The colleague: one of the more difficult people in your life to buy a present for come holiday season. You might not know them as well as your family, but you likely spend an inordinate amount of time with them. Luckily that means you're more familiar with their work habits than most, so you're in a unique position to nab them a gift that not only expresses how you feel about your friendship, but is also something they can actually use. And that -- of course -- is where we come in. The Engadget Holiday Gift Guide is here to quell your fears of office discomfort, and lead you to the promised land of co-worker gift satisfaction. Read on for the full rundown, and don't forget to check out our other guides
right here!
$0-50
Haute Diggity Dog iBone - If your co-worker has an iPhone and a dog, they'd probably be thrilled at this oh-so-modern chew toy. If they don't have an iPhone or a dog, they'll probably take this the wrong way. Your move.
$11.95 -
Buy from Haute Diggity Dog
Lite Blue TOOL - Oh yes, you're undeniably jealous that she's rocking a PSP-3000 in the break room while you limp along on your first-gen model with that little nick in the screen, but deep down you feel sorry for her: she's never known the joy of homebrew. This Lite Blue TOOL could solve all that, making hacking a later-gen PSP a breeze. A few shared ISOs later and... is this love that you're feeling?
$30 -
Buy from Code Junkies
Solo CheckFast Netbook Mini messenger bag - Your jet-setting colleague slimmed down to a netbook and a phone months ago, but since he's still stashing them in that ghastly messenger bag of his, he's not really reaping the true rewards of traveling light. The Solo CheckFast Netbook Mini bag is designed to TSA's specifications in order to breeze that netbook through security without ever taking it out, and is specially fitted to 11-inch and under mini laptops.
$25 to $35 -
Shop for Solo CheckFast Netbook bag
$51-100
HDD Stage Rack - If they seem to spend more time rummaging around under their desk with a half-disassembled computer than actually working, they might appreciate this HDD Stage Rack, which allows for "plug and play" usage of internal 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch drives over USB 2.0 and eSATA connections. Then again, maybe they like it under there.
$71.65 -
Buy from Geek Stuff 4 U
Steelseries Ikari Laser mouse - Sure, it might say "gaming mouse" on the label, but you know what else takes exceptional eye-hand coordination and can benefit from on-the-fly adjustable sensitivity and ultra-accurate tracking? Excel.
$70 -
Shop for SteelSeries Ikari
Audio-Technica ATH-ANC7 QuietPoint headphones - Yeah, whenever you tell him to turn down that Alanis Morissette -- and to
please stop singing along -- he readily complies, but 15 minutes later you're faced with the same situation and life just doesn't seem worth living anymore. Maybe these can help. They're comfortable enough that it shouldn't be too much to ask him to wear them, and if he just won't comply you can ask to "borrow" them and bask in the magic of noise cancellation -- and that Sarah McLachlan mixtape you've been dying to play yourself.
$90 to $170 -
Shop for Audio-Technica ATH-ANC7
$101-250
Nanovision MiMo UM-710 - You can never have too much screen real estate, but sometimes you run out of physical desk to hold it all. Nanovision's MiMo UM-710 can fill that one remaining gap in your colleague's desk with seven glorious inches of productivity, and since it plugs in over USB there's no extra video card to worry about.
$130 -
Buy from The Gadgeteers
Verbarius electronic clock - Sure, they've got a clock on their computer, their phone -- even the photocopier they walked past ten seconds ago -- but for some reason they're ever-so-curious what your opinion on the time might be. The Verbarious tells it to them in plain english so you don't have to: "thirty-one past noon" instead of your garden variety "12:31." You can switch between English, German, Spanish, French and Russian to spice things up further.
$199 -
Buy from Art Lebedev
SteelSeries 7G keyboard - Everybody loves to feel productive, but ever since your interoffice basketball league started drug testing, those performance-enhancers just aren't going to do the trick anymore. Luckily, the SteelSeries 7G has some of the clickiest, clackiest keys this side of the 90s, which makes even the most mundane of IMs
feel like Pulitzer-worthy prose. Another "gaming" accessory that's really better suited to the office, the keyboard's 18K gold-plated mechanical switches put that cheesy came-with-the-computer keyboard of yours to shame. Keep this one for yourself.
$103 to $149 -
Shop for SteelSeries 7G
$251 - $500
Sling Media's Slingbox PRO-HD - It's common knowledge that no one around the office talks about, but we all like to keep a small window of TV streaming in to dull the pain of being locked in a cube for eight (or more) hours by The Man. To that end, there's hardly a better gift for your fellow cube-dwellers than the Slingbox PRO-HD. Hey, it'll even save you a few vacation days during March Madness.
