Netbooks are one of the most sought after gadgets for Black Friday 2009. The same was true last year. The big difference this year is that Windows 7 netbooks are now available.
This means that retailers will be trying to get rid of their XP netbook inventory and the very low priced netbooks will not have the latest OS installed.
I looked back at the Black Friday 2008 netbook deals and many deals were at the $299 price point. For that money you only got a Dell mini 9 for instance with 8.9 inch display, 512MB RAM, 4GB SSD running Ubuntu Linux.
This year I expect much better deals at below $200, likely hitting $150.
For $299 you can buy a Windows 7 netbook already today. The Acer AOD250-1695 Windows 7 Netbook is selling for $299.99 on Amazon.com. Only downside on this one is the 3-cell battery.

I expect that you can find a Windows 7 netbook for about $250 on Black Friday and Thanksgiving. Windows XP netbooks should be a bargain at $150 and possibly some retailers try to sell you a Linux netbook for even below $150.

A Windows XP netbook is still not a bad choice especially if you get it below $200.
The minimum on hardware you should look out for in a bargain Black Friday netbook is: 10.1-inch screen (if you want ultra-portable 8.9-inch are still out there), Intel Atom N270 (N280 would be better), 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, WiFi (802.11g, 802.11n would be better), webcam and 6-cell battery.
More Black Friday News. See also our Black Friday TV Deals Report.