Black Friday liveblog: Online deals or brick-and-mortar sales?

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Updated 5:18 a.m.

So what are the deals that people are snapping up this Black Friday?

Big-screen TVs and laptops are always big sales items on the big shopping day. But if there was one item that everyone seems to want to get their hands on, it's Apple's iPad 2.

They were popular at Walmart, which offered iPads with 16 gigabytes of memory for $399 plus a $75 Walmart gift card. In a twist, Walmart guaranteed availability by Christmas for shoppers who showed up within the first hour at its stores, although the guarantee didn't amount to that much, according to the News for Shoppers website.

An iPad at that price is certainly a good deal for Apple aficionados, but not a great one.

"Apple products are rarely discounted, so no one was expecting great deals on the iPad or iPad mini, but I thought one or two stores might try to make a splash by offering the Google Nexus 7 or similar tablet at an unbeatable price this Black Friday," writes Michael Brim, founder and CEO of the Black Friday deals watch site BFAds.net. "That didn't happen."

So outside of the popular iPad, tablet deals didn't wow.

At 2 a.m. Friday, BFAds was still showing deals on several HDTVs, but by 3:30 a.m, they were gone.

By 5 a.m, the website was showing a Seiki 40-inch HDTV for $200 after rebate as one of its hottest deals. Rival online-deal website FatWallet.com was showing a Toshiba 40-inch HDTV for $179 from Best Buy as one of its most popular Black Friday deals.