Gratuitous Gifts
When you need something that isn’t inherently expensive, but has the same impact on the techie, get him something that he can always use: cables and/or trinkets. There are plenty of types of cables you could get him. USB cables, parallel cables, serial cables, networking cables, power cables, even speaker wire is good. If he travels a lot, along with the cables toss in a power adaptor kit.
Trinket-wise, even some rather tacky gifts will please a techie. For example, a key chain made from some 30-pin RAM is always a nice gift, as is the standard 120mm computer fan.
Gifts that Keep on Giving
Perhaps one of the best gifts right now, considering the state of the NASDAQ, is stock. With the recent bear on tech stocks, prices are at 52-week lows for innumerable stocks. From Dell to Sun Microsystems to AMD to the dot com outfit around the corner, tech stocks have taken a beating lately. This means that for a small chunk of change one can grab hold of a few shares of whatever they want. When the market comes back strong, your techie will be quite happy looking at his portfolio (I know I will be).
The Splurge
If you really want to make your techie happy, you could always splurge and just take him to Egghead to let him pick what he wants. 1.4GHz chips are out, as are numerous ungodly huge hard drives, and DVD-RAM drives. However, stuff like this might be a bit more of a bite on your pocketbook than the other gifts, which have come down in price surprisingly recently.
If All Else Fails…
…give money. Your techie likely has a specific plan of what he wants to upgrade when, or what he wants next. He very likely already knows where his computer network is headed and when. If you give him money, he can actualize his dream, making everybody happy, although he may become a tad more reclusive as he holes himself up into the computer room.
Beyond these simple ideas, numerous other things are available for you to get your techie, dependent upon what your techie likes. Gag gifts like the soundtrack to the movie Hackers would be funny, as would others. But then, I have always liked the idea of asking the techie what he wants for Christmas, or at least paying attention to the hints (like the message on the front lawn written in flaming gasoline).
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