Top 10 greatest geek gifts

Top 10 greatest geek gifts

It's Christmas time once again and stockings are waiting to be filled across the land. Buying technology for someone is always tricky and, rather than try and recommend specific stuff that's in the shops now, Shaun and I have done a roundup of what we wish could have been in our Christmas stockings over the years.

This, of course, means that some of the things on the list either aren't available now, or are so outdated that you wouldn't want them to be. But the list will give you ideas of what makes a good geek gift and what doesn't.

As ever, Shaun and I argued long and hard about what to put on the list. We got our top 10, but still included a pair of honourable mentions. Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments section.

10. Iomega Zip drive
Shaun Nichols: In today's world of 1GB thumb drives, web-based storage services and DVD-burning laptops, external media drives are becoming increasingly rare. Ten to 15 years ago, however, they were all the rage. And none was more popular than the 100MB Iomega Zip drive.

The Zip drive was everywhere in the heyday of the dotcom boom. PC vendors offered the drives as a built-in option for a number of years, and the Zip disk in its individual plastic case became a staple of any college student's book bag.

That's not to say that the drive wasn't without its faults; external Zip drives were notoriously fragile and prone to a serious defect known as the 'click of death'. But, as the alternatives were the 1.44MB floppy disk or an expensive CD burner system, the Zip drive won by a landslide.

Iain Thomson: I knew the Zip drive was popular when the one on my desk got stolen. I'd had it in for review and left it there to check upload and download speeds the next day. However, despite questioning all those around, the drive was nowhere to be seen.

Zip drives were so popular that production companies started referring to 'zipping' something over to you, much as people now refer to 'Googling' something. Back in the day this would have been a great Christmas gift.

9. Optical mouse
Iain Thomson: The first optical mouse was a gift indeed for geeks everywhere. Up until that point mice had been controlled by a track ball inside the casing. While this worked well on mouse mats and certain hard surfaces, it was no use whatsoever on surfaces that couldn't get traction on the ball.

You also had to open the thing up once in a while and scrape off the accumulated gunk that built up on the control wheels if you wanted the thing to work.

But with the optical mouse you just needed a surface to roll a laser along. At last you could use a laptop in bed by running the mouse along the sheets. You could dump the mouse mat and just use the desk instead. The optical mouse would have been a great gift, and it's a design that will stay with us.

Shaun Nichols: There are few advancements more underrated than the transition from the trackball to the optical mouse. It is one of those things that doesn't seem like a big deal until you use it, at which point you can never imagine going back.

There are still some limitations, such as the ability to work on certain types of surfaces, but by and large the optical technology has been the most important thing to happen to the mouse since the advent of the second button and scroll wheel.

8. Lenovo ThinkPad X300
Iain Thomson: OK, this was a personal choice for me as I'm hoping that a family member reading this might buy one for me. It's never going to happen, but if wishing made it so ...

I've been a ThinkPad user for nearly a decade and to my mind nobody builds a better laptop. They are built to last, have excellent features and, while you pay for quality, it's worth it.

The X300 combines the slim design you'd expect in an ultraportable, with full features and a solid state hard drive. This isn't a Macbook Air; it's a proper laptop with an Ethernet port, optical drive and a removable battery. All this in a form factor 22mm deep.

Now let's not forget that it's very expensive, but surely that's the essence of a good gift: something that you don't buy yourself. So if there's a geek in your life and you're feeling rich, splash out on one of these.

Shaun Nichols: Though I'm a Mac guy outside the office, I must say that I have grown to love my trusty ThinkPad. The IBM influence is still very apparent; they are buttoned-down, all-business machines. Rugged and well-made, they're also formidably equipped.

As soon as Iain approves my expense filing for that new 30in monitor, I'll be more than happy to lobby the company to spring for an X300.

