Traditionalists might balk, but the holiday shopping season is already underway. Skeptical? Head to your local department store and you'll be inundated with Christmas trees and holiday ornaments. Bargain hunters, though, know that the real deals are over a month away.

Traditionally, Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving for the uninitiated) is when retailers truly slash prices. Early birds can shave hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars off their holiday bills. We checked with a few elves, who gave us a sneak peek at what you can expect deal-wise this year.

Yesterday's news about holiday shopping was somewhat positive, with online shopping found to be up two percent on Black Friday compared to 2007, but the word that overall holiday shopping was down four percent sent the markets reeling. Today's news about Cyber Monday, though, is much more positive, with word coming in that there were 46 percent more shoppers online than last year!

The rate of shoppers yesterday was 6.7 million per minute, a massive figure that's nearly 50 percent higher than last year's 4.6 million. There's no word yet of final sales resulting from all that traffic, but it must be good, and Microsoft, for one, is spreading some joy, letting the world know that over the holiday weekend it sold 25 percent more Xbox 360 consoles than during the same period last year. An even better sign for the console, currently the cheapest of the current generation of gaming systems, is that it out-sold Sony's PlayStation3 by a three-to-one ratio. What we don't know is how well Nintendo's Wii sold, but one word comes to mind: gangbusters. [From: ZDNet, and Microsoft]

Okay, so you don't need us to tell you that the economy is in dire straights at the moment. But, perhaps we can be the bearer of a wee bit of good news on this Cyber Monday. While online holiday sales have been down this year compared to November of 2007, sales on Thanksgiving day and Black Friday were actually up -- just not enough to offset the decline.

Online sales for the period covering November 27 and 28 were up two percent over last year, a combined $822 million. But, the preceding days in the month were down four percent, $10.4 billion this year compared to $10.8 billion last year. Interestingly, according to the report from comScore, online Black Friday shoppers tended to sleep in, being most active at Noon-4pm in the afternoon. That's a stark contrast to the average buying experience most associate with that holiest of shopping days -- getting up at 2:00am to stand in the cold in a long line of bargain hunters. [From: comScore]

Whether you or not you want to spend money this year on gifts, you can't escape the fact that the official holiday shopping season kicks off today, "Black Friday," as the day after Thanksgiving is dubbed. Retailers in every category offer significant deals on this day, and the consumer electronics industry is no exception. If you're planning on buying either yourself or someone else a computer, television, MP3 player, or other gadget, you should take a look at the various sites that highlight the latest holiday sales, as well as any newspaper circulars.

Whereas in the past, Black Friday deals were mostly reserved for the Friday after Thanksgiving itself, this year the economic downturn means that the sales are likely to last well up to Christmas and beyond.

Though some deals have already been leaked or announced, many Black Friday markdowns don't get announced until today, so here are a few online places to find out about the latest sales:

Free Stuff: Not only is Engadget offering updates on the latest Black Friday Gadget deals, but will also be giving away actual merchandise, which means you may not even have to schlep to the mall this year!

Apple Deals: The Unofficial Apple Weblog will keep you up to date on any Apple-related deals, in case you're in the market for Apple software or a new MacBook, iPod, or iPhone.

What the Biggest Retailers Are Offering: Looking for the rare sub-$1,000 50-inch plasma HDTV? Hint: You can get it at Wal-Mart, but make sure to check out Walletpop's roundup of sales at all the other big stores, from Target and Circuit City to Toys R Us and Amazon.

The Best Bargains: CNET has a good roundup of which gadgets have the best markdowns, from PlayStation 3 packages to memory cards.

All Bargains All the Time: For everything else, check out DealNews.com, which offers up-to-the-minute listings of every single online and brick-and-mortar deal on pretty much everything, including, of course, consumer electronics.

Earlier this year, we were fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on perspective) enough to get our rumps on one of the famed ButtKickers. For those unaware, these devices are meant for installation underneath a seat or sofa in order to provide chair-rumbling effects to help you "feel" the film. Now, the Guitammer Company is making them even easier to install by cutting the wires, bringing low frequency audio transducers just inches from your derriere without any cords necessary. The above pictured kit will go on sale next Friday (yes, that's Black Friday for you Americans) for under $300 on Amazon -- are you really ready to rumble?

The economy is a funny thing. Thanks to reduced consumer spending due to the current financial crisis (no, you can't even escape it at Switched), coinciding with a boon in manufacturing output, this holiday season could see even more drastic cuts in the price of LCD TVs.

Analysts expect prices to be slashed for Black Friday, and think the lower prices will last through next year. They expect the sweet spot to be smaller sets, such as 32-inchers, which currently cost around $600-$700 and could drop as low $350 for the holidays.

