The perfect hi-tech pressies

At only 77g, the Sendo M550 is one of the lightest phones on the market. Its looks have fooled far too many people into thinking it's an expensive, high-spec phone (including some of the networks planning to sell it).

At a shade under £80 on Virgin Mobile, this dual-band phone is quite a bargain, and comes equipped with a colour screen, dual display (so you can see who is ringing before you even open it and answer a call), Wap browser, games, polyphonic ringtones and an excellent keypad.

Battery life is also impressive, coming in at up to 400 hours of stand-by time and up to 300 minutes of talk time.
www.sendo.co.uk

Sanyo Xacti £499.99
Sanyo claims that this the future of digital cameras. I wouldn't go quite that far but the Xacti is an imaginative and feature-packed camera for still pictures and movies.

Shaped more like a video camera, the Xacti has a flip-out LCD viewfinder on the side, weighs 153g and can be operated with one hand.

Despite its compact size, the Xacti has eight different lens configurations, a 5.8x optical zoom lens and a 3.2 megapixel CCD. Together with the 10x digital zoom, it provides up to 60x zoom capability.

Pictures and movies can be stored on removable SD cards (128MB card in the box), and can be transferred directly from the camera to a PC by means of the USB cable supplied.
www.sanyo.co.uk

eJay Audio Cleaning Studio 2004 £19.99
This software allows you to convert recordings made on old and 'noisy' media formats such as cassette and vinyl into MP3 format.

As well as handling the encoding into either MP3 or WMA format, the audio restoration tools analyse the sound as it is being encoded to detect anything that shouldn't be there, getting rid of hisses, pops and other noises associated with analogue recordings.

You can also do basic digital mixing and audio editing, allowing you to create custom sound files and your own music mixes.

It's a great tool for creating your own Windows alert sounds. This Christmas my PC will perform a Homer Simpson belch every time it crashes.
www.ejay.co.uk

eJay Audio Station 2004 £29.99
The MP3 format has revolutionised the music industry and eJay Audio Station 2004 provides the tools you need for making MP3s.

You can convert music CDs to MP3 or WMA and burn your own CDs, letting you create your own compilations (observing copyright laws, of course) compile your own playlists and a whole lot more.

If you are converting your existing CD collection, it has automatic online CD recognition via CDDB, so in most cases you won't have to manually type in all the song titles.

Audio Station also supports internet radio, with a selection of pre-programmed stations covering all genres.
www.ejay.co.uk

Logitech diNovo Media Desktop £170
This is the daddy of the wireless keyboards. With the look and feel of a good-quality laptop keyboard, it comes in two parts: a main keyboard, and a side unit containing a numeric keypad and an LCD display.

Put the two together and you not only have a full-size keyboard, but a keypad which can be placed either side of the main typing area (great for the left-handed). It has a mini screen that can alert you to new email, a remote control for your music and videos, and a calculator.

The fact that it is Bluetooth-enabled means it has a 10-metre range, and no need for line-of-sight.

As well as all this, the keyboard features a set of user-programmable buttons that can be used to quick-launch applications, or for custom bindings in games.
www.logitech.com

Apple iPod £249-£399
Digital music is well and truly entrenched in our society, and the iPod is the best MP3 player.

Yes, it's an Apple product. Yes, it's going to cause you no end of grief if you ever come up against Apple's awful UK technical support (especially if you are a PC user).

But it's worth it to get a device that's smaller than a pack of smokes, weighs just over 150g and can hold every song you'll ever need, own or listen to.

The iPod is basically a very small portable hard drive, with a fast FireWire interface (if you use a PC, you probably don't have FireWire ports, so you'll need a FireWire card costing about £20, or the optional FireWire to USB cable). The basic 10GB unit can hold about 10,000 CD-quality tracks.

It also has some rather neat extra features, including an address book and games, and can be used as a voice recorder with the mic that comes supplied.
www.apple.com

Logitech io Personal Digital Pen £149.99
Imagine a pen that you can use to write on ordinary paper, then go back to your PC and plug it in and see everything you've just written reappear in digital form on the screen.

Pretty neat, and now possible with the most original of this year's gadgets.

Using the Logitech io couldn't be simpler: write down whatever you want as normal (up to 40 pages worth at a time). When you place your pen into the cradle, everything gets transferred to your PC.

So now all those doodles, phone messages and long meeting notes can be saved on your PC. Using the supplied software you can manage and search your scribblings and embed them in emails.
www.logitech.com