Clark was practically a majority of one on his staff when he got excited about the Asus Eee (pronounced "Triple E") PC. Joel and Christa were vocal during a recent staff trip about their dislike for Clark's beloved mini-laptop.

The Eee runs on Linux and sells for around $299. There's also a Windows version available for a hundred dollars more. The "wundercomputer" weighs less than 2 pounds, has an 8-inch screen and is great if you have little fingers. It's designed for very basic tasks like web surfing, e-mailing, word processing and cheap VoIP service.

While the original target market was schoolchildren, it's been embraced by a lot of travelers who have grown weary of breaking their shoulders with traditional bulky laptops.

Asus now expects to sell about 5 million units this year. Those huge projected sales numbers have scared the big players in the market. Microsoft has reversed a decision to can XP, and now will keep it going indefinitely because it works well with the Eee. Hewlett-Packard, meanwhile, is preparing to introduce its own small, light computer for $499 with a 9-inch screen, built-in camera and more.

Before the Eee, nobody wanted to serve this market -- now being called the Netbook segment. So to Joel and Christa, Clark wants you to understand that the Eee and others like it have really created a new opportunity. Travelers now can compute in a whole new way without having to lug around a huge laptop. This is the wave of the future!

Electronics are some of the hottest items for both men and women this holiday season. Clark's been looking at several Black Friday websites and has the scoop on deals you'll be seeing at retailers on the day after Thanksgiving. Let's get started with digital cameras. First off, Clark says this is one of the most difficult areas to comparison shop because it seems like every retailer sells about 25 types! Try going to CNET.com and reading customer reviews to get a handle on the model you want. That said, this is the first Christmas that SLR (single-lens reflex) digital cameras are coming in under $500. The advantage of SLRs is that they offer better picture quality even though they're a bit bulky. When it comes to GPS units, look for prices around $100-$149 on Black Friday. Best Buy is listing the popular TomTom One for $119. Staples will have some GPS deals for $124; Office Depot for $129; and Circuit City will be selling the discount Mio Walker GPS for $99. Meanwhile, portable DVD players won't be much cheaper ($79-89) than they were last year, but you'll find the average screen size has gotten larger. If you're in the market for a laptop computer, you'll find some deals in the $299-349 range at Circuit City and Staples, respectively. Finally, look for a variety of HDTV deals. Some retailers are offering 32-inch screens for around $399. If you want to check out a Black Friday website for yourself, try logging on to BlackFriday.info. Clark told you several weeks ago how Wal-Mart was trying to put the kibosh on such websites leaking its deals. So somebody leaked the sales info to CNN and Wal-Mart got way more exposure than they expected!

Clark has finally gotten his hands on a mini laptop called the Eee (pronounced "Triple E") PC that he's been talking about for the past several weeks. At $399, Clark admits to having overpaid for this computer. But he's really impressed with its usability and light weight of around 1.5 pounds. If you have smaller fingers you should have no problem touch-typing on the keypad. Travelers can now take an affordable mini laptop with them instead of paying $2,000 for a traditional one. The Eee is made by a Taiwanese company that teamed up with Intel, and it's designed for the basics: web surfing, e-mailing, word processing and cheap VoIP service. In fact, Clark's Eee came preloaded with Skype software! His computer even boots up in mere seconds versus a few minutes with most other laptops. His Eee uses Linux as its operating system. Linux is beloved by techies, but even a non-techie like Clark finds it extremely easy to use this laptop. Meanwhile, a version that runs Microsoft Windows won't be available for another couple of months. What about the much ballyhooed price in the low $200s? Clark says we should begin to see those kinds of prices sometime next year. So if you bought a Nokia Tablet PC on Clark's recommendation and really thought he stunk, you owe it to yourself to get to a store and check out the Eee. It will truly allow you to travel with laptop functionality without lugging around 10 or 15 pounds of extra baggage!

Christmas lists last year were topped by requests for clothing, followed by peace and happiness. The least popular answer was computers. But the past year has brought many changes. Today the No. 1 thing people want is computers. Peace and happiness now comes in second, followed by big-screen TVs, clothing and money. Computers sales tend to come in waves. One of the last great sales surges was in 1999 when people bought systems that were Y2K compliant. On a side note, Clark recalled all the millennial hysteria surrounding wide-eyed predictions about planes falling out of the sky at the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31, 1999. Clark was in the air on New Year's Eve at midnight Greenwich Mean Time doing phone interviews with various radio and TV stations. Some people thought it would be the last time they ever heard from him because they expected his plane to crash! Fortunately it didn't. But those people who bought computers in 1999 now have systems that are the end of their life. That partly explains this holiday season's computer craze.

