Laptops have always been the traditional selling juggernauts of Black Fridays past, and this year is looking to be no different. Although expected to face stiff competition from that other class of portable PCs (tablets, for those not in the know), great deals and the fact that laptops are just that functionally robust are sure to give them the edge when all is said and done.

The following are prospects of what to expect in this year’s upcoming Black Friday laptop shopping spree.

Desktop Replacements: High-End Specs at Low Low Prices

Also called (rightly or otherwise) “gaming laptops,” desktop replacements are more often than not expected to hit retail price tags beyond the $1,000 mark due to the high-end hardware they carry. Surprisingly however, this year has seen some releases tagged at just under $800. For comparison’s sake, $800 was the Black Friday 2011 discount price for this laptop class.

If patterns stay true, we could be looking at desktop replacements that could drop to as low as $525 come November 23^rd. With laptop components like quad-core i7s, powerful APUs and/or dedicated GPUs, and a minimum of 8 GB of RAM, gaming enthusiasts can expect some rather sweet deals.

Budget Laptops: Drilling Holes Below Rock Bottom?

The previous Black Friday event had budget laptops sold for as low as $180; and some of these were even 15”-16” computers. While these laptops aren’t exactly powerhouses, at that price range, they are liable to get their fair share of the market, especially among the casual computer user crowd.

Going below $180 could prove to be a real challenge, so don’t get your hopes up too high. Still, wouldn’t it be great if we could score laptops for $170?

Thin-and-Lights: Staying Strong

15-inchers embedded with Intel’s latest Ivy Bridge processors have proven to be great sellers in the laptop market. These CPUs give laptops extra horsepower beyond those expected of mid-range portable PCs; and their integrated graphics aren’t too shabby either. Overall, they’re everything most casual users could ever need (or want) in their laptops.

Even better, Ivy-endowed laptops have seen great price drops since this summer, going with discounts as low as 27%; that’s roughly $400 for a machine that’s initially priced at $550 or so. And if past Black Fridays are any indication, we may see these prices drop even lower to $360.

Ultraportables: Popularity Resurgence

When Apple’s MacBook Air came out this year with a redesigned build, consumer interest was reignited, and the ultraportable market was suddenly rife with competition again.

With Ivy Bridge processors sporting more-than-adequate graphics processing power (and with some even having dedicated GPUs of their own), a lot of ultras are nearing the power levels of the bigger laptop types while still retaining their travel-friendly chassis.

Summer price drops brought some ultraportables down to $500, possibly indicating that $400 ultras at this year’s Black Friday isn’t such a stretch. If there ever was a time to own one of these babies, that time would be now.

About Colleen Northcutt:

I’m Colleen Northcutt, a writer, web promoter, and blogger from Reno, Nevada. I work for LaptopAid.com, where I write about various topics relating technology. Most, of course, are about laptops and notebooks. I am a very passionate, optimistic, and dedicated woman who takes up responsibilities with utmost enthusiasm. In my spare time, I love playing PC games and checking out the latest technological news.

While guest blogging is a simple, straightforward way that you can build traffic and increase search engine rankings, it also takes a significant amount of time and effort. In addition to producing awesome content, you’ll also need to reach out to popular bloggers in your niche and convince them to publish your work. The challenge here is that the popular bloggers in your industry get dozens of requests to publish guest posts every single day. If you want to reap the benefits of guest blogging, you’ll have to stand out and convince busy bloggers that you have something unique to offer – over the hundreds of other eager would-be guest bloggers.

Fortunately for you, many bloggers cripple their chances of landing coveted guest posting spots by making some extremely common mistakes. By avoiding these guest posting mistakes yourself, you’ll greatly increase your chances of landing guest posting opportunities on awesome blogs in your niche. Here are 5 of the most common guest blogging mistakes:

Mistake 1: Not Following Guest Posting Guidelines
While it should go without saying that you follow the blog owner’s guidelines when you’re submitting a guest post –– many bloggers still make the mistake of submitting guest posts or proposals without paying close attention to posted guidelines. The reason blog owners post guest posting guidelines is because they’re inundated with requests and posts as it is – posting guidelines is a way to streamline the publishing process. If you can’t even take the time to follow simple requests, why would a blog owner take the time to review your proposal or guest post?

