on the operating system, but on ergonomics, battery life, and price.

Sprint sells its first netbook, expands its 4G network

Sprint today began selling its first subsidized, network-connected netbook and announced the expansion of its fourth-generation wireless network to a further 10 cities

The netbook Sprint is selling, the Dell Inspiron Mini 10, does not rank among the best performers in our Ratings, available to subscribers. However, where the Mini 10 currently sells for $349 from Dell, Sprint will sell it for $199.99, after a $100 mail-in rebate. The catch, as with netbooks sold by other carriers such as AT&T and Verizon is the requirement to sign up for a two-year broadband plan for the device, which costs $59.99 a month.

The Sprint Mini 10 is currently available only at Sprint Stores in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sprint's news release does not detail further availability, but other such launches by competing carriers gradually rolled out to a number of cities across the country.

Sprint is the first carrier to roll out a fourth-generation, or 4G, wireless network. The 10 new cities added today, including Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth, expand Sprint's network beyond the 25 cities where they already have at least some 4G service, including Philadelphia and Las Vegas.

5 hot electronics gifts flagged by Consumer Reports Holiday Shopping Poll

Electronics are again at the top of a lot of gift lists for the coming holiday season, according to the results of a Consumer Reports Holiday Shopping Poll released this week.

Here, are the five hottest electronics gifts, listed in order of respondents’ intentions to give them. I’ve added some reasons why they’re hot at the moment and, for some, details on the kind of people who are buying them:

• Video games and accessories. Planned as gifts by 28 percent of respondents. In a year where many people plan to cut back, as other survey data underlines, these are gifts that cost a lot less than most hardware. Nearly half of households with kids under 12 are planning such purchases, but so are nearly a quarter of homes with no such youngsters—underlining that games and extra Wii nunchucks aren’t just being bought for kids anymore. It helps that some of the hottest game titles of the year appeal equally to young and old players—notably Beatles Rock Band.

• Video-game consoles. Planned as gifts by 14 percent of respondents, including 25 percent of homes with kids under 12. With no new versions of consoles out this year, and the economy softening, prices have dropped for most brands. Also, after two seasons in which getting a Nintendo Wii consoles required military-level planning, the promise of its wider availability may be prompting some Wii holdouts to plan a purchase. (See our video buying guide for game consoles.)

PC Shopping? Beware False Bargains

Walk into just about any computer store or log onto most Web sites that sell computers, and you’re sure to find a good number of laptops and desktops at rock-bottom prices. But those deals may not be as good as they seem on the surface, our lab tests show.

Take a close look at these “bargains” before you buy, because some computer manufacturers are replacing dual-core processors with single-core Pentium and Celeron processors to reduce costs. Others are using less-powerful Atom processors in systems that otherwise look like full-blown laptops and desktops. The result, our tests show, is more sluggish performance when you try to surf media-rich Web sites, watch videos, or play 3D games.

The bottom line when shopping: If you’re looking for a primary PC for general-purpose computing, avoid computers with single-core processors, such as some Atoms and Celerons. Also make sure you get more than 1GB of memory. Of course, if all you need is a low-cost netbook for general Web surfing and e-mail, with perhaps some word processing thrown into the mix, then an Atom-based netbook with a gigabyte or two of memory and at least a 160GB hard drive should serve you well.

Take a look at our laptop and desktop Ratings (available to subscribers only) to see how Atom and other low-end processors affect systems like all-in-ones and other full-blown computers. —Donna Tapellini

Extra Extra: Consumer Reports Electronics Buying Guide is on sale

(Click to enlarge.)

It may be a tad early to start your holiday shopping, but there’s a good chance you’ve at least been thinking about it. Maybe you’ve had a big-ticket gift—like a new TV or home theater—in mind for a while now, but are putting off the purchase till November or December. If it’s sales you’re waiting for, you probably know what you want and how much you’re willing to pay. On the other hand, you might just a teeny bit leery of throwing so much cash at something you know very little about. Which is better: a plasma or LCD TV? Should you upgrade to a Blu-ray player or stick with standard-def DVDs?

If you find yourself in need of expert advice, consider the newest edition of the Consumer Reports Electronics Buying Guide. Inside you’ll find a wealth of information on everything from televisions and computers to smart phones, GPS units, and much more. For each product, the Consumer Reports editors walk you through the basics, explaining what’s available, which features matter, brand profiles, and offering tried-and-true shopping tips.

