The Theotek team offers up some of our favorite gift ideas for the 2017 Theotek Christmas Gift Guide in this Theotek Extra. In this gift guide, three of our team members share their options for great Christmas presents for the Geek on your gift list. Here’s the video of our gift guide. We didn’t do an audio version since this is such a visual show. Watch the video below and then check out the links for each item in our round-up after the video.
Wes Allen’s Gift Guide Suggestions
Wes showed off his TASCAM DR-40 4-Track Portable Digital Recorder. He uses it for professional reasons, since he often records video and audio for his work with the ABCNJ tech ministry. Here’s a sample video that Wes shot using the recorder.
That sounds pretty good. Here’s another sample test recording audio in various situations.
The recorder costs a little over $170 at Amazon. Wes recommended this as one of Our Favorite Things during a past show.
Wes also shared the newest version of Scrivener, a great writing tool for people creating a little more complex projects, like a book or research paper. He uses it also for sermon writing and keeps them all in a single folder by year in Scrivener. Literature and Latte just released version 3.0 for Mac and is working on the Windows update. Get it for $45 unless you own a earlier version. Then you can update it for $15 off. The iOS version costs $20.
Mark Allison’s Gift Guide Suggestions
We get a few recommendations from Mark Allison. He started things off with the TPU Docking Stand Holder for the 38mm Apple Watch. It holds the Apple Watch on your night stand or desk and you can use it like an alarm clock with the watch plugged in and display set to turn on showing the time. It only costs $6.34 on eBay.
Next we get the Anker SoundCore Bluetooth Speaker for $32.99 on Amazon. This Bluetooth battery-powered speaker lets you play your music from a phone or tablet on the go or at home. He loves his. It comes in black, blue or red.
Mark also recommends getting an SSD for your computer. He picked one up from Newegg, but you can find them anywhere. He said that the one he has isn’t necessarily the best. Get one that fits your storage needs and size of your laptop. Putting one in your computer shouldn’t take too much technical skill. The hardest part is replacing the boot drive and getting all your software back on the drive. Also, many newer computers don’t have user-upgradable drives. For example, you can upgrade the new MacBooks or MacBook Pros. These can cost as little as under $100 and as much as over $1,000 for extremely fast drives. He said that getting a more costly drive usually means faster performance and more storage.
The last thing Mark recommended didn’t have anything to do with tech. It’s Millie’s All Natural Organic Gluten-Free Vegetable Sipping Broth. It’s like tea without the tea. These come in tea bags and you pour hot water over them and let them soak about 3 minutes. As of the time of this post, they’re not available where he gets them, on Amazon. They offer other flavors that are available now, like Thai Lemongrass for $15 for a pack of 12 bags. You can ask Amazon to email you when they’re ready.
Kevin Purcell’s Gift Guide Suggestion
I picked just one gift to recommend. I just picked up the DJI Spark mini drone. It’s a high-end consumer grade drone with a 12MP camera that also shoots in 1080p video. The battery lasts about 15-20 minutes. It’s on sale for $399 now, but normally costs $499. I recommend getting the bundle that includes a remote control that connects to your phone or tablet. It also has the propeller guards and extra battery, which you’ll likely need.
Other Great Gift Options
If you need a few more recommendations, we’ve got some ideas. First, consider gift cards. Find out what platform the person uses for their smart phone. Get Apple Gift Cards for iPhone, iPad and Mac users. Get Google Play Gift Cards for Android users. We also love Amazon Gift Cards. That way we can pick out whatever we want. Also consider giving them some store credit for their favorite Bible software from Logos, Accordance, Olive Tree, WORDsearch and others.
