Ok, so I don’t think I am qualified to write about any gift guides except for this one. That’s because I am a geek myself. I have had the opportunity to play with many different fun toys in the last little while, and these are the ones I would highly recommend for that special geek in your life whether they have been naughty or nice.

 msi Wind

  • MSI Wind Netbook (est. $429). If you don’t already know, netbooks are one of the most popular items this year. It’s easy to see why. Who wouldn’t want a small, portable laptops that you can take anywhere? And these netbooks are powerful enough for most people’s computing needs (that is, if you don’t play 3D games). I have tested out many models in this category of computers, from 7" to 10” models, ranging from HP, Asus, MSI, etc. MSI is hands-down the best netbook on the market today with the best balance of performance, screen size, battery life and usability. The ASUS EEE PC 1000H is a close second for me, but the MSI Wind wins because of its lighter weight, 802.11n support and longer battery life.

kindle

  • Amazon Kindle ($349). Even if that special geek in your life is not an avid reader, he or she may still appreciate Amazon’s reading device. First of all, the e-ink technology is rather phenomenal if you haven’t seen it. It doesn’t use any power at all when the page is not refreshing. It makes a great reading experience. Second, the Kindle comes with an always connected through Sprint’s Whispernet, which is basically a low bandwidth data network via the cell towers. Best part is that there is no subscription fees at all to use this network on the Kindle. Finally, a lot of people don’t know this, but the Kindle actually has a built-in “experimental” web browser. It’s not a great browser and it doesn’t measure to desktop or even other mobile browsers by any stretch of the imagination. But having a large screen, always connected device as a browser is surprisingly a very good thing. Even though most websites don’t render as they would on the desktop, you can still make out the content, especially for news sites.

Nuvi 760

  • Garmin Nuvi 760 (est. $240). With the rapidly decrease in prices, portable navigation devices are going to be hot items this holiday. I have tested several GPS units from Garmin and Magellan and found that I like the Garmin Nuvi units the best. I used to own a Garmin Nuvi 650 and found it to be reliable, easy to use and has great battery life. I haven’t used a portable GPS since several months ago because I got a new car and it has a built-in GPS. However, functionality and usability wise, these portable devices are far superior (although my built-in one in my car looks cooler). I have recently tested the Nuvi 760 and found it to be even better than the Nuvi 650 that I previously owned. It also comes with 1 free year of MSN Direct so that you can receive real-time traffic information, weather, gas price, etc. At around $240, it’s a great bargain!

 card-share-reflect

  • 2GB Eye-Fi Share(est. $70). This is another one of those things that I thought “why would I need it?”. But I got this as a gift, and I love it! You just use it like your normal SD card, but when you get home, you just need to turn on your camera and all your pictures will automatically be uploaded to your computer, and also optionally to the popular photo-sharing sites like Flickr, Picasa, SmugMug,  Shutterfly, Facebook, and more. There is something magical in seeing your pictures just show up online :) This year, they have also added the Eye-Fi Explorer model, which adds automatic geo-tagging to the pictures that you take. Very cool stuff.

 

Happy Holidays!

- J.

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