$299.99 -
Buy from Sling Media
Archos 5 - Believe it or not, there's a decent chance your colleague will find a need for a PMP with an expansive screen, inbuilt WWAN and portable PVR capabilities. And even if he / she doesn't actually
need those niceties, we dare you to find a co-worker who wouldn't gleefully accept it.
$349.99 to $449.99 -
Buy from Archos
ZeeVee's ZvBox - Given just how much internet TV your buddy to the left consumes during the day, don't you think he / she would appreciate a simple way to do so on their television at home? ZeeVee's localcasting box is the cure for the common lack-of-a-HTPC -- just make sure you're giving it to someone with technical prowess.
$499 -
Buy from ZeeVee
$501 - $1000
500GB Sanho HyperDrive COLORSPACE UDMA - There are photo backup devices, and then there's the Sanho HyperDrive COLORSPACE UDMA. Of course, we can only wholeheartedly recommend giving this to colleagues who are looking to make that amateur shooting gig into something more substantial, but we can pretty much wager 1 in 5 corporate drones have such a scenario in mind.
$549 -
Buy from HyperDrive
Dell M109S DLP Projector + 40-inch screen - So, here's the quandary. You're all about some after-hours Halo action, but you're not down with bringing the kit each time. Solution? Gift your dearest team member with this hot, hot combo and let him / her do the hauling. No one said this had to be altruistic.
$619 -
Buy from Dell
LaCie 2.5TB 5big Network - Just like everyone needs more fruitcake, socks and underwear, everyone needs more storage. Really, it's a fact of life. That said, you can't go wrong with LaCie's 2.5TB 5big Network, which should certainly stay well below capacity until you give him / her the same box next year for half the price and twice the room.
$899.99 -
Buy from LaCie
RIM BlackBerry Bold - Being that you're out shopping for a
colleague and all, it makes sense to get him / her a replacement mobile that's geared for business. Thankfully, the Bold isn't a half bad personal phone either, and we hear it even makes you Usain Bolt-like for the first few days of ownership. No guarantees on that one, though.
$549.99 off contract -
Buy from AT&T
$1001+
Dell Precision M6400 Covet - For those employees looking to really reward their hard-working co-workers, we can't think of many machines more well suited for the task that Dell's appropriately named Precision M6400 Covet mobile workstation. Sure, it'll run you just south of four large, but it pretty much ensures he / she will come to your wedding with oodles of loaded up gift cards.
$3,859+ -
Buy from Dell
Drobo + DroboShare - Never mind that you know exactly what kinds of dark, decadent interoffice love letters will be redundantly stored on this thing, the point is to make your colleague happy. And look, giving him / her the assurance that those steamy quips won't vanish forever if the boss confiscates the company computer will undoubtedly make a lovestruck co-worker immeasurably jovial. For better or worse.
$1,198 for the pair -
Buy from Drobo
CineMassive OmegaPlex - Nothing says "job well done" quite like 27.6 million pixels across a dozen panels. Or a $12,995 present. Incredibly, you can gift someone with something that fits
both criteria in the gargantuan CineMassive OmegaPlex. We don't reckon we need to clue you in on what you could do with 7,860 x 3,600 worth of resolution, but let's just say you'd never have to look at overlapping Excel sheets ever again.
$12,995 -
Buy from CineMassive
posted December 23rd 2008 2:35PM
I'd like to see somebody get their co-worker (Read:me) that dell lappy....
Glad this came out with so much time left to shop!
and ever more days of actually working...i mean I plan on going into the office on Xmas Eve and on Xmas to deliver my gifts
I wish I had rich colleagues... sigh...
Show 'em how much you care: a $15 gift card to Circuit City.
most office parties are over with.
you can't be serious with this list...no coworker deserves anything past the solo bag.
I don't think most people are utilizing these lists. I think they serve two purposes:
1. Engadget readers love to see lists of cool gadgets- even if they've already been reviewed on Engadget
2. Engadget readers love to sit there and masturbate to all the cool things their co-workers would get for THEM.
3. To stimulate trolling about whether there should be / should not be Apple products on the list.
Lucky me my girlfriend got me those Audio Technicas
"...or maybe they like it down there..."
your mom likes it down there!
wow...I just got a microplush throw
"Scott, I sold my car so I could by you a CineMassive OmegaPlex."
"Oh, uh, thanks. I got you an iBone."
does anyone else laugh when they read iBone?
I just realized that.
Ummm...who gives their co-worker anything over like...$50?
The Wu-Tang Clan.
Sam = Perfect answer,
but do they really call each other colleagues?
They refer to themselfs as the Killer Bee's.
Maybe Engadget should do a Holiday Gift Guide for "Killer Bee's on da Swarm!"
How about getting them exactly what they deserve: NOTHING.
