Best_Stuff_Awards

While not the most road-friendly laptop, this super thin, 6.5-pounder with its 15.4-inch screen will certainly make you forget your desktop the minute you see its striking good looking metallic casing and colored front light panels and, of course, give its mobile Pentium M processor with Centrino integrated wireless technology a spin. Read more

The “mother of all displays” is the 24-inch widescreen Samsung LCD SyncMaster 241MP flat panel. There is some debate among serious gamers about the response speed of flat panels for gaming. This is due to the slower on-off cycle of LCD displays in general, as opposed to CRTs. This may be a problem for some panels, but we have never been disappointed with this giant display, where you almost feel you are part of the action yourself. With so much screen “real-estate” available, you easily catch details you might miss on smaller displays. Read more

You can literally replace your home entertainment center with this 17-inch widescreen laptop. Featuring a TV tuner, personal video recorder and Microsoft’s Media Center Edition of Windows XP, you can record and playback your favorite shows/movies, burn DVDs, listen to your music collection and even play the most demanding 3-D graphics video games on this multitalented machine. Read more

Jura-Capresso makes the number one coffee makers on the planet. They’re absolutely fantastic and the Jura-Capresso S9 is their latest super-automatic. It takes whole beans and it converts it into the most delicious coffee you’ve ever tasted outside of a café in Italy. It has a built-in high tech burr grinder to grind and brew the perfect cup of coffee. If you want the best coffee maker on the market the Jura-Capresso S9 is definitely for you. $2199. www.capresso.com

The folks at Netgear make it simple to set up a wireless home network. Its routers for the most part are plug and play. Simply plug your Cable modem or DSL into the router then plug router into your PC. Outfit your laptop or other PCs in the house with Netgear’s PC cards or its cool new Wireless USB Adapter and volia! All your computers are talking to each other; you can share the same Internet connection printers, scanners and more. Best of all, despite all the different versions of 802.11 wireless, Netgear’s products are backwards compatible, meaning if you have an old machine or existing wireless card they will still talk to each other, and you can set up your whole house for under $200. www.netgear.com.

Don’t let its streamlined size fool you. Apple’s smallest portable (12-inch screen, 4.6 lbs, 1.18 inches thick) is packed with all the processing power you’ll need for school or professional applications. Read more

Gateway's got game with this monster PC that will handle anything you throw at it. The Best Stuff crew uses the new Gateway 700XL series for serious game testing. When not busy gaming, it can chew its way through the most demanding jobs (like video editing, music making and other power hungry projects) without missing a beat. Read more

This Lilliputian laptop weighs only 2.4 pounds and is a miniscule .7-inches thick but it delivers big time power with its Pentium 1GHz Processor and integrated Centrino wireless technology, 256MB of RAM, 40GB Hard Drive and 12.1-inch XGA display. Battery life is not as good as larger laptops, but the time you save going through airport security with this lightweight wonder will allow you to plug it in way before the guy behind you with the beefy Dell re-loads his computer bag. Other features include USB ports, a SD Card slot and Ethernet adapter. $2300; www.shoptoshiba.com

The holiday shopping season has officially begun. While it still may be too soon to tell what the clear winners are this holiday season, here are some gift ideas that are sure to please.

Old Century Baseball Game
Front Porch Classics makes it possible for people of all ages to enjoy America's greatest pastime year round with the Old Century Baseball game, an exquisitely detailed retro pinball-style Coffee Table Game made of high quality wood and nostalgic graphics. Forget the batteries and gather round…"Play ball!" To play, players launch the pinball and swing the bat to hit singles, doubles, triples and homeruns. Each batter's performance can be recorded on actual scorecards, while turning movable scoreboard knobs keep track of the game’s score. Old Century Baseball is available for sale at Bed Bath and Beyond stores nationwide and www.bedbathandbeyond.com for $129.95. www.frontporchclassics.com Read more

GPS giant Garmin just added another acronym to its stable. Its new iQue 3600 is the company’s first combo GPS/PDA. Instead of a bulky add-on accessory, Garmin’s GPS satellite tracking antenna and software are integrated into the handheld. Simply flip up the antenna and not only do you get a full color GPS tracking device but it has voice guidance commands just like car units. It’s also a full-fledged PDA operating on Palm’s stable OS 5 software for keeping all your appointments and contacts. $550; www.garmin.com