7. Palm Pilot
Iain Thomson: The original Palm Pilot was a thing of beauty, and the ideal geek gift. The Newton that came before it was OK, but the handwriting recognition sucked and the battery life wasn't much to write home about. But the Palm was perfect: long battery life, great operating system and very easy to use. It made the Filofax look like, well, a bunch of pieces of dead tree wrapped in leather.

The Palm Pilot was the undisputed king of handheld computing for years. You could get a keyboard it plugged into to turn it into a word processor, it held all your addresses and you could even send contact details to other users via IRC. All this in something you could fit in a shirt pocket.

Sadly, Palm has fallen on hard times over the years and the promise of earlier products has been sadly wasted. But those early models were something to treasure.

Shaun Nichols: What the iPhone has been to the Web 2.0 crowd, the Palm Pilot was to the first dotcom boom. Had the company thought to join forces with a mobile phone operator earlier, we could still be talking about a Palm monopoly on the smartphone market.

While Palm wasn't the first to build such a device, it was the first to really get it right, and those are the companies that get remembered. It's a shame that Palm has fallen on such hard times. Hopefully it'll rebound and we won't have to refer to Palm as a mere footnote in tech history.

6. LCD monitor
Shaun Nichols: The desktop LCD monitor has become commonplace in recent years, reducing its status as a geek luxury item. However, when these things first began rolling out in the early part of the decade, they were rather cool. Apple, in particular, offered some downright gorgeous displays with the Studio line.

At a time when most screens were big square CRT boxes that weighed half a ton, LCD monitors were a sure-fire way to make any geek's holiday. Not only were they sleeker and lighter with a larger rectangular screen, but they freed up valuable desk space and required less energy.

Iain Thomson: The move to LCD was a godsend. The slim panels made life so much easier than lugging a great CRT monitor around the office. At last it was possible to have a computer running on a small desk without having to have the keyboard on your lap.

For enterprise buyers the LCD was the business. In areas like London, San Francisco, New York and Tokyo, where office space was very expensive, a LCD screen saved costs and power.

5. The Altair
Iain Thomson: For about a year in the 1970s the Altair was the ultimate geek gift as it was the first generally available home computer. To be sure, it wasn't useful for anything much. There was no screen and you programmed it by flicking switches back and forth. If you did it correctly then you were rewarded with flashing lights. Plus you had to build the thing yourself.

But the Altair was catnip to geeks. It really was a computer you could build in your garage and program rather than trying to get time on the office mainframe. Any geek who got it would have been overjoyed, until the Apple I came out that is.

Shaun Nichols: For all the talk afforded to the personal computers of the 1980s, the Altair really doesn't get its proper due. Though it was little more than a fancy blinking box to the vast majority of the population, the Altair was a milestone in that it showed that there really was a market for desktop computers.

It is also rather important in that it used a Basic language written by two college students who were operating what they fancied to be a software start-up out of their dorm rooms. They called their company 'Micro-Soft'. Without Altair Basic, it's a pretty safe bet that this company would never have got off the ground.

4. Apple iPhone
Shaun Nichols: Should the iPhone be ranked higher as a geek gift item? Possibly. It is, after all, the most sought-after gadget on the market right now. However, the new iPhone was released in late June, meaning that any early adopter worth their salt has already grabbed one.

There's not a lot you can say about the iPhone that hasn't already been said. At the ripe old age of 18 months, it has moved past the geek chic phase and into a fully-fledged consumer electronics star. However, the addition of the App Store and the recent efforts to port Linux, are adding a whole new level of possibilities for geeky tinkering.

Iain Thomson: Actually, I'd be a little pissed off if I got an iPhone in my Christmas stocking. Yes, it's a great geek device, but the cost to run the thing is outrageous.

Imagine someone giving you a Christmas present that cost over $1,000 to use, and you're tied to one network to do so. It makes the lack of batteries in toys seem like a minor inconvenience.

