<p>My impossible-to-shop-for son will have his 19th birthday soon. He’s considering computer science, and is currently enjoying his first college course in this field (Java). Anyone have any gift ideas that perhaps have something to do with computer science?</p>
<p>Tons of ideas here: [ThinkGeek</a> :: Stuff for Smart Masses](<a href=“http://www.thinkgeek.com/index.shtml]ThinkGeek”>http://www.thinkgeek.com/index.shtml)
I particularly like this one:
[ThinkGeek</a> :: Compiling](<a href=“http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/xkcd/dac0/]ThinkGeek”>http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/xkcd/dac0/)</p>
<p>What’s the budget???</p>
<p>My desk at work (!) has a collection of Angry Birds figures, Halo figures, Dilbert paraphernalia, etc. </p>
<p>An accessory to something he already owns, such as a classy iPad case or cell phone case, upgrade to a cellphone, etc.</p>
<p>Maybe a “parental coupon” to purchase a “higher-spec” computer two-three years from now…especially if the computer he’s bringing is more than a couple of years old. CS majors are some of the few majors who tend to max out their computer’s resources. </p>
<p>This is doubly important if the older laptop is so old it still has a 32-bit CPU as the trend in computing/software development for mainstream consumer/corporate office computers is centering more on 64-bit based CPUs. </p>
<p>If the machine’s brand new…maybe extra computer memory or a portable hard drive/multimedia device which could double as one to extend his computer’s capabilities.</p>
<p>My favorite tech mementos:</p>
<ul>
<li>Sun Java and Espresso Cup and saucer. I got this at a trade show in the 1990s and we use it to store our wedding and engagement rings</li>
<li>Mozilla Firefox T-shirts (I have polos and tees and the material is very soft; unfortunately they are too big for me now)</li>
<li>Apple Tee Shirt from local store opening (unfortunately too big now too)</li>
<li>Intel Itanium Tee Shirt (too many holes)</li>
<li>T-shirts from my employer</li>
<li>An old cap from my employer</li>
</ul>
<p>I’d be happy to have tee shirts from Microsoft, Google and other tech companies too.</p>
<p>These are company-themed things that I identify with and a CS major might too if that’s his thing.</p>
<p>BTW, all of these things were all gifts.</p>
<p>My son has picked up a number of gadgets and trinkets from companies at job fairs. One that I liked quite a bit was a combination key chain, laser pointer and flashlight. I saw them on Amazon for under $10.</p>
<p>One thing that might make a good gift for a few bucks more is a Swiss Army Knife. I do repairs to computer equipment from time to time (not really CS but you often get asked to fix things if you’re a CS major) and the Swiss Army Knife comes in handy - it’s also handy for all sorts of other quick repair, fixit jobs or trimming your nails or opening bottles.</p>
<p>Somewhere between the t-shirt and the higher end computer – a good second monitor with a big screen.</p>
<p>I was looking at 27 inch monitors yesterday from Apple and Dell. Nice stuff. My daughter has a 27 inch iMac that I used yesterday. Wonderful, wonderful system.</p>
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<p>Agree with the above with the possible exception of the Microsoft stuff. Back when I was in college(mid-late '90s), Microsoft was as uncool and “un-techie” as you can get among the hardcore engineering/CS majors.* Among them…Microsoft lovers are derisively identified as being too corporate and for “non-techies”/pointy-haired boss types. </p>
<p>The real cool kids among that group gravitated towards various flavors of Unix or Unix-like OSes/brands like FreeBSD, Slackware, Gentoo, etc. Even Redhat and Ubuntu…despite being flavors of Linux is disdained by some for “being too bloated by emphasis on user-friendliness though implementation of resource intensive graphical user interfaces”. </p>
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<li>Ironically, one of the most zealous among this group is now working for the very institution they used to dub “The Evil Empire” back in their college days. </li>
</ul>
<p>** The underlying core is based on a variant of BSD.</p>
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<p>Microsoft was a big company back then (it still is) and they did lots of cool things in the 1990s too. I remember when they recruited Jim Gray from DEC. He worked out of San Francisco doing quite a bit of cool research stuff - continuing his areas of work from System R at IBM in the 1960s.</p>
<p>I also think that David Cutler’s work on Windows NT to turn Windows into a real operating system was cool. But a of that wasn’t visible to the average person. That set the stage for their OS dominance of the last decade.</p>
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<p>I worked on DEC Alphas and Windows NT in college and in my first jobs. Funny part is how despite all that…Windows NT 3.1, 3.51, and NT4 kept crashing/having BSODs up the wazoo…even after all the service pack updates. </p>
<p>Granted…they were slightly better than Win 3.1/3.11 and Win9x…but that’s really damning with extreme faint praise. And don’t get me started on Windows ME…which Microsoft seemed to have repeated with the Vista fiasco.</p>
<p>The difference was that the NT family were real multiuser operating systems. Dave Cutler brought a far better lineage to Windows. Windows 3.1 and ME were really single-user operating systems hacked to look like a multiuser operating system. Not having protected memory was a big headache as applications could write into the space of other applications causing random crashes.</p>
<p>Microsoft is still a huge company with huge products. They have problems like all large companies do but they do a lot of serious work and they fund a lot of serious research.</p>
<p>An unlocked Android device so he can develop apps? Android apps are written in Java.</p>
<p>Money is always good, the more the better, CS or any other major. I would take Money over any other gift, any money $5 or $1k. I am CS and hate PCs, I love my jobs though, I love writing software but I do not care what computer I am writing my software for, any will do, I am also not geek at all, none of CS people that I know are geeks, they are just like others, business, MDs, sales…whatever.</p>
