Best Christmas Gifts of 2008

Electronics are of course the byword these days. Whether it's a new GPS device or an iPod, more and more the trend is for gadgets and devices that fit in your pocket and can make life on the road or at home a bit more fun. But there are a lot of gifts to buy for all members of your family this year. This year I did a lot of shopping online and ended up getting a lot of things for members of my family that they could and will use in the coming year.

For the Road Warrior:

A portable GPS device is the way to go. Whether you look at the more high-end Eclipse integrated audio reciever/GPS or a basic TomTom pocket unit, this is a device that can do wonders for making the life of the travelling parent that much easier. It's great for dropping kids off at cross-town addresses or getting to that little hole-in-the-wall diner for a lunch meeting on time.

This year I opted to get my parents the TomTom One, the basic, stripped-down GPS reciever unit. The fact that it's powered by a standard 12v car socket terminal or a computer's USB was very attractive, not to mention the small size and the detachable mounting bracket which is great for older cars. You get what you pay for with a TomTom, but it's a heck of a good deal for $135-$150- manually enter your destination and your origin point and you'll get instructions in your choice of pleasant voices and accents as to where to go. It's great for family cars as it will beep to warn younger drivers to slow down, and can rapidly find points of interest such as churches, emergency stations, or roadside stops.

If you are driving a more modern car, you may want to consider upgrading to an integrated recievier/GPS unit to simultaneously power your bluetooth, iPod, navigator, and stereo systems. This can get pricey very quickly, and I suggest you contact your local car audio specialists to make sure you find a piece of equipment that is compatible with your rig.

For the Photographer:

Though you probably can't get them any equipment they don't already have, one thing most shooters are always running low on is data storage space. At upwards of one gigabyte per photo presentation, it's easy to blow through a hard drive in no time flat.

A great gift for the digital camera operator in your life is a SeaGate portable hard disk drive, which can be found for around $150. The 250 gb model provided me with 232 gb of useable space, and that's without an out-of-box formatting. The platter spins at 5400 rpm, ensuring that you can more than keep up with USB 2.0 speeds- music played from the unit is crisp and smooth, and games play fluidly through the USB connections. At just a hair over six ounces and 3.3"x2.4" inches, it fits easily into almost any pocket and is sturdy enough to take quite a thumping with little ill-effect, which is a plus for a hard drive. It comes in a variety of striking colors and the metal case is very durable and well-made, and extremely quiet compared to a traditional hard drive.

For the Soldier:

If you've got a loved one heading overseas, there are fortunately a bevy of gifts to hand out. Portable electronics are the most popular item most soldiers take with them- a PSP boxed set which retails for around $300 is a great place to start, as is a Nintendo DS Lite with a carry case, which retails for about $225. These are wonderful ways for them to pass the time while sitting on a bus, which in this author's mind constitutes about 90% of the time he's spent in the military.

For the Amateur Shutterbug:

For portable, well-made camera options, the new Nikon Coolpix 8mpx camera is a tough one to beat. No bigger than a mid-sized cell-phone, it has a 3x optical zoom, 2.5" LCD screen, multiple options for coloration, contrast, and lighting, and has space for an on-board SD card for extended storage. Images are crisp and sharp and at a very high resolution for such a small camera. The biggest bonuses I looked at when considering cameras were the size- again, easily fitting into a pocket- and the brushed steel case, which is very durable and well-constructed. At around $150, it's a great way to break into the digital camera market without having to spend the money on a professional piece of equipment.

For the Video Gamer:

2008 was a great year for video games. One of the top-rated titles for multi-player games was Left 4 Dead, which puts you right in the middle of a George Romero-style Zombie thriller game. The frenetic, fast-paced gameplay is exceeded only by the need for teamwork and cooperation, which encourages local players and a lot of frenzied excitement. For your role-playing nut, Fallout 3 by Bethesda is both a great addition to the Bethesda lineup and a worthy successor to the Fallout series. The first-person apocalyptic adventure plays more like Oblivion or a puzzle game than a shooter, but regular encounters with tough adversaries will keep even a veteran gamer on their toes. However, the guns-blazing nut will definitely find Gears of War 2 to be a prized addition to their collection. The followup to the critically acclaimed Gears of War franchise, this game requires a fast trigger finger, faster reflexes, and is a twenty-hour thrillride of gun-blazing glory.