Manufacturers are hoping the low prices and impending digital television switchover will compel consumers to shop, but the unpredictability of the economy may keep even drastic price cuts from luring shoppers in. [From: USA Today]

If you watched the news before Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year for American retailers, you surely heard tales of doom and gloom with predictions of downward trends in consumer spending and all that jazz. As it turns out, sales in-store were just fine, and according to reports about online shopping, many chose to wait and do their shopping on the following "Cyber Monday," buying an impressive $733-million in goods online.

More impressive is that those sales levels were maintained for the next three days, each seeing more than $700-million in online sales. Okay, so maybe that's a drop in the bucket compared to the over $10-billion spent by consumers in stores on Black Friday, but where retail sales grew somewhere between five and eight percent, depending on who you listen to, online shopping over that week rose a far more impressive 17-percent compared to 2006.

From PC World

Related Links:

• Best Buy's $200 Black Friday PC and Other Cheap Computers
• Where to Find Post-Thanksgiving Deals
• Holiday Gift Guide

Well, Black Friday came and went, but it's still kind of Black Friday at many places through the end of the weekend. This means hundreds of amazing deals on electronics and other digital doodads, not to mention insanely long lines. We don't really think all the fuss is worth it, particularly since two weeks ago, we bought a Panasonic 42-inch plasma HDTV for about $1,100. In fact, we're confident that deals will persist for the next five weeks of holiday shopping. And let's not forget that many of these Black Friday sales are also available online. But if you're in the mood to shop this weekend, and sometimes that's enough of a reason to deal with the crowds, here are some sites you should check out before you god.

DealNews: This site lists the latest deals on all sorts of merchandise, including, of courses, deals on electronics. Sales are listed by retailers (Apple Store, Sears, Amazon.com), as well as by specific item (such as LG's 42-inch plasma HDTV for $899). You can also print out coupons here.

Gadget blogs and sites: Both Engadget and Gizmodo have exhaustive lists of all the deals that are to be had today. Or, if you don't have time to browse through each and every deal and link, you can check out the top ten Black Friday deals that Laptop magazine has compiled.

Retrevo: This newly launched site lists the latest deals, and, unlike a lot of other sales listing sites, even tells you what it thinks is a good discount versus just a discount. but also offers a nifty new shopping tool that lets narrow down gadgets by price range, brand, feature list, then scours the Web for online deals, user and blog/Web site reviews, and images and gives you a customized breakdown of price and quality on whatever you're looking for.

BlackFridayInfo: This site comes alive today with pretty much every Black Friday deal that any major retailer might have, and offers links to online deals right on the main page, so you'll never have to leave your desk!

Assorted tips: If you know what you want, but just don't have a strategy for beating lines or traffic, you're in luck, because everyone in the gadget and product review business usually has its own Black Friday guide. Just do a search for "Black Friday tips" and you'll likely find a full list of stories such as this one.

For more ideas on what to buy this holiday season, check out the Switched Holiday Gift Guide.

Shopping on Black Friday requires a certain amount of masochism -- struggling through the crowds, punching mothers in front of their children to get that cheap plasma TV -- it's dangerous business.

If you decide to brave the battlefield at Best Buy this year, you'll be rewarded with an opportunity to grab an eMachines PC with a 17 inch LCD monitor for the super low price of $200. Don't expect the world though. The PC is rumored to be powered by an Intel Celeron running at 2.66 Ghz (meaning no efficient and powerful 'Core' for you), comes with 512 megabytes of RAM (which is the bare minimum for doing just about anything on a computer these days), has a measly 80 Gigabyte hard drive, and it has no DVD burner.

Don't get us wrong -- $200 is still a heck of a price, but you could get so much more, or at least more interesting for a tad more cash. For instance, Wal-Mart is selling their own $200 PC without monitor. The gPC, as it's called, runs Linux instead of the resource-hungry Vista and uses an ultra low-power (and carbon-neutral) processor from Via. Or, how about the diminutive and cheap Eee from Asus which is also powered by Linux (noticing a trend here?). Priced from $200 to $400, these little laptops let you get all your basic computing tasks done by focusing on web applications.

Or, if you're in the market for something truly different, head on over to Laptop.org and you can get yourself one of the OLPC XOs (also Linux powered). These tiny, innovative convertible laptops are meant for kids in developing nations, but for a limited time you can order one for yourself as long as you're willing to pay for two. The second one gets sent to a child in the third world on your dime. In that case, $400 gets you a technological marvel, a piece of history, and a warm, fuzzy feeling.

From Engadget

Related links:

• Wal-Mart Gets $200 Green PC
• Are You Ready to Ditch Windows?
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