The traditional mad shopping day known as Black Friday could turn out to be one of the best ever. With the economy in the crapper, retailers could be offering super deals to entice buyers either into their brick & mortar stores or to their shops online. Yesterday I received an early email notification from Black Friday @ GottaDeal.com in which they are already gearing up for what they perceive as a busy Black Friday shopping season.

Oops, I forgot. For those outside of the U.S., Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving which is on Friday November 27th this year. Here are some of the early sale predictions for this years Black Friday celebration:

Having covered Black Friday extensively for the past six years, we are in a better position than pretty much anyone else to offer predictions for this year. Over the years we’ve noticed trends in the deals offered by the major retailers and can offer a glimpse into what we believe will be the best Black Friday deals this year, along with some general holiday shopping predictions.

On to price predictions. We fully expect to see 42″ plasma and HDTVs in the $399 to $499 range this year.These cheaper HDTVs will likely be 720p and will lack features found in more expensive models. We expect prices on 50″ plasma and LCD HDTVs to also fall this Black Friday, perhaps to somewhere around $599 to $699.

The “classic” Black Friday laptop the last few years has had a 15.4″ widescreen LCD display, a dual-core processor, 2GB of memory, 160GB hard drive and usually a combo CD-RW/DVD drive, along with standard features such as WiFi, modem and ethernet port. Laptops like these have been available all year long from retailers such as Best Buy, Dell and Staples for as low as $349. Therefore we predict we’ll see this level of laptop in Black Friday ads for around $249 to $299 this year. We’ll also predict an upgraded model with a faster Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB of RAM, DVD burner and larger hard drive for $349, and maybe less.

There is this about Netbooks:

As with regular laptops, these mini machines vary greatly in specs and features. We expect to see the cheapest of these netbooks for around $99 this Black Friday, but there will be deals on models with better features. Realize that these are not meant to be your primary machine. They are great for light tasks such as web browsing and e-mail, but the small screen size and smaller keyboard make long-term use uncomfortable in most cases.

There are a lot more predictions here at Black Friday Predictions for 2009.

What is really interesting is the prediction that desperate retailers might jump the gun and start their sales in October. With Window 7 computers coming our way on or about October 22nd, 2009, I would expect that some retailers may be offering deals on these new boxes. At least this is what I am hoping since I will be in the market to replace my wife’s 3 year old laptop system.

So what do you think? Will these predictions come true?

Comments welcome.

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