Best computer as holiday gift? Depends on needs

The sound you're hearing, likely, is Santa cussing the pop-ups and spyware on his PC. Let's hope he gets it solved before he needs to organize his Christmas eve jaunt.

I am getting lots of holiday-related questions, so let's try to answer the most general of those.

What are the "best" computers to buy for the holidays? There is no way to answer that without knowing tons of information, including the budget, the intended use, the kinds of software needed to be used and many other things. (A friend asked me about what laptop to buy, for example, and we measured his hands to see what form factor we needed the keyboard to be . . . a 12-inch laptop is pretty cool unless you can't type on it.)

The excellent magazine PC World rates desktops, laptops and other products for quality, so that's a good place to start. If you have a local computer store that has been in business awhile, don't overlook the locally built PC, especially if you need lots of hand-holding.

The Apple versus PC discussion is harder now than it used to be. You'll pay more for an Apple, but that extra money gets you better design and overall coolness.

Laptop decisions are especially personal. I would rather buy someone a gift card for a laptop and let them select their own because "fit" is so important.

I get questions about the "coolest" things to buy for Christmas, and even that is hard to answer because I don't know what people already have. On my personal list, the best thing I've gotten for Christmas is Tivo . . . it simply gives me back my most precious thing, which is time. (Tivo is a digital video recorder, a VCR with no tape. What it allows you to do is "time-shift" your television, or watch your programs on your schedule, not the networks'. It also allows one to eliminate commercials.)

Two issues: Tivo now plans to put pop-ups on the screen when you're skipping commercials, and you can't capture HDTV with a typical Tivo.

I think any computer user would love a flash drive (one of those small USB hard drives), and a DVD burner is always welcome. An external hard drive is a nice gift, considering they are simple to attach and offer a sense of security for data and a great place to store music files for a home jukebox.

Digital cameras also are a great buy right now. Mine is a tiny Canon that I bought mostly because it's a brick and my kids can't kill it. PC World also rates cameras, but these also are a pretty personal item. Prices are dropping like Enron stock, so these are a good buy.

PDAs are coming of age. Mine is a Dell X3, but there are new ones out from Dell, HP and others. I prefer the Pocket PC versus Palm, but that's more of a personal thing, too. Get one with wireless built in and you'll have a ball at all of the free hotspots.

WEEKLY WEB WONDER: Check out Epinions for great consumer to consumer reviews of products. Check it out at www.epinions.com.

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James Derk is co-owner of CyberDads, a computer repair company, and a computer columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His e-mail address is jim@cyberdads.com.