While guidelines will vary tremendously from blogger to blogger, some common requirements set out by blog owners include:
• Min/Max article lengths
• Specific topic areas
Where/how to submit an article or proposal
• Whether to include a picture
• Where to include your links
• Specific style of writing

Often, this mistake arises because the would-be guest blogger is also making another common guest posting mistake – spamming blog owners.

Mistake 2: Spamming Blog Owners

Another frequent guest blogging mistake is to write up a standard email and simply send it out to as many bloggers as possible. While in theory, this allows you to quickly reach as many bloggers as possible, there are a couple of very good reasons why you don’t want to be spamming bloggers with your guest blogging pitch:

1. No matter how well-crafted you think your emails are, bulk emails inevitably sound spammy. Blog owners will simply throw out your obvious form e-mails.
2. Even if your email doesn’t get immediately moved to Trash, your pitch won’t be convincing if you don’t know who you’re targeting. You don’t know their audience, you don’t know what kind of articles they publish, and you don’t have an understanding of their subject matter.

Rather than simply bulk emailing blog owners with your guest blogging pitch, focus on quality over quantity. While it’s certainly ok to have a basic template to base your emails on, take the extra time to look over each blog, identify areas of interest, and craft proposals tailored to each blogger. You won’t reach as many bloggers as you would by spamming, but your response rate will be exponentially greater.

Mistake 3: Not Pitching Interesting, Relevant Topics
It’s important to take the time to pitch your guest posting ideas before actually writing the article. If you simply send in your guest post without confirming with the blog owner, there’s a good chance that it won’t get published. Even if a blog has a guest post submission page, you can’t be sure the blog is still actively taking guest posting submissions, and more importantly, you don’t know if the blog owner will be interested in the subject matter of your article.

Take the time to reach out to the blog owner beforehand, and be sure to pitch guest post ideas that would be of interest to the blogger’s readers. Avoid topics that have already been covered on their blog. If possible, include some URLs of your past writing, either from your own blog or previous guest posts.

Avoid simply asking the blog owner what you should write about. While in rare cases, a blog owner might request a guest blogger come onto their blog and write about a certain topic, this really only happens if the guest blogger has a particular expertise that the blog owner wants to share with their audience. If you can’t think of any interesting ideas that might interest a blogger’s audience, don’t bother asking for a topic to write about. Successful blog owners will recognize that if you can’t come up with a good topic idea on your own, then you’re unlikely to have anything interesting to write about, even if you’re assigned a topic.

Mistake 4: Submitting Proposals To “A-List” Blogs
Everyone in the tech industry would love a guest post on a blog like TechCrunch or Mashable. Everyone in the financial world would love a guest post on a blog like TheStreet. And everyone in the SEO world would love a guest post on SearchEngineLand or the SeoMOZ blog. But the reality is that – unless you already have a fantastic reputation in your industry – you’re unlikely to get published on the “A-list” blogs in your industry.

Rather than pitching your guest blogging ideas to the busiest editorial teams on the internet, look for bloggers in your niche who have a solid readership base, but aren’t in the mainstream spotlight. Not only will you be able to speak with the blog owner directly, these blogs often have loyal audiences that can translate into loyal readers for your blog as well. Your chances of getting published will increase dramatically if you target the right blogs with your guest posting proposals.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to get published on the top blogs in your industry, but spending too much time getting rejected or ignored by the “A-list” blogs of your industry will take away precious time you could spend actually getting published.

