Finding that perfect gift for your nerd friends is probably not a problem for you. What is a problem, however, is how to get the “I want this” message across to your non-technology-obsessed friends and relatives.

Before moving on, a word from my soul:

I don’t expect nor do I ask for any gifts for Christmas. None. Christmas is a religious celebration that has become overwhelmed and polluted by greed. If Christmas didn’t exist, the government and Wall Street would have created it. Instead of happy people celebrating I see stress and disappointment. I refuse to be a participant to that, though for cultural reasons I still buy presents for my kids. For now.

With that out of the way, you’re now free to indulge in your personal traditions, which might involve some form of gift exchange. The following my suggestions. These are all things I use and recommend and I’m not making a profit from the sale of any of these items.

External Hard Drive. I now have five Western Digital MyBook external hard drives in my office. Five! Four of them are configured as backup drives. (I also have two other external hard drives, not of the MyBook model. I’m a storage nut.)

The external drive isn’t really the present. No, the present is the Backup utility. Backup is the best computer utility you can use, and the most overlooked. By giving the gift of an external hard drive, you’re giving the gift of backup. That’s far more valuable.

• I recommend 500GB capacity, 1TB is okay, but often unnecessary for a backup drive.
• Avoid some of the higher capacity drives (1.5TB and up) as they tend to have problems.
• A USB interface is good enough. Ensure that you have available USB connectors on your computer. (Unlike printers, external hard drives come with their own cables.)
• There is no need paying for an IEEE interface drive unless you plan on using it. Ditto for Ethernet connectors on the drive. They add cost to the drive, a premium you don’t need to pay if you don’t need the interfaces.
• Avoid portable hard drives unless you’re buying it for a laptop and you plan on taking the drive with you on the road.
• Avoid USB-powered hard drives unless they’re for a laptop or you plan on taking it with you on the road. (I also recommend plugging your desktop external hard drive into a UPS, battery-backed-up socket.)

Headset. A headset is a pair of stereo headphones with a microphone attached. They’re ideal for today’s computer user for so many reasons: communicating on the Internet: on-line chat, on-line phone calls, on-line game playing, as well as voice dictation (which I don’t use, but many enjoy).

• If you can, try out the headset before you buy. If you plan on wearing the headset for a while, they must be comfy.
• Some headsets cost more because they more accurately produce sound and they block out noise from the room.
• Headsets come in both USB and audio connector flavors. If your PC has high-end audio, use an audio-connector headset. If not, USB is fine.
• The computer might let you hear sound out of either the headset or the computer’s speakers, but not both. That’s a bummer. For example, on my game PC I have the headset hooked up all the time. I can’t hear beeps or mail alerts the PC makes because the sound only comes through the headphones, not the speakers.

TV Adapter. The Windows Media Center program is a great tool that’s sadly overlooked. What it does is to turn your PC into a locus for video and audio in your home. To really make it useful, however, you need to add a TV adapter gizmo.

The TV Adapter gizmo pumps television programming directly into your PC via the cable TV connector. Once configured, you can watch and record TV on your PC — just like Tivo, but without the subscription fee.

• Get an external, USB TV adapter. They’re very easy to set up and attach to the PC. Often times Windows identifies the gizmo instantly.
• Don’t pay too much. I paid about $130 for my Hauppauge Win-TV external gizmo. It works great.
• Be careful about recording shows. Though it’s easy, the shows consume a lot of disk space. I regularly recorded Mythbusters — until my hard drive filled up with episodes!
• Yes, you need cable TV to make it work.

Feel free to offer your own suggestions as I readily admit I’m not aware of all the cool stuff out there.

I’d also like to announce that the annual revival of the Wambooli Holiday Sing-Along is back. Stop by and get into the festive, digital season!