2006 Holiday Gift Ideas: Computer Miscellaneous

[Let's put iPod-related gifts in Miscellaneous, and if there are enough of them, perhaps we'll create a new section. -Adam]

This is sort of a stocking stuffer.

Lots of folks have iPods. The new iPods have a much-discussed problem with scratches, especially the screen.

Several companies are offering what I think is the ideal way to keep your iPod pristine, without adding bulk or harming its looks. Basically they are repackaging 3M Protection Film, cut to fit your iPod. This is the same stuff that 3M sells for use on the front end of expensive cars to protect the paint from being chipped. It is invisible and almost undetectable once applied. The skin can be removed without any trace left behind.

This film is being sold for various iPods for as much as $30. Here it is for only $7, and this one is for the entire iPod, front (including the screen and scroll-wheel), back, and sides.

iPod Total Body Skin $7 http://www.bestskinsever.com/servlet/the-3/5G-30GB-Video-iPod/Detail

Randy B. Singer

Co-Author of: The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th and 6th editions)

OS X Routine Maintenance http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html

Over the last few years, many PowerBook and MacBook owners have been overjoyed with their portable systems, but less-than-thrilled about the lap- and hand-searing heat emitted by these notebooks, formerly-known-as laptops.

If you'd like to use your notebook on your lap, a number of "heat shield" products are available. Most seem to keep the heat off a users' lap well enough, they tend to fall down in other areas: they're too slippery, they're too fragile, or (in some cases) they significantly increase the internal temperature of the computers.

However, several folks I know have had good luck with the Lapinator, a "laptop desk" available in 13- and 18-inch widths. It uses 3M Thinsulate Ultra insulation with a cross-linked molded foam bottom which reduces overall contact with your lap, coat, desk, or what-have you so you're note only comfortable, but your laptop actually runs cooler than it would on a flat surface. They come with a 4-inch velcro strap for taming any stray cables, and a separate "Mousitizer" can be connected to either side as a surprisingly effective mousing surface.

http://www.lapinator.com/

At $24.95, they aren't quite cheap, but they're lightweight and reasonably portable, though the foam bottom means they'll take up a fair bit of space in a bag. So far, my peeps have found them reasonably durable and give them high marks for making the "laptop" experience not only feasible, but downright pleasant again.

-- Geoff Duncan TidBITS Editor at Large <http://www.tidbits.com/>

At 15:26 -0800 21/11/06, Geoff Duncan wrote:
>
> <http://www.lapinator.com/>
>
>At $24.95, they aren't quite cheap, but they're lightweight and reasonably
>portable, though the foam bottom means they'll take up a fair bit of space
>in a bag. So far, my peeps have found them reasonably durable and give
>them high marks for making the "laptop" experience not only feasible, but
>downright pleasant again.

The iLap at twice the price but possibly less bulky and lighter

http://www.raindesigninc.com/ilap.html

does a similar job. It also has a wrist support at the front, which is
removable. I have used similar laptop desks to the lapinator and this is
more comfortable as there is less contact / more air between the desk and
my legs.

Don't leave home without it :-)

        f

Has to be the BlueEye Black......

Gear4 have just released a very cool 3-in-1 stocking filler for the iPod. It is a mobile phone connection, FM radio and remote control. It lets you take/make phone calls on your ipod (via a bluetooth connection) and incoming numbers are shown on your iPod.

http://www.gear4store.com/product_details.php?&products_id=235

Tony

Glossop UK

If you're a laptop owner with an extra monitor laying around, I think the best sub-$10 investment is the Nexgen Small Stacking Shelf.

<http://www.lnt.com/product/index.jsp?productId=1365076>

Combine it with the widely available iBook monitor spanning hack (which for me has worked perfectly, but of course YMMV) and you're off to the races.

It would probably work for most Apple laptops, but it is almost perfectly designed for the 12-inch iBook:

It's the perfect height

It's cheap but sturdy

It's a (vinyl-coated) metal grid, so it keeps the computer nice and cool.

All the ports are available.

