The Ultimate Geek Gift Guide 2009
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 geek gift this holiday season. 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 two years running must be the Apple iPhone GS3. 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. This year, the iPhone has some competition in the new breed of Android phones in particular the Motorola Droid.
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.
Acer Aspire One
The Flip MinoHD 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. We have take ours on every trip we take and it is easier to use than the standard point and shoot digital camera.
The new version of the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSPgo) has the best graphic intense games available in the hand held gaming market. The PSPgo has a new slim down form factor. Download movies, shoes, and games directly from the PlayStation Network.
The Nintendo DSi portable gaming system will also be a popular with geeks this holiday season. Unlike the PSPgo, the DSi has more innovative games that take full advantage of its touch dual screens. On the DSi, the geeks in the family will enjoy games like Scribblenauts, KORG DS-10 Synthesizer, and DS classics like Brain Age 2 and TouchMaster 3.
The Nintendo Wii is perhaps the innovative console 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. This holiday season Nintendo is releasing a whole slew of Mario Bros games. What geek doesn’t love Super Mario Bros based games? Two highly anticipated games are Super Mario Galaxy 2 and New Super Mario Bros.. The Mario Bros have been geek classics since the first game came out in the original Nintendo Entertainment System.
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 32 GB USB drive. Some of the cutest USB drives are the Star Wars Mimobot Thumb Drives.
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.
Another category of gadgets in every techie at heart wishlist is electronic book readers. The Amazon Kindle DX is probably the best ebook reader in the market at this time. But Sony and Barnes and Nobles have their own offerings.
The Kindle’s wireless connectivity allow you to shop and download books on the fly as you go on the run. Hundreds of blogs are also available through the Kindle such as Slashdot and The Onion. I have a growing collection of ebooks on my Kindle, in fact I have not bought a hard cover book since I got my Kindle last year, just like I have not bought a CD since I first had my first MP3 music player.
The Powermat is the perfect gift for the early adopter techie. The Powermat is a wireless power adapter. To enable your favorite gadget (iPhone, Blackberry, DSi, etc) you need to buy and use power receiver for your device in the form of a case. With the power receiver, simply place the device on the Powermat to recharge wirelessly.
No geek gift guide is complete without a computer mouse. The Apple Magic Mouse has the form factor of something out of science fiction. The Magic Mouse uses multi-touch technology used in the iPhone. The multi-touch technology allows the whole mouse to be a button and/or a scroll wheel without actually having a button or scroll wheel. You don’t just any mouse pad you having laying around with the Magic Mouse, the SteelSeries SX Mouse Pad is more appropriate.
Apple Magic Mouse
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.