Gifts for the For the Outdoorsman:

Even after all these years, I still swear by Nomex flight gloves as being the best light-work foul-weather gloves on the market. Retailing for around $25 at actiongear.com or any military supplier, these gloves fit the hand well, provide great dexterity, and yet keep you warm and comfortable in all but the coldest and wettest weather. The leather conforms to your palm and fingers for surprising levels of grip and comfort, and the kevlar protects your hands from sudden flash heat.

If you need something a bit more durable hot to warm weather situation, then Camelbak's Duty Gloves are about the best deal on the market. I use them from everything from shooting to garage work and they excel in every regard. The thick padding and bevels on the glove help protect from shocks, cuts, and abrasions, but ventilation holes in the fingers allow air to slip through and the sturdy synthetic leather material breaths better than many commerical gloves available. They're a great pair of light to moderate-weather work gloves for $55, and a great deal at that.

For the Talker:

The best cell-phone gift for your local gadget-buff I've seen this year is to upgrade your current phone to the new LG Voyager VX10000. Though it's a bit bulkier than some of Motorola's lineups, it makes up for it by being another addition to LG's clamshell lineup of phone styles. The major improvement over prior models is the addition of a touchscreen on the front of the phone, which creates a large and visually impressive display right in your hand. A locking mechanism keeps you from accidentally dialing numbers while it's in your pocket, and folding the phone open reveals a full QWERTY keyboard for those of us who never quite got the knack of T9 texting. Add in a reasonably priced internet package and the option for a mobile TV connection, and you have a slick little piece of entertainment in the palm of your hand. Verizon hasn't quite caught up to Sprint yet in terms of mobile entertainment, but the price is right and the reception overall is fantastic almost everywhere in the nation. It retails for around $200, but you can easily get a discount if you shop around.

For the Hunter or Marksman:

If you want to find a multi-purpose scope for your local hunter, then the ACOG Trijicon is the way to go for your outdoorsman or even better, deploying soldier. The Trijicon series of rifle scopes sport not only low-level view magnificiation, but in some cases image enhancement for low-light shots and a free-floating sighting point inside the scope that can be used for rapid both-eye reflex target acquisition. Hunters and soldiers alike will love the bullet-drop compensator for longer-ranged shots, and the low-maintenance design ensures years of hassle-free service. Retailing for around $1,000 on the Trijicon website, ensure that you talk to your soldier or hunter first to make sure they can use this scope with their weapon system before you buy it!

For the Handyman:

It's hard to beat a multi-tool for a guy or gal who's always working or fixing things. Whether they're taking apart a server or just fixing things around the house, having a multi-tool in their pocket makes their life infinitely easier. Retailing for around $55, Leatherman and Gerber both make a proud series of multi-tools that everyone will appreciate having. Whether you need to loosen a bolt or cut a package open, the utility and use of this handy device is endless.

For the Wine Buff:

If you enjoy high-quality wine but can't exactly make the market, you may consider buying from Camas Prarie Winery. A locally owned family winery in Moscow, Idaho, it's owned and operated by Stu Scott and his wife for some 25 years now. A nationally-competitive company, they frequently take home gold medal awards at the annual national wine convention in San Francisco. They have a delightful array of merlots, cabernets, zinfandels, and dessert wines to go with every mood and occassion, and can ship all over the country. Visit camasprariewinery.com for more information.

For the Sentimentalist:

The best present I got this year was from my friend. She went online and found pictures of all my closest friends and put them into a small, leather-bound photo album. Though digital photos may be the wave of the future, having those images in my hand was the single most priceless thing I've ever been given in my life, and just goes to prove that just because something was cheap doesn't mean it can't be worth a tremendous amount of money. Remember to give from the heart this year, and good things will come of it.