As holiday shopping kicks into gear, more and more people are facing a troubling question: "What do I get the techie on my list?" You may have used a different noun like geek, nerd, gamer, WebHead or data-breath, but the quandary is the same. What do you get for the techocrat in your life? This guide is here to help you avoid megabyte, gigahertz and teraflop overload. The main message is "accessorize".
With the meteoric release of Microsoft's mega-game Halo 2, gaming is a good place to start. While Halo may slake the thirst of XBox gamers, PC gamers might enjoy Battlefield Middle Earth, based on "The Lord of the Rings", or the follow-up The Sims 2. Don't forget Playstation 2 folks. CompUSA's Steve Thrift, sales manager and self-professed gamer, suggests Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
Great Picture, Killer Sound
The PC is becoming the center of home entertainment as more video and audio is pushed through. Great graphics and video demand a great monitor. For the best picture quality and desk-clearing size, it’s tough to beat an LCD flat panel display. Flat panels run the gamut of price, size and quality, so choose the one that’s right for your wallet. Apple’s 23 inch Cinema Display will knock your socks off, and it will set you back about $2,000. Sony, perhaps the picture quality leader, has a 19 inch LCD for about $600. Give up a little quality for a lower price, and you might look at what CompUSA’s Thrift calls their “value line” of Norwood and BenQ flat panels. A 15 inch Norwood is just $230, and a 17 inch BenQ is about $330.
Want to add killer sound? Now you can plug in speakers that rumble the floor, shake the walls and put you in the middle of a sound storm. There are some powerful systems from computer firms like Logitech and Altec-Lansin. But Adam Saba, computer department manager at Best Buy in West Des Moines, says, “Traditional loudspeaker manufacturers are getting into the act for PCs.” Klipsch has a 5.1 surround sound system that’ll put you in the middle of any game, and Bose offers a set of speakers with a level of clarity that only they can offer.
Bridge the Stereo and Computer
Even with ear-shattering speakers, the PC is not always the most consistent place to listen to music. A new breed of system bridges the music stored on a hard drive with the stereo system. “Network media players” connect to your stereo like any other component, then to you computer either through a wired or wireless connection. It then searches out music files stored on the computer and allows them to play on the stereo. The beauty is that you can listen to all your music without worrying that some annoying Windows sound or AOL’s mail reminder will suddenly beep over your music. Best Buy offers systems from Linksys ($129), NetGear ($149) and Roku ($249). The Linksys system even has its own detachable speakers so you can listen to MP3s anywhere in the house.
An easy way to accessorize is with a new mouse and keyboard. The days of rolling mice are gone. Today’s optical mice use bounced light to guide them, allowing them to be used on almost any surface, according to Best Buy’s Saba. “You can even run them on your pant leg when you’re sitting at home or on a plane.” Cut the wires with a wireless mouse and keyboard, and you can run your PC from across the room. A good choice for both wireless and optical is Logitech’s Cordless MX combo. The MX uses Bluetooth for it wireless connection, so other devices can be networked if, and when, they become available.
The penultimate keyboard/mouse combination is Logitech’s diNovo. The set is wireless and has a sexy thin profile to the keyboard. It features a separate media controller that lets you control your music from other parts of the room.
Hard drives are the filing cabinets of digital information. As more photos, MP3s, movies and other files get loaded onto systems, expanding disk storage becomes a real issue. An internal hard drive (installed inside the computer) will run about $1 per gigabyte of storage, with an 80 gigabyte drive being a good place to start. A comparable external drive will run about $150, down from about $250 last year. An internal drive will not require installation inside the computer.
For extreme drive space, LaCie offers a monster 500 gigabyte external drive ($449 at CompUSA) that connects to the computer using either USB 2 or FireWire. That’s a lot of 1s and 0s that can be stored.
Get Off the Desk
If the person for whom you’re buying has all the desktop he can handle, consider some other gadgets that work away from the desk. The star of the season seems to be Apple’s iPOD portable music. A whole new economy has developed around these devices with the ubiquitous white earplugs. Car adapters, external speakers (even from Bose), and Griffin Technologies’ iTrip FM tuner make great gifts for iHeads.
iPod isn’t the only game in town. MP3 stalwarts Rio and iRiver continue to expand their offerings. Rio’s ultrasleek Carbon player is cool looking and slips in a pocket. It runs about $250.
As with tunes, video has gone mobile. This started last year, but picks up steam this year. Standalone devices, like Creative Lab’s Zen player, let you record and store hours of video. You can play video back on the built-in screen, or plug into a TV or monitor. Try palm-sized video on the latest PalmOne handhelds, like the Tungsten T5. These organizers-on-steroids now let you store and play video. The quality isn’t the greatest, but it’ll do in a pinch.
Storage is on the go, too, with the latest generation of flash memory drives (what I call “USB keys”). These often are, quite literally, the size of a key fob and store megabytes of data. To use them, simply stick them into a computer and copy to the like a floppy drive. Prices have been dropping relatively quickly lately, so buy the most amount of storage to match money your wallet.
Likewise, prices on memory cards for cameras, handhelds and the like, are dropping. Your digital camera buffs will appreciate an extra roll of “digital film” in the form of an SD (secure digital), CF (compact flash), Memory Stick (Sony) or other memory card. Check the camera for the correct type of memory cards (without letting them know, of course).
For the Ubergeek
Want to elevate your loved one to stardom in the technocracy? Wrap his wrist in Abacus Wrist Net watch from Fossil and MSN Direct (about $130 at CompUSA). Timepiece, computer and screen come together in a wireless information appliance you wear on your wrist. Move over Dick Tracy, this bling lets him get stock quotes in the elevator, check the weather on the golf course and read e-mail during a haircut. Out of the box, the watch delivers news, local weather and a monthly calendar to the lucky person wearing it. For about $40, you can give access to a slug of MSN Direct “channels” including movie times, news, sports and messaging.
