A Nielsen Company survey has advised that a little less than 20 percent of all Americans admitted they will be waking up early and going after the best deals for this year’s Black Friday. Nearly half of these will be looking at deals they can receive at the supercenters and similar retailers. Another 52 percent have admitted that that you can find them at electronic stores this Black Friday for the best tech deals. These are the top 5 Black Friday Tech Deals.

1)      The HP Pavilion Laptop

Hewlett Packard is offering their HP Pavilion 15.6 inch screen laptop with a core i3 with 4 GB of RAM and a hard drive of 500 GB for less than $500. At $499 the HP Pavilion laptop is a wonderful buy at more than $200 less than the current price of $730.

The laptop has an embedded WiMax broadband along with an Ethernet LAN which is 10/100/100 Gigabit. Weighing in at five and half pounds and almost an inch and a half thick makes it ideal to carry from class to class or home to office.

2)      Canon Powershot SX120 IS 10MP digital camera with 10X Optical Zoom for $129

Keeping track of those holiday memories with the Canon Powershot SX120 digital camera with 10X Optical Zoom is one of the best digital cameras on the market today. You can find this particular camera for the $129 price tag at Target. The current price is $100 more than what you will be buying it for on Black Friday. With a 3 inch LCD Pure Color System and Smart Auto it can detect an analyze faces, colors, brightness, distance and movement. There is even and easy mode on the camera for the novices that want to start their photographic career with one of the best in the industry.

3)      Xbox Kinect Bundle for $299

The Xbox Kinect Bundle is being sold all over the marketplace. Wal-Mart is offering the bundle for $299 on Saturday after Black Friday. The deals are saving you $100 if you wait until Saturday to buy the Xbox Kinect Bundle. The Xbox Kinect is being rated 4 out of 5 stars and has been the recipient of the Editor’s Choice Award with PC Magazine.

The Xbox Kinect Bundle includes the Xbox 360 4GB console along with the Kinect sensor, the Kinect Adventures game as well as a wireless controller. There are Black Friday deals for other gaming consoles that include the PS3, Nintendo DSi and the Nintendo Wii.

4)      46 inch Samsung UN45C5000 LED/LCD 1080p 60Hz HDTV for $898

Televisions are a must have this year. The big screens are coming down in price and Black Friday is offering some deals for the LED/LCD big screens. This is an otherwise extremely pricey television offered at Wal-Mart for an incredible savings. The regular price is $1249 which is a savings of almost 30% on Black Friday. Amazon is offering the same television at a 40% savings. Amazon regular price is $1499 and the Black Friday price is $899. Avoid the lines at your local Wal-Mart and check out Amazon.

5)      Barnes and Noble Nook Wi-Fi EReader for $99

EReaders and other eBook readers are a sensational hit this Christmas as more people are trying to go green and have caught the eBook fever. The current price for the eReader is $149.99 at Best Buy. The Black Friday price of $99 is a nearly $50 savings. There is a vast catalog of various titles along with instant downloads either through Wi-Fi or 3G.

These are the top five Black Friday tech deals that shoppers are hoping to catch and retailers are hoping to catch the shopper’s eye. 

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Pros:

- One of the benefits of mounting your television on the ceiling is that you can adjust the angle of television to suit your needs. Unlike when it is sitting upright on a table or a cabinet, you can mount your LCD so that you can watch it from almost any position that you like. Whether it is mounted in front of your bed or on the roof above your recliners, it is sure to improve the comfort of your television watching experience.

- Another benefit of having your television mounted on the ceiling instead of the wall or sitting at floor level is that you save space. While your wall might be covered of paintings or your floor cluttered with useless furniture (which you’re probably too lazy to clean up), your ceiling is almost always empty and filled with space to hang things such as your LCD television. 

Cons:

- The number one con and fail is the fact that your television might well and truly fall. In this case, falling and failing can be confused – they can both relate to the same thing here! A falling television would not only render your expensive television useless, but could damage other furniture and items, or even pets and your family, not to mention yourself. 

- Maintenance is also a problem when trying to reach a LCD TV attached to the ceiling. For example, attaching game consoles, and trying to use the buttons on the bottom of the television would be a real issue after so many times. And not all television remotes have a good signal, so that would be another thing in your way to think about.

