‘Tis the season to be geeky

Less than a week until Christmas. Still have a few slots left to fill on the gift-giving list? For those slots occupied by the names of geeks, I’ve compiled the following mini-list of geek gifts with a serious wow factor. And they’re all Windows-compatible, too.

One of my recent faves is the Sony MPD-AP2OU. Available on the street for around $250, this device is a USB 2.0 CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive. The MPD-AP2OU does most everything you could want from a portable CD device. It’s a 24x CD-R, a 10x CD-RW, a 24X CD-ROM player and an 8x DVD-ROM player. Additionally it handles MP3 and standard music CD formats along with ID3 tags and playlists. It also supports DVD-Video, Video CD, Photo CD ,and CD Extra formats among others for video playback. The little guy comes with a recharging cradle that can also act as a docking station, and has a rated battery life of 10 hours, though this turns out to be for straight music playback; DVD playing is more like three hours. This device talks to Windows and Macintosh PCs, though I haven’t yet been able to get it to talk to a Slackware installation.

I used the MPD-AP2OU to great effect with the next item down on this list, the Toshiba Portege R100, Toshiba’s slick, Titanium-clad ultra-portable notebook. This little beauty truly rocks. Even with an extended life battery installed, it still weighs only slightly over three pounds. Screen resolution is excellent and the keyboard isn’t sized for Christmas elves, either. The little box includes ports for any connection you’d like to make — including Ethernet, 56K modem, USB, and firewire — but you’ll need to purchase any kind of external drive separately. The R100 comes with an internal hard disk only. Performance proved excellent, though near the end of my test cycle, the power supply suddenly died. I’d still give this one to any road warrior on my list, though with a $3,000 starting price tag, he’d better be a really close friend.

After my power supply gaff with the R100, Toshiba was quick to respond with another new product, namely its Portege M205. This is its newest tablet PC, running Windows XP Tablet Edition. I’m finally getting an idea of how cool Microsoft’s OneNote can be when it’s installed where it’s supposed to be. The M205, however, is a highly polished device considering that tablets have only been around for a year or two. By day it’s a standard notebook weighing between four and five pounds. Twist a locking tab, however, and it’s quickly transformed into a tablet by simply turning the screen and folding it down over the keyboard. Toshiba sent a stylus, which works as advertised, and also included an external CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, though I still like my Sony better for those chores.

Still need more? Well, check out Hewlett-Packard’s Media Center PC m370n. This is an amazing little box designed to bring your stereo rack into the 21st century. And it’s well designed with features like dedicated front panel buttons that take you directly to important multimedia features, such as the photo slide show, MP3 playlist, or video playlist. You also get buttons for immediate TV viewing and even the TV channel guide. HP loads a whole lot of useful software on this box, including a full-featured photography suite as well as DVD and CD burning utilities. In an especially nice touch for folks like my dad, there’s a camera dock on top of the PC that lets you dock your digital camera directly to the PC for brain-dead image transfers.

There’s more, but darn it I’m out of space again. Happy holidays and thanks for reading.