It has these sort of flanges on the side, which I thought I would have to bend off. But it turns out that they hold the iBook perfectly in place if you just slide the iBook under them.

Even the color matches!

There are a couple of minor drawbacks:

If you leave the right-hand flange in place, you won't be able to eject or insert CDs. If that's a problem, though, you could always just bend that flange back or remove it.

You can't close the iBook's lid, unless you remove the flanges. Of course, the iBook doesn't support clamshell mode anyway, so who cares.

I put up a few pics of the setup on Flickr. As you can see, I have it set up so that the mousing area is directly underneath the raised iBook.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/35417468N00/>

I hope others find this as useful as I do!

- Alaska Jack

Logitech mm50 iPod speakers. Or consider any set of iPod speakers with a dock.

http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/products/details/AU/EN,CRID=2414,CONTENTID=10785

I used to turn my nose up at these class of speakers: surely lots of speakers sets had aux-in already? Surely having a built-in iPod dock = planned obsolescence? And I was already playing music on my hifi via Airport Express.

I bought the mm50 because I kept picking up an iPod nano that was not fully charged. The mm50 on eBay cost about the same as a dock + remote + iPod charger, and contained speakers. Surprisingly, I found continuously listening to my music and podcasts on the mm50, and my Airport Express is barely used.

Essentially I have come to embrace 1. Smart playlists that contain music and podcasts that I haven't listened to, and 2. the randomness of "shuffle all". I find myself listening to music that I would never have chosen manually. The remote control still allows me to skip tracks.

And the mm50 continues playing even as I sleep/restart the Mac. My iPod has gone from being just a portable music player, to being a music-playing mule, and I love it more for that!

The unit is small and shaped well enough to carry around. In fact, on recent trips, I can listen to my nano in the car (via aux-in), to in the plane (via earphones), to in the hotel room (via mm50). Seamless!

And it keeps the nano charged too.

A great gift is a subscription to eMusic! Subscribers get a certain number of downloads every month of high quality MP3s from independent artists. No DRM, so it works as well on iPods as on any other player.

It's an especially good gift for someone who really likes exploring music and finding new artists they haven't heard from. (No Top 40s in there -- it's all indies!)

<http://www.emusic.com/>

--Nik

On 11/23/2006 1:21 PM, "Fearghas McKay" wrote:
>> <http://www.lapinator.com/>
>>
>> At $24.95, they aren't quite cheap, but they're lightweight and reasonably
>> portable, though the foam bottom means they'll take up a fair bit of space
>> in a bag. So far, my peeps have found them reasonably durable and give
>> them high marks for making the "laptop" experience not only feasible, but
>> downright pleasant again.
>
> The iLap at twice the price but possibly less bulky and lighter
>
> http://www.raindesigninc.com/ilap.html
>
> does a similar job. It also has a wrist support at the front, which is
> removable. I have used similar laptop desks to the lapinator and this is
> more comfortable as there is less contact / more air between the desk and
> my legs.

The iLap is actually bulkier when you take the stand and wrist pad into
account. Having used both, I personally prefer the Lapinator; it's lighter
and, in my experience, more comfortable (both for my lap and for my arms --
I didn't like the angled position into which the iLap forced the latter).
But I know the iLap has many fans.

If you're looking for a more-portable solution, LapWorks' Laptop Desk 2.0
and UltraLite easily slip into a laptop bag. I covered them, the Lapinator,
and a few similar products earlier this year for Macworld.

<http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macgems/2006/08/laptopdesk2/index.php>

I highly recommend the Laptop Desk UltraLite for road warriors.

Another approach is Speck Product's new SeeThru. Designed as a protective,
polycarbonate case for the Core Duo MacBook Pro (with versions for the
MacBook and Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro on the way), one of the SeeThru's
unadvertised features is that it lets you use your MacBook Pro on your lap
-- while, in my testing, still allowing the notebook to cool normally.

