Gift List

I’ve been tracking technology products for 30 years, and this year promises to be a great one for anyone looking to add tech to their gift lists. If you have suggestions or questions, ask away. I’ll be your holiday elf for the season.

PCs:
Apple MacBook: Just in time for the holidays, Apple announced a new MacBook that will sell for under $1,000. Cast from a single piece of aluminum for strength and featuring a glass trackpad with some new gestures and an NVIDIA graphics system, this has to be one of the hottest machines of the season.

HP Pavilion TouchSmart: Designed specifically to substitute input from touch rather than a trackpad or keyboard, the TouchSmart is this season’s most beautifully designed home PC. It’s an all-in-one machine that’s very elegant looking and excels at playing media like movies, photos and music.

Acer One Note: Netbooks are all the rage. They’re much less expensive than traditional notebook PCs and much lighter and smaller. This one looks great, has an 8.9-inch display screen and weighs just over 3 lbs. It costs less than $400, but remember that it’s really useful when it’s connected to the Internet, but less useful for standalone activities.

Flat Screen TV:
Philips HDTV 52 inch LCD: Philips has worked on the LCD design to incorporate the highest resolution (1920×1080p) Full DF. Its Pixel Perfect technology maximizes the sharpness of the image, and the signature Ambilight casts a lovely glow around the screen, which lessens eye strain and creates a lovely mood.

Panasonic Viera TH-50PZ800U: The Viera is known for reproducing deep black and highly accurate color, and it’s a great screen for connecting HDMI peripherals.

Pioneer Kuro Elite: Also touted for it’s deep black color, it’s designed to automatically pick the best display for whatever you’re watching – even if it’s not in HD.

Music:
Sansa slotMusic Player: Anyone who thinks that downloading music is a pain will appreciate the Sansa slotMusic player. Instead of requiring you to download your music, the slotMusic player (which is under $20) uses pre-recorded SD cards that you can buy in many retail stores. So, just like records or CDs, you’ll actually own a physical copy of your music, and you’ll be able to play in your player or any other gadget that has an SD slot (cell phones included).

Mobile Phones:
Blackberry Storm: This is the first Blackberry (still the most trusted email service) device with a touch screen. The phone is sharp looking and loaded with multimedia features. The 3.5 inch screen flips between wide and horizontal views. Plus it works all over the world by supporting many different communications standards.

HTC Dream T-Mobile G1: The hot new phone that combines Google’s Android platform, TMobile service and a sharp looking phone with a full QWERTY keyboard that slides out when you need it. The early word is a big thumbs up, especially for those who use Google apps and Gmail religiously. It will be priced under $200.

Nokia 5310: For teens, consider the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic; it’s much less expensive than the touch smart phones, but it’s a great music phone for $50.

GPS:
Garmin Nuvi 755: This year, Garmin adds lane assist, which shows you which lane to be in so you don’t miss the turn. Coupled with voice directions and 3D videogame-like views, this is the next step in GPS. Those who want more from their GPS-like phone navigation can look at Garmin’s other models. Outdoor hikers who want GPS should look at Garmin’s eTrex models.

Family Fun
Wii Fit: An add-on to the popular Nintendo Wii, the Wii Fit is a board with built in sensors that lets you do things like swivel your hips with a virtual hula hoop, block a soccer ball or plan a fitness program including yoga.

Hasbro Family Game Night for the Wii: Get to know your family again as you play a collection of traditional family games redone for a digital world. Play games like Connect Four, Boggle, Reverse Yahtzee and Battleship Barrage.

Eyeclops: The Eyeclops is a bionic eye that plugs into your PC and magnifies whatever it sees. This year Jakks Pacific, the creator, adds Night Vision eyegoggles that use infrared night vision technology to the Eyeclops line.

Learn a Language:
Tell Me More Foreign Language: This CD with interesting dialog and graphics is one of the nicest ways to learn conversational foreign languages.

Make it Yourself:
Blurb: Use Blurb to create a treasured hardcopy book for family and friends. You’ll be your own publisher and the results are spectacular.

Animoto: Create an MTV-like video to share with family and friends.

Zazzle: Create your own designs for T-shirt, sneakers, cards and the like and get them printed here. If you like, you can open your own Zazzle shop to sell your creations, or you can buy some great pieces from other artists.

Digital Cameras, Camcorders and Printers:
Olympus Stylus 150: Point-and-shoot camera with great automatic settings including an intelligent flash. It also has a tap feature, which lets you take photos out in the cold weather by simply tapping the camera. You can leave your gloves on and still take photos.

Polaroid Pogo: Kids love this instant mobile printer because it doesn’t use an ink cartridge and develops a print right before your eyes. Plus, it fits in the palm of your hand. The Pogo printer uses heat to develop the picture; it connects to your camera via Bluetooth and USB .

Samsung SC-MX20: The camcorder for the YouTube generation, the SC-MX20 features 720×480 resolution, a 34x optical zoom, image stabilization, 3 hour batter life and a nice-sized 2.7-inch LCD preview give the “cool” factor a backbone. Plus, there’s a swivel grip so the little ones can tilt and avoid taking pictures of your knees. It comes in colors, weighs next-to-nothing, uses SD memory and costs $279. Plus, you connect directly to YouTube and upload; no PC required.

Digital Photo Frames:
Kodak ‘s Digital Photo Frames: These digital photo frames begin at under $100 for a 7-inch display, with MP3 speakers and on-frame viewing and editing features.

Coby Digital Picture Key Chain: These make great stocking stuffers and hold somewhere around 50+ images.

For The Home:
AT&T SL82218: Many of us wish we had mobile phones with better reception at home. The AT&T phone combines Bluetooth connectivity with Digitally Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT) 6.0 antenna technology. This lets you connect your cell phone to the cordless phone’s base unit for clear sound and extended range.

Oregon Scientific Wireless Solar Powered Weather Station: Weather watchers can use the sun to power this touch-screen LCD weather station. Included are an anemometer, self-emptying rain gauge and a thermo-hygro sensor.

Go Clickfree Portable Backup Device: With GoClickFree you might not need to try so hard to backup your files. This mini device connects via a USB cable and then automatically knows what to do.

The opinions stated within the article are solely the opinions of Robin Raskin and are not endorsed by the site sponsor.