Heath McKnight's 2009 Holiday Shopping Guide

By Heath McKnight

It's that time of year again: the turkey and dressing are resting in your belly, and thoughts turn to the holiday gift giving season. Which means it's time for the annual Holiday Shopping Guide from Digital Media Online, Inc. I'm going to spotlight the best gifts for the techie, creative, home theater, computer users in your life. I'm going to break it down by category and give some affordable options, as well.

Computers, Operating Systems, and Software
Without a great computer, most of the world can't function, no matter your profession or choice of computer, operating system, and software. I have two tremendous picks for computers this year, one a Mac, the other a Windows PC, and I've had the chance to work with both for over a month. Both are laptops, and both are excellent for every day emailing and web surfing, photo editing, CAD design, video editing, gaming, and more.

 

First up is the 17-inch MacBook Pro from Apple; the mid- to late-2009 models (including the 13 and 15-inch models) are incredible, and the unit I recently reviewed for Digital Media Net is the fastest Mac laptop ever, the 17-inch 3.06 GHz MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive (review here ). Obviously that's a killer system at a price of around $3,500 or so, but the 13- and 15-inch models are great, too, and start at around $1,100.

For Windows PC users, check out the fantastic Toshiba Satellite line of laptops. I had the chance to review a Satellite P505  which, in my humble opinion, was about as powerful as the high-end Toshiba QOSIMO laptops. This slick laptop comes with a gorgeous 18.5-inch display, incredible-sounding Harmon/Kardon speakers, a fast Intel Core 2 Duo processor, plenty of RAM, and more. The prices are pretty good, and you can get more information or purchase one at www.toshiba.com

As far as operating systems go, I highly recommend using Mac OS X Snow Leopard (for Intel systems only; review here, which costs only $29 for a single Mac, or $49 for up to five Macs. For Windows, I've heard great things about Windows 7 but I haven't had a chance to use it yet.