San Francisco - It's hard to be a geek at Christmastime. Sure, there are lots of cool tech toys and gadgets on display on store shelves, and a few may have landed under your tree this year. Perhaps Absolutely Mad: 50 Years of Mad Magazine on DVD, a Microsoft Xbox 360, an Apple MacBook Pro 2008 edition, a Garmin Nuvi 880, and one or more of the hot smartphones: the Apple iPhone 3G, the Palm Treo Pro, the RIM BlackBerry Storm, or the T-Mobile G1.
But it takes a geek to know what a true geek really wants, and chances are your friends and family aren't all that geeky.
So which true-geek items might they have given you? InfoWorld's band of mad scientists -- a motley crew of software, networking, datacenter, and hardware experts that habituates the InfoWorld Test Center -- offers recommendations on what they lust after ??? and know their fellow geeks do, too. Christmas may be over, but you can still give the gift of geek tech to yourself
[ Watch our geek gift guide slideshow. | Looking for a high-tech collectible? Peruse David Margulius' collectible tech gift guide. | Curious about last year's geek gift guide recommendations? Check them out! ]
In alphabetical order, here are our top 10 picks:
* Apple Time Capsule
* Botanicalls DIY Plant Twitter Kit
* Cathode Corner Nixie Watch
* EVGA GTX 200 Waterblock
* Eye-Fi Explore
* 4th Motion Gyroxus Full-Motion Game Chair
* MvixUSA MvixBox
* Sky Factory SkyV
* SRS Labs iWow for iPod Adapter
* Yoggie Gatekeeper Pico
And delve into our guide to collectible tech.
OK, we know you also really want a new mobile. If you didn't get one for the holidays, get the scoop on InfoWorld Test Center's top mobile picks.
