Fathers’ Day Gift Guide – Part 2

Here’s a few more ideas if you’re still struggling to come up with that elusive gift for the dad in your life.

TomTom GoLive 820

Perhaps the new TomTom GoLive 820 GPS system may be what he needs? As well as offering all of the usual GPS facilities, TomTom now include live traffic updates – as frequently as every two minutes – to help you to get you your destination in the quickest possible time.

How does a portable hands free speakerphone that does double duty as an external speaker for your music on your mobile phone sound as a gift idea? And it even acts as an emergency battery charger for your mobile phone as well? That’s exactly what the Uniden BTS200 does.

Yes, it’s a hands free speakerphone that connects with your mobile phone or computer (or other bluetooth enabled device) and lets you conduct your phone calls in a hands free mode, with better sound quality than most phones can offer, because it has bigger and better speakers than your phone will have. Being connected to your phone or computer, it also can be used in place of the built in speakers for playback of music or movie soundtracks, and the removable battery has a USB port that lets you plug it directly into your phone to give it a boost if the phone’s battery has died.

WD TV Live Hub (Image copyright (c) 2011 Gary Stark)

The Western Digital TV Live Hub is a very compact and stylish media centre that I think most dads would enjoy. Coming with 1GB of internal storage, it can also load from within your home network and play them on any connected tv set.

Although it’s been discontinued by HP (pulled from the market almost as soon as it was released, in fact) HP’s WebOS based Touchpad tablet might make a great present for dad if you can find one and get it for a good (sub $150) price point. It offers a great browsing experience, there’s a kindle reader available, and it can handle email as well. Great for casual use within the home environment, say while watching tv, as long as you’re not going to paying too much for it.

Netgear Powerline AV500 (Image copyright (c) 2011 Gary Stark)

Although wireless ADSL 2 modems are very commonplace today, they’re not always suitable for everyone, nor might they be suitable for all environments. If you live in a larger, multi-storey dwelling, for instance, the wireless signals from you modem might not be strong enough to give you good reception throughout the whole of your house. In that case, perhaps something like NetGear’s Powerline AV500 may be useful. This is a network adapter that plugs into your home’s main power line circuit (using a pair of pre-existing power points) and sends the ethernet signals using the mains power wiring. It’s actually like magic, but works very well, and can extend the reach of your home network without exposing you to a risk of being hacked by passers-by in the way the an unsecured wireless network can.

Hopefully, some of the ideas that we’ve presented will be of use to you as Fathers’ Day approaches.