The hi-tech must-haves for Christmas

Chris Green rounds up this year's digital desirables.

Stuck for a Christmas present for the tech savvy enthusiast who has everything? Then check out this list of the most desirable gizmos vying for your cash.Creative Jukebox 2 Creative Labs
About £180
uk.europe.creative.com
MP3 players have come a long way. With Compact Flash and SmartMedia unable to keep up with storage demand, manufacturers are turning to hard drives for added storage.

The Jukebox 2 is an update of the model reviewed here last Christmas. It has 10GB of storage space, and can hold about 2,000 songs in MP3 format, or 4,000 in Windows Media Audio (WMA) format.

It compares well with more expensive rivals such as Apple's iPod. You can load your entire music collection and data files onto Jukebox 2, use it on the move, or share information between computers.

As well as playing MP3 and WMA files, you can use it as a 10GB external hard drive for storing all forms of data.

The Jukebox 2 also supports USB2, offering transfer rates 10 times faster than normal USB.

You can create customised play lists and search for songs by name, which is essential considering how many it can hold. It offers 16 hours of continuous playback on just one battery charge.

Sadly, unlike its predecessor, it uses a proprietary battery format, so you can't switch to off-the-shelf batteries if you run out of power on the road.

Logitech Pocket Digital Camera
About £100
www.logitech.com
This is a digital camera the size of a credit card, but about seven times thicker. There isn't much to the Pocket Digital from Logitech, but that's the point.

This tiny little 1.3 megapixel camera can take 52 photos at 640 x480 resolution before it needs to be downloaded, and connects to your PC by a USB cable. All this is cased in a classy aluminium shell, which means it can take a bit of rough-housing in your bag.

The only downside is the lack of a flash, but other than that it is ideal for someone who wants a lightweight digital camera they can pull out of a bag in a hurry.

AMD AthlonXP 2400+
About £140
www.amd.com
AMD continues to be the choice of the power consumer and regular game players.

At multiplayer gaming events the AMD-based machines often outnumber the Intel ones thanks to the sheer horsepower of the chip, its suitability for Windows XP (which is optimised for the AthlonXP), and lower price compared with the Pentium 4.

The 2400+ is not the fastest Athlon chip available. But the arrival of the 2700+ model has helped reduce prices, making the 2400+ an excellent bargain.

Athlon chips, however, generate a lot of heat, so you need to have good quality case and processor fans for best performance.

Logitech QuickCam Cordless
About £180
www.logitech.com
Webcams are brilliant, but the cable that connects them to your PC can really curtail their usefulness.

Step forward Logitech's wireless webcam. While these are not new - you can get webcams that connect to your network via 802.11b with ranges of hundreds of metres, but cost a fortune - the Logitech is more moderately priced for the home user.

It works anywhere within 20 metres of your PC, and a small receiver unit plugs into the USB port.

It also has a built-in microphone, which allows you to record videos with sound which can be transmitted over the wireless link.

Handspring Treo 270
About £499
www.handspring.co.uk
Handspring beat Palm to market by more than a year when it released the first PalmOS-based PDA with a built-in phone. The Treo 180 was its first attempt, but wasn't perfect.

The 270 is its second attempt. It's the same size, has all the PalmOS features and Handspring dual-band phone functions, but it also comes with a colour screen, improved battery life, 16MB of Ram and updated web and Wap browsers.

Best of all, Handspring has released the long-promised GPRS patch for the device, allowing users to take advantage of faster and more cost-effective data services.

Logitech MX700 Mouse
About £60
www.logitech.com
As mice go, this is probably the Rolls Royce. The MX700 uses the latest optical recognition technology and wireless connectivity to form a multi-button mouse that can be used within a two-metre radius of its transmitter, although this depends on the surrounding equipment.

The optical engine scans a larger area than most other sensors and analyses more information for smoother tracking on more surfaces, including glass.

The fast response times make it suitable for office applications and gaming and the rechargeable batteries can be used for several hours.

A cradle for recharging the mouse when it's not in use is included. AA batteries can also be used.