Still imagining a ceiling mounted LCD television as the perfect thing for you? You should probably start organising to install it (or to get someone to do it for you) then. But if you’re starting to decline the thought…. how about a wall mounted desktop?

Please take time to browse my other articles:
 - The Truth about Natural Disasters – Volcanoes
 - An Alliteration for Every Letter of the Alphabet
 - Fun Card Games – Big Two

1)    Switch to CFLs or LEDs

Environmentalists have been exhorting this paradigm shift for quite some time now. If you still have incandescent bulbs then you seriously need to throw them out. Consider this: by some      estimates, life span of LED bulbs is around 45,000 to 60,000 hours. On the other hand, incandescent bulbs and CFLs operate for 1,500 and 10,000 hours, respectively. In terms of luminescence or the amount of light each of these produce, to get the equivalent of 60 W of light from an incandescent bulb, you only have to consume around 14 W for a CFL and 6 W for an LED. You might then say that the initial investment of the environmentally friendly options would be high. Yes, but considering the life spans and the low power consumption of both CFL and LED, you’d recover the cost in no time. In fact, imagine the money saved over the entire life span of an LED bulb – 60,000 hours. By some estimates, over its life span, it’ll save you close to ` 16,000 in cost of bulbs (40 incandescents) as well as electricity cost. But a figure you can relate to more is how much the switch from incandescent bulbs will save you in simple energy costs for a year – ` 788 for two bulbs.

2)    Driving Tips

It’s a commonly accepted fact that driving between 45 to 55 kph increases fuel efficiency. At this optimal speed bracket, you’re expected to drive steadily without jerky acceleration and rapid braking. Basically, don’t be an aggressive driver and it’ll save you 15 percent of your fuel cost; that’s the thumb rule. Idling the car for a long time obviously makes no sense. You’re wasting fuel and burning money, adding to the pollution, and not going anywhere. The rule here is that if you’re going to stop for more than 30 seconds, you should switch of the engine. The initial surge of fuel burn at ignition gets countered if the wait time is above 30 seconds. A Japanese study showed that for a distance of 3,700 kms, when idling norms are strictly followed it saves 6%. For an average Indian car with a mileage of 15 km pl this distance would cost around ` 12,000 of fuel. So you could potentially save ` 740, every 3,700 kilometers. Consider  this: if you travel 30 km a day, just preventing your car from idling can save you 6% of 30 x 365 x 50 / 15 = ` 2,190 a year! Also remember to use properly inflated tyres, avoid unnecessary dependence on air conditioning, and whenever possible, carpool.

3)    Switch to Solar Heating

One of the biggest guzzlers of electricity in any household is the big old water heater. In some parts of the country water is heated for nearly half of the year! This water is not used just for bathing, but also for other applications – washing hands, cooking etc. A typical storage water heater that can raise temperature of   25 litres by 35 degrees Celsius has a rating of 2000W and takes about 33 minutes to do it. So a reasonable estimate would be that you’d need an average of 2 cycles to heat about 100 litres of water, i.e. one hour of usage a day (considering some water will not have to be raised all the 35 degrees from room temperature). This means 2000watts a day x 30=60kWh. Comes out to Rs.240 per month just on heating water. By way of instant heaters the amount is almost the same. At a flow of 3 litres per minutes most instant heaters raise the temperature by 21 degrees. So heating around 100 litres of water takes about half an hour of run time.  However instant heaters have a higher rating than storage water heaters – 4500W. That means 15 hours a month x 4500W = 67.5kWh. At a cost of Rs.4 per unit that comes out to rs.270.

       By either of these methods you end up spending over Rs.1.500 a year on heating water if you only consume hot water for half the year. Switching to solar is a viable cost effective alternative. They work in any climate ant the only fuel they need is sunlight- which is free. There is of course an investment which you can quite easily recover in the life span of the equipment. The real cost benefits of this system show up when you opt for a solar water heater for your society or building. Much greater economics of scale apply then. For an individual household the setup costs are around Rs.130 per litre so a 100 litre setup would cost around Rs.13.000 with an additional cost for installation. Here we’re talking about evacuated tube solar collectors. Some of the things to look out for are insulating material quality and the reflective sheet underneath the tubes.  

