While the digital camera market doesn’t usually produce blockbusters like last year’s Wii gaming console, Mr. Hart of Best Buy offered a prediction on one potential breakout product: the Flip videocamera from Pure Digital Technologies. This type of device, which can record high-definition video yet is small enough to fit in a pants pocket, appeals to teenagers and college students who communicate via YouTube, he said. RIK FAIRLIE Personal Computers

Black Friday came about a month early for computer shoppers this holiday season.

Leave it to Wal-Mart to jump the gun, sort of. Just two days after Halloween, the discount chain put up for sale, for one day only, a $298 laptop, the Compaq CQ50-139WM. And it wasn’t a slouch in specs: a single-core Intel Celeron M processor running at 2 gigahertz, with 2 gigabytes of DDR2 RAM and 160-gigabyte hard drive.

For computer shoppers, we could say let the games begin after Thanksgiving  except they’ve begun. With the economy roiling, there are dire predictions for PC retailers this holiday season, as consumers retreat from nonessential purchases. A survey by the NPD Group, a market research company, showed that 26 percent of consumers plan to spend less this holiday. That said, those who have budgeted for a laptop or desktop machine (NPD says nearly a quarter of their respondents are planning just that) might find that they can afford more machine than they expect.

“It’s a great time to buy a notebook computer, with tremendous prices across the board,” says Bob O’Donnell, an analyst with IDC, a research firm. “It’s particularly good because we don’t see any major changes coming in notebooks until next year, when Windows 7 comes out,” he said, referring to the successor to Windows Vista.

“We’ve seen that notebooks, like cellphones, have become critical to own,” he said. “You don’t share a cellphone, people don’t want to share their notebooks.”

While it’s not news that manufacturers make marketing plans months ahead of time, it’s notable that Dell has introduced a number of new laptop and desktop models in the last couple of weeks to capitalize on the season. Look for online deals on even these machines as Christmas approaches.

The exception in the cut-rate arena will be, as usual, Apple. The company, gaining ground in computer market share this year, jump-started its Christmas push in October with a new range of MacBook and MacBook Pro portables, adding features (and a trim new shape and lighter weight) but maintaining prices in the $1,300 to $2,500 range. Macs don’t go on sale, even on Black Fridays. STEPHEN WILLIAMS