25 Holiday Gifts Your Techie Will Love

What to get the techie in your life this holiday season? We've got a line up of gadgets, smartphones and PC products to die for -- even if you're really the geek in this equation and buying gifts for others that are really more for you. Get ready for 25 holiday gifts that techies will love.

What, you were expecting smartphones or handhelds? Don't worry, we'll get to those. First up on our holiday gift list is a robot -- the one thing no technophile can resist. The Rovio Bot from ThinkGeek.com is actually a roving Wi-Fi connected real-time media player that streams the audio and video it captures via Webcam and microphone to your PC's browser. It's also got a speaker for two-way audio.



Price: $229.99

Here's one for the littlest whitebox builder in your life, a DIY Electronics Design and Projects Kit from ThinkGeek.com. Projects one can build with this assortment of basic electronic parts include a light detector, an interactive noise maker and IC chip designs.



Price: $49.99

Flip's MinoHD is simply the best pocket-sized HD camcorder available, and the 120-minute edition gives your geek all the storage he or she needs to film that indie feature in a single take. The 2-inch antiglare display is terrific, and this baby can port video to the Web in mere moments. We're also fans of Flip's new customization portal, which lets you decorate the camcorder's case any way you like.



Price: $229.99

The nice thing about Zivio's Bluetooth headset is all the options you get -- including nine different earpieces in "scoop" and "mushroom" shapes, two ear loops and two different lengths of USB charging cable.



Price: $129.99

For your James Bond wannabe, ThinkGeek.com offers these 1.3-megapixel Spy Camera Sunglasses. They'll be able to shoot still photos on the sly via RF remote control, and do it for as long as they like. The battery, which is recharged via the USB 2.0 interface that also transfers data to the PC, lasts up to nine hours. Oh, and these shady shades also house an MP3 player.



Price: $79.99

Told you we'd get to the handhelds. First up is a device that's not going to be everybody's favorite, but it'll surely be a hit with any Twitter addicts you know. This is San Francisco-based Peek's TwitterPeek, a device built exclusively to read and post messages to the Twitter microblogging service. The TwitterPeek is available exclusively from Amazon.com.



Price: $199.95

Motorola's Droid for the U.S. market is the first smartphone based on Google's Android 2.0 platform, and Europeans will soon get their own version called the Motorola Milestone. In the U.S., Motorola is teaming up with Verizon for its rollout of the Droid, which features a 3.7-inch touch screen, 5-megapixel camera, slide-out QWERTY keyboard and a 16-GB memory card.

Price: $199 after rebates, two-year lock-in

Hero is Sprint's first Android smartphone and has beveled edges, an anti-fingerprint screen coating, a 3.2-inch HVGA touch-screen display with pinch-to-zoom capability, an embedded GPS, a digital compass, a gravity sensor, a 5-megapixel autofocus camera and an expandable microSD memory slot. It's the first U.S. smartphone to use HTC Sense, allowing users to customize their home screens using different panels and widgets.



Price: $179 after rebates, two-year lock-in

Motorola's Cliq, available through T-Mobile, is the first phone to use Motorola's much-touted MotoBlur -- essentially an Android skin. It's got a 3.1-inch touch screen with QWERTY slider keyboard on the side, and includes a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus, 6 hours of battery talk time, a Qualcomm MSM7201A 528MHz processor, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS enablement, 256 MB of storage and a microSD slot with expandable 32-GB capacity.



Price: $199 after rebates, two-year lock-in

Samsung's Moment has an 800MHz processor, 3.2-inch AMOLED screen, optional trackpad and 3.2-megapixel camera. Thanks to Android, it also includes built-in Google search and other Google features like Maps, Gmail and YouTube. Sprint is the carrier.



Price: $179 after rebates and two-year lock-in

Still making fun of Microsoft's Zune? Well, think again -- the Zune HD is loaded with multitouch, accelerometer and 3D graphics courtesy of Nvidia's Tegra platform. This is a cool little device that makes portable gaming even more exciting, all to the sound of your favorite music. It comes in 16-MB and 32-MB flavors, and the case can be personalized to your taste.



Prices: $219.99 (16GB), $289.99 (32GB)

Acer's Ferarri One is a netbook that may be the first to feature a processor from AMD, which has generally avoided a product category defined by archrival Intel. But the Ferrari One's 11.6-inch display sure looks netbookish to us, though the dual-core AMD Athlon X2 L310, 250-GB hard drive and up to 2GB of memory do push the limits on what a little netbook is supposed to be. But hey, it's got Ferrari's famous red paintjob, so what's not to like?



Price: Approx. $750

Lenovo's new IdeaPad Y550P notebook is built around Intel's latest Core i7 mobile processor. Intel's Turbo Boost technology automatically speeds up the processor when the PC needs an extra performance boost. If that doesn't have you swiping the credit card, consider the Y550P's 15.6-inch, 16:9 wide-screen display; 1.3-megapixel Web camera; Nvidia discrete graphics; Dolby Home Theater surround sound speakers and a battery life of four-and-a-half hours.



Price: $550-$1,149

Acer has added a notebook to its Aspire Timeline series, the AS1810TZ, which has Microsoft Windows 7 as well as a multi-gesture touchpad and Intel CULV dual-core processors.



