Here it is again. That time of the year when you are expected to provide gifts for certain people whether you want to or not. Abstaining is an option but will do little to further your acceptance into the good graces of your friends and family. I hope to provide some recommendations for appropriate gifts for those technology geeks in your life. I will try to refrain from stating the obvious. We probably already know that everyone who doesn't already have one would enjoy an iPad.

I will first postulate a couple of caveats. When I say technology geek I am referring to individuals who are truly immersed, fascinated by, and driven by technology. If your spouse or significant other is mad about Crazy Birds but is challenged when trying to access his or her Gmail account from any computer besides the one you configured for them, they do not qualify as worthy of a cool tech gift. Try the “under $25” display near the gaming section at Target for them.

Second, any tech gift worthy of giving is one you would want for yourself (or probably already own and use). Here again we have made an assumption—that you are in fact worthy of a cool tech gift. We will give you a pass on that one just by virtue of reading this in Tech Decisions….although that is open to discussion.

The third and most important caveat is this: Do not under any circumstances give someone a cheap knock-off of a real product. We are not dealing with purses here—no real geek could ever tell the difference between a $500 Dooney & Bourke and the lookalike you got at the flea market for $33.50. But my wife could.

This rule is even more important if you are giving a tech gift to a child. If your nephew says he wants an iPod Shuffle, that is what he wants. He knows the difference between what he asked for and that inexpensive generic MP3 player with the really crummy headphones you found at Odd Lots.

If you give a colleague a cheap substitute for a real item they will just think you are cheap. A child will think you are stupid and will know you really don't care about them.

When I was about 11 or 12 I was given a new baseball glove to replace the glove that I had outgrown. This was the glove I was going to use through junior high and into high school. I was not given the opportunity to help in the selection of the glove, which given the criticality that a baseball mitt plays in your fielding skills should have been a red flag. The mitt I was given was a Winston. No, that isn't a typo. I didn't get a carton of cigarettes. What I received was a Japanese baseball glove with a logo that was a looked a little like the premier American brand at the time—Wilson.

Lest you think I am disparaging Japanese products you need to know that there really was a time when Japanese exports to the west were inferior to the products they were competing against. This was long before the days of Sony or Toyota or Lenovo.

So there I was with this Winston baseball mitt—a giant super stiff monstrosity that I was never able to break in properly or enjoy. So, long story short, kids are not stupid. They know the trends and what's cool better than you do and it is horribly unfair to give a child something that their friends will make fun of.

One more thing about kids: They know what's cool but that does not mean that everything a kid knows is cool is cool for adults. Adult's trends should not mirror kid's trends. That translates to something like don't wear anything Aeropostale if you are over 25.

Cool…not just functional

There are a few other things to consider when selecting tech gifts. Great functionality is not enough; a really great gift also has to be cool. Everything tends to go in cycles with certain hipper areas of the country or demographic segments of the population picking up on things before the rest of the world. Those trends tend to spread pretty quickly these days so there is a time limit on cool.

One indicator that has always worked for me is that when I see someone with Elvis sideburns who drives a really big pickup truck using or doing something that once had a certain panache, it's all over. Case in point—bluetooth headsets. We have all had one or more of those geeky things that slip over your ear and allow for hands free talking on your cell phone. Very useful, but totally un-cool.

Yesterday I noticed the guys painting my neighbors house all had big ugly Bluetooth headsets (and big ugly pickup trucks). Let's face it, most of us conduct a lot more business using email, instant messaging or text messages than we do using voice communication anyway. It's still OK to use your headset in your car but let's refrain from gifting these things.

Headphones/Headsets

The whole headset/headphone thing has gotten weird. I used to travel a lot so like everyone else I purchased a set of those very expensive noise reducing headphones. There was a time when you would look around the business section and everyone had them. They were once cool. You would notice who had the real ones (Bose) and who just had a set of bulky headphones. Not cool anymore.

Less is better. I find that when I travel I want to carry fewer, smaller things and those noise cancelling headsets are huge. My recommendation for this whole headphone headset dilemma is a wired headset with ear buds and inline controls for controlling your phone and/or volume. They are lightweight, very portable and also provide much better acoustics than any headphone that come with your smart phone or other portable device. My personal favorites are the Bose MIE2i mobile headset for an ear bud model or the Sennheiser PMX 680 for a sport neckband model.

