Gadget Guide: Gizmo Gifts to Add to Your List

2007 WASN'T THE YEAR of the flying car/skateboard/Segway (it never is, but we're not giving up). While the season can boast no paradigm shifts, it does offer plenty of exciting, fun, practical devices — cutting-edge tech that you, or anyone on your gift list, can easily enjoy. (Preferably you, but that's hardly the holiday spirit.)

Gone are the days of Mom weeping over an indecipherable digital camera manual — now, a bizarre-looking printer can take over the downloading and editing of family pics. Also over: hideous cables snaking from laptop to TV; a teeny USB gadget plays files directly. The usual suspects are all gussied up, too, with smartphones, laptops and digicams sporting fancy new features.

And while an HD video camera is far from cuddly, a robotic panda is — and it can fill the hole in our hearts when Butterstick leaves. Now, can a flying car can do that?

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Written by Rachel Kaufman, Vicky Hallett and Holly J. Morris