Many (and I mean many) PCMech readers buy stuff online. In fact, a fair amount of them shopped online during the “bad old days” in the pre-2005 era. Continued

Even though this has been mentioned in a few other places already, the GOOG has thrown in some holiday cheer with certain search results.

Christmas – Look to the right, candy canes.

Christmas Sweaters – Look to the right, holly.

Hanukkah – Look to the right, Menora.

There’s also Kwanzaa and.. who knows what else? Can you find more?

Christmas Day is the same day it is every year, that being December 25. And the day after is obviously December 26.

There are a few tech-related things you can expect to have issues with those two days.

1. Cell phone traffic will spike.

Everybody is calling everybody. Most wireless carriers can handle the traffic but don’t be surprised if you have to dial a number a few times just to get thru.

Tip: If you encounter problems calling, having a POTS line nearby will usually always go thru without a problem.

2. Video game console online services will crawl.

On Christmas morn’ there will be lots of hyper kids jumping for joy at the fact they received a brand new Microsoft Xbox. And of course they’ll all hook them up and try, repeat, try to get online with them.

Don’t be surprised if the connectivity isn’t exactly stellar in performance.

After Dec 25, all those kids will try again on Dec 26.

It will even out to normal on the 27th.

For those that say "But it didn’t crawl last year.." That’s right, it didn’t. But consider the number of Xbox users now compared to then.

3. General internet slowness

In addition to video game consoles a ton of people will be getting new computers or something that is internet capable.

All this traffic will be sure to bog overall connectivity down somewhat.

Being that all ISPs will have minimal staff in the US that day, don’t bother calling for tech support. Wait until the 26th.

Said honestly, your best option is to simply watch television that day instead of using the computer.

My recommendation: Stuff yourself, get fat and wait it out.