Should the story of Christmas be retold in a modern setting, the smart money would back the Three Wise Men swapping the frankincense and myrrh for an iPod and a swanky mobile phone (gold, of course, never goes out of style).

The trio of sages would ignore that wandering star and find their way to the manger with a GPS navigation unit and probably write a blog on the whole amazing adventure.

Such is our love of gadgets. There's no denying it. Nor is there any escaping the fact that the people who love gadgets are very hard to buy presents for.

Everyone who knows a gadget boy or a geek girl will be smiling to themselves. We techno types are picky (although we prefer to think of ourselves as being "selective").

In some instances we are the first in line for the very latest gear, so most stuff we want has long been in our mitts. Or we carefully choose exactly the right product from a fleet of look-alike models swimming in an alphabet soup of sound-alike specifications.

That's especially so if the right gadget is meant to warm the heart of your geeky loved one. As well-meaning as mere mortals may be, anyone born without the digital equivalent of the train-spotting gene is struggling against the tide. (Gadget spouses have a head start here. It's one reason so many Mac users and Star Trek fans pair up.)

Let's throw another curve ball into the equation. Such is the rate of change in Geekdom that the speed at which gadgets live and die, or at least start to look wrinkled around the edges, can be measured in months. We live in fear that one day, Steve Jobs will stride onto the stage at yet another Apple expo, unveil yet another member of the iPod family and, before he walks off the stage, have already announced a smaller and slimmer replacement.

So Icon has made the whole process dead simple, with a hand-picked bunch of the best devices plus a few reliable stocking stuffer accessories. This guide also works for the potential recipient - select the items you want, circle them with a big red marker pen (how last century!) and leave the pages lying open in a conspicuous spot.

Shopping list

Digital cameras

When shopping for a camera, make the most of the very competitive market. It pays to shop around, and then once you have bargained with the assistant to get the price as low as you can, push for extras such as memory cards or a carry case to be part of the deal. Of course, if you're heading overseas, look into duty-free prices (and do so well before you get to the airport) - and don't forget vendors who operate online only.

Broadband

Finally making the move to broadband? Low-cost plans of about $30 a month with 200MB of downloads are fine for email and web browsing but you'll quickly go over the limit watching movie trailers and downloading music. A better limit is 500MB a month, which gives you plenty of overhead. Avoid ISPs that charge extra per megabyte over the limit - it's better to have your connection automatically wound back to dial-up speed.

Fitness

There are thousands of second-hand "pre-loved" iPods on the internet, but very few bargains. It's not just about the great value offered by the latest crop: older iPods can suffer from poor battery life. The second-generation iPod mini is an exception, although you'd do well to compare it to the nano, which has even better battery life because it stores songs in a slab of flash memory instead of a mechanical hard drive.

Desktop

Maybe it's time for a new computer? Laptops are closing the gap in price and performance with the bigger desktop PCs and Macs. By the time you add widescreen displays and built-in wireless networking you'd have to wonder why anyone would buy a desktop. If you decide later that you need a bigger screen, you can connect a larger monitor when you're at the desk, along with your current keyboard and mouse.