If Wal-Mart sold a laptop or desktop computer for a measly four hundred bucks, would you buy it? I’d reckon that there are lots of people that would, but I’m not one of them, for oh so many reasons. Reason numero uno? I’ve never been inside a Wal-Mart store in my life. Not once. Not ever …

Fear not. I won’t deliver my anti-Wal-Mart rant today. Nevertheless, if I drop dead without ever having stepped foot into a Wal-Mart, a smile will cross my lips as I pass into the great beyond. (Consider it my Rosebud for now, but do take a gander at JibJab’s Big Box Mart when you have some time to spare.) Wal-Mart isn’t a place I’d ever consider when notebook computer shopping.

c|net is reporting that Wal-Mart is gearing up to shovel out trailer loads of bargain priced Hewlett-Packard desktop PCs and notebooks on “Black Friday” (as the day after Thanksgiving is known here in the states). Suffice to say, you will not want to use one of these computers to assemble a Big Box Mart-esque video right out of the box (if at all).

Blame it on the tryptophan perhaps, but I’ve never been one to haul my butt out to the store on Black Friday. Now I know people, relatives even, that have ritualized the pre-dawn retail store assault. While they’re out there shivering in the parking lot, I’m warm, toasty, and unconscious (in a white noise induced haze), with the covers happily (yet wool-less-ly) pulled over my eyes.