Mistake 5: Not Delivering Top Notch Content
In essence, guest posting is an exchange – the blog owner offers the guest poster access to their readers and a strong back-link – the guest poster is offering their knowledge, experience, and writing ability. If your guest posts can’t engage, entertain, inform, or enlighten, then why would a reputable blog owner post your content on their blog? Even if you could get mediocre content published on someone else’s blog, why would that person’s blog readers click through to your blogif your guest post is anything short of outstanding?

Never forget that the building block of successful guest blogging is great content. Your content needs to bring value to the blog owner’s readers, whether that’s in the form of entertainment, inspiration, or knowledge. Write content that you would be proud to post and share on your own blog, take the time to craft great proposals to the right blog owners, and you’ll soon be writing your way to guest blogging
success.

Author Bio:
Nat is a blogger and SEO for WhoIsHostingThis.com.
Nat’s writing focuses on search engine marketing, social media, and technology.

The FBI virus is a scam called scareware or a Ransom virus. It is downloaded accidentally, and then locks users out of their computer and claims they need to pay the FBI $200 to avoid prosecution by using the anonymous payment service Moneypak.  Don’t fall for the scam! Hire Eugene Computer Geeks to remove it for you.

Our virus specialist comes on-site at no additional cost (if within the Eugene / Springfield, Oregon city limits).  Scheduled drop-offs available upon request.

This is a guaranteed service, and we have lots of experience with removing this particular virus.  Our competitors charge as high as $200 to $300 to remove it.  We find this unjustified considering it only takes 5-15 minutes to properly remove.

FBI VIRUS REMOVAL SERVICE: -$30! Guaranteed removal. Takes about 5-15 minutes.  On-site removal  This service is for removal of the FBI Virus only.

FULL VIRUS REMOVAL AND PREVENTION SERVICE: -$60! 2 hour service. Removal of FBI / Moneypak virus and all other viruses, malware, spyware, and adware. Most PC’s infected with the FBI virus are infected with other Viruses or Malware as well.  We also install advertisement blocking software, and ensure you have adequate protection installed and setup correctly.  Our Geeks install a malware cleaning tool, tutor users how to stop viruses, and how to properly maintain their PC.

Remote Removal may be available upon request, even if you are not in Oregon.

Call (541) 357-7222 or email support@eugenecomputergeeks.com

Lane Junk Removal is using the free wordpress theme called “Responsive”.  It’s very simple and has a nice interface. The only complaint we have is that it’s not very easy to customize and some coding in PHP, and CSS is required. Please check out the new site and tell me your thoughts.

Lately we’ve been using WordPress more and more, and is our favorite content management system.  It is very good for Search Engine Optimization and is the ideal choice for a blog / content management system if ranking well on Google and Bing is a high priority. WordPress is easy to use, making it simple for clients to edit their site, and make changes whenever they desire.

When using WordPress, it’s really easy to create a professional website in a very short amount of time.  There are thousands of very high quality themes for free or for purchase.  The commercial themes are usually very customizable, high quality, and well worth the $45-$55 dollars. (The best site for themes is Theme Forest)

Adobe Certified Expert

If you have interest in designing, then you might have heard the word of adobe. Photoshop of Adobe has been the most popular designing platform and has added to the repute of the company. If you become an Adobe certified Expert, you can gain the title of certified Adobe Instructor, a well-paid job.

CIW Certification

Certified internet web professional, or CIW is considered as one of the standard web design certifications. The participants are offered with web design as well as web development series. The course contents also include JavaScript, Perl, and many other specific programs.

Online Certification At W3Schools

W3Schools have become a common standard for professional web certification. Gone are the days when W3Schools were the first place to offer web development courses, but now their certification programs are more popular and more beneficial. Their programs cover

• HTML
• CSS
• JavaScript
• PHP
• Query

And the list goes on.

Certifications For PHP And Zend Framework

PHP is the widely used programming language around the world. Zend is also a good name in the global IT industry, particularly for their Zend-Framework. Zend certification has become a standard to judge employees who have applied against a post. For PHP programmers, to go for Zend certification is a wise decision.

