TMO Gift Guide - Five Gadgets for your Mac

by , 7:00 AM EST, December 8th, 2004

John F. Braun draws on his experience as the resident Mac Gadget expert to pull together five more cool products for you to give (or get) as gifts this holiday season.

Product: iTrip
Manufacturer: Griffin Technology
Price: US$35 ($33.10 - Amazon)

The iPod is great, but when you're on the move, you can't always lug around cables to connect your iPod to other devices. As long as the place you'd like to be, such as your car or a party at a friend's, has an FM radio, the iTrip lets you transmit your iPod music to a nearby FM radio with an available station.

Product: WRT54G Wireless Router
Manufacturer: Linksys
Price: US$99.99 ($56.99 - Amazon)

Sure, Apple's AirPort and eventual AirPort Extreme were some of the first wireless bases, and work well with both Macs and PCs, but we found that the Linksys WRT54G, although offering no official Mac support, works just fine, since it has a web-based interface, and can be had for under $60.

Product: iSkin eVo2 for iPod 4G
Manufacturer: Linksys
Price: US$29.99

We love our iPod 4G, but started going nuts as soon as it got its first few scratches on the chrome back. After some research, we selected the iSkin for iPod, and are glad we did. It protects the iPod from wear and tear, offers a protector for the screen, and also provides little feet so you can place it on a flat surface (such a car dashboard) without worrying that the iPod will fly around.

Product: iGlasses
Manufacturer: Ecamm Network
Price: $8.00

Sure, the iSight and iChat AV are a great combination for audio/video chatting, but the combination doesn't always do well in low-light conditions. The most recent update offers controls to adjust brightness and other low-level camera settings not only in iChat AV, but other applications including iMovie 4, QuickTime Broadcaster, iSpQ, Yahoo! Messenger, GCam, iVisit and EvoCam.

Product: MenuMeters
Manufacturer: Raging Menace
Price: Freeware

Want to know what's going on with your Mac in a minimum of space? The MenuMeters package provides tiny but informative meters for CPU utilization, disk activity, RAM statistics and network activity. Plus, Raging Menace just sounds like a cool name for a company.

Check out our other 2004 Gift Guide's, too!

• TMO Gift Guide - Gifts for Macheads and Podheads, by Gary Randazzo
• TMO Gift Guide - Five Gadgets for your Mac, by John F. Braun
• TMO Gift Guide - Gifts Cheap on Price; High in Value, by Brad Gibson
• TMO Gift Guide - Gifts For The Technarian In Your Life, by Vern Seward
• Computing with Bifocals - Software to Put Under the Tree, Part II, by Nancy Gravley
• Computing with Bifcoals - Software to Put Under the Tree, Part I, by Nancy Gravley