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Black Friday, the day when consumers can generally expect to find some good deals, is thankfully just about upon us.  With a few weeks before Thanksgiving here in the US, it seems now is about the right time for the deals to begin making their way into the public eye.  Sadly, although Dell has plenty of deals listed for Black Friday, it seems that some are not as exciting as one would hope for. 

To begin with, Dell is planning to offer the Inspiron Mini 9 for $299, which offers a $50 savings from the regular $349.  The specs for that model include a 1.6GHz Atom processor, a 4GB SSD, 512MB RAM an 8.9-inch display and running Ubuntu 8.04.

Other notebooks that are on sale (and some that will offer a much greater savings) will be the Inspiron 13 for $699 (a $329 savings), the Studio 15 for $699 (a $245 savings), the Studio 17 for $799 (a $349 savings), the XPS M1330 for $1,029 (a $319 savings) and the XPS M1530 also for $1,029 (a $319 savings).  More deals after the break.

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We all know, love, hate and possibly do our best to ignore Black Friday.  For deals on gadgets and tech, you’d expect the main electronic stores to participate: Best Buy, Circuit City, maybe even Wal-Mart and Target.  You can add one more to that list that you probably wouldn’t expect: Walgreens.  Yeah, I wasn’t expecting it either.

Of course, a store like Walgreens doesn’t have a whole ton of electronic deals, but there are a few.  Some of its not too surprising, like a 10” LCD TV for $99, a 9 megapixel Kodak camera for $79 and a 2 GB MicroSD card for $9.  While they are good deals, their what you’d usually expect from a store like Walgreens.  However, there are two surprising additions.  One is an 8MP HD camcorder from Aiptek for $79.  The other being an $89 Nextar GPS.  Sure, they aren’t really big brand names, but what do you expect from Walgreens?

With the economy the way it is, and tech becoming more popular, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more of these types of deals from other retailers for Black Friday.  Last year the big push was for HDTVs, which it could be this year as well.  One thing is definite, though, people like finding good deals on tech.

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Kodak has two new All-in-One (AiO) printers, the EasyShare 7 (“ESP7”) and the EasyShare 9 (“ESP9”).  The ESP7 and ESP9 showcase Kodak’s promise of the lowest ink replacement cost in the industry.  MSRP on black ink is $9.99 and color ink is $14.99.  Those prices are pretty reasonable.  Other goals for these printers are lab-quality prints and easy to use.

Keep reading for specs on each printer and a SALE!

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Despite the growing popularity of netbooks and ultraportable PCs, at the end of the day we consumers still turn to our old, reliable, and trustworthy desktop PCs for our more sophisticated and power-hungry computing needs.  Knowing this, Acer is not abandoning its desktop PC product line, despite the success of its Acer Aspire One.  To address our power-hungry computer needs, the company is rolling out the new X3200 Phenom-powered desktop PC.  And, what better way to appreciate this machine’s power, but to pair it up with a 24-inch LCD, right?

Plenty more after the break.

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Photographers have been messing around with 3D photography for years.  It just hasn’t been a nice and easy, already developed for them, consumer-friendly, point and shoot 3D camera they were using to take the photos.  Some photographers were rigging up their own cameras to get the effect, some doing it in post-processing.  Some, used much less user-friendly four lens cameras that did exist out there, just not with the best picture quality.

Fujifilm is hoping to remedy all of that with their development of their 3D camera.  The way it accomplishes the 3D effect is to use two lenses and two sensors.  The lenses are about 6 to 7-cm apart, which is the width between the average person’s eyes.  These lenses and sensors take different pictures from different angles simultaneously.  Then, it combines the different pictures to create one image that is displayed on the camera’s 2.8-inch, 230,000 pixel LCD screen. 

Read more about 3D cameras after the break.

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We have seen how LCD technology has revolutionized our daily lives, from cellphones to television displays.  All of this occurred less than a decade ago, when we made our transition from CRT displays to LCD displays.

Recently, researchers from Sony and the Max Planck Institute in Germany have unveiled the result of their research by demonstrating a flexible video screen.  Some have come up with numerous applications of this technology such as foldable computers and reusable newspapers where you can upload the content of a newspaper onto a device equipped with one of these screens.

See what separates this new flexible display from its predecessors after the break.

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Dell seems to be experimenting on its LCD product line.  Their new S1909WX and S1709X LCDs use the more traditional 16:10 aspect ratio (with a 1440x900 resolution) instead of using the new standard LCD aspect ratio of 16:9.  Still, these two new LCDs sport some of the features of other Dell LCDs, such as a detachable stand that will allow users to use a VESA mount the display on a wall.

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With all the super hectic movie chaos that are taking place these days, one’s monitor can never be enormous enough to feed to our flaming desires for in-house movie screenings.  Well if that’s the case, I’m sure reading the news about this huge 23-inch LCD monitor will make a lot of people a lot happier.  As the title suggests, Dell now presents you with its 23-inch S2309W 1080p LCD monitor, hot from the oven!

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Recently, Sanyo announced its new PLV-Z3000 LCD Projector featuring a 120Hz full HD 1080p display resolution and a 5:5 pull down for producing images as true to the source as possible. Sanyo boasts that this is the industry’s first LCD projector to have the 5:5 pull down feature.

With a 5:5 pull-down mode, the PLV-Z3000 can increase the smoothness of video even if the source includes scenes with a tremendous amount of motion. Thanks to the projector’s “Dynamic Predictive Frame Interpolation Technology” which predicts motion differences between frames, it enables the projector to generate five interpolated images to fill the gaps. These extra images improve resolution and eliminate motion artifacts. Additionally, Sanyo claims that this projector can take 24 fps material from HDTV broadcasts and display the content in movie theater quality.

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There is clearly a market for the giant-sized LCD television sets, and Philips is one of the leading sellers in that market.  They have recently unveiled a new 42-inch LCD with the 42PES0001, also known as the Essence. 

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