The compact portable weighs in at just 3.08 pounds with an 11.6-inch, HD LED-backlit display; 320-GB hard drive; Intel Wi-Fi Link 1000; Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR; full-size Acer FineTip keyboard; integrated Acer Crystal Eye Webcam and digital microphone.



Price: $549.99

HP's new Compaq Presario CQ61 series notebook features a glossy black finish and the line's iconic touchpad design. Powering this Windows 7-loaded, 15.6-inch laptop is an AMD Sempron processor and ATI Radeon HD 4200 graphics. A 160-GB hard disk drive and 2 GB of system memory round out the specs.



Price: $399 ($100 rebate available from Oct. 18 to Dec. 19)

Just when you thought things couldn't get any better, Apple goes and releases a new MacBook. The 13.3-inch glossy wide-screen, LED-backlit display has a wide-screen resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels. Also new -- the entire multitouch trackpad acts as the button -- there is no separate button---and users can click anywhere on the touch-friendly glass surface. And since it's multitouch, you can use one or more fingers to scroll, pinch, swipe and rotate documents, images and applications. Apple also says that the built-in lithium-polymer battery offers the longest MacBook battery life ever -- up to 7 hours on a single charge, and can be recharged up to 1,000 times, which is good for about five years of typical usage.



Price: $999

Apple has revamped its Mac Mini line, offering three upgraded models with 160-GB, 320-GB or 500-GB hard drives. The entry-level Mac Mini has a 2.26-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of memory and Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics. The $799 model bumps up to a 2.53-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo chip and 4GB of memory. Finally, the top-of-the-line features the 2.53-GHz Intel processor but adds two 500-GB hard drives for supersized storage. These units are also big on energy savings -- they use less than 16 watts of power when idle, which is 4.5 times less than a similarly equipped tower server, according to Apple.



Prices: $599, $799, $999

Lenovo is calling all gamers and hardcore multimedia users with the new IdeaCenter B500 desktop. This all-in-one has an Intel Core 2 Quad processor, powerful discrete graphics, up to 8 GB of DDR3 memory and 1 TB of hard disk drive storage space. The B500 has a 23-inch full HD (1920x1080) 16:9 wide-screen, two JBL5-watt integrated speakers, Webcam, and a 4-in-1 remote control that acts like a motion-drive game controller. Additional features include a VoIP handset, air mouse, media remote and the CamSuite, a Webcam focus tool that also adds special effects to live video feeds.



Price: Starting at $649

HP's latest Compaq desktop offering for consumers is the Compaq Presario CQ4010, a very thin tower that ships with Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium. Specs include an AMD Sempron processor, the Nvidia nForce MCP61 chipset, 2GB of system memory and a 250-GB hard disk drive.



Price: $309

The EeeTop from Asus takes that company's flair for netbooks to the desktop. This all-in-one PC features an Intel Atom processor on the Nvidia Ion graphics platform, making it low-power but surprisingly robust in terms of visual experience. The EeeTop has a 20-inch HD widescreen and 5:1 surround sound.



Price: Approx. $600

HP's new lineup of all-in-one touch-screen PCs includes the TouchSmart 300 series with processors from AMD and the TouchSmart 600 series with chips from Intel. HP's slim, power-saving design and small footprint belies the big picture you're getting here -- on a 20-inch, 16:9 HD widescreen display with the 300 series and a 23-inch 16:9 full HD 1080p widescreen display. Premium stereo speakers, a built-in Webcam and microphone and wireless keyboard round out the package.



Price: $899 (TouchSmart 300 series), $1,049 (TouchSmart 600 series)

Finally, after much rumor and innuendo, the brand-spanking-new Apple's Magic Mouse is here. The multitouch device lets users scroll in any direction with one finger, swipe through Web pages and photos with two fingers and click and double-click anywhere. Thanks to a chip inside, the Magic Mouse doesn't confuse a scroll with a swipe, and can also tell when users are just resting a hand on it. The little fellow supports momentum scrolling -- similar to iPhone and iPod touch -- where the scrolling speed is dictated by how fast or slowly gestures are performed.



Price: $69

I-Tech's Virtual Laser Keyboard (VKB) is the only keyboard that operates in total darkness. The keyboard uses the company's proprietary IR laser-based detection technology that studies the user's finger movements to interpret and record keystrokes. The keyboard also uses a light projection of a full-sized QWERTY computer keyboard on almost any surface. The VKB can be used with PCs or Macs, as well as some smartphones and BlackBerries, including the new 8100, 8300 and 8800 models.



Price: $148.99

If your favorite techie is a fan of "The Simpsons," they'll probably get a kick out of the nasty Charles Montgomery Burns, owner of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, filming and recording you. Via a USB, Mr. Burns runs on PC Windows 98, 2000, XP and Vista, and can be used with Skype, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and AOL messenger.



Price: $38.95

If you bought your favorite techie an Amazon Kindle or the Nook from Barnes & Noble, probably not a lot. So why not consider Bookeen's Cybook Opus? This 5-inch E-book reader has a 600x800 panel screen at 200 dpi, which does the trick, and Bookeen isn't just a hook to drag readers into a big-box book retailer.



Price: $229