A great Father’s Day gift idea

May 8, 2008 | By valmg |

Many people have a hard time buying gifts for other people. My sister in law is no exception. She called me recently because Father’s Day is in a month and she wasn’t sure what to get my brother. She knows I used to sell computers and that I am obsessed with finding the best deals possible online when I have to buy something. She asked to help her find a gift for him that he’d want, like and use.

So there we were on the telephone, each of us on our computers. I’m familiar with most of the computer and tech toys that my brother has but I asked her if he’d bought anything new recently. Noone wants to be the person to give someone something they’ve already got, you know. She said he hadn’t bought anything at all lately. I asked her if he’d mentioned needing or wanting anything specific. Aside from the standard silly answers like a Ferrari, a truck and a computer, the answer was no. So I started thinking back over conversations we’d had in the past few months and it dawned on me. On a number of occasions my brother had called me from a job asking me to check something or do something on my computer for him, because he didn’t have what he needed on his old laptop or thumb drive. I knew what she should get him, I’d seen it shown in the weekly deals. She must have sensed I thought of something from the tone in my voice, because she asked what I was thinking.

I told her we needed to go to the Buy.com website. She told me she’d never shopped on Buy.com, and asked me what they sold. Rather than spend a couple of hours on the phone telling her what they sold, I answered “everything”, while wondering how can anyone that calls themself a shopper not have shopped at Buy.com. Anyway. I told her we needed to go to the Computer section of the site. She reminded me they were on a tight budget and couldn’t afford a new computer. I told her I wasn’t going to show her a new computer (although I could because they carry them), but rather I was going to show her something almost as good as a new computer. Wanting to ease her fears, I told her I’d seen a portable hard drive that I thought would make a great gift for him.

She told me he’d looked at portable hard drives before and he thought they were too big and heavy and that one wouldn’t fit inside his laptop case. (It sounds like it’s time for a new case, don’t you think? They have those you know.) I told her in this particular instance size would not matter. I got her to look at the page for the Buffalo 320gb MiniStation Turbo USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive, as shown in this screenshot.

320gb. That’s more storage than all of the hard drives in all of the computers I’ve ever owned added up. She’s not a computer person so I doubt she was as impressed as I was. So I explained some of the specs to her.

The amount of storage available on such a tiny drive amazes me. Isn’t that amazing! The dimensions are 5″ wide by 3.3″ deep and the unit is 0.8″ high. This portable hard drive is not much bigger than a pack of cigarettes or a deck of cards. The drive is about the size of the picture on the left, which happens to be of the drive. The drive weighs a minute 0.42 pounds. The more I tried to sell her on this drive the more I wanted one for myself. I mentioned its shock resistant chassis in case it’s dropped, that it connected by USB and that it works in both the Windows and Macintosh environments. This is key because my brother works on computers as part of his job. The other thing that I really thought was great about it is that it’s a plug and play drive, so my brother could use it right out of the box without downloading any drivers.

Finally she agreed with me that it seemed like it would be a good gift for him. She saw the price of $134.99 down from $379.99 and asked me if there was a catch, like a membership you had to buy or a rebate you had to fill out. I was happy to be able to tell her there was not, that was Buy.com’s price for the item. She was thrilled to see that the purchase would qualify for free shipping, and was even happier when I told her she could get another $10 off by using google checkout, which she’d never used before. She was so happy with the hot deal she got that she said she was going to start checking their site first, and that she understood why I liked Buy.com so much. I’m glad I was able to help her find something within her budget that I do think my brother will appreciate.

Funny thing. I feel like shopping now!