The Ultimate Geek Gift Guide 2008

This geek gift guide is not so much for geeks and techies but for those that have geeks and techies in their life and need a little help in finding the right techie gift. So if you don’t know what is the hottest gift item or you want to redeem yourself from the Cosby sweater you gave last year, this is the gift guide for you.

The hottest tech gift must be the Apple iPhone. The iPhone is one of those gifts that will be used every single day, and not just to make calls. In fact, the feature I use most often is email, browsing online, and Google Maps. I also use the iPhone to play freely available casual games available on the App Store. And of course you can play your iTunes music on the iPhone just as you would on your iPod.

Netbooks are a trendy new segment in the ultra portable laptop market. Netbooks usually refer to sub $500 laptops perfect for email and internet browsing. The ASUS Eee PC is perhaps the most popular brand in this market but there are available models like the HP Mini 1140NR and Acer Aspire One.

The Flip Mino is quickly gaining a big market share of the camcorder business from established brands such as Sony, Panasonic, Canon, etc. The Flip is the iPod of video cameras. It is small, portable, and simple to use. When recording, you can zoom in out and stop. When playing back you can increase/decrease the volume and pause.

The Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) has the best graphic intense games available in the hand held gaming market. The PSP is also a great platform for watching movies on the go. Whenever I travel on long trips I make sure to pack a couple of UMD movies. There are a ton of movies and shows available on the PSP. In terms of games you can’t go wrong with titles such as God of War: Chains of Olympus, Medal of Honor: Heroes, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, and Sega Genesis Collection. Notice that most of these titles are sequels to popular games systems like the PlayStation, XBox, and Wii.

The Nintendo DS portable gaming system will also be a popular with geeks this season. Unlike the PSP, the DS has more innovative games that take full advantage of its touch dual screens. On the DS, the geeks in the family will enjoy games like Mario Party DS, KORG DS-10 Synthesizer, Brain Age, and TouchMaster.

The Nintendo Wii is perhaps the most fun and social gaming platform currently available. The game play with the Wii Remote can be very animated. The Wii is definitely a gaming console for the whole family, and there are plenty of games that the family can play together. Some personal favorite games that I am enjoyed this year have been Carnival Games, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, Super Mario Galaxy, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

One item that a geek never has enough of is disk space. Technologist can easily fill a 100 GB hard drive with bittorrents, software, games, movies, pictures, data, etc. in no time. The geek in your life will appreciate a portable hard drive like the Western Digital My Passport which are available with 360 or 500 GB. The My Passport is the slimmest, slickest, and sexiest of the portable drives I have seen. They are small enough to carry with you in your laptop bag. As a stocking stuffer, you might be interested in getting a 16 GB USB drive.

Earlier this year Oprah said that the Amazon Kindle was her favorite new gadget. The kindle an electronic book reader like the Sony eReader except that the Kindle’s wireless connectivity allow you to shop and download books on the fly as you go. Hundreds of blogs are also available through the Kindle such as Slashdot and The Onion.

As everyone already knows, the standard geek uniform is jeans and a t-shirt. Any self respecting geek needs to have some ThinkGeek shirts in his wardrobe. ThinkGeek gear is like Armani Exchange for geeks, binary fashionable and geek chic.

Be sure to take a look a the Juixe Store. We have selected the best software development books that need to be in every software developer’s bookshelf such as the classics like Code Complete, The Mythical Man-month, and The Pragmatic Programmer.

If you still need a little bit more help in finding the right tech gift for the geek in your life, take a look at the following geek gift guides from other sources such as CNET, Engadget, and Ars Technica.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 27th, 2008 at 1:53 am