A guide to Christmas computer gifts - part 1

Choosing presents for friends and family is a whole lot easier if you accept the mantra that 'everybody loves a good gadget'. With that in mind, we've chosen our favourite products of the past few months to give you a guide to what's available at every price range.

Eight categories cover a range of computer related hobbies and activities. We start with The Right Image, covering our pick of the best digital still and video cameras, plus DV camcorders and scanners.

The Director's Chair offers a selection of first-class tools for shaping and outputting video material. Digital music was 2004's hottest topic, and Apple dominated the portable player market. Rivals have begun to chip away, though, so take a look at the players we recommend, along with music accessories.

2005 will be the year of the wireless network and we look at options for a world without wires. Computers take the hard work out of basic office tasks and in Let's Get Busy we look at some hardware and software that has impressed us, while Pack Up Your Troubles weighs up the best deals for safely storing all that data.

We close by getting back to the serious business of fun, offering great stocking fillers as well as some of the most entertaining and challenging games of 2004. We've also added some consumer advice, to make sure that a purchasing niggle doesn't spoil your holiday.

Finally, bear in mind that the run up to Christmas always promotes fierce competition both online and on the high street, so don't be surprised if you find some of the gifts we mention heavily discounted.

We suggest checking our Active Prices tool. If the item hasn't yet appeared on Active Prices, go to Google, type in the name of the product and press enter. You'll get a nationwide list of deals. Enjoy the season!

THE RIGHT IMAGE

Before you go shopping for any peripheral, you should check that your PC has the right ports to hook up your new purchase. It's very unlikely that any PC purchased recently will not feature USB 2 as standard, and any USB 2-compatible peripheral you buy today will be backwards-compatible with the older USB standard.

The only real difference between the two standards is data transfer speed. So if you want to speed things up, invest in a USB 2 upgrade card from Belkin or Adaptec (available for around £50),although you'll need to check that the component is compatible with the version of Windows you are running. You'll also need to open up your PC and slot the card into a spare PCI slot on the motherboard.

To connect a digital video camera to your PC you'll need a spare FireWire port. If your computer doesn't already have FireWire ports you can again add these using an upgrade card. Why not kill two birds with one stone by fitting a card that features both USB 2 and FireWire ports such as Belkin's combo card available for around £45?

Sharp VL-Z100 £350
Many people will be happy to settle for a standard digital video camera that records to the mini-DV tape format and in this area of the market the Sharp VL-Z100 is great value at £350. The body of the unit is split into two parts and there's a 2.5in LCD screen on which you can view the subject you're shooting.

We liked the way you can swivel the screen and push it back into the body of the camera making the unit pretty compact, and all of the settings and effects are easily accessible through the intuitive menu system.
Contact: Sharp 0161 205 2333 www.sharp.co.uk

Epson Perfection 2580 Photo £89
The slightly pricey Epson Perfection 2580 Photo scanner is well worth considering. It scans at a maximum resolution of 2400dpi and has several advanced photo-scanning features that make it more than just your average photo scanner.

One of these is the automatic film loader on the top of the unit's lid, through which you can feed 35mm slides or photo negatives. Epson's Color Restoration software is bundled with the unit, which helps restore old photos to their former glory.
Contact: Epson 0870 241 6900 www.epson.co.uk

Panasonic GS120 £650
For fans of moving rather than still images, the Panasonic GS120 is one of the best digital video cameras we've seen this year. It has three CCD sensor chips to record footage, instead of one, which means you'll get fantastic colours in the clips you capture using it.

There's a 10x optical zoom and the camera is remarkably compact given the range of features included. You can take 1.7-megapixel still shots at the same time as you are recording moving images, and these can be saved to an SD memory card.

The camera also provides an image stabilising feature to eliminate camera shake. All this for just £650 makes the Panasonic GS120 a great buy.
Contact: 08705 357357 www.panasonic.co.uk

Canon Powershot A85 £239
One of the most versatile cameras that we have seen this year, the Canon PowerShot A85 combines four megapixels of shooting power with a range of easy-to-use features. You also get advanced manual settings for more experienced snappers.

There's a 3x optical zoom for capturing faraway objects and a macro mode for taking close-ups of objects just 5cm away. The quality of images taken with this camera is impressive; pictures were uniformly crisp and colours were faithfully reproduced. A 32Mb Compact Flash memory card is included to store your snaps.

