Wal-Mart is getting a jump on "Black Friday" as it plans to have a special pre-holiday sale on Friday at its stores beginning at 8 am. This web site has the details on what will be on sale which includes a Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD player which will go on sale for $98.87. It's by far the cheapest price ever offered for a stand alone high-def movie player. The sale is in Wal-Mart stores only and of course this item will likely sell quickly.

Wal-Marts have also begun to stock an ultra-low-cost, "green" desktop PC that combines a VIA processor, a stripped-down Ubuntu operating system, and a $199 price tag. It includes a 1.5GHz VIA C7-D processor, 512MB of DDR2 RAM, an 80GB hard drive, a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive, 100Mbps Ethernet, and a "gOS" operating system, which is reportedly a modified version of Ubuntu 7.10 with a custom Enlightenment E17-based interface. The system has a productivity suite based around Google apps like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Maps, and Google Documents and Spreadsheets, and Everex has also pre-installed software like OpenOffice.org 2.2, Skype, and GIMP.