Business-Worthy Consumer Tech Gifts

The team at BYTE had the unique challenge of finding the top business-worthy consumer tech gifts for the holidays. There are lots of top 10 lists out there, but our challenge was finding cool consumer stuff that will also work well in the enterprise. Of course, many consumer products can be brought into the enterprise--that's the raison d'etre for BYTE--but there aren't a lot of them that also make great gifts. We skipped the obvious--the iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire--because we bet whoever wants those gadgets has them already. Our goal: gifts that would surprise, yet also function at work.

The Acer Aspire S3 has been our number-one drool object for all of 2011. We've gotten our hands on one for a bit and I can honestly say it is the best notebook we've seen in years. From the feel of the keyboard, to the weight, to the fact that it doesn't collect fingerprints, if you're in the market for a thin, fast, on-the-go Windows 7 laptop, this is the one for you. The solid-state drive provides an "instant on" and it works like magic. You open the computer and it's right there asking for your password. Take that, iPad.