Wednesday, November 25th 2009, 3:02 pm
By Joel Craig, NEWS 9 Contributor
OKLAHOMA CITY -- Electronics like TVs, DVD players and laptops are usually some of the hottest items on Black Friday. But what are the best buys and what specific types should we be looking out for?
You've scoured the newspaper and Internet looking for the best Black Friday deals, here's a quick few tips. LCD TVs are in a price war, deals will be bountiful. If you're buying a 40-inch or smaller TV then 720P resolution will do just fine - for most of us our eyes won't be able to see the difference between 720 and 1080. Blu-Ray is the big thing in DVDs. Many players will connect to the Internet if you want to download movies, but know most players under $100 don't have this feature.
Also you don't have to throw out your old DVDs, they'll play on the newer Blu-Ray machines. Some places will exchange your old DVD movies for Blu-Ray versions. A place to start is the Warner Brother Pictures offer at DVD2Blu.com.
If you're looking at the new eBook readers, those are handheld devices that can hold scores of books and reference materials with a screen that is actually readable, be sure to check which file formats the unit can use. Just like many other things in the world of electronics the eBooks need different versions of software to be able to read them. Look at the sites you'll probably be buying and downloading books from to see which format they use, then be sure the player you're buying has it. Also know many public libraries allow you to check out electronic books over the Internet for free. There are many laptops on sale, buy depending on your needs. Celeron and Sempron processors are at the low end. Athlon and Pentium are a step-up - Turion 2 and Dual Core Duo are the fastest processors for laptops generally on sale.
Lastly, a research group, SquareTrade, just released a study analyzing the failure rates of laptop computers over a three-year life. The most reliable were Toshiba and Asus and the least reliable brands were Acer, Gateway, and HP. With HP's hardware malfunction rate, it ranked the worst at a whopping 25.6 percent.
November 25th, 2009
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