<http://speckproducts.com/15mac-seethru.html>
<http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macgems/2006/11/seethrumacbookpro/index.php
>

I'm guessing that this is the appropriate thread for iPod gifts. iGuy
is an under $10 USD way anthropomorphize an iPod - turn them into
posable, portable, tune-playing pals. Sadly, there's no option for my
new Video iPod:

http://speckproducts.com/iguy.html

Marilyn

DJs can forget the vinyl as long as they can put two iPods on an iPod DJ Station:

http://www.fredflare.com/customer/product.php?cat=309&productid=2173

I've never used it, and I'm not but I'm thinking of chipping in for it as a present for my nephew, who is an aspiring DJ.

Marilyn

I have these earbuds, i keep them wrapped around my ipod case. They're my
"emergency" earbuds. They aren't the best sounding set I have, but they're
very acceptable and way better than nothing when I was stuck in a tire
repair place 'cause I had a flat. They're actually the best noise reduction
phones I've tried so I use them on planes as well, and they actually stay
in my ear, most earbuds fall out of my head. Finally at $15 (list price, I
paid $10 for mine), they can be easily replaced after taking a lot of
abuse. I'm on my second set.

<http://www.koss.com/koss/kossweb.nsf/p?openform&pc^eb^SPARKPLUG>

At work I want something a little better sounding, and a little less noise
blocking (need to hear the boss yelling at me.) So I use a pair of
Sennheiser PX 100's. They're the cheaper end of Sennheiser's line and
actually got a better review than 2 other more expensive Sennheiser
headphones here:

<http://www.dansdata.com/3senns.htm>

They come folded up in a hardcase for protection when traveling (I usually
throw them in my carry on luggage and use the Koss above while in transit,
and the Sennheiser when I get there.) They have a funky folding mechanism
that takes me a couple of tries each time to get them folded correctly, but
they do travel well.

<http://www.sennheiserusa.com/newsite/productdetail.asp?transid=005206>

They have a list price of $60, which is what I believe I paid for them.

Kevin

A small company in the UK has developed a small mirror device that slips over the top edge of the MacBook or MacBook Pro screen converting the built-in iSight camera into a video camera - no kidding! They are laser-cut reflecting mirror devices that cause the iSight to look forward instead of backward at your face thus giving you a 13 inch viewfinder (in the case of the MacBook). Ever tried to take a video chat buddy on a tour of your garden or of your new kitchen? It's nearly impossible with the camera aimed at your face but with the Huckleberry from Mungai Mirrors, you can!

As a bonus, with your registration code, you can download a free copy of iGlasses which will flip the image on your iSight camera so that the mirrored image reads correctly to your iChat buddy (also helpful when reading barcodes for Delicious Library!)

One of the best things about all of this is the price - $19.95 for the Huckleberry and the iGlasses software. The only drawback now that we're in December is that these are shipped from England. Even so, if you hurry, it may get here by Christmas, mine only took about 9 days.

Link: http://mungaimirrors.co.uk/huckleberry

--Curt Blanchard (Tucson Macintosh Users Group)

        Give the gift that keeps on saving: Backups!

        You can give your friend Retrospect.

        You can install it on your family's computers for them, and
set up scripts, and provide blank media.

        You can stand over your parents until they complete a full backup.


        You can give (or ask for) a backup drive. I suggest FW400 &
USB2, for performance & future proofing; FW800's extra bump seems
irrelevant for most people's backups, although saving a FW400 port
for your iPod might be convenient, and $300 is not bad for 500gb w/
cables.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/800+USB2/

        I still think the best way to do backups is from one machine
to another over the Internet. Do a full backup over FireWire, move
the drive to another machine in another location, and update the
backup(s) from then on over the network.


        For extra karma points, offer to host a friend's backup drive
(in exchange for them hosting your own?). This assumes you both have
suitable network connectivity, given the rate at which you add/modify
files.


                                                Chris
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
                             <http://www.reppep.com/weblog/pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

Hi Guys,

The gift ideas article is great!
I just wanted to let you know that Huckleberry is now also shipping
from the United States via our Ecamm.com store:

http://www.ecamm.com/mac/huckleberry

Although it currently states "backordered" we should have more stock
early this week. :-)

Take care,
Glen