At £239, the Canon represents excellent value for money, providing you can put up with having to change the four AA batteries fairly regularly.
Contact: 08705 143723 www.canon.co.uk

Fujifilm FinePix A120 £105
If you're on a lower budget in the run-up to the festive season, the Fujifilm FinePix A120 offers 3-megapixel image resolution at an appealing £105 price tag. This is more than good enough for printing your pictures at A4 size.

Colours were accurate in the pictures we took with the A120, but the main trade-off at this price is that there is no optical zoom.

A 16Mb XD format memory card is included and the camera doubles as a webcam and video camera for taking very short movie clips. It can also be connected to a TV so you can view photos in the living room. This well-designed model is ideal for beginners.
Contact: 020 7586 1477 www.fujifilm.co.uk

THE DIRECTOR'S CHAIR

Video editing is one of the few activities, along with 3D games, that can bring a computer processor to its knees, as it involves processing very large amounts of data at once. The first thing to do is make sure you have plenty of hard disk space available. One hour of uncompressed video uses up 13Gb, and you should allow at least twice that amount when you are editing the footage.

If you are new to video editing, go through your hard disk and discard or back up unwanted material and run Disk Defragmenter regularly.

If you are buying for someone, make sure their PC has a Pentium 4 or Athlon processor of at least 1.5GHz in order to edit video, and you should aim for 512Mb of memory. Don't forget that you will need a DVD burner if you want to create discs for a DVD player.

Lexmark E232 £147
Laser printers cannot be beaten when it comes to printing out large amounts of text cheaply. They once cost too much to be considered for home users, but the Lexmark E232 is a wallet-friendly £147. This laser printer is extremely speedy and came very close to its claim of 20 pages per minute.

Pictures are best in the special picture-printing mode and we found that the text quality was very good too. The Lexmark E232 is quite big and bulky but it does include a 250-sheet paper tray as well as a front-mounted paper feeder for special paper.
Contact: Lexmark 0870 444 0044 www.lexmark.co.uk

Pinnacle Studio 9 Plus £70 (or £30 as an upgrade)
Good video-editing software means you can make home movies into impressive DVDs. Pinnacle Studio 9 Plus is great for beginners who want a simple interface but it doesn't hold back more ambitious users, as it includes some very advanced features.

One of these is the chroma-key effect where you can insert a background behind a subject. The most important new feature is the addition of an extra video track in the timeline. This means you can create picture-in-picture effects. Studio 9 Plus also supports dual-layer DVD discs and Dolby Digital surround sound so you can create full-length movies. Contact: Pinnacle Systems 01895 442003 www.pinnaclesys.co.uk

HP psc1215 £70
Multifunction devices are no longer a poor substitute for a standalone product and the psc1215 is a printer and scanner in a compact size. It prints at a photo-realistic resolution of 4800 x 1200 on photo paper and takes about five minutes per photo.

It can work as a standalone photocopier too and offers numerous options in this mode. It does not have a fax capability, but this is available in Windows XP if you have an internet connection.
Contact: HP 0870 070 4320 www.hp.co.uk

Adobe PhotoShop Album 2 £41
Using a digital camera can result in a huge number of photos with meaningless names and no description. Adobe Photoshop Album helps you to organise your photos so that you can always find them.

You can assign multiple categories to images and there are several projects included so you can use your photos for something a little more special, including greeting cards and calendars.
Contact: Adobe 020 8606 1100 www.adobe.co.uk

Roxio Creator 7 £70
Creator 7 will create and edit sound, image or video projects on your computer. The Media Manager helps to organise all such data on your computer and a capture tool allows you to transfer it from cameras or digital video camcorders.

Photos can be edited in Photosuite, which has wizards for common tasks, including an email tool that automatically compresses images. Videowave takes care of video duties and can create slideshows of photos that fit to a piece of music. You can export your movies to CDs and DVDs, as well as to websites.
Contact: www.roxio.co.uk

Spaark Photoprintables £20
Spaark Photoprintables is a clever idea for anyone wanting to create a professional-looking photo album. The software gives you a style for your album and arranges your photos on the pages. Special paper is provided with the album for you to print out on, which can then be put into the album.

There are several different sizes of album available and it's possible to buy extra pages to add to the collection. Contact: Spaark Photoprintables 01628 890752 www.spaarkphotoprintables.com