Features
Dear Santa...
20071115 [Computer Buyer]
More top Christmas gadget gifts
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1 SaitekPhoto Mouse
It's this simple: the mouse has a see-thru bit, it comes with atemplate, you cut out a photo around the template and stick it under the see-thru bit. Simple - but genius. Your mouse is the one place it'll always get your attention, however busy you are.
£12.99 inc VAT @ www.amazon.co.uk |
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2 Cheggers Party Quiz
A festive must-have is a trivia game to keep the relatives occupied. This year's top PC-based option is surely Cheggers Party Quiz, an unashamedly lowbrow challenge ('Who has hosted both Zoo Watch and Animal Hospital?') featuring a slightly scary 3D animated version of 1980s telly bloke Keith Chegwin. When you're feeling like you've eaten and drunk too much and might be in danger of making a fool of yourself, Cheggers is a reassuring sight. Developed by Oxygen Games, it's also on PS2 and Wii.
£16.99 @ www.play.com |
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3 Hercules DJ Console Mk2
Yo, yo, Computer Buyer be in da house (stop that - Ed). This very portable yet wholly credible mixing deck can be plugged into your PC, allowing you to mix and scratch tracks with the two jog wheels in old-school disc-spinning style - rather cooler than using a mouse. With a crossfader and volume sliders, twin pitch knobs and pitch bend buttons, equalizer and effects, two analogue inputs and a mic jack so you can talk over the music annoyingly, the Hercules has all you need to become your hood's illest MC. Probably.
£138.28 inc VAT @ www.dabs.com |
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4 The gift of memory
The ideal gift for any PC user could be a gigabyte or two of extra RAM. Windows Vista needs more memory than ever to run smoothly - at least 2GB is sensible - and RAM for most recent types of PC costs under £50 per gigabyte. Find out which type you need by checking your manual or using free software such as CPU-Z (www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php). Or, if you have a PC from a reasonably well known brand, find it in a memory manufacturer's 'configurator', such as www.pny.co.uk/memory_configurator.php, and it'll tell you exactly which memory modules to buy. |
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5 Meccano Spyke
We have to admit this is a poor idea for a Christmas present, since at the last count it was expected back in stock on 8 January. Quite popular, then. Spyke is a robot that you build yourself and then unleash to explore and surveille (is that a word?) your surroundings. Not only can it record video and sound wherever its little caterpillar tracks may roll, it can beam them back to your PC via WiFi. It also has motion sensors and - this is possibly getting a bit too multi-tasking even for our liking - you can use it as a VoIP phone, webcam and MP3 player. Oh, and it climbs stairs. Don't worry about its batteries running out, because when it gets tired it finds its own way back to its charging station. Unlike proper Meccano, though, it probably can't distribute its smallest components automatically under all the sofas in the house.
£199.95 inc VAT @ www.firebox.com |
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