Tech Gifts for Small and Home Business

Looking for the perfect gift for the entrepreneur in your life? They might work from a home office in the back bedroom or share an office with a group of like-minded success seekers, but what they need are the tools to help them work faster and better. Here are our picks for the best gifts for the small business user.

		HP Color LaserJet 3600n Printer - Nothing says professional like well printed materials. And nothing says you've made the extra effort more than color printouts; adding color makes documents stand out from the boring mono laser printouts of the competition. Color laser printers used to be expensive, complicated beasts, but a new breed of less expensive models have put attractive color documents into the hands of home business users. The HP Color LaserJet 3600n produces sharp text that pops off to impress potential clients, and the color is bright and clear. It can also crank out printouts at a good speed; useful if you need to quickly prepare for a meeting. And, at $549, it won't break the bank.
		Lexmark X342n Multifunction Laser Printer - If the object of your affection leans toward the minimalist approach to business, a device that can handle printing, faxing, and scanning in one will make their efficient heart go pitter-patter. The Lexmark X342n can handle it all, from printing documents quickly to faxing and scanning. The $399 device can handle these tasks without breaking a sweat, managing a print speed of more than 24 pages per minute and producing clear, sharp printouts. It can't print in color, but it does come with a scanner with a built-in sheet feeder; a big plus if you need to scan a big document and don't want to wait around feeding every page individually. The fax features are also above average: the X342n can use the same sheet feeder to fax long documents and send the same fax to a group of numbers with just the touch of a button.
		Polycom SoundPoint Pro SE-225 Speakerphone - Big companies have conference rooms with fancy systems that let groups of people talk on the phone, but small businesses often don't have the resources for that. The $220 Plycom SoundPoint Pro SE-225 deals with this problem – it works as both a normal phone (which can handle two phone lines; useful if you have separate home and business lines in a home office) and as a speakerphone that allows two or three people sitting around a desk to all talk to the person on the other end of the line. And it sounds great; full duplex conferencing means you won't get the annoying cutoff when one person is talking that you get with some speakerphones.
		Dell UltraSharp 2407WFP  - Big shots (however small their companies are) need big monitors; a bigger monitor makes it easier to view multiple documents at once and keep track of everything modern business involves. The $700 Dell UltraSharp 2407WFP provides plenty of desktop real estate; it runs at a maximum resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels. As well as the usual DVI input for connecting to a PC or Mac, there are composite, S-Video, and component video inputs that mean it can double as an HDTV. It doesn't have a speakers or an HDMI input, so it won't work with some high definition devices, but Dell does offer a $30 set of speakers that clip onto the bottom of the screen; perfect if the company office is your small bedroom and you want to watch TV in bed.
		Lenovo ThinkPad X61 - Many small businesses are replacing their desktop computers with laptops because they are nearly as powerful, but much more portable; you can run an entire small business from a laptop you can carry in a small briefcase, such as the Lenovo ThinkPad X61. This 3.6-pound ultraportable laptop may be on the skinny side, but it has performance to spare; it's available with up to a 2.2-GHz Core 2 Duo processor and a 200 GB hard drive. A tricked-out model like that costs a cool $1,850, but you can bring the price down by using more modest components if you're on a tighter budget; a base-level model goes for $1,030, and is still quite capable of doing everything most business users will need on the road.
		Verbatim Store 'n' Go Pro U3 Drive - Looking for a less expensive gift than a $1,000 laptop, or for someone who just needs access to their business documents occasionally? You might still be able to help your favorite business person do their work on the go: a USB thumb drive like the Verbatim Store 'n' Go U3 allows them to bring their desktop with them on a drive that fits on a key ring. Available in capacities from 256 MB (around $20) to 4 GB (around $130), this clever drive allows the business person on the go to run programs straight from the thumb drive on any PC running Windows with a USB port. So, they can go to a cyber cafe or hotel business centre, insert the thumb drive, and get access to the files and applications that come preinstalled on the drive, which include a Web browser, office suite, e-mail program, and others. The programs and data are all stored on the drive, so users won’t leave any sensitive date behind once they remove the drive. It's like having your desktop PC with you, but without having to carry it around.