Mark Hurst's technology buying guide

By Mark Frauenfelder at 12:51 pm Thursday, Oct 27

Mark Hurst, the founder of the GEL conference and its associated website, Good Experience, has published a free PDF file called "Uncle Mark 2006 Gift Guide and Almanac." It is full of excellent advice. He says: "This is my set of answers to questions I get all the time - 'which digital camera should I by? which laptop? which gift for my high school-aged nephew? when should I go to the Met?'"

Here's what he has to say about which cell phone to buy.

For “techies” and early adopters who want all the latest features, I recommend the cell phone with it all: the palmOne Treo 650 (find it at palmone.com) combines a phone, e-mail, instant messag- ing, Web browsing, Palm Pilot software, and a digital camera, all in one device. I know from experience that the Treo is the best-designed of all the multi-function devices out there. (I have a hard time imagining who really needs all those features in one device, but it’s a great gift for a techie.)

For us mere mortals, who just want to make a phone calls that aren’t dropped abruptly, I would recommend finding the oldest, chunkiest, most boring Nokia model you can find in your neigh- borhood cell phone store. I recommend Nokia because they have consistently made the easiest-to- use cell phones. Some of their new models have silly designs that are hard to use; aim for an old one, shaped like a big chocolate bar. My phone is five years old and I love it.

Great advice. My wife uses an ancient Nokia (one that we had sitting in a desk drawer) after her new flip phone's hinge snapped. She never wants another phone. Link to PDF file