In addition to product information, the guide offers advice on how to shop smarter, including:

• Netting the best deals online, and protecting yourself when you shop on the Web


• When to repair and when to replace a broken item


• How to haggle effectively


• Finding the best electronics retailer based on our comprehensive annual survey


• How to save—and what to be wary of—with refurbished or open-box products on store shelves


• Where to get free office software, free computer security programs, and more useful freeware

Back to school: Laptop or netbook?

Smaller netbooks are more portable than most laptops, but laptops have the edge in ergonomics and processing power.
[PHOTO: Courtesy of Zieak]

If you’re buying a portable computer for school or college use this fall, one of the decisions you’ll face is whether to get a larger laptop or a pint-sized netbook. As we’ve noted previously, each has its pros and cons—laptops being more powerful with bigger keyboards and mousepads; netbooks being smaller, lighter, and typically cheaper.

The best primary computer for most students is unquestionably a laptop. But it will likely cost you hundreds more than a netbook, especially if you opt for a lighter laptop, which is typically pricier than a comparably-powered, heavier one. However, the benefits outweigh the extra cost. A laptop’s superior ergonomics are better suited for extended typing than a netbook’s and its greater processing power is essential if you need to crunch a lot of data—in spreadsheets, for example.

However, if you already have a laptop or a desktop and don’t own a smart phone with Web access, a netbook might be worth considering as a highly portable secondary computer. Given the ubiquity of free Wi-Fi on college campuses, a netbook can serve nicely as a mobile connection to the internet and e-mail, as well as a note-taking device. If you do plan to take notes on a netbook, get a model that we rated better on ergonomics; models in our netbook Ratings (available to subscribers) range considerably in the ease of use of their keyboards, mousepads, and other features.

New computer Ratings: Less-costly laptops and desktop bargains

We’ve just finished testing a slew of new computers, from netbooks to laptops to desktops. In our latest Ratings of computers, you’ll find 17 new laptops, 13 new desktops, and three new netbooks. (A ConsumerReports.org subscription is required to access all Ratings.) Altogether, you can get the lowdown on 102 computers.

Now all you need to do is decide what kind you want.

Netbooks are great for a lightweight second computer with long battery life.  You’ll have to weigh the importance of ergonomics, price, and battery life. We haven’t yet found a netbook that excels for ergonomics, price, and battery life although one new netbook came close.

Travelers looking for a solid 13-inch lightweight laptop no longer have to break the bank. The price of Apple’s White MacBook recently dropped to $1,000, and there are several very good 13-inch Windows laptops costing even less. Fourteen- to 16-inch laptops really hit the sweet spot in terms of price. If you’re looking for a heftier (in terms of weight and power) desktop replacement, take a look at a 17-inch laptop. They’re getting more robust, with some featuring quad-core processors that were formerly found only in desktops.

Desktops are among the best bargains you can get in computers these days. You’ll pay less than $800 for a system loaded with features and powerful enough even for 3D gaming. Even all-in-ones, which have generally cost more because manufacturers must squeeze most components into the display, offer increasingly good value. —Donna Tapellini

In the CR Test Labs: 10 new netbooks

Is the line between laptops and netbooks blurring? Lower-priced laptops now cost less than $500, while higher-priced netbooks cost between $400 and $500.

And the products themselves are increasingly similar. Netbooks aren’t necessarily bare bones—some new models have bigger hard drives and more memory. Screens are also getting larger. While most netbooks started out with 9-inch displays, that size has largely been replaced by 10-, 12-, and most recently 11-inch displays. Meanwhile, we’ve seen Atom processors, meant for netbooks, in 13-inch laptops.

You’ll soon be able to check out for yourself the details of the 10 new netbooks currently in our CR Test Labs. Here’s a quick preview.

Acer. The Aspire One AO751h-1259 is one of the more loaded netbooks we’ve seen. With an 11.6-inch display, it’s got a 250GB hard drive and 2GB of RAM. Instead of Linux or Windows XP, it comes with Windows Vista Home Basic. It weighs less than 3 pounds (according to Acer) and costs $400.

Asus. The $390 Eee PC Seashell 1005-HA is a 10.1-inch netbook with a 1.66GHz Atom processor and a 160GB hard drive.

Gateway. Two netbooks from Gateway’s LT series take different approaches. The 10.1-inch LT 2021U (pictured above) has an Atom processor and runs Windows XP Home; it has 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive and costs $300. The AMD Athlon-based LT3130U has 2GB of RAM, a larger 250GB hard drive, and runs Windows Vista Home Basic. Its display is 11.6 inches, and it costs $400. We’ll let you know if it’s worth spending the extra $100 when our tests come out.