Productopia | Carl Laron

While they're still not the best choices for heavy-duty gamers or number crunchers, the rest of us will almost certainly find the perfect notebook among those in the latest generation of cheap laptops. Some budget picks are as small and light as a netbook on the outside, but inside contain the heart and power of a fully-capable laptop.

Others are less fun to lug around, but are admirable performers if you need a desktop replacement. Some add features, such as a 3D display (with stereoscopic glasses) or a touch-screen that's useful and fun, that are heretofore unheard of in a sub-$800 notebook computer. Some cheap laptops deliver as much as 10 hours of battery life. All use Windows 7. You can learn more in our newly-updated report on cheap laptops.

Though a few okay deals can be found, the Black Friday circulars leaked so far haven't held a lot of excitement for those looking to score a home-theater bargain for the holidays. The Best Buy Black Friday circular looks like more of the same for the most part, but one combo deal, a 50-inch Panasonic Viera TC-P50U1 plasma TV and a Panasonic DMP-BD60K Blu-ray player for just under $1,000, made us sit up a little. Taken together, it looks like a little better discount for decent tech than we've seen from many other retailers. Let's dig a little deeper.

We've just updated our report on Blu-ray players, and the biggest news is how far and how fast the prices of some really excellent choices have dropped. The Panasonic DMP-BD60K, for example, delivers terrific picture quality, especially with Blu-ray Discs, and a reasonably complete mix of features at a street price of around $150. You can also find some lesser but still decent Blu-ray Disc players for even less -- as low as $100 with careful shopping. That $100 price is significant, as that's the price most experts have long said would be the tipping point for mass adoption of the Blu-ray format. So, does that mean that the time is finally right for most people to make the switch to Blu-ray?

One of the fun parts of the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is guessing which of the products introduced with great fanfare will actually make a go of things, and which ones will soon be relegated to the technology scrap heap. Tuesday's CES Unveiled media event more or less confirmed that some of the big trends that have been building over the past year -- such as sustainable technology, 3-D TV, the growth of apps, and others -- should be major presences at the 2010 CES in Las Vegas. But Tuesday's event was also the coming out party for the 2010 Best of Innovations award winners: products selected by a panel of experts as being the most innovative in terms of design and engineering. Some of these are already available, and the rest should reach the consumer market in the coming months. As always, we think some of these innovations look as if they'll be hits. Others? Not so much.

If you're wondering just how low LCD TV prices are going to drop this holiday shopping season, the answer could be, "Very." iSuppli, a market research company focused on the electronics industry, says that we could see some real bargains. For instance, premium-brand 32-inch LCD TVs might be found on Black Friday for just under $300, while select big-name 42-inch LCD TVs could potentially be snared for just under $500. That follows the ongoing trend of sharply-declining LCD TV prices over the last year.

The dust from this fall's price war has settled, and in the end, what was true before is true now -- experts say the key to video game nirvana is matching what's important to you with the hardware you buy. Our latest report on video game consoles lays out the details on where the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, and Sony PlayStation 3 score direct hits, and where they are shooting blanks. You'll also find lots of info on the latest handheld video game consoles, including the Nintendo DSi and Sony PSP Go.

Though some manufacturers have moved on to greener pastures, plasma TV fans still have a bunch of great sets to choose from. Panasonic plasma TVs in particular, such as the Panasonic Viera TC-P50V10, draw kudos for dark, cinematic blacks and terrific picture quality overall. Samsung and LG also come through with plasma TVs that get their fair share of admiration from critics. Our latest report on plasma TVs fills in the details on the sets that deliver the best picture quality, and the ones that satisfy by offering terrific value.

Digital video recorders, or DVRs, were once thought to be the weapon that would kill advertiser-supported TV. After all, conventional wisdom asks: Who wouldn't simply skip past all of the commercials when watching a time-shifted program? Well, according to an article in The New York Times, a funny thing happened on the way to the funeral. Instead of killing off commercial TV, the DVR might be what saves it. Nielsen, the company that tallies up viewership for TV networks and advertisers, reports that more and more people are keeping their fingers off the clicker as commercials drift by when watching programs recorded on their DVRs.

Not content to wait until the day after Thanksgiving, Wal-Mart is putting some home-theater electronics up for sale in their brick and mortar stores this Saturday. Scanning through things, we found some ho-ho-hum deals, but also two that could peak the interest of budget TV buyers.

Reports are in on the fall harvest of home-theater projectors, and from all indications it's a bumper crop. While performance is up across the board, prices are down -- way down -- and that's the real news. Some stratospherically-expensive projectors will, of course, still draw oohs and aahs from those who crave every morsel of technical perfection, but the rest of us can enjoy performance that's nearly as good (and in some cases, just as good) from projectors costing far, far less. Our latest report on home-theater projectors gives you the lowdown on a cornucopia of high-performance, low-cost projectors. You'll also find news about the first full HD (1080p) projectors to come in under the magic $1,000 barrier (albeit by just a buck or so).