Glowing peripherals are all the rage this season. Another mouse unit, the Logitech Wingman Force Feedback Mouse, has blue lights on the base and the mouse itself. Do not be fooled. The FF mouse is a bad idea that occupied Logitech when they should have been figuring out how to counter MS's Intellimouse. If your geek is female or just small-handed, then consider Microsoft's slightly less flexible Intellimouse Pro, smaller and without that handy extra button.
Creative Labs, Common price, $180-$199
A good rule of thumb for hardware buyers: if you can understand the entire feature set and tech specs of a peripheral, then it isn't sophisticated enough. The SBLive Platinum is so decked that I don't understand half of the connections coming out of it, but that's exactly what I like to see in a hunk of PC hardware. Sure, there are dweebs out there who really do know their signal from their noise -- and even understand why we would want to put them in a ratio -- but we don't want to be one of them. The rest of us are more than satisfied knowing our hardware is smarter than we are.
The Platinum edition is Creative's top-of-the-line sound card. It supports four-channel sound and digital/analog output, with much-improved positional audio. The software suite is incredible, everything from a voice chat client to an MP3 studio and 3 top-drawer game titles (Thief, Need for Speed 4 and Descent 3). But the real standout is the Live Drive, a set of outputs (headphones, S/PDIF, Midi and Mic) that mount in a large drive bay on the front of the CPU. No more crouching behind the CPU to swap in a new sound source or just headphones. Much like electronic seat adjustment or remote starting in a new car, these are the kinds of little luxuries an aficionado appreciates.
This one is easy. Just go into your computer superstore and ask for the most expensive consumer sound card they have. We haven't seen one that comes close. Salesmen may try to talk you out of it, claiming that most of the major sound cards are of relatively equal quality and all that the Platinum does is add to the $99 X-Gamer is that Live Drive doohicky. In this instance, they may be right, but ignore them anyway. That Live Drive is worth its weight in gold - which is pretty much the price it does add to the basic SB Live models. But think of it this way. By keeping your geek from scrambling about the back of his CPU you are saving the world from another pointless exposure to his unattractive ass-crack. Unless, of course, your geek is female, in which case definitely get her the less expensive versions.