Tips for hi-tech holiday shopping

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Black Friday and Cyber Monday are now gone but if you still haven't found that perfect hi-tech gadget, CNET.com reviews everything tech. So 24-Hour News 8 talked to one of their editors, Brian Cooley, about what's hot for the holidays.

The Samsung Pebble is just one small gadget.

"It's an MP3 player. It's one of the best sounding out there for a low price, about $45 for one of these...about 1 gigabyte of storage," said Cooley.

Netbooks are from manufacturers like Dell that run around $350 to $400.

"What they are is a super small, super light laptop computer 2.5 lbs. or so. Believe me, when you pick one of these up you go 'Whoa'," said Cooley. "It's a full fledge computer ideally built for accessing everything on the Internet: web, e-mail, friends services, social networks."

But Netbooks won't play DVDs or applications that require a lot of processing power.

Another hot item is the Roku Netflix Player.

"This box connects to your television and to the Internet, no computer involved. And then it streams movies from Netflix directly to your television,” said Cooley.

People are talking about lower budgets, perhaps for Christmas. But on the other hand, retailers are talking about trying to bring in what little dollars are out there.

"Here's what's going on with the retailers: they had a good Black Friday, especially with electronics, but it's still expected to be a soft season overall. Toward the end of December, closer to the Christmas holiday, I do expect to see some aggressive price cutting," said Cooley.

For a big price cut on a new HDTV, Cooley suggests waiting until after the Super Bowl.

"The day after the big game is going to be the beginning of a lull for TV sales, that is traditional every year. So if you can wait and get through the game without a new HDTV, you could get a particularly good deal. The downside is inventories will be a little sparse then," said Cooley.

In regards to the perennial hot holiday gadget, the iPod, Cooley suggests looking at the iPod touch, saying it ranks very high in their reviews.