What to buy a geek for the holidays

By Beth Pariseau, News Writer 18 Dec 2007 | SearchStorage.com

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In general, remember that when in doubt, a gift certificate to a consumer electronics store and a pound of coffee is a can't-miss combo for any geek on your list. (Yes, coffee. Do you know a single geek who isn't a heavy coffee drinker?) If you want to venture forth into more advanced gift buying, however, we asked some of the geekier types we know and trolled some of the geeky shopping haunts for some suggestions to get you started.

Geeky gift ideas from years past What to buy a geek, 2006 What to buy a geek, 2005 What to buy a geek, 2004

Fly Pentop Computer: Geeks appreciate anything that allows their computer to seem like it's reading their mind. The Fly Pentop captures whatever you write with it on Fly paper, stores it and allows it to be uploaded via USB. And once there, it's converted from handwriting to text. The geek who gets this would never have to feel lost in the analog world again. Wacom Products is another company with lots of geeky digital tablet products.

Eye.fi: "[I] want the Eye.fi for Christmas," Glasshouse's geeky vice president of data protection, Curtis Preston, typed out on a PDA. "SD [secure digital] [memory] card with Wifi. As soon as you snap, pics are uploaded via Wifi to your PC and fav pic site. Take pics away from home, store them on the 2 GB card, then turn on cam in house, and it uploads your picks automagically." We don't think that last part was a typo. Meanwhile, the newest 2 GB memory cards also make a good stocking stuffer even without Eye.fi.

Drobo: Several of our storage-focused geeks also mentioned Drobo, a consumer-scale product released earlier this year by BlueArc founder Geoff Barrall's latest brainchild, Data Robotics. The Drobo box, a black cube that will fit on a desk, contains four disk bays. You can add any SATA disk drives, and the box will automatically stripe data across them. Drobo's colored lights tell you when to replace drives. If it's red, replace the disk. If it's yellow, the disk is filling up. Green and all is well. "A very cool external storage solution," said IDC analyst Dave Reinsel. Never thought we'd hear "cool" and "storage solution" in the same sentence.

Matrox TripleHead2Go: This three-headed monster is the ideal computer monitor for the busy geek in your life. "This made me go, 'mmm, three screens at once,'" wrote Prudential Fox & Roach Realtors senior systems engineer and avowed geek Tory Skyers in an email. "I could have a kernel compiling on one, my Web pages and such on the other, and my email on one too, while I work on something on the fourth, if I use a laptop … gimme a minute to come up with something else I could work on …"

The latest HD-DVD player: "Most geeks will already have a PS3, which has Blu-ray, so they shouldn't need a Blu-ray player," said Luke Kannel, senior Windows server specialist for information systems at a healthcare company in the Midwest, in arguing for the HD-DVD option. Skyers went one better by suggesting the LG PC Blu-ray/HD-DVD combo drive, "so I can watch Transformers AND Die Hard with a Vengeance in HD without shelling out $15,000 for separate players." Speaking of Transformers, if a DVD player isn't in your budget, "for the kid in me, I like anything that reminds me of childhood -- this is typical amongst geeks," said Phillip Boylard, systems analyst for the University of New Mexico Hospital. "Transformers, GI Joes, Thundercats. Things like t-shirts, mugs and such are reasonably priced gifts to get a geek."

Nintendo Wii: Good luck finding one, but if you do, you'll have a very happy geek. "The cool gift and hardest gift to find this year … the reason it is so popular is that it is a console that is family friendly," Boylard said. "My grandmother, who is 85, plays it."

Kohler home generator: The data center energy crisis is obviously having echo effects at home for our geeks this year. "For something completely different, for the geek who has everything, how about a Kohler residential generator (LP or natural gas) with automated startup and transfer capability for about the price of a very large screen HDTV, so you can keep all of those home electronics and geek devices powered during your next power outage," said StorageIO founder Greg Schulz. "It's just like the larger industrial sized models used to power IT data centers." You can also find smaller hand-crankable chargers and transistor radios for a more modest price.

Other items our geeks mentioned: digital photo frames, "the ones with video and sound are only so-so, but the rest are nice!" according to Karl Lewis, storage administrator for the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan; a new alarm clock, Skyers suggests this pin clock); Bluetooth headsets; the latest and greatest cell phone (the iPhone ranked high on the list); and board games.

That's right, board games -- about as analog as they come. But according to Skyers, "If you ever wanted to see a grown man revert almost instantly, give him and a friend Crossbows and Catapults. I guarantee they will be on the kitchen floor yelling at each other for at least four hours!"

And after all, isn't that what the holidays are really all about?

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