Intel Pentium 4 2.53GHz
About £200
www.intel.co.uk
If you have an Intel-based system and want to give it a makeover for the new year, there are some real bargains to be had on Intel's powerful Pentium 4 processors. We've focused on the 2.53GHz model of the chip, as it's on offer at very good prices.

Based on Intel's NetBurst micro-architecture, the Pentium 4 offers higher performance processing than the old Pentium IIIs.

The newest Pentium 4 supports Hyper-Threading technology, which allows you to multitask more efficiently when running several applications at once.

Disgo 128MB
About £99
www.mydisgo.co.uk
USB Pen drives are becoming popular among laptop users and those who need to move material between home and work easily, without the fuss of floppy disks.

The Disgo has 128MB of storage space on which you can store pictures, documents, music and so on.

Insert the Disgo drive into a USB port, and it mounts almost instantly as an ordinary storage drive. When you finish copying files to and from the drive, simply take it out of the port.

All versions of Windows except for 95 and 98 support the Disgo without the need to install a driver, and a driver is available for Windows 98 systems.

Vodafone Live: Sharp GX10
About £199
www.vodafone.co.uk
Picture messaging phones are all the rage, with 02, Orange, T-Mobile and now Vodafone getting in on the act.

Sadly, most picture phones, such as the Sony Ericsson T68I, are terrible, and are likely to put people off the concept. However, Vodafone has got it right.

The Sharp GX10 has lots of nice touches, such as a mirror next to the lens so you can take pictures of yourself, along with a usable interface, polyphonic ring tones, email, a colour screen, a second display on the lid showing who is calling and an infrared port that connects to your laptop or PDA.

Underpinning all this is the Vodafone Live service, basically a repackaged version of its Vizzavi Wap service, only with better content, improved navigation, colour pictures and more online commerce services.

It's not too different from the Japanese iMode service, although Vodafone Live runs over GPRS.

It is also one of the few picture messaging phones available on pay-as-you-go, although in that form it will cost you £350 rather than the subsidised £199 if you get it on a contract.

Best of all, you can play the original versions of PacMan and Space Invaders on it, thanks to its Java-based Atari Coin-op emulator.

Iomega 20GB USB2 HD
About £120
www.iomega-europe.com
When CDs and zip disks can't cut it for storage space, there are only two options: get another hard drive or a bigger hard drive.

If you don't want to bolt a bigger drive into your PC, then try an external one that can be moved between machines.

Iomega's entry-level unit has 20GB of storage and connects to USB and USB2-equipped computers. The latter will transfer data faster.

You can save, move and share graphics files, multimedia presentations, digital video and music between your PC at home, work and laptop.

It also includes QuikSync automatic backup and disaster recovery software, so you can use it as an automatic backup system.

Iomega Zip 750
About £130
www.iomega-europe.com
When Iomega released the original Zip drive in the 1990s, it was a big success. Subsequent revisions have seen versions for every imaginable connection format, and a higher capacity 250MB version.

Under pressure from CD recorders, Iomega has produced a new version of the Zip drive capable of writing 750MB to a single disk.

The first is an external unit connecting to your PC via USB. As well as working on USB interfaces, it will also connect to faster USB2 ports, allowing data to be transferred at 7MB per second.

But, while you can read and write 750MB and 250MB disks, you can only read from the original 100MB disks.

Logitech Cordless Navigator Duo
About £80
www.logitech.com
Last year we looked at the wireless keyboard and mouse combo from Logitech, which has been given a makeover for this Christmas.

Apart from being white instead of black, this bundle of wireless keyboard and wireless optical mouse now sports improved wireless technology, new shortcut keys, improved mouse accuracy and compatibility with both Windows and MacOS.

The keyboard is smothered in shortcut keys, which might at first sound daunting, but makes it a great labour saving device.

Onboard shortcut keys control the quick launching of popular office and internet applications, along with a mouse wheel for scrolling, a volume control and mute button with controls for playing music CDs and MP3s.

The wireless capability of both devices is radio, rather than infrared, so it does not rely on direct line-of-sight, instead working in a radius of about four metres for the keyboard and two metres for the mouse.