Folks often ask Clark what they should spend on a computer. Clark believes you can get a nice desktop for $300 and a good laptop for $450. But now a Taiwanese company has announced plans to sell a basic notebook model for the low $200s. The cheap laptop is being called the eee PC and should hit stores within a few months. Meanwhile, the Black Friday shopping sites have begun popping up with their predictions about sale prices on the day after Thanksgiving. According to some, Sears will be selling 32-inch hi-def TVs for $300 and 42-inch plasma TVs for $600. We'll have links to various Black Friday shopping sites for you as we get closer to Xmas.

It's great to have the opportunity to see rip-offs that Clark has warned people about being pushed on you and have the chance to say no upfront. Christa recently was buying a computer at a retailer and was being given the hard sell on two things that Clark just spoke about a few weeks back. One item was the Windows recovery discs, which were being pushed for $40. You can make one yourself for practically free or a get lower price from the manufacturer. The other was the extended warranty pitch. On a related note, Clark recently got a call from a distant relative of his who was in a store buying a TV. When the relative said he listened to Clark Howard and knew all about the cons of extended warranties, the salesperson took a very creative and unethical approach: He told the relative that Clark bought four TVs at that store and got extended warranties on every one of them. Clark is now thinking about doing a hidden camera sting where he exposes known retailers who try this tactic to make a sale on an extended warranty or service plan. Once again, for the record, Clark wants to emphasize that he doesn't buy extended warranties. That may change in the future, of course. But for now just say no when they're pushed on you.

Best Buy and Circuit City have come up with a new way to rip off customers buying computers -- and it has nothing to do with extended warranties. According to PC World, these retailers are now trying to get customers to pay for Windows recovery discs. The backup discs are rarely needed, but the retailers have found a way to boost profits by tapping into the "what if" fear of consumers who may not know a lot about computers. It turns out that you can make these discs yourself or buy them from the manufacturer for half of what the stores charge you.

PC World got so fired up over the whole issue that they sent in secret shoppers to get the real scoop. The shoppers found that Circuit City pushed them hard to pay an extra $30 for the store-made recovery discs. But at Best Buy, three out of five stores outright told the shoppers that it's not possible to make the backup discs yourself. Meanwhile, several of the top computer manufacturers say that their notebook models come with instructions and software for creating the recovery discs. Best Buy tried to explain its way out of the situation by telling PC World that it was all just a miscommunication between the secret shoppers and the sales associates. But you have to understand that electronics retailers have really had their profit margins crushed, so they're desperate to push extra stuff on unwitting consumers. One last word on extended warranties on computers: Don't get them! Computers develop so quickly that there's no sense in insuring what may be obsolete in a year or two. When you're shopping for a laptop, just make sure you get one that has at least one gig of RAM for the memory. Clark also recommends Firefox for web browsing, rather than IE.

Minneapolis' Star Tribune reports that sales of extended electronics warranties at Best Buy and Circuit City are down 12 percent and eight percent, respectively. Clark really rejoices in these stats because he hates when these warranties are crammed down your throat by salespeople. Speaking of that, Clark recently bought an LCD TV (on sale) at a major electronics retailer. When the salesperson started his spiel about the warranty and Clark declined, the salesperson dropped him like a hot potato. He actually left Clark by himself to lift the TV onto his cart and didn't even fill out a customer ticket! Clark thinks the man probably acted this way because he may have needed a certain close rate on the customer tickets he writes up. So rather than risk being penalized for not selling the warranty, the sales associate didn't even bother writing up a ticket. At Circuit City, for example, the only way they survive is through warranty sales. Best Buy, meanwhile, reported some $800 million -- more than half of their $1.38 billion in profits -- came from the sale of extended warranties.

Clark says the payback on warranties is worse than on a Vegas slot-machine. In fact, he jokingly advises people to get a quote on a warranty and then go drop that chunk of change in a one-armed bandit. At least then you'll get flashing lights, racket and noise, plus have some fun taking in the atmosphere! But seriously, for every dollar you pay on an electronics warranty, you only get back about eight to15 cents, after you account for depreciation and how quickly technology becomes outdated. Clark thinks you should never buy an extended warranty on computers and electronics. You're a little bit safer with a warranty on your appliances. Finally, keep in mind that credit cards will sometimes double the manufacturer's warranty on electronics. It's like getting an extended warranty for free!

The latest American Customer Satisfaction Index from the University of Michigan has been released. This quarterly survey has been around since 1994 and keeps tabs on the good, the bad and the ugly in multiple industries. The big news this year is that American automakers did very well. While the top automaker was foreign (Toyota's Lexus division), homegrown companies like Cadillac, Buick and Lincoln-Mercury all tied for second place. Meanwhile, Toyota's namesake division fell way behind on the tally. Clark thinks the Japanese automaker has been taking its eye off the ball lately. The Toyota business model is now geared toward growth and quantity, not quality. That accounts for why they've been issuing more recalls than ever. Fortunately for Toyota, there are some corporate initiatives in Japan to raise the quality of their namesake line of vehicles. In the computer industry, Apple is tops in customer satisfaction; Clark's wife has an Apple Macintosh that she loves. In the PC world, Hewlett Packard's HP line makes a beloved machine, yet HP's Compaq division has been voted the worst company in the industry. Meanwhile, Whirlpool continues its dominance in the appliances field, racking up its largest lead yet over the competition.

