these factors have prompted retailers to rethink Black Friday . And in a new development , the deals will be available from right now throughout the remainder of the holiday season . No need to freeze your butt off in a long line overnight ! For example , I picked up a laptop at Best Buy for $ 249 on November 11 . It was part of a one-day sale that the electronics retailer held to kick off the holiday shopping season . You can monitor the best deals out there on any number of Web sites dedicated to Black Friday deals . Some of the ones I 've checked in the past have included blackfriday.info , gottadeal.com and bfads.net . While we 're on the topic of holiday shopping , you 'll no doubt be asked to buy extended warranties on some of your purchases . I want to reiterate my annual refrain that they are n't necessary and are really just a waste of your money . Modern electronics seldom fail . In fact , flat-panel LCD and plasma TVs fail at only a 3 percent rate during the first three years of ownership , according to Consumer
Atlanta , Georgia -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- For all the ballyhoo about Black Friday , the crown jewel in the holiday shopping calendar has been something of a bust for retailers . That 's led to a shift in how the day is being handled this season . Historically , nobody outside the retail world was really familiar with the idea behind Black Friday . But sometime in the '90s , it suddenly became the thing to do to camp out overnight the day after Thanksgiving and wait for stores to open with their door-buster deals at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. . But talk about inefficiency . The crowds that waited so long would thin out by 9 a.m. , and stores were more like ghost towns the rest of the day . And retailers probably did n't make any money on the stuff they were selling anyway ! Then there have been the actual physical dangers of having large crowds of people mill around and then dash like mad to snatch up deals . During Black Friday 2008 , a Wal-Mart employee was actually trampled to death by a mob of shoppers in New York . All of