3. Commodore 64
Shaun Nichols: One of the first personal computers to take to the home market (along with the Apple II and Atari) the Commodore 64 did, in fact, grace the base of many Christmas trees in the 1980s. The result was a flood of grown up geeks who hold a soft spot in their heart for the C64.

If you don't have an old C64 up in the attic to dust off, you can get one on the cheap as a nostalgic gift for the geek in your life. The glut of machines produced in the 1980s has hardly left the C64 as a collector's item, and machines can still be had for about $30 on eBay.

Iain Thomson: The C64 was also the first gaming PC. There are people out there who will spend $3,000+ on a system that can play the latest games fast, but the C64 was for many years the ultimate gaming platform.

Sure, you couldn't overclock it or run open source games, but if I'd had one I would have been a happy little geek indeed.

2. Apple shares
Iain Thomson: Apple held its initial public offering in December 1980 and a great Christmas gift would have been a share or two.

When Apple went public the shares were sold at $22. However, the stock has been split a few times since then and a share today would be worth around 50 times what you paid for it.

Apple's IPO was a revolutionary move. In a stroke it created more than 300 millionaires of staff who had been working in exchange for stock. The IPO helped foster the culture of rewarding staff in stock, something that was to become a mainstay of Silicon Valley and opened up the possibility of a start-up's receptionist being able to retire at 30.

Giving shares isn't the most Christmassy thing to do, and there have been plenty of ups and downs in the stock price over the years, but a few Apple shares would have been a great stocking filler.

Shaun Nichols: Anyone astute (or lucky) enough to have given out Apple shares as a gift undoubtedly deserves the fortune those shares would have yielded. I guess it's a bit of a cop-out to list Apple shares as good gift idea, but it's food for thought when stumped on shopping for a geek. Perhaps a share or two in an interesting tech firm could become the ultimate 'gift that keeps on giving'.

1. Apple iPod
Shaun Nichols: As far as holiday heavyweights go, they don't get much bigger than the iPod. For more than half a decade, the Apple music player has been top dog in the portable media market. In recent years, each of the individual colours of the iPod Nano, Classic and Touch outsell competing devices on their own.

And unlike the iPhone, Apple often updates the iPod in the late summer/early autumn. This makes the players still very fresh on geek hot-lists come the holiday shopping season.

Iain Thomson: I held off on the iPod for many years. The headphones are rubbish, the batteries are suspect and you pay through the nose for the actual device. But then I was given one and I'm growing to love it.

The interface is fantastic, the device is a poem of metal and plastic and the sound is good. I've bought media players since they first came out and the iPod is best of breed.

Honourable Mention - Batteries
Iain Thomson: Do you want to know the number-one thing most geeks wish for at Christmas? Batteries.

Almost all electronic devices come without them and I'm sure most people reading this will remember trying to scavenge batteries out of the remote control to try and make a Christmas gift work.

Shaun Nichols: Forget socks and underwear, batteries are the ultimate stocking stuffer. Growing up, AAs were a staple of mine and many other people's wish lists. Anybody who has ever had to put off opening a new toy/gadget because of a lack of batteries knows all too well how important they are.

These days, packs of batteries are no longer a necessity in many gadgets. That doesn't mean that batteries don't make a great gift. What geek wouldn't want a new phone or laptop battery pack to keep around?

Honourable Mention - Nintendo Wii
Shaun Nichols: Why is the Wii such a great geek gift? It does what virtual reality, combat simulation and the Segway all failed to do: combine technolust with honest-to-goodness exercise.

As many of us now spend our days sitting at a desk pounding away at keys, it's more important than ever to get some physical activity in. What better way to do that than with the old geek standby, the gaming console?

Iain Thomson: We argued about the Wii. It's not a serious bit of technology, just a dumb computer with a good graphics card, I said. But after playing with a Wii for a while I take it back.

Integrate the motion controllers and you've got more than a PC would ever give you. OK, you're going to end up with sore shoulder muscles, but the Wii is a fitting geek gift.