Tip: Now, if you're a really good friend, you can hook up your buddy with legitimate free music. In the past, Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have offered up entire albums for which you can pay what you think is appropriate (or, if you're so inclined, nothing). Me? I'm downloading the DJ mashup disc from Girl Talk, Feed the Animals; to me, that album is worth $50! Of course, you could just buy some DRM-free music on behalf of your friend and pop it directly onto the USB drive. (I prefer to use Amazon.com's MP3 service at the moment.)
Web Tools
Yes, the Internet is a wonderful and scary place. (Of course, your scary might be my wonderful, but I digress.) You need Web-savvy software to get the most out of your time online.
One key tool that I rely on is a good FTP program. You have plenty of choices, from Filezilla to the Firefox plug-in FireFTP. I'm fine with CuteFTP's clean and simple interface.
Which browser should you use? That depends on whom you ask. Opera and Chrome each have their strong points, but I always find my way back to Firefox, coupled with some key plug-ins. Among my essential Firefox add-ons are Noscript for secure Web browsing and CoolIris for a tasty graphical experience when I'm looking for photos and videos.
When trying to corral all my instant messaging, I usually go with Meebo.com while on the road, but deskbound I'm using VoxOx or Digsby. Try both out and pick the one that works better for you.
MorphVOX Junior--something admittedly dorky--allows you to monkey with your audio settings to change your voice.
Into RSS feeds? Most folks swear by the Web-based Google Reader. Offline, I use FeedDemon. It's easily customizable and simple to tweak.
Twitterholics on your shopping list will get a lot of mileage out of installing Twhirl on their desktops. Just go with me on this one.
Tip: Hey, Don't forget about sharing your bookmarks! Obviously it's not a problem if you use sites like Delicious to manage your bookmarks, but if you're old-school and have a bunch saved on your browser, export the file and include it on your USB gift.
For productivity, I have only one recommendation for you: OpenOffice. Forget dropping hundreds of bucks on the big, bloated office suite from Microsoft. OpenOffice is completely usable and compatible with Office documents.
The best part of all the suggestions I've made here: The most your PC mixtape gift will cost you is the price of the flash drive!
Happy holidays, people!
Casual Friday columnist and PC World senior writer Darren Gladstone geeks out over gadgets, games, and odd uses for humdrum tech. In other words, he's a nerd--and he's okay with that. Need even more nerdity? Follow gizmogladstone on Twitter for more time-wasters.