4)    Buy star rated products

Energy Star Rating was first introduced by the US Department of Energy in 1992. The program ensures strict testing procedures in order to identify and promote energy efficient products. This reduces green house gases as well as saves money for the end users. 

Specific to India, B.E.E(Bureau of Energy Efficiency, Govt. of India) has come out with a standard. Originally designed for Air Conditioning equipment, the objective of this labeling system is efficient use of energy and its conservation. BEE Star label is now Mandatory- for Frost Free Refrigerators, Room AC, Tubular Florescent Lamps and Distribution Transformers. We saw the BEE Star label on a couple of heaters too. The rating system is quite consumer friendly. The number of stars can vary from 1 to 5. Higher stars indicate higher energy efficiency and more energy bill savings for the customers. On a demo chart for refrigerators we noticed that a five star rated product consumed about half the electricity as non-rated refrigerator, which translated into a saving of Rs.1750 per year.

5)    Use natural resources

Many homes as well as offices are increasingly being designed to be naturally lit, cooled and heated. You too can structure your activities in such a way that use natural light more often. For instance if you want to read a book. There’s no other source of light better than diffused sunlight. On  the ventilation front, cross ventilation along with ceiling fans can do wonders .They’re cheap too, costing less than 30 paise to run. Put up light reflecting films on windows to keep indoors cooler. Clean air filters in AC, this improves ventilation and air flow too. These methods should allow you to keep your cooling costs down by at least 10 per cent, which would be typically about Rs400 a year if your AC bill is Rs.4000 a year.

6)    Banish the vampires

 Any electronic appliance when it’s on standby or even switched of draws some amount of power as long as it’s plugged into a socket. This is known vampire power. While many of us know that such a thing occurs, we often underestimate the magnitude of how much this drain could be. Some estimates suggest that up to 22%of all appliance consumption occurs from standby power drain. Adapters that usually don’t come with a power strips and flip just one switch for a set of connected appliances to turn them off. Or better yet, pull out the plug. The minimum reduction in bills is estimated to be around 10 per cent. So if you spend about Rs.1000 on your electricity bill per month you should save Rs.100.

7)    Adjust the settings

·         Turn your water thermostat down 2degrees in winter and up several degrees in the summer.

·         Set your A/C thermostat to 23°C-25°C.It provides enough comfort and the AC operates for lesser time.

·         Check if your refrigerator is unnecessarily cooling more than you need.

·         Use appropriate load settings for your washing machine.

8)    Go LCD

Some people believe that the lower power consumption of an LCD is overrated and that continuing with a CRT is the way to go. This is absolutely false. Let’s just compare the power consumptions. A typical 19-inch CRT’s power rating is set at around 100 W, and a similar-sized LCD, around 30W. So what type of savings are we talking of here? Say you run a monitor for seven hours a day for a year. ACRT will then consume  around 255 kilo-watt hours of power, and the LCD will pull around 76.Assuming that 1 unit (1kilo-watt-hour) of power is priced at around Rs.4 the difference in bills between the CRT and LCD over a year is around RS.700. Multiply that by thee years (the common warranty with most monitors), that’s over Rs 2,100 saved. If you use your screen for more than seven hours, that would mean an even bigger saving. Now the cost to replace a CRT is also very affordable, since at the lower screen sizes LCD are dirt cheap. Also remember, LCD run at much lower temperatures. If you use an air conditioner in your computer room, the benefits of using an LCD might show up from further savings in this region as well. And of course let’s not forget the glare reduction.

Near the beginning of last year, I purchased a Pentium 4 computer from a friend for about $300. Little did I know that not even twelve months later, I would discover that my newly purchased system was several years old and is now practically obsolete. Nevertheless, my computer still fulfills my needs – it runs Microsoft Office 2007, some of the latest games like Age of Empires 3 and Command & Conquer 3, I can surf the internet, and I can check my email. Therefore, a new computer is the last thing I’m looking for this Christmas.

I’m one of the few teenagers that don’t own a cell phone. Why? I don’t need one. I never have, and I doubt I ever will. But even if I did want to purchase one, I’d be confused as to which one to buy. There are hundreds of different cell phones out there, each with different features. And after you buy one, a company comes out with a newer model several weeks later.

