A global recession notwithstanding, you don’t have to break the bank this season to purchase a gift for the special techie in your life. Thursday Tech gives you a first look at some hot items that are sure to make perfect presents.

– Roland Henry

Warm Connections

If your special techie is a coffee drinker who keeps a mug at his/her desk throughout the day, then consider this gift. The Connectland cup warmer has a little metal hot plate designed to keep coffee or tea toasty throughout the day. What’s more, it doesn’t need an electrical outlet to keep beverages warm, but rather it plugs into a laptop or desktop computer via USB connection and features four additional outlets for other gadgets.

The LCD screen on the cup warmer displays the temperature of the hot plate and also has a clock.

Find this one online for just US$12.

Giving Power

For the techie, travelling with a laptop, cellphone, music player and camera often means packing several adapters. Try the new Powerstick by Ecosol, which is a USB device that allows users to reduce the number of chargers you carry. The Powerstick, available through online order and retailing for US$50, may be plugged into the desktop or laptop to get a full charge, then that charge is transferred to a mobile device. The Powerstick comes with nine adapters that are compatible with most cellphones, smartphones, MP3 players and GPS devices.

Christmas In A Flash

Because having storage space continues to be a priority, a flash drive is a great gift on a budget.

Sovereign Centre tech oasis Innovative Systems carries the new, multi-coloured line of flash drives from Transcend JetFlash V35. These attractive little drives come in a variety of translucent colours (they are colour-coded according to storage capacity), are compact in size and weigh only eight grams. What’s more, the device boasts a high price/performance ratio, despite its thin design. The store retails the four-gigabyte flash drive for J$1,915 and the eight-gigabyte equivalent for J$3,576.

Card-Carrying

With the advent of high-end cellphones, multimedia features on mobiles are a growing reality. So upgrading a friend’s micro SD card is a worthwhile consideration. Storing lots of high-resolution images, movies and music on a cellphone largely depends on a high-speed memory card. Transcend’s microSD 2G card complete with adapter is available at Innovative Systems for J$1,536.

Remember The Titan

If your techie is into music, then maybe the Titan is just right for him or her. Available locally at Royale PC and Electronics in Tropical Plaza, the Titan is an electronic music player that is compatible with both MP3 and WMA files. It is outfitted with 2G storage space as well as a radio FM tuner. Check it out for only J$4,500.