Other than the above certifications, there are certification options of database Administration, Red Hat Linux RHCSA/RHCSE. The later one is more about computer repairing, networking, servers, and programming. The more you explore your passion the more you will feel inclined towards some certification and the more would be the chances to get a good job or a raise.

If you want to become an IT professional or a competent web designer, being in high demand, then you will have to put some extra charm at your resume. To appeal to the prospective employers, there is a dire need of some professional certification. Look at the options given above, you will find some good certification course for you. Do consider your personal interests in mind while opting for a specific certification.

Author Bio
This post is written by peter north. He loves to write about the technology stuff and currently he is working with a web design company.

Apple and Samsung, both competing to provide the consumers with high tech mobile devices. Apple has declared its latest iPhone 5 as the best device they have ever made. Compared to that, Galaxy S III is also experiencing the best sales record with its multicarrier availability, 4G LTE capability, larger display, and robust performance. The comparison of both phones is presented in the lines below!

Display
The new screen of iPhone 5 is 4 inches, compared to 3.5 inches of the iPhone 4S. Although, Galaxy S III has 4.8 inches screen, and many other Android phones have larger screens, iPhone 5 seems bit smaller, but it all depends on the choice of the consumers. iPhone 5 is handy, whereas the larger screens can’t be used by one hand. However, for business owners, larger screens means larger display, that’s what they want.
The pixel density of iPhone’s retina is 326 pixels while Galaxy S III has 306ppi.

Cameras
Cameras are what give the iPhone 5 an edge over Galaxy S III. The rear-faced camera is 8 mega pixels and front faced camera is 1.2 megapixels. The front camera is dynamic, work excellent in low light, and can support videos upto 720 pixels. All it makes the FaceTime chats bit better. The Galaxy S III doesn’t work well in low light, although it has 1.9 megapixels front-faced camera.

Performance
The processor of iPhone 5 is A6, that is better than iPhone 4S. It ensures better gameplay. The dual core chip of GSIII is better than iPhone 4S; however, it’s given a tough time by iPhone 5. The Ram of GSIII is 2GB, whereas, iPhone 4S has 512MB and iPhone 5 has 1GB. It gives Samsung an edge over iPhone 5. The battery life of iPhone 5 is 8 hours) despite being LTE capable). However, GSIII has 8-12 hours of battery, depending on how much a user uses the device.

Operating System
iPhone 5 has the latest operating system, iOS 6. There are many additional features offered in new OS. The Google maps and YouTube app are the most interesting features.

The bigger screen makes the apps appear clearer, but if they are updated. The older apps appear in a letterbox mode.
Siri is also updated in iPhone 5 that enables the users to search for movies or score sports. The voice quality is made excellent even with 3 mics. One can realize that while being in a noisy area. The voice quality of GSIII is not as good as that of iPhone 5.

Price
iPhone 5 starts with $199 (16 GB) and $399 for 64GB. The company offers two-year contract. Galaxy S III is available at $199 (16GB version); however, the 32GB version is being sold at $249. It shows a less price compared to iPhone 5. GSIII doesn’t have the 64GB version.

Both iPhone 5 and GSIII are the popular devices among mobile consumers around the globe. The benefits of both are huge; however, one device may have an edge over the other device due to the users’ preferences. To gain maximum advantages of iPhone 4, you will have to unlock iPhone 4 by using authentic software. Go to the vendors that are reliable and ensure guaranteed satisfaction.

Author Bio:
This contribution is made by Michael Shore. He is working as writer and auditor with unlockiphonezone which provides unlock iPhone 4 services.

When choosing a printer for your office, you ought to consider several factors. The first one is the type of printer that will meet your needs. There are 4 basic types of printers; the dot matrix printer, line printer, inkjet printer and laser printer. These printers carry out their functions differently and you need to understand how they function so that you can know the best pick for your office.

1. The dot matrix printer as the name suggests, transfers the characters to paper in a series of dots. The printer head has a couple of sharp pins, which transfer dots of ink onto the paper. This type of printer is quite cheap, but it produces terrible noises while working, it not the best idea for an office which requires a quiet, serene environment!

