Seven Must-Have Gadget Gifts

Face it, my brothers and sisters, it's been a good year. World uncertainties aside, the markets have been generous to most of us.

Bounty on this grand scale creates, well, a problem: What ridiculously extravagant gift are you going to give someone (or yourself) in 2006?

And since kids know the truth -- if one present is good, seven presents are better -- what better time, then, for a Borat-titled story: "The Seven Best Money-Is-No-Object Gifts to Get"?

Go ahead. Go wild. You deserve it.

Best Game Platform

There are those in the world for whom $600 is a lot of money. And there has been much twittering out there over which is the best gaming platform: The Sony (SNE) PlayStation 3, the Nintendo Wii or the Microsoft (MSFT) Xbox 360.

But money is, blissfully, not the issue here. So the choice is simple. If you want to game, do what the professional gamers do: Get a gaming PC. Good brands are the Voodoo Envy notebook PC or the Vicious PC; but my pick is the Alienware mALX ($9,900).

The mALX is a beast of a laptop, with a 19-inch screen that is -- just barely -- portable. The thing has unimaginable power and features. I will spare you the techno details, other than to say this: Spend three minutes playing Battlefield, Warcraft or Grand Theft Auto on the mALX, and you'll never mess around with a dorky old PlayStation again.

Best Disc Player

The supposed big story of the year is the "war" between the two competing high-definition video disc standards: HD digital video discs and Blu-ray discs. But there's really no story, and there is no war. Blu-ray disc players are better. They offer more storage, more features and better image quality. So get a Blu-ray player, cost and compatibility be damned.

The trick with Blu-ray is not to mess around with also-rans from the likes of Samsung, Philips Electronics (PHG) or Panasonic. Get a Blu-ray player from the company that invented Blu-ray players, Sony Electronics -- the BDP S-1 ($1,000), to be exact.

The S-1 comes with excellent controls, a nice array of connectivity options and a superbly designed user interface that embarrasses the competition. Timeless classics, like Lawrence of Arabia, are simply astounding on the S-1.

Best Display

	Runco PL61

While the high-end of flat panels is populated with excellent brands like Pioneer Elite, Fujitsu and Sony's Bravia line, there is still only one real choice: Runco, specifically the PL61DHD ($14,995).

Yes, the PL61 is hardly new. And $15,000 is a lot of money to spend on a TV with less than the industry standard for vertical resolution in a high-definition set: The Runco only has 760 lines as opposed to 1080.

Still, right now, the Runco is the best TV money can buy. It presents 61 luscious diagonal inches of meticulously processed plasma-rendered imagery. Skin tones are stroke-them silky. Blacks are velvet on an October midnight.

You simply have to come to terms with the reality that when the 1080-line version of the Runco comes out later in 2007, the 760-line unit you just bought will be passed off into the kid's room.

Best Camera

This has been the year of cheapskate cameras. Digital single-lens reflex cameras with high-end features like auto exposure and focus are coming from the likes of Olympus, Pentax and others for less than $500.

	Horseman L Series

And super-cheap units like point-and-shoot cameras from Panasonic, Fuji (FUJIY) and the rest come stocked with great features such as 5 megapixels of resolution and 5X optical zooms.

Fine. But do we care? No.

For the ultimate in photography, there is simply nothing to rival large-format cameras. Many vendors are still making these marvelous monsters, including Tachihara, Ebony and Alpa. But my pick for best-of-the-big is the Horseman L Series (starts at $5,800).

There is simply no image this camera cannot make marvelous.

Sure, it weighs 15 pounds without a tripod or other accessories, and you can easily spend $10,000 on a full system -- and a lifetime mastering all its horrible complexities of exposure and processing -- but when you are near to breathing your last breath, you'll look up at that Horseman-created photo from happier days and know your life was not for nothing.