Holiday Gift Guide Guide
Bonus post
Here’s a bonus Monday post with a few updates to online shopping tips and tech picks from last year if - like me -you still have a few gifts to get.
This time of year, even if you’re not buying all the things, you’re subject to everyone telling you what to buy. If the Mall Santa or the cranking of Christmas Carols used to be the sign of the season, now it’s the onslaught of online Gift Guides.
Beware the Gift Guides, I’ll tell you why in a minute.
My favorite store in Santa Rosa sells local stuff from local folks here in Sonoma County. Go local and support small biz when you can.
But it’s hard to beat online for the range of products and especially tech, even when you know it’s probably coming from China.
Last year I wrote a Holiday Gift Guide full of my favorite tech stuff. All still legit, with a few updates. I did get the Wyze Pan-Tilt-Zoom camera and it’s great. I got the new Sonos Era speaker, also great. I tried the Tablo over-the-air antenna to get local sports and that just didn’t work, not great.
Just got a new laptop for the college grad. It’s a Thinkpad, my favorite laptop of all time. Carbon X1, even the name sounds cool. Pulled it out of the box last night and it sure looks sweet. Will put it to the ultimate test - coffee shop WiFi - later today.
Here’s my gift guide from last year:
If the after Christmas sales are amazing, I’ll check wireless charging, wearables and perhaps a new tablet - my 7 year old iPad is getting sluggish.
I wrote last year’s article as an excuse to play around with affiliate marketing - that’s what powers every single Gift Guide on the internet. Affiliate marketing is setup so that the publisher of said gift guide gets a kickback for everything you buy that they recommend.
Caveat Emptor! None of these reviews are unbiased.
In my follow-up to the gift guide I went through affiliate marketing in entirely too much detail including how to sleuth product links to see who is getting paid:
Happy Shopping!
best, Andrew