(Photo credits: tsakshaug)

2. The line printer works in a similar way to the dot matrix printer but it is much faster as it produces whole lines of text as opposed to one character at a time. The quality is however quite low.

3. Inkjet printers work by spreading tiny jets of ink onto the paper to produce high quality print material.

4. The laser printer on the other hand uses laser light to produce very high quality printed text. The type of printer you choose will largely affect the output you get so choose wisely.

Another consideration you need to make is technological advancements. The technology behind printers has undergone serious evolution in the recent past. You are not, for instance, limited to printers that require manual, wired connections to the computers in the office. With wireless technology, you can print easily from wherever you are within the office.

Some modern printers even come with the option to connect them to the internet, meaning you can print remotely from thousands of miles away. Another aspect of technology you can consider is whether the printer will require you to turn the pages over manually so that it can print on both ends or it can do so automatically.

Once you have determined by comparing your office requirements with the exact type of printer functionality that you want for your office, then you are free to go online to do your brand name research. Many companies sell printers, but you want the very best. The simplest way to make sure that you are purchasing from the best company is by doing an online search.

Some of the key things you should look out for in this search are the customer reviews of the printers. A given printer might appear quite attractive to you having all the qualities you require, but it is only someone who has used the product who would be in a good position to tell you which problems the printer might have.

Some of the common printer issues include paper jams, which are incidences of the paper getting stuck while printing is going on. This usually results in ink smudges and leaks. You want to avoid such problems. A good quality printer should produce a neat and highly legible output.

(Photo credits: zen)

The printer should also not be slow. The average speed should be about 10 pages of printouts per minute. This is what you should look for in customer reviews so that you can be sure that the printer you finally settle on is the best in the market.

Price is not and should not be the most important element of consideration, but it would be foolish not to give it some thought. You should be prepared to spend a bit of your money to ensure that you get a good printer. This should be viewed as an investment in office infrastructure.

Do not buy a low quality printer because it is cheaper, this is a decision you will definitely regret. You would be better advised to even give it some time for you to raise enough money so that you can buy a problem-free printer that everyone in the office will enjoy using.

This article has been written by Chad, an IT technician who has in the process had quite some experience with printer cartridges.

Apple also bumped up the camera in the new iPhone 4S.  While it’s still the same old 8 megapixel camera, The shutter is now much faster.  It no longer lags in between shots.  You can also take panoramas.  The software was also improved, and is better at low-light images.  It’s now easier than ever to share your photos on Facebook and Twitter, with the new integration available in iOS.

Do you use your iPhone as a navigator?  Every iPhone 5 comes with iOS 6, which removed Google Maps and added Apple’s own map application.  While Apple’s user interfaces are awesome, they are not the best at data collection.  Streets are missing, images are messed up, et al.  While they scramble to make the application work properly, users have found a quick fix: using maps.google.com.

Are you a movie watcher?  The iPhone 5 has a slightly bigger screen at four inches, giving applications more room.  This is fantastic for anyone who watches a lot of videos on their phone, reads a lot, and much more.  With the added space, there is now an added row of icons to the home screen.  Text that used to be hard to read should now be easy to see.

Is the iPhone 5 worth the upgrade?  If you have anything less recent than an iPhone 4, yes.  The retina screen on the iPhone 4 and its later models is much better.  If you have an iPhone 4, unless you’re a serious gamer or would find use out of Siri, you should wait until the next iPhone, when all of the iPhone 5 adopters will have old technology.

The initial development of E Ink took place in the mid to late 90s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. The technology has been integrated into mobile phones, watches, indicator displays and keypads, but it is most widely known for its use in Amazon’s Kindle e-reader. The American firm boasts that the device has the most advanced E Ink system available, making text as simple to read as if the screen were made from paper.