Don’t you find it frustrating that after making a $300 purchase on a new smart-phone or computer, an even newer model is released several weeks later, thus already setting your piece of technology into the “soon-to-be-obsolete” category?

The opposite of keeping up with the latest trends in technology is to wait a couple of years before purchasing a new piece of electronic equipment. The price drop is substantial, but then again, what you’re buying is already obsolete, meaning that depending on the situation, you might not be getting the best value for your money.

What should you do? Well, here’s my opinion. What I tend to do is not purchase a new electronic device as soon as it’s released, yet at the same time not wait forever for the price to drop to less than $25. So, I usually aim for a 1 to 2-year deadline. Now, obviously I didn’t follow this strategy when buying my Pentium 4, but then again I wasn’t aware of when the Pentium 4 was originally released, as well as the fact that the $300 price point was quite high anyways. After one or two years have gone by since a product’s release, the cost tends to drop anywhere from 10% to 15%, yet it’s still considered trendy and popular among society. I bought my Wii in August 2007, almost one year after its initial release in November 2006.

What are your trend-keeping strategies?

1. Potato Chips – Discovered: Saratoga Springs, New York

   

   Chef George Crum made the interesting discovery of potato chips after a customer complained to him about his potato fries being cut way too thick. Being a wise guy he sliced a potato paper thin and then fried it to a crisp. The diner loved it, thus creating the world’s very first potato chip.

2. Viagra – Discovered: Merthyr Tydfil, Wales

   

   Viagra was discovered by men who were being treated with an erectile dysfunction. It was first discovered in the town of Merthyr Tydfil with the trial medicines they thought could cure the dysfunction. It has since become well known as Viagra, and is used as a male enhancement.

3. Silly Putty – Discovered: New York

   

   Silly Putty was discovered in the 1940s by a general electric scientist named James Wright while he was trying to create a synthetic rubber to use for the war. He mixed boric acid and silicon oil and got Silly Putty. Since then it has become one of the world’s most popular toys. One favorite past time includes sticking it on a newspaper and pulling it off to reveal the imprint of the comic.

4. LSD – Discovered: Switzerland

   

   LSD was discovered by a Swiss chemist named Albert Hoffman. It was the world’s first acid hit. The year was 1943, and he had been working with a chemical called lysergic acid diethylamide. The initial reason for his research was related to childbirth. After the first try he attempted even a larger dose of it and made another discovery, the bad trip.

5. Microwave Ovens – Discovered: Massachusetts

   

   Microwave Ovens were discovered in 1946 when a magnetron melted a candy bar in Raytheon engineer Percy Spencer’s pocket. Microwave emitters powered the Allies radar in WWII.

6. Penicillin – Discovered: Scotland

   

   A Scottish scientist named Alexander Fleming was looking into a cure for the flu in 1928 when he noticed that a blue-green mold had infected one of his Petri dishes, and it had killed the staphylococcus bacteria that had been growing in it. The world’s most effective cure was actually discovered due to a contamination in the lab. What a unique coincidence!

7. X-Rays – Discovered: Germany

   

   X-rays were discovered in the 19th century by several scientists toying with penetrating rays that were emitted when electrons struck a metal target. It wasn’t fully workable until 1895 when a German scientist named Wilhelm Röntgen tried sticking different objects in front of the radiation and saw the bones on his hand projected onto the wall behind him.

8. Artificial Sweeteners – Discovered: Illinois; Maryland; Nebraska

   

   Artificial sweeteners were discovered in much the same way as penicillin. Three of them, Saccharin, Cyclamate, and Aspartame were all discovered in a one hundred year time period, and all by scientists who forgot to wash their hands after an experiment.

9. Brandy – Discovered: The Seven Seas

   

   Brandy was created by wine merchants during the medieval time period by boiling the water out of wine so that their cargo would stay fresh and take up less space when being shipped. After a while it was decided to skip the reconstitution stage altogether and brandy was accidentally created .

10. Vulcanized Rubber – Discovered: New York

    

    When rubber rots, it smells horrible unless it is vulcanized. The ancient Mesoamericans actually had their own variation of the process Charles Goodyear discovered in 1839. He accidentally dropped some rubber-sulfur compound onto a hot stove, creating the first vulcanized rubber.