Tomorrow is supposedly Cyber Monday. According the Wikipedia article on Cyber Monday: “The term Cyber Monday refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday“…” The premise was that consumers would return to their offices after the Black Friday weekend, making purchases online that they were not able to make in stores.”

They go on to say that “Although idea has not survived the test of time“. It has simply evolved into a marketing event.

Here on Long Island we are fortunate to have access to a relatively fast broadband cable network, and a number of people have faster internet at home than at work. That plus employer restrictions on internet usage could make it “Cyber Sunday evening” instead of Cyber Monday.

The term Cyber Monday has come under some criticism, according to the Wikipedia article:
“Some critics online and in the media have called for a boycott of the term, calling it a useless media buzzword with no basis in fact.” And: “At the official Cyber Monday site run by Shop.org, more than 500 retailers offered discounts for the 2007 holidays. As a Motley Fool article noted, many of these same deals can be found elsewhere.”

Motley Fool refers to Cyber Monday as a Joke.

There is also an article by Candace Lombardi of CNET News entitled: “Cyber Monday more myth than reality?”

One option may be to do your Cyber shopping whatever day of the week suits you with the Sony VAIO VGN-NS130E/S Notebook.

Before I begin blogging about Black Friday, here is a definition for those readers outside of the USA, from Wikipedia: “Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States, where it is the beginning of the traditional Christmas shopping season” (see Black Friday (shopping)). If you don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, like the rest of the world, then you just have Christmas sales. Canadians have their Thanksgiving in October, but some make the trip across the border to take advantage of Black Friday deals.

Personally, I try to avoid crowds of people, and rather look for deals online. I’m not alone in this, and some avid deal hunters get online before midnight on Thanksgiving to look for online deals. To them “Cyber Monday” is a non-event concocted by the media. They started shopping before the weekend.

Laptops are always a hot item, but CNET News Blog warns us to “Beware (of) Black Friday Laptop Deals“.

Another way of finding a laptop on Black Friday is looking online. Manufacturers like Toshiba and Lenovo are selling them at directly from their online stores, with discounts of 15 to 30 percent.

Another one of the items a lot of people are looking for this year is the Nintendo Wii Fit.

This week Google launched an enhanced Google search App for the iPhone which includes a speech to text search. According to the New York Times in this article, “Users of the free application, which Apple is expected to make available as soon as Friday through its iTunes store, can place the phone to their ear and ask virtually any question, like “Where’s the nearest Starbucks?” or “How tall is Mount Everest?” The sound is converted to a digital file and sent to Google’s servers, which try to determine the words spoken and pass them along to the Google search engine.
The search results, which may be displayed in just seconds on a fast wireless network, will at times include local information, taking advantage of iPhone features that let it determine its location. ”

I’ve just tested it and asked it “How far is it to JFK airport”, and it came back with a reply about some airport in Michigan!. That is once problem the speech to text search application has run into – English spoken with an accent which is not American – see “Google launches voice activated search for iPhone - can’t understand British accents“. I’ve always maintained that I don’t have an accent, but everyone else around me does!

After writing about Netbooks, and how wonderful they are, I feel that I need to add a word of caution. This is especially so since I’ve noticed a lot of interest in the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Netbook. It could be because it is a lot more configurable than other Netbooks. In typical Dell style the consumer is given a lot of configuration options, although not as many as a standard notebook.

Although times are tough, and the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Netbook looks like a real bargain in comparison with other laptops, it helps to remember the target market of the Del Mini 9. It is targeted at people who already have a primary Notebook, and is intended for use as a secondary notebook. If you are going to do anything more than web browsing or emailing then you will quickly find that the hardware is just not up to it.

You can pick up a Dell Inspiron 1525 Notebook for not too much more than the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Netbook. It is larger and heavier than the Mini 9, but it is a far more capable machine.

So what is it about Netbooks and Clouds (Cloud Computing)?. Maybe it is like one of those tunes I can’t get out of my head. Actually, I’m more interested in the Client side of Cloud computing. Just giving the definitions of Cloud Computing was enough for me (see Cloud Computing)

The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 I mentioned in my last blog entry was one of a series of Netbooks from manufacturers as diverse as Hewlett-Packard (HP 2133), MSI (MSI Wind U100 Notebook), Asus (ASUS Eee PC 900), Acer (Acer Aspire One Mini A150-1006 Notebook) and the Dell. These are just a subset of the many Netbooks available.

Wikipedia defines a Netbook as “A netbook is a small to medium sized, light-weight, low-cost, energy-efficient laptop, generally optimized for internet based services such as web browsing and e-mailing.“. The internet-based services part is a hint of the Cloud.

Then there is the Nettop, a “term introduced by Intel to describe “low-cost” desktop computers“.

Released in September this year, the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 was Dell’s answer to the popular Asus Eee PC Series of Notebooks. The Mini Notebook uses an Intel 1.6GHz Atom N270 CPU, similar to most recent Netbooks.
The Dell Mini 9 It is available with either the Ubuntu Linux Operating System, or Windows XP Home Edition.

The specifications are as follows:
512MB or 1GB Ram Max,
8GB Solid State Drive or 16GB Solid State Drive
No internal optical drive.
Webcam

The Screen size is 8.9 inches diagonally, and the weight 6.2 pounds. As with most Netbooks, the Dell has 3 USB ports for attaching external devices like DVD Writers and external hard drives. It also has an SD Card slot, which from my experience with Netbooks, provides an easy way to copy data onto or off the notebook.

Then there is the built is Ethernet card and 802.11b and 802.11g wireless. This way the Netbook can be connected to the Cloud.