There are only 17 shopping days till Christmas, only two shopping days till Hannukah, and eight shopping days till Samuel L. Jackson’s birthday.  Sure, it’s not a religious observance, but Jackson’s tired of monkey-fighting people forgetting his Monday-to-Friday birthday.

So – what to get a geek?  Here are some ideas – and some idea of the impact on network performance.

1) Mini HD Camcorder

Cisco’s Flip cams dominate the industry to the point where any small-sensor high definition portable cheap camera have been termed “flipcams” – sort of like “hoovering” the rug in the U.K., or blowing your nose with a Kleenex. 

Just be aware that at if you put those flip videos streaming on the network, you’ll end up with 9MBPS worth of bandwidth being sucked up. 

2) An internet TV streaming device

Whether NetFlix, Vudu, Amazon, AppleTV, or a Blu-Ray player with YouTube built in, it seems to be time of the Internet enabled set-top box.  Personally, I’ve just got a computer hooked up to my TV, and that seems to do the trick. 

Again, however, streaming video over the network could result in slowdowns, especially with high-definition content.

3) Online Games

Whether it’s World of Warcraft or Team Fortress 2, online games are often a nice buy for gamers.  They don’t take up a lot of bandwidth, per se, but they do require low-latency connections, which may be a problem if you’re also running some sort of Voice app or video communication program at the same time. 

4) A Cellphone

Droid, Blackberry, or iPhone, the smartphones of today all have some sort of Internet connectivity through WiFi – sometimes automatically.  So, as people come into the office after Christmas break, all of a sudden there’s a rush of new devices on the WiFi enabled Internet. 

And before you ask, yes, it was a bit of a slow news day.