According to the company that designed E Ink, the technology is simply a “straightforward fusion of existing knowledge of chemistry, physics and electronics”. The electronic ink itself is made up of millions of microcapsules, which contain a clear fluid, along with white and black particles which are positively and negatively charged. A positive or negative charge is then applied to microcapsule and as a result, white or black particles will rise to the top.

There are a number of advantages to using E Ink, one being that there is no problem with screen glare if the user is either in the sun or trying to read in front of a light. The matte screen is designed to reflect light like ordinary paper, has no backlighting, and therefore poses no problems with glare for the user. E Ink makes devices just as easy to read in bright sunshine as they are to read in a dark room. For users, this allows far more flexibility in terms of where they are able to use their device – ie there is no problem taking it out into the garden on a bright, sunny day or reading on the beach. There is absolutely no problem with sitting in the car with sunlight streaming in through the windows. In comparison, multi-purpose devices such as tablet computers with LCD screens are in general less well suited to the task as the display tends to be less crisp, battery life is usually measured in hours rather than days, and the problem with glare can prove to be a substantial one.

E Ink makes the process of reading on a screen more comfortable and as a result more enjoyable. It is expected that as the technology advances, we will begin to see E Ink becoming far more commonplace in the world around us. Ultimately it is expected that electronic ink will allow any surface to be used as a display, opening up many new and exciting possibilities.

Christina Jones is a freelance technology writer, with a passion for gadget accessories. After many near misses, she knows how important it is to protect your iPad with one of many iPad cases.

Oracle Solaris is a derivative of several components from both Sun and Oracles UNIX based systems. Solaris, originally a UNIX OS that replaced Sun’s SunOS, was developed to take advantage of the SPARC microarchitecture, comprised of components from Sun Microsystems, Motorola and Fujitsu hardware, to name a few. Today, Solaris exists as a platform for managing database infrastructures.

Solaris, in its original incarnation from the early 90s, was developed as a derivative of the UNIX SVR4 as a proprietary database software. Under Sun’s ownership, the Solaris OS was made open source and was branded as OpenSolaris in 2005 until Oracle acquired Sun in 2010 and made the decision to continue kernel development privately. This has divided Solaris into two divisions: Solaris (in its current version Solaris 11) and OpenIndiana. The Oracle Solaris platforms are developed internally but OpenIndiana has features the core of the platform (from the time it was divided)  and is available for free open development.

Oracle Solaris is designed to work cohesively with a variety of RISC computer microarchitecture such as SPARC and even Z Systems from IBM. Intuitive sets of database manipulation instructions are featured within the core of the operating system making it one of the most universally ideal cloud computing operating systems. Solaris features built in data services that allow for easy encryption, compression, replication and deduplication as needed. The OS itself is enough to virtualize a data center – additional software is not required to host data services. Networking and data layers are separated, creating an inherently secure basis for a networked environment.

Migrating systems to an Oracle Solaris is made easy by intuitive interfaces with other file systems structures and operating systems. Data can be securely moved through encrypted channels throughout a system migration. Solaris is highly scalable making revisions for data storage and application virtualization. Resources can be integrated the distributed and allocated as needed as additional provisions are added to the system or as legacy hardware is updated and replaced.

Those that wish to further manipulate the source programming for the Solaris OS can access source code that has been approved under OSI license. Developers looking to fully customize a platform using Solaris as a foundation may access this code and implement custom installations using a few different tools provided by Oracle. Published (approved) source can be found utilizing Java hosted OpenGrok source browser. OpenSolaris is ideally a platform to run virtually through a virtual machine (such as Oracle’s VirtualBox) where revisions and heavy OS modifications will not affect a bare metal installation.

Author Bio:

Deney serves as CEO for Nordisk Systems, Inc. Nordisk Systems Inc, features systems such as the NorStor NS2000 which, among other factors, has been built around ZFS file system, making it an ideal infrastructure for Oracle Solaris installations. Find out how a system from Nordisk Systems can meet your data storage and application hosting needs at http://www.nordisksystems.com/.