It's down to the last days before the holidays are finally here, and you're starting to sweat. You're walking up and down the aisles of big-box store's electronics department, through the shelves of specialized shops where you don't have a clue what each gadget does, and up and down lists of online retailers that you don't know if you can trust or not. Let's face it, you are totally and hopelessly lost in finding a gift for your favorite geek, techie, and otherwise computer-inclined friend. You're actually starting to think that “maybe they would really like a new pair of cashmere socks and a sweater?”

Stop right there, and put down the fruitcake, fruitcake! We're gonna work through this and make sure that your gift-receiving tech-friend will have a wonderful holiday season when they unstuff their stocking and rip apart their wrapping paper. However, if the eggnog does goes sour and you feel like you're about to go nuts over all these details and specifications, just remember one thing: you can never go wrong with USB connectivity. Never.

If there is one thing a computer techie likes, it's extra space to stretch our their music and video collection, install some extra apps, or backup all of their precious'. In computer language, that means you should look into getting them a new hard drive. On the price-factor, this would be in the range of $50-$150 depending how much space you want to give them, where you want to shop, and what kind of connection their system's support. You'll want to find out if their computer uses either an IDE or SATA interface in order to ensure that the bare drive will work with their system; but if you have no way of finding out just buy an external hard drive, and practically all of those use USB to connect and you'll be hard pressed to find a modern day computer that doesn't use USB somewhere.

A techie on the go likes portable hard drives, but I recommend investing into something extremely portable like USB flash drives. The prices on flash memory have dropped extremely fast lately and you can easily pick up a roomy thumbstick device for cheap. I've been eying a 16-gigabyte model that's been wavering in the ~$40-$50 price range for the past week, but I might wait out on a 32-gigabyte stick that's set at ~$60-$70 instead. You'll never be able to find these prices in any big-box store, but you can find them in some online retailers. My recommendation, as it always has been, is to look at shops like Newegg and TigerDirect. I've personally used Newegg for the past couple of years without any hassle, trouble, and no regret in my purchases.

With all these USB devices taking up precious ports on their computer, I'd suggest throwing in a USB hub to expand and open up some more slots. These things come in a variety of sizes, shapes, capabilities and colors, so you might be able to find something with the right shade of their school color for that proud university student you know. Now most of these things are self-powered through the computer but some do power themselves through an extra power outlet. That being said, I don't think you could go wrong either way with a simple USB hub. This is probably the most affordable device on the list, so take note penny-pinchers. You can find a decent four-port hub for about $10 just about anywhere, making this a perfect stocking stuffer.

If you're the type looking to spend something a bit more impressive on someone special, and really wanna surprise them with a gift they probably won't be expecting, then I'd suggest looking at some of the trendy, new netbooks. These are smaller, lighter, and slightly-less capable laptops that are meant for simple daily tasks, web browsing and maybe a little work whenever the deadline starts pressing down on you. Some of the more successful companies that have ventured into this new product-type are Asus with their EeePC, Dell with the Inspiron Mini, and HP's Mini. These each come with varying prices, hard/flash drives, and power, but those three are pretty good quick-buys. The price range will fluctuate from about $250 to $700 depending on the configuration of hardware and extras.

With all this being said, I do wish everybody a safe, fun, and exciting holiday season. Just remember to hug all of your aunts and skip Charlene's snicker-doodle pie if you want to avoid an embarrassing call to the poison control center.