GPS Devices

GPS devices have been around for quite a while now. They aren't particularly cool but they have become an absolute necessity. The days of picking up a free map or directions at a service station are long gone. Unless you have spent the last 20 years in the same location, commuting to the same employer you need a GPS device. The problem is there is a very broad range in price, though not necessarily capabilities. I was looking at one for my motorcycle that was over $700 while on the same web page one was listed for $89.99. I have a built in GPS device in my car. Last year I received a DVD in the mail to update the maps on my device. Thing is I had to cough up something like $300 to activate the DVD. I am still using last year's maps. My smart phone has a number of excellent GPS applications I can choose from at a reasonable price (often free). Most of them work very well and the maps they provide are at least at current as that DVD I received. It is kind of a no brainer to use a smart phone for mapping and directions. But no matter how many cup holders your car may have it probably doesn't have a nice dashboard cell phone holder. A quick search shows dozens of such devices most of them available for under $35. And that is a very useful tech gift.

Fast Boot

Solid state hard drives are reaching the tipping point where prices are starting to decline as availability increases. At one time the Apple MacBook Air was the only real player. Now all the major manufactures are offering SSD options. There is something so cool about a very light, very thin laptop that boots right now. I am not suggesting that these are appropriate gifts as they are for the most part very pricey. What would make a very cool gift for that geek on your list is a solid state drive. I have a 2-3 year old net book that I got for about $300. It is an adequate machine, is light enough, and has a good enough battery life that it is a great travelling companion. It currently runs XP on a single GB of RAM. I would love to upgrade that machine with a couple of 2 GB RAM modules and a SSD hard drive. Prices for 128 GB SSD's are less than $250. So if anyone likes me enough to fork out that kind of loot the SSD would make an excellent gift. I can spring for my own RAM.

Power Every real geek has a plethora of portable devices…tablets, smart phones, media players, etc. And everyone seems to forget to either keep all their devices charged or doesn't bring enough charging devices to keep them all running. Portable battery packs are a must. These are small, portable devices that are usually chargeable using a wall socket or by connecting to a USB port on a running computer. They have one or more USB output ports which can be used to charge or run portable devices that have run out of juice. I never seem to have enough of these things as I am always “lending” one to friend or family who left their charger at home and are looking at a 4 hour flight. Do yourself a favor and gift these to the folks you will end up lending yours to. You get a lot more points for giving than lending.

Read Only

Paper is dead. It has taken about 15 years but eBooks are finally here to stay. I used to have walls and walls of floor to ceiling book shelves. All gone. I now read everything on an electronic device of some sort. My smart phone and tablet work great everywhere but in bright sunlight. For reading on the beach or porch I needed a “real” e-book device that uses ambient light instead of back lighting. It is a toss-up between the Kindle or the Nook device as far as the basic models go. I use a Kindle because I already had one-click shopping set up at Amazon. Everyone else in my family uses Nooks. If you don't want to spring for a reader for your geek gift recipient, gift cards are good choices. And don't forget the third caveat: If your significant other asks for an iPad 2 don't surprise them with an e-reader. Big mistake.

Other Tablets

The Kindle Fire looks like it might provide real competition to the iPad but choose the recipient carefully. If your geek friend hates the big guys such as Microsoft and Apple—and already has an Android phone—then a Kindle Fire would be a reasonable gift (and reasonably priced as well at about $200).

Speaking of tablets I saw an article posted on November 25, 2011 recommending the BlackBerry Playbook as one of the best tech gifts for dad. A few days later RIM pulled an HP and started selling Playbooks at a $300 discount. I don't know about you but this feels like RIM doesn't have a lot of faith in the future of the product and is trying to generate some cash before the bottom drops out. My advice is steer clear of the Playbook. No Playbooks on my gift list this year.

Stocking Stuffer

Portable USB flash drives are past the tipping point. I picked up a 64 GB model for less than $100 recently. You can never have too many of these because they have a limited useful life and because they have a tendency to disappear. Remember, these are for transferring files, not permanent file storage. One thing I ask of you is please, please do not give someone the thumb drive that looks like a thumb. That is unless the recipient is in pre-school. Or drives a really big truck. Or both.

HoHoHo! Happy Holidays!

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