<p>These are fabulous ideas! Although as a non-techie I don’t understand some of your ideas, lol, but hubby will help. </p>
<p>DS has a new Dell laptop, pretty powerful one, but I think a portable hard drive is a great thought. In my technology-challenged brain it seems you can never have too much memory, right? I also love the idea of a big screen monitor (he streams Netflix movies.) </p>
<p>Motherbear, is there a place I can get more information on developing apps on an Android device? That sounds right up his alley too…</p>
<p>Again, everyone, thanks for the ideas, and keep 'em coming if you can. Definitely bookmarking this thread because son is really, really hard to shop for.</p>
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<p>Assuming the Dell isn’t a consumer-line(i.e. Inspiron, Studio…) and has more system resources than a typical laptop bought for most undergrads, it should hopefully last him for at least 4 years and then some…especially if he’s comfortable enough with IT/hardware maintenance to serve as his own tech support.*</p>
<p>Big screens are another great idea…and not just for streaming movies. Very helpful for CS assignments/projects. </p>
<ul>
<li>Including fully disassembling and reassembling the notebook as needed. You’d be surprised at the number of engineering/CS majors who completely bricked/blew up their machines because they thought they knew what they were doing. That includes some of the hardcore unix/linux zealots I knew during my college years…</li>
</ul>
<p>We did not have THAT much trouble with NT actually, our development systems for Windows CE 1.0/2.0/3.0 (eek) ran on NT… at least late vintage NT4 SP3 etc took us all the way to 2001… NT 3.x was true to its initials (Not There :)).</p>
<p>Being a pet rodent fan, I would suggest a USB hamster wheel… Or, if you can find one, a robotic guinea pig (Gupi) like this [Gupi</a> the robotic guinea pig - YouTube](<a href=“Gupi the robotic guinea pig - YouTube”>Gupi the robotic guinea pig - YouTube).</p>
<p>Good headphones for the computer. I don’t even pretend to buy tech gear. CS majors collect an awful lot of free t-shirts from recruiting fairs, etc. S has an entire wardrobe of them. 
ThinkGeek is popular, as well as t-shirts from his favorite online comics/memes (xkcd, etc.). S asked for a Doctor Who tool (ThinkGeek).</p>
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<p>But often not until reaching certain more advanced courses that required writing more resource hungry programs (e.g. graphics).</p>
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<p>What was this a footnote of in post #8?</p>
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<p>However, earlier versions were rather cumbersome to actually use as multiuser systems (limitations on remote use, limitations on use as a non-Administrator user). Plus they tended to require rebooting for configuration changes that should not (e.g. changing the DNS server list).</p>
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<p>My experience with the various iterations of NT…including NT4 with all service packs was so horrid that when the IT manager of the company at my second job was giving away NT4 Sp6a CDs and full licenses to employees…I didn’t join in. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I happily partook in his giveaways of SuSe, Slackware, and Redhat Linux CDs. Also, when the IT manager at the next company I worked for was giving away Win2k CDs with full licenses, I didn’t hesitate to snap up as many of them as I could.* If he was later doing the same for XP Pro or Windows 7 Pro/Enterprise/Ultimate…ditto. </p>
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<li>Rock-hard stable and when given at least 64 MB RAM…is a surprisingly usable desktop even on old Pentium I machines for basic office and internet apps. </li>
</ul>
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<p>Not sure about that based on my engineering/CS friends/colleagues’ experience…even those who graduated as little as 3 years ago. One common complaint I kept hearing from them was how the desktop/notebooks they brought with them/their non-techie parents got them ended up being too underpowered for their academic needs after two-three years.</p>
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<p>Not only CS majors, but also anyone working in the computer/technology industry. Have a few drawers of such free t-shirts myself…including some advertising versions of linux which no longer exist or worse…a company which later became regarded as more of a pariah in the Linux community than the “Evil Empire” itself.</p>
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<p>Cutler came over with expertise in RSX and VMS and those were character-cell operating systems. GUIs and front-ends were not a priority there.</p>
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<p>VMS too. VMS is still used in high-reliability implementations. It’s main downfall as a consumer and low-to-middle end server system was that they couldn’t keep up with x86. x86 killed off a lot of minicomputer architectures. HP’s current architecture for VMS is Itanium but there are still lots of VMS licenses sold running as Alpha or VAX VMs on x86.</p>
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<p>Most undergrad CS courses require very little compute power.</p>
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<p>I got tons of these for a long time and then it stopped where I work. The IRS
complained many years ago that this was untaxed income. Companies can go
hog-wild with this stuff.</p>
<p>These days a lot of companies are partners and competitors and some of the
competitive stuff on the old shirts might not be the best thing to wear on campus.
I’ve replaced all of my computer tech shirts with Nike shirts (that cost a few bucks).
Very simple and plain and it works fine if I want to run or lift after work.</p>
<p>Son received far more in the way of gadgets and trinkets compared to t-shirts. The
big spike in cotton in 2011 may have had something to do with that. The t-shirts
handed out tend to be XLs (male) too which could be really big for some people.</p>