Tech Gifts for the Holidays 245
MrCopilot pointed out that every year there are a slew of gadgets geeks desire for Christmas, and approximately 7 million web pages dedicated to compiling lists of them.
So why shouldn't we join in the fun. Here are stories from
Dallas News,
CBS News,
Seattle Times,
E Media Wire,
Detroit News and
MSNBC. So lets take a crack at your own list. There's still another day or two where things could conceivably be shipped on time for the holidays. I highly recommend Rock Band, although my aching hands might disagree.
Re:My Pick for geek toy... CyBook Gen3! (Score:4, Interesting)
A paperback book with 1MB hardly fits in a pocket and is maybe 6h of reading for an average reader. A 1GB SD card is easily months of reading, pluggable into a device that is the size of the 1MB book - and thanks to the e-paper, the batteries won't die on you while you read and the readablity will be just like with a paper book.
Imagine you want to read the whole Pratchett's Discworld series on your daily way to work, 1h each direction, on a train daily. You either go to a bookstore and (with lots of luck if it's all in stock) buy some 10 pounds of paper, then remember to take one part for your travel, or two if you're about to finish the 'current' one. You pay a small fortune.
Or you rent them at a library. Good luck getting them all, good luck getting them in parts and none of the parts missing, you're bound by return schedules and you need to go to said library.
Or you visit piratebay and download the whole series in ebook format, then read it on your pocket reader. Cost: zero. You have them all, no management. You read on your own schedule. They fit on one tiny card. And so on... And if you feel like the author deserves the money, you buy the DRM'd versions from Amazon and promptly delete them, or just buy the paper version and put them on a shelf in your house, never opening them.
Asus EEE PC (Score:4, Interesting)
The thing is hardly bigger than a DS. It can fit in women's handbags. Glove compartments.
And yes it runs linux, it comes runs linux out of the box.
Mine will double as a casual laptop and as a remote for my TV which will be using my computer as a source(via logmein).
I can see both women and men loving this thing. $400 bucks or so.
CHEAP ebook readers? (Score:4, Interesting)
It would be good if it was pocket-sized too.
What would you recommend?
New monitor (Score:2, Interesting)
For the gamers (Score:3, Interesting)
My list (Score:5, Interesting)
Chaos tower [chaostoy.com]
oh boy. another list! (Score:3, Interesting)
Alternative choices after the jump.
Re:Rock Band? (Score:1, Interesting)
Rock band will now fail with your piecing logic cutting right to issue.
Seriously! Rock band is a toy nothing more. If i wanted to learn to play a instrument, I would, but I don't. I just want to rock out with friends and not sound like crap because we haven't been playing for 3+ years. Or perhaps I'm musically disabled and I just want to push buttons and hear music.
The real instruments argument doesn't apply because by that logic, if you've played Castlevania your an idiot because you should have spent you time with a REAL whip learning how use it. Woooppphaaaap!
Sometimes games aren't simulators for real life! Sometimes games are just games.
Re:Hand-Brain coordination (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, in second year, I got a TI SR-52, which they thought was even cooler because it could do polar-rectangular conversions in my choice of degrees or radians. Everyone wanted me in their study group.
Re:Please don't turn /. into digg. (Score:3, Interesting)
Good question: I tried to ask "What were the best books, movies, games, and media released in 2007?" The question might yield somewhat meaningful results, and I'd been thinking about the issue after seeing the NYTimes' best books [wordpress.com].
Instead, the submission was rejected in favor of one discussing consumer electronic junk.
The geek gift lists aren't hardcore geek enough (Score:3, Interesting)
Second point - none of the geek gift guides I've seen are hardcore geek enough. I'd love to hear other similar ideas (because I've got these two already), but...
Item #1: a Symbol CS1504 handheld barcode scanner (around $100). No significant instructions included or software beyond drivers, and it comes in a plain brown box. It's the size of keyfob car remotes and has memory so you scan stuff then hook it up to your computer later and download what it scanned - once you write the software to do that of course. Kept me entertained for months and now I've written Java code to support it and lookup UPS and ISBN codes.
Item #2: The Pickit2 starter kit from Microchip ($50 direct). Nothing says geek more than programming little extremely cheap microprocessors in assembly language to flash LEDs in sequence. This kit gives you everything you need to get you started in doing just that, and is a gateway gift for future geek paraphernalia like breadboards and electronic parts - nobody else will have a clue what all that stuff is, but at least it's all pretty cheap. Throw in a subscription to "Nuts and Volts" magazine and he'll have geek pr0n all year long. If you play your cards right next year you'll have all sorts of blinky geek ornaments to hang on the tree.
Both of these gift ideas have an extremely high geek fun to price ratio. What I'm looking for is other ideas like this.