Black Friday 2009

That's right folks Black Friday 2009 is coming up and ad leaks are already hitting the net. With our slumping economy it appears as though many big retailers like Wal-Mart, Sears and Best-Buy are starting their Black Friday sales early an the ads are being leaked even earlier than years past (or maybe it just seems that way).

Black Friday, or the Friday after Thanksgiving, used to be considered the beginning of the holiday shopping season, the time of year when many retailers see their red ink turn to black, as year end sales push them into profitability. Over the past few years however the luster of Black Friday has begun to tarnish.

The drop comes largely in part to the fact that the economy has been down but add to that the lack of "stellar" deals or influx of better overall deals on other days and Black Friday just has had the appeal. It appears as though Black Friday 2009 might be making a move to turn that around. The release of Windows 7 has made a big mark on the market and it should help push some stellar PC deals. Drops this year in gaming console prices, and some predicted deals in the arena should also help push customers through the door.

So lets get the deal hunting started. Here are a few sites you should bookmark, if you haven't already, and keep track of the deals as they come in.

• Blackfriday.fm has built an impressive list of rumored leaks
• Dealighted.com Black Friday Deals , here you'll find an aggregate of deals from most of the popular sites on the web.
• FatWallet Black Friday 2009, so far there isn't much listed but FatWallet is amongst the top sites for deals on the web
• SlickDeals Black Friday 2009, with a strong membership base SlickDeals already has several threads dedicated to Black Friday 2009 and you can only expect more
• Twitter users for updates and offers follow: @Blackfriday @blackfridayweb @BlackFriday_fm @blackfriday_org

One of the hotest leaked deals so far comes not on Black Friday but rather a couple weeks earlier. Walmart has decided to start the holiday shipping season on Saturday, November 7. At that time you'll be able to pick up the Arcade Xbox 360 system for $200—the normal price—but for that day the system will come with a $100 gift card. If you are a truly hard core gamer you can put that $100 card towards a shiny new PlayStation 3 which would allow you to pick up an Arcade 360, and a 120GB PlayStation 3, for a mere $400.

If gaming isn't your thing there are several more nicely priced deals such as a Blu-ray player for $150, or a $300 HP G60-519WM laptop. As with several other Walmart laptop deals this looks like it is built exclusively for Walmart by HP. This particular model packs a 15.6-inch WXGA display, along with previously rumored specs including a 2.2GHz Celeron 900 processor, 3GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, a LightScribe DVD burner, and some basic Intel GMA 4500M integrated graphics -- not to mention Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit edition for an OS.

As more information and details begin to roll in I'll be adding more links and updates soon, so be sure to check back often.