Five Hot Tech Gifts For The Boss Or Employee     by Titus Hoskins Finding the right Boss Gift or Employee gift is always a problem at this time of the year, so it might prove helpful if you turned towards technology for a solution. Every holiday season has special hot tech gift items that everyone wants to see on their wish list, and this season is proving no different. So this side of a Zhu Zhu Hamster, here are five tech gifts you might consider putting on your list for that favorite boss or employee: 1. E-Readers. In case you're wondering, E-Readers is just as the name indicates, these are hand-held electronic devices which let users read books. They are also called digital or electronic readers. Probably the best known E-Reader is the Amazon Kindle which was introduced in 2007 and according to a recent Time article, Amazon has already sold 1.7 million units. Not to be outdone, Barnes & Noble has launched its own E-Reader call the NOOK , which retails for around $260. There's enough memory for holding 1,500 books (2 GB) and there's a microSD slot which could give you another 16 GB more. Other companies are also offering E-Readers such as the Sony Reader, Asus Eee-reader and Irex Digital Reader. According to the Association of American Publishers, total revenue from digital-book downloads has risen 149% this year, while they estimate e-book readers sales to top 3 million by Dec. 31. Plus, according to Forrester Research around 1 million of these gadgets could be sold this holiday season, and sales in 2010 are projected to double, to 6 million. 2. Netbooks. These are the smaller cousins of the laptop, often referred to as mini-laptops. They usually have screens of 10 inches, although some displays can be slightly larger or smaller. Netbooks have smaller Intel Atom processors, one GB of RAM and run Windows XP. Prices are well under $500. Keep in mind, the category of "netbook" is a fairly recent one - Asustek launched the netbook category when it released its first Eee PC in the fall of 2007. Some of the most popular Netbooks include ASUS Eee PC 1000HE, Lenovo Ideapad S10, Acer Aspire One, MSI Wind U100 and the HP Mini 2140. But shop around because there are other very good Netbooks on the market which also deserve a prominent spot under anyone's Christmas tree. 3. Blu-ray DVD Players. Blu-ray technology which offers glorious High Definition 1080p images and Superior sound, is becoming extremely popular with the buying public. Prices for Blu-ray DVD Players are also coming down which is further fueling the demand for these high-tech items of the moment. Keep in mind, to fully enjoy the benefits of a Blu-ray system you will need a full 1080p High Definition Television, the larger the better! Some of the best rated Blu-ray players include the Sony PlayStation 3, OPPO BDP-83, LG BD390, Panasonic DMP-BD60k and the Samsung BD-P3600 Blu-ray DVD Player. Again, prices have fallen drastically and if you shop around you may even find ones listed for under $100. 4. Smart Phones. PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), also known as smart phones are always an appropriate gift for a boss or an employee. These hand-held electronic devices are becoming even more dazzling and feature rich. Pretty soon, they will probably be bringing you your morning coffee! All joking aside, the smart phone is proving to be a popular gift as prices have dropped. The Apple iPhone has also opened up this market to a broader audience, further fueling the demand for this popular tech gift. Some of the best rated smart phones and PDAs include the whole Blackberry line, the Palm TX, the Sony CLIE series and of course, the Apple iPhone. Again, shopping around will get you a lower price but be wary of Free PDAs offers in return for a service plan, unless that's what you're looking for. 5. Gaming Laptops. These laptops have high-performance Graphics Chips, fast powerful processors, tons of memory (including dedicated Video RAM), large high resolution displays usually backed up with a Blu-ray Optical drive. Despite their somewhat flashy exteriors, gaming laptops are not only used for gaming, many business people, graphic artists, architects, video producers... enjoy the benefits of having a powerful laptop which can do heavy-duty graphics without crashing. Of course, any boss or employee can also play video games on them too. Some highly rated gaming laptop include the ASUS G71Gx-A2, Toshiba Qosmio X505 - Q850, MSI GT740, Alienware M17x and Rock X790 (Clevo D900F) which is basically the same laptop as the Eurocom D900F Panther, Falcon Northwest Fragbook DRX and the AVADirect Clevo D900F Core i7. Clevo is the Taiwanese OEM (original equipment manufacturer) of high-end quality laptop components, which these ODMs (original design manufacturers) such as Rock, Sager and Eurocom use to build their gaming rigs. Check over these five high-tech devices and you may find a suitable boss gift and/or employee gift that will be very much appreciated by the receiver. Shop around and you will probably find many of these tech gifts at a very suitable price; if all else fails, go with the Zhu Zhu Hamster! Copyright 2009 Titus Hoskins.