As you probably know, Clark hates to waste things. He had been using the same pair of headphones in the studio since the '90s. Even though they were old and ratty, he used them until the end of their life. Now he has a new pair, so don't be surprised if he's able to hear you callers a little bit better! Likewise, he holds onto clothes long after they should be thrown away or given to charity. In fact, his wife has to periodically purge their closet and make the old threads "disappear."

Clark read a TechWorld.com report about how manufacturers of the cartridges we all use in our printers give you a notice that your cartridge in empty when nearly 60 percent of the ink is still left. If you throw it out at that point, more than half the ink you pay for goes unused! So when your computer tells you replace to the cartridge, instead just pull it out and shake it. You'll probably get several weeks more use out of it. After all, manufacturers have a clear financial incentive to shortchange you and make you buy more of their product. What you pay to print per page skyrockets if you throw that cartridge out or recycle it too early. Multi-ink cartridges are the worst because they have individual ink banks for up to three or four colors. Any one of them can run out before the others do. Another way to save money on ink cartridges is to get them refilled. Manufacturers hate it when you do this. Studies haven't yet shown decisively if the refilled ink is good quality or not. So just shake it up, baby! Samsung is one of the few companies that makes printers with a toner saver button that can reduce the amount of ink you use per page by 40 percent. Over time, that becomes a great savings.

Dell is the company that changed the modern computer world as we know it. Dell set out to make computers more affordable for everyone and it worked. The company moved with the times one out of every three computers in the U.S. is a Dell. But Dell is having trouble these days. Dell can’t hit its financial numbers and its customers aren’t happy. The company has let its customer service get worse and worse, and customers have started losing faith. Dell finally seems to realize it has a problem and says it is hiring more customer service representatives. But, news reports state that the 400 new employees the company has hired in Oklahoma City are for corporate clients only. That’s just not smart. Until Dell puts the focus on the customer, you buy one of its computers at your peril.

Dell Computers has been so successful at selling computers that the company seems to have forgotten how to provide customer service. Dell is a terrific company, but its execs haven’t really focused on the customer service problems they’ve been having. Instead of fixing those problems, the company is trying something new that will further alienate people who are having problems already. To explain further, Dell is starting a “premium” line of computers that costs three times as much as the basic model. People who buy these computers will receive top-of-the-line customer service. But if you buy the basic model, you won’t get much help at all. It’s sort of like flying in first class versus coach. According to the Dallas Morning news, the company hopes to make 80 percent of the “coach” customers happy, which is pretty paltry.

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In other computer news, the $100 computer is a reality. It will be able to connect to Wi-Fi networks and include all the necessary parts of a computer for much less. Clark will keep you updated on it.

Laptops and desktops are very affordable these days with full-featured laptops starting at $500 and desktops as low as $300. Clark has encouraged people to go for it and several people have approached him to question the advice. But he’s stuck to his guns on this one. And now it’s paid off. Walt Mossberg, the technology columnist for the Wall Street journal, recently wrote that these computers are “just fine” for the average user. Mossberg has never said it’s okay to buy the cheapest computer as Clark does. But this time, he says a $600 computer is just fine. In fact, the No. 1 choice in testing was the e-machines computer. People used to turn their noses up to e-machines, but they have gotten serious and have helped drive the prices down to as low as $249 for a desktop. There is no need to spend four digits for a computer anymore. Computers are becoming essentially an appliance and plans are in the works for a $99 computer. There is no need to spend an arm and a leg to get a great machine.

Clark was shopping recently for a new computer and he came across one that cost $339 with several rebates. He found one that was $30 more with the same features and only one rebate. That was at Staples. He ended up buying the more expensive one, he confesses, but that’s because rebates are much easier in some stores than others. Staples is one of those stores; Costco is another. But for the most part rebates re a huge hassle. Buy where you know you will get your rebate money or don’t buy there at all.

In a couple of years, laptop computers could cost as low as $100-200. This will create a tremendous market for students everywhere. Countries, poor and not poor, will be buying laptops that will cost the same as an expensive dinner for two. Right now, desktops with monitors are selling for as low as $259, and laptops are going for as low as $499. And in the next few years, these cheap laptops will contain great features like wireless Internet, and will be much smaller then traditional laptops. If you have thought that computers are out of reach because of their outrageous prices, then you will soon be able to afford quality computers for almost no money.

Clark was shopping recently for a new computer and he came across one that cost $339 with several rebates. He found one that was $30 more with the same features and only one rebate. That was at Staples. He ended up buying the more expensive one, he confesses, but that’s because rebates are much easier in some stores than others. Staples is one of those stores; Costco is another. But for the most part rebates re a huge hassle. Buy where you know you will get your rebate money or don’t buy there at all.