The best kind of gift, someone once told
me, is one someone wants and would never buy for themselves.
That theory works well in choosing gifts
for the geeks on your holiday gift list.
I’m not using geek as a pejorative, but rather to refer to someone who
enjoys technology, clever gadgets, superhero stories and science fiction. When you look at how many people watch “Star
Wars” and the movies with Marvel and DC heroes, you realize geeks are all
around.
So how can you buy them gifts they will
enjoy?
The good news is you can, and should,
avoid the big ticket items. We geeks are extremely choosy about our phones and
laptops. We have to choose those
ourselves.
And we will put more effort into that
than we did into choosing a college.
The most expensive things I’d suggest
would be an Amazon Echo or a Google Home. Both are small devices you place in
your home. The device hears your commands when you call it by name, and you can
ask it to do a variety of things: answer questions, set timers, tell you the
weather, play music, etc.
The Echo will let you order items directly
from Amazon. The Google device lets you
add items to your Google Calendar and reads you your Gmails. Unfortunately it
works with only one Google account. The Echo and Home cost $180 and $130,
respectively.
These devices fall into the nice-to-have
category and are not must-haves, so they fall squarely in the thesis of the
gift giving I mentioned at the start.
In previous years, I have sung the
virtues of Google’s Chromecast as a way to get streaming video to your
television. By now I hope most of you
have something like Chromecast, such as Roku, Apple TV or the many
alternatives.
Google recently came out with Chromecast Audio, which hooks to your speakers and lets you stream audio from your phone,
PC or tablet. You may have the music coming to you from the music services
available from Google, Apple, Spotify and many others. Chromecast Audio is $30.
Fairfax based ThinkGeek.com has always
been a go-to place for geek gadgets, do-dads and clothing. I personally love the Jedi Fleece Robe and
the Chewbacca robe. They both look quite
warm and powerful.
Is your geek a little forgetful? The Tile device is a small square you can
attach to your keys or slide into your wallet, purse, backpack or laptop
case. If you misplace an item, your
phone can help you track it if it is in Bluetooth range--basically inside the
house.
If you lose your phone, push a button on
any Tile, and your phone beeps.
If your Tile is outside your phone’s
range, but within the range of another Tile user, you will be told where your
device is. The other Tile user will not know your device is close by.
The Automatic Pro is a device that hooks
into the diagnostic port on your car. It
reports data to your phone via the cellular network, telling you statistics
about how efficient your car is, the location, how much gas is left. It will even tell you speed statistics if you
want to spy on your teen driver. And it
elaborates on the check engine light and tells you more about what is wrong.
The Harmony remote system is a small box
you place in the line of sight of your AV equipment. Then using one of its
remotes, or an app on your phone, you can control the device even when you are
not in the line of sight of the devices.
Conventional remotes communicate by infrared so the remote normally has
to be where it can “see” the device.
I might misplace a remote,
but I generally know where my phone is.
And you do not have to remember what
channel ESPN is on. Just push the ESPN button in the app, and your TV turns on
and goes to the ESPN channel.
A geek loves little gadgets and
tools. Microcenter up in Fairfax has a
long windy checkout area full of little tools, gadgets and inexpensive USB
drives to delight a geek.
Monoprice.com is a great source for
additional phone chargers and cables.
No matter where you shop, compare prices
to Amazon. Especially if you have Amazon Prime and can often get two-day free
shipping. If your geek does not have
Prime, that in itself is a great gift. For $99 a year they get free two-day
shipping on many purchases as well as a lot of free movie streaming and even
some free online storage for photos.
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