As far as I know the PSP Tool only allows you to get into service mode and without a custom IPL (boot code) you can't run any homebrew apps.
that's what the magic memory stick is for. the files are free and if you don't have a memory stick, then i doubt you need homebrew.
About the HDD dock...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153071
I don't know if it's better or worse, but it's certainly cheaper and it also has USB 2.0 and eSATA. It's also available in stores as I've seen them at Best Buy, so there's still time to get them. Just make sure you get the one with the eSATA port for only a couple dollars more.
Yeah that one is good. I was just about to come in and recommend it over what engadget suggested. It's cheaper too.
First off, you guys should really start these guides a month earlier. Secondly: Steelseries Ikari Laser mouse - Sure, it might say "gaming mouse" on the label, but you know what else takes exceptional eye-hand coordination and can benefit from on-the-fly adjustable sensitivity and ultra-accurate tracking? Excel.
Are you kidding me? These things are awful, how can you recommend them? It has tons of software incompatibilities, which prevent you from programming the mouse without first rebooting. For example, if I play WAR and decide to change my mouse settings to match the game better, I need to quit WAR, reboot my computer, then hope the programming software sends the update to the mouse. Since you can only store 1 button profile at a time, you need to reboot every time you want to change the config. Meanwhile they have not once updated the programming software that I can tell (last modified shows a date of October 2007!) , so none of these things look like they're getting sorted out anytime soon.
Did I mention that the button programmability is lackluster at best? You cannot assign a modifier key, like shift, to any of the buttons. You can assign it as part of a macro, but it doesn't work right. I like to put shift on a side button, so I can sprint in FPS games, and access a second hotbar in MMOs and similar styles of game. If you press and hold the button on the Ikari Laser mouse, it repeats shift as if it were a regular character, so your character will stutter, and your hotbar will flash on and off repeatedly. If you tap the button it sometimes just puts shift on and off instantly, and it sometimes makes things flash repeatedly. I even tried assigning one side key to a shiftDOWN state, and the other to shiftUP, but it didn't do anything. The macro editor (which is the only way to assign functions) is also very limited in it's functionality. You can only record a macro, which means it puts down whatever you type/press, and the only options for editing a macro are changing the time delays. That's right, you cannot even change the order of a keypress in the macro, and you cannot delete a keypress. If you screw something up, you need to do it all over again from scratch.
The ergonomics of the thing are off too. Normally when you rest your right hand it tilts to the right, bringing the thumb up. The Ikari Laser mouse however, is twisted in 2 directions at once! The palm area is alright, it tilts right like your hand does (just not enough to be truly comfortable), but the mouse buttons have no tilt at all. If you're having trouble picturing this, rest your fingertips on the edge of your desk, then rotate your hand clockwise. Yep, it makes your middle finger press down harder on the desk. That means when your hand is at rest on the mouse, it is actually pushing your middle finger against the R-button. So even when you get used to the poor shape of this mouse, every now and then you will randomly start right clicking on things. Great for getting killed in games or screwing up Excel spreadsheets!
Lastly, the mouse has the shakes. I've tried playing around with all the Freemove settings, but to no avail. What does this mean? Well, when I try to draw with the mouse every single line looks like /\/\/\/\/\/\/\ and not -------. But the best part is the mouse cursor will move on it's own. So, let's say you're watching a full screen movie, the controls are hidden unless you activate the mouse to do something, but the mouse can't sit still, and it will slowly jitter and travel across the screen, activating the controls every 5 seconds. This also means my screen saver defrag pretty much never comes on, since the mouse is busy making patterns all night long. Goodbye precision, your sniping game will be off, and many times when you go to click a button it will jitter in a random direction and hit an entirely different button. This has lead to constant sessions of cleaning out the Firefox dictionary file, occasional document rewrites, accidental spam link activation, and many other wonderful things which have made me decide to dunk this thing in a vat of acid when I can finally afford a replacement.
In short, if you hate your co-worker and want them to kill themselves, buy them this mouse.
wall of text that nobody will ever read.
The summary at the bottom is for people with no attention spans like yourself, cheer up!
I read it, but I'm not sure why -.-
Haha! Anyone notice the Death Race scene on the mini-monitor? This is on top of the negative Death Race reference in an Engadget post earlier today. Oh, you crack me up Engadget.
Okay first of all, as everyone pointed out, this should've been come out way earlier. In fact, the "for colleague" list probably should be the first out of the gate seeing how office parties usually take place earlier than family/friends gatherings. The secret santa exchange party at my office was on the 12th.
Secondly, anyone who's rich enough to buy a more than $50 gift for a colleague is not doing the shopping themselves and hence have no use for this. Seriously, the "for colleague" list should be limited to the $0-50 range, with 10 or so gadgets.
Nothing like waiting till the last minute huh? Jesus Christ!
well its for a colleague so it doesn't matter if its last minute