So I see I've been tagged by both pals Nick Swan and Spencer Harbar for geek Christmas recommendations. So, these are the geek things I have that I absolutely love. All are for the road warrior, like me, except one that I've extracted the most value out of.
APC Universal Battery Pack
I love this thing... we've all got devices that are powered via USB from phones to games to bluetooth headsets to MP3 players. This little guy (and I mean little) charges super fast and can then be used as a power source for any USB powered device. It works great for my Jawbone bluetooth headset, my iPod Touch & iPhone 3G and other devices. For those with 3G phones (not just the iPhone, but any battery sucking device), I love being able to jump on a plane, put my phone in airplane mode, plugging in the charge cable that came with my phone into this battery pack and dropping it in my bag. When you land, you've got a fully charged phone. I've never drained the battery on this thing... seems to charge forever!
Belkin Mini Surge Protector/Dual USB Charger
I picked this guy up just recently and it rocks. We've all been slim on power outlets in hotel rooms. This guy serves as a little spike bar, but also doubles as a USB device charger! For my last two trips, I was able to charge everything using this guy guy overnight on one single plug. What's cool is I don't have to lug around the AC adapter to my APC battery pack (above) or the plug for my iPhone anymore as they can plug right into the USB ports. Oh... and the Belkin guys were thinking: the plug can rotate 360 degrees for any situation.
Apple iPhone 3G
You know you love a device when after having it for a few months, you don't look at the newer devices, in this case phones, and get device envy. Not going to rant and rave over this one... I just love my phone. The phone experience is awesome, Exchange ActiveSync rocks, MP3 player, games, data... I love it. My only complaints: email folders are all locked in expand all mode, the speaker phone isn't loud and the vibrate is too subtle.
Sony PlayStation Portable
My wife got this for me two Christmas' ago and while I only seem to play it when I'm on the road, I love this guy. Killer little game system. Love Madden 2009 on it. I've also got some casino and racing games... would really like to get a good adventure / action / first person shooter though. Recommendations?
Bose QC3 Noise Canceling Headphones
An absolute must. Operation is easy: board plane, get these out and on your head ASAP so the joker next to you don't start talking to you. Everyone knows how well these cancel noise so when the guy looks irritated at you for ignoring him, you just point to the headphones and say "sorry, these block everything... even airplane jokers like you."
Wired Subscription
I wasn't going to mention this, but Spence nails it. Best geek magazine on the planet. I look forward to this every month. I do miss Business 2.0.
HP MediaSmart Windows Home Server
Last Christmas I finally got sick of my backup/restore strategy at home and decided to just bite the bullet and buy peace-of-mind. This guy ROCKS. I feel safe with it holding all my data... music, vidoes, photos, work stuff and now DVDs (my Vista Media Centers use a little gallery trick to show the DVD library I've ripped to my home server). I love how this guy backs up all my machines every night without me even having to think about it. Had a few machines blow up... within 2hrs I had the machine reimaged across my network from the WHS. Just to be safe I bought a 1TB WD MyBook with an eSATA port to backup the WHS.
Custom Virtualization Rig
Man, I can't tell you how much value I get out of this box I build mid-summer. Love it so much, I just ordered another 8GB of memory to boost it up to 32GB. Fantastic resource for the home office person who needs lots of machines: virtualize them! I documented the process in 3 blog posts: part 1, part 2 & part 3.
So... what do I want? I want to get one of those eReaders... but I'm not sold on the Kindle vs. Sony. There are aspects of both that I like (actually the new Kindle that will come out in the coming months.