2009’s Hottest Holiday Tech Trends

Hopped-up netbooks, streaming Internet devices and connected HDTVs top our list of hot holiday tech trends for 2009.

Leaves are dropping, days are shortening, and colder air is sweeping in. The holidays are almost here, and for most of us, that means feeling out proper gifts for friends and family – and, if we’re lucky, dropping just the right hints to unwrap what we’re after this year too. The especially good news for gadget enthusiasts being as follows: If your preferred pick happens to be a high-tech item, there’s a lot to get excited about this season.

Chomping at the bit to start planning your wired wish list already? Grab a pen and start scribbling: Here are some of the hottest up and coming tech trends that will hit with full force when Sunday ad circulars start to flutter down like oversized snowflakes. From touchscreen computers to connected GPS navigation systems, take note – this is the gear set to make a big showing this holiday season.

Lenovo S12

High-Powered Netbooks

Netbook computers made a huge splash last year with unbelievably low price tags, but this year, the big news will be all the newfound features and power. Nvidia sops up a majority of the credit with its new Ion graphics processor, which gives the anemic Atom processor a major shot in the arm. Unlike last-generation notebook systems, which couldn’t play any games from the last decade and choked on high-quality Hulu videos, Ion-equipped netbooks will play relatively demanding computer games and even full 1080p HD video. Screens have also stretched from 10 inches all the way up to 12, and a newfound focus on industrial design has produced some netbooks that are downright pretty.

Garmin Nuvi 1690

Connected GPS Navigation Systems

The world isn’t a static place. While knowing where to go using a GPS is nice, knowing what’s going on around you (e.g. how bad traffic is on the interstate, what the weather will be like when you get to your destination, and whether the next restaurant is a dive) can be even more helpful still. A new breed of Internet-connected GPS devices, which use a wireless modem to pull this data out of the air, make it all possible. And if you’re still just looking for point A to B instructions, budget GPS devices will be cheaper and more powerful than they’ve ever been. Think: No need to spend more than $100.

LG 47LH50

Internet-Connected HDTVs

Ever watch TV while holding a computer in your lap to surf the Internet? So do a lot of other people, which is why companies have finally figured it out and started offering Internet-connected HDTVs so you can access online information directly from your television set. While these models may not offer a full-fledged browsing experience (yet), they do provide widgets (small programs that take the appearance of pop-up windows) that let you check the weather, monitor stocks, read the news, and even browse pages on Flickr. Now that’s what we call killing commercial time effectively.

Sony Webbie HD

Budget HD Digital Camcorders

Pocket-sized camcorders like the Flip Mino are old news, but while the size has remained steady, the quality of these budget-friendly video cameras has continued to get better and better. The latest generation will actually capture video in full-motion 1080p quality. Footage might not be quite the same caliber as that provided a real $1,000 HD camcorder, but for a device no bigger than a cell phone, it’s a lot better than you could have done two years ago. Just beware if you intend to sit up long nights sipping eggnog: High-definition videos aren’t nearly as flattering as those taken by the fuzzy VHS camcorder you used to shoot with, since they can capture every wrinkle and pore.

Xbox Live Games Storefront

Digital Video Game Delivery

Encyclopedia-sized video game boxes have been dead for years, and now it’s time for their smaller cousins to disappear, too. Digital distribution services like Steam, Xbox Live, the PlayStation Network and WiiWare have eliminated the need for cardboard by pushing games directly to the gamer over the Internet – in minutes – without a trip to the store. Meaning that if your local retailers are sold out of the hot holiday game, not to worry: Just send friends a digital copy. They’ll receive an e-mail with instructions for downloading it, as well as the pleasure of knowing they’re taking a more eco-friendly route by ditching toxic DVDs. Of course, if it’s for Junior, it might not hurt to buy a physical copy to stick under the tree, either, as trying to wrap thin air just doesn’t have the same effect.

Gateway ZX Series all-in-one

Touch-Screen Computers

Consider this a continuation of a trend the iPhone kicked off way back in 2007. We’ve already seen buttons hacked off phones, cameras and GPS devices in the name of the almighty touchscreen, but this year, the mouse and keyboard are next to go. A wave of coming touchscreen computers, triggered by the release of Windows 7 (which has much better touch capabilities), will include tiny touch-operated Internet tablets, convertible netbooks, and even full-size touch-screen desktops.

Motorola Droid

Android-Powered Smartphones

Google’s promising Android operating system got off to a slow start last year with the launch of the T-Mobile’s relatively tame G1. But the year following has been good to Google, and this holiday season the operating system will have a bevvy of attractive models out in full force. Continuous upgrades on Google’s end also mean that the new Android phones offer features like multi-touch functionality that previous versions didn’t have. Watch out, Apple and friends.

Plastic Logic Que

E-Book Readers

Amazon has owned the eBook reader market in the past with its all-popular Kindle, but this holiday season will see other companies begin to tread competitively into the same space. Most notably, a number of new e-readers will mimic Amazon model with built-in modems and tap a competing book marketplace from Barnes and Noble. Even more exciting, the Barnes and Noble storefront will offer more than twice the variety of Amazon’s 300,000-title eBook store with 700,000 paid titles and access to another million through Google Books. And you thought reading was fundamental before…

Vudu Set-top Box

Streaming Internet Devices

Next-generation televisions may offer Internet on your TV, but what about accessing online video on your set instead? Disgruntled cable users rejoice: New options are on the way for enjoying streaming video this holiday season. Besides the usual options like game consoles, we’ll see smaller and more affordable set-top boxes, TVs with the ability to suck down online video built right in, and even existing Blu-ray players with firmware upgrades that will activate previously untapped features. Suffice it to say that there has never been a better time to cut the cord.

LaCie Stark 1TB Hard Drive

Mammoth Hard Drives

The trend toward cheaper and cheaper hard drive space is nothing new, but the demand for it this year is. The ready availability of downloadable video through services like iTunes, Amazon Video on Demand and Zune Video Marketplace means that hard drives are acting less and less like repositories for tax documents and more like home entertainment libraries. Which, of course, makes them look small awfully quick: One half-hour episode of The Office in high definition can consume an entire gigabyte. Fortunately, with 1-terabyte and 2-terabyte drives quickly becoming the norm, that’s no longer much of an issue. With terabyte drives routinely selling for under $90 now – 9 cents per gigabyte – storing movies on a hard drive has almost become cheaper than burning them to DVD.

Check out our slideshow: 2009’s Top Holiday Gadgets.