November 28, 2005 (issue 12/7/05)

Hardware, software, computer and technology gadgets are terrific gifts for the technology people in your life. Here are a few ideas:

Car enthusiasts will like CarChip (Davis Instruments, $139 standard, $179 E/X, www.carchip.com), which lets users easily record and view a wealth of useful and detailed information about their car’s performance.

For business or recreational travelers, GPS (global positioning system) gifts such as Earthmate GPS LT-20 (DeLorme, www.delorme.com $99.95) are good choices. Earthmate comes with the award-winning Street Atlas 2006 USA mapping and trip routing software. Load it on a laptop, attach the tiny new Earthmate LT-20 receiver, and your gift is an invaluable resource for anyone who travels across town or across country.

Musicians on your list will enjoy the Hecsan Rollup Piano Pro (Hecsan, www.hecsaninc.com, $250, original version $99), a flat, rubberized 49-key keyboard that actually rolls up for easy portability and has a permanently attached control box with a built-in speaker. Various voices, rhythm accompaniments and MIDI (PRO only) are available.

If your musician is a wannabe or even good singer, the new Singing Coach Unlimited (Carry-a-Tune Technologies, www.carryatune.com $99.99) will help improve his or her singing. The program works even if you can’t read music - it tracks your singing pitch and tempo and matches them to on-screen displays. Singing, warmup, and basic lessons are included.

 Music listeners will appreciate mp3 maker deluxe 2005 (Magix, www.magix.com $39.99), an especially versatile program that allows you to record, convert and organize music files from your CDs, tapes or the Internet to MP3 format for compact file storage.

And to play your MP3 music, the Iomega Mixx (Iomega, www.iomega.com  $55-$115) is a thumb-sized player unit with ear-bud type earphones, all attached to a necklace for handy transport. The Mixx also features a FM radio and a recorder that records from either the radio or a built-in microphone.

For fishing people, In-Fisherman: Freshwater Trophies (Bold Games, www.boldgames.com $18.00) is a fun program. Choose your lake, boat, tackle, and go fishing. Good virtual fish action for anyone.

For children (of all ages), programs such as Backyard Hockey 2005 (Atari, www.atari.com $19.99) offer a fun-filled 3D animated hockey game featuring pro hockey players from all 30 NHL teams. Fast arcade action, strategy, league play and more are features of this popular game. Another action-filled game is TrackMania (Enlight, www.enlight.com $29.99), which lets you build your own car race course, as simple or crazy or complex as you want, and then race the course against time, against the computer or others over a LAN or Internet. For anyone with curiosity about numbers and math (or who needs a fun way to learn math), The Number Devil (Viva Media, www.viva-media.com $27.99) is a terrific program, based on an international best-selling children’s book, that shows what fun you can have with numbers while learning in an entertaining way.

Gifts for digital photographers abound. To help anyone share a growing collection of photos, PhotoStory on CD & DVD 4 (Magix, www.magix.com $39.99) lets you use digital photos and/or video clips to create wonderful slide shows and add text, narration, sound effects and music. The slide show can also be used as a digital album for sharing on CDs or DVDs or for archiving pictures for safekeeping. Consider giving Epson StoryTeller Photo Book Creator (Epson, www.epson.com $20/$30) so your digital photographer can create a memorable printed photo album. The program is designed for ink-jet printers and comes as a complete kit containing Creator software, glossy photo paper, a hardbound book, cover sheets and a 98-page instruction manual. The included templates provide varieties of interesting sizing and placement options, borders and page decorations for photos. Add captions, create a cover, and you’ll have a spectacular album.

If your photographer wants a full-featured (and affordable) photo editing program, Paint Shop Pro 9 (JASC, www.jasc.com $90) provides the ultimate in control and precision in editing photos and much more. This program is designed for advanced amateurs or professionals but has a click-and-fix mode for novices. Included are the usual options for rotate, crop and automatic fixes of brightness, color and contrast, but there are also advanced features dealing specifically with digital camera photos. Help comes from a 500-page printed user guide, on-line help and a Learning Center.

Gadgets are always great gifts. The SWISSMEMORY USB Victorinox (SWISSMEMORY, Victorinox, www.swissbit.com $59/$124) looks like the traditional red Swiss Army Knife, complete with its fold-out knife, screwdriver, nail file and scissors, retractable ball point pen and LED flashlight, but this one sports a foldout detachable USB 2.0 Drive, available I n256MB, 512MB and 1GB flash memory sizes. Plug one of these into your computer to use as a portable hard drive.

Your techno person can find wireless Internet "Hotspots" easily with the The Digital Hotspotter (Canary Wireless, www.canarywireless.com $59.99). This small, useful device detects the presence of and analyzes Wi-Fi wireless networks. Push the one button on the device to begin scanning for networks and displaying information about those detected.

More information about these gift suggestions is available in our full reviews; just check our website or contact us by e-mail or regular mail for a copy.

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