This article is quite last minute, and I suspect it’s a hint by our Chief Content Officer to us Contributors as to what we should get him…let’s just not let him get his hopes up.

In the past six months, numerous advances have made the scene in the tech world, drawing drooling droves of techies to places like Best Buy, Egghead, and eBay looking for their much needed silicon fix. But still, few techies truly have the cash on hand to buy everything their greedy little hearts desire. But you may have a techie on your list of holiday gift recipients, and we all know how much it would warm their greedy little heart to give them something that they either haven’t (due to their cheap little heart) or have been unable to get themselves.

Now, the first thing to know, if you aren’t a techie, is that techies can be quite specific in what they want from an item that blinks and beeps, so a good alternative is always to give money, or to at least have a receipt handy for an exchange. But minor considerations like that aside, there are a number of things that any self respecting techie would love to have in his or her stocking.

PDA
The personal digital assistant, or PDA, came about around a year and a half ago, and has made leaps and bounds in that time. It went from something limited to some basic organizational capabilities to running a quite sophisticated OS with the capacity to run plenty of programs written in a widely supported language.

One of the original developers, Palm, has a gaggle of different models out depending upon the target audience. The Palm V, with its rechargeable battery, slim design, and lightweight, is sleek and chic for those tech-savvy businessmen in your life. Or the Palm VII, with its internal wireless modem, can keep your always-on-the-go techie connected with all the data he needs online (connections with reality are more difficult to forge). Models with color screens or extra memory are also available, as are adaptors which allow the unit to store pictures or type by means of a keyboard as opposed to the stylus.

Digital Camera
More of a toy than a necessity for the tech, the digital camera epitomizes everything about the tech. It stores things on a disk (or memory card), there are no hidden costs (like with buying and developing film), and best of all, it allows the techie to transfer files between a computer and a camera by means of a simple serial or USB cable, giving him the euphoric sensation that “networking has never been so easy”.

One of the oldest camera companies in the world, Kodak, is now mass producing digital cameras as well. With camera resolution ranging from 640×480 up to numerous megapixels, your options are nearly limitless. Functions are numerous, including audio annotation and burst photography, as well as time-lapse photography. As for lens capabilities, they’re about the same as standard photography, which are quite impressive. Other manufacturers like Sony also produce high quality digital cameras, so shop around. Price doesn’t necessarily imply quality, either, so a suggestion would be to look for the best match of nifty features and resolution to price. Also, make sure it has the LCD on the back for reviewing pictures. Without that, you kinda lose the whole “Digital Camera” aspect. Generally, as long as you’ve got greater than 1.5 Megapixel, your techie should be pleased.