Gifts for geeks

ThinkGeek

I am a geek. I have geeks for friends and geeks as family members. I married a geek and am raising a geek-in-training right now. Whenever a gift-giving occasion roles around, I am always on the lookout for sites with products that appeal to the inner-geek.

Now, there are different varieties of geek out there. Most geek sites cater to the masses of “soft core” techies that are everywhere these days. What is harder to find are sites that cater to the über-geek — that small number of people who speak in programming languages, who can read binary, who write device drivers for fun, and who tend to prefer OS’es other than Microsoft’s. For those types of people, ThinkGeek.com is your shopping nirvana.

What is ThinkGeek.com?

According to the site itself:
Think Geek was created to sell stuff that would appeal to the thousands of people out there who were on the front line and in the trenches as the Internet was forged. From programmers, engineers, students, lovers of open source, to the masses that helped create the behind-the-scenes Internet culture.

They sell all kinds of things that would appeal to geeks, from t-shirts and other apparel to gadgets, electronics, and books. The site was definitely built by geeks with a sense of humor, with all kinds of cute and quirky sayings scattered throughout. I particularly like the “Customer Action Shots”, available on most apparel items, showing happy customers wearing their Think Geek apparel.

The Site:

The site has actually improved and expanded a lot down through the years since I started visiting there. What started out as a fairly simple and straightforward site has now grown into something quite slick and fancy. I think the site is quite attractive and very appealing to my geek-nature. The font used is quite small — something I’ve noticed that geeks prefer (because we always want to see so much information on the screen), however it might prove challenging to those whose eyesight isn’t that great.

The left-side navigation menu is quite handy. The main categories are:
* T-Shirts
* Other Apparel
* Cube Goodies (games & fun stuff for the office)
* Gadgets (cool & unusual stuff that geeks go crazy for)
* Computing (stuff for your PC)
* Caffeine (food stuffs and caffeine related-items)
* Electronics (digital cameras, mp3 players, etc)
* Books (sci-fi, techie humor, and techie non-fiction)

Each major category is broken down into quite a few sub-categories, which appear on the expanded-menu when the main category is selected. Other menu-categories also include “What’s New” and “Clearance” items.

When you select a category or sub-category to view, you are presented with a nice, efficient list of the items down the screen (25 items at a time with previous/next buttons to get you through them all). You get a small, thumbnail image of the item, a title and brief description, the price, whether or not it is in stock, and a link to get more information.

When you select an item to view, you get a larger image (and often links to other images, such as the back of the shirt, etc) and longer (often tongue-in-cheek) description. If you are browsing apparel you can also link to pictures that have been sent in of happy customers wearing the item.

How to Order/Shipping:

The Think Geek site is a fairly typical shopping cart application. You add items to your cart and check-out when you are done shopping. There are no major surprises or differences here.

Payment options: They accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express. You can also pay by personal check, certified check, or money order (in U.S. currency only).

Most orders are shipped on the same day they were ordered. Shipping options include 5 UPS service levels (Ground, 3 Day, 2 Day, Next Day Saver, Next Day) and Airborne shipping options. You will receive an e-mail with a tracking number when your order is shipped, which can be tracked via the UPS and/or Airborne sites (you can also view your tracking numbers on your Think Geek account history page). They will NOT ship to P.O. boxes.

There is no handy-dandy shipping-charges chart. You shipping totals will be calculated based on what you order, how much you order, and where it is going. The site will calculate your shipping costs and display them before your order is complete, so you can cancel if you do not agree with the shipping charge. That being said, I have always found their charges to be very reasonable.

Customer Service & Extra Details:

I have never had any problems with my order, so I have not had to deal directly with customer service. A lot of my friends and co-workers have ordered on Think Geek too, but I couldn’t find any of them who have ever had trouble with their orders. According to the site, you can return (for refund or exchange) your purchase by contacting Think Geek within 30 days of the order shipping date. You can e-mail (returns@thinkgeek.com) or phone (1-888-GEEK-STUFF) them to arrange for the return/replacement. Opened software and videogames cannot be returned or exchanged.

You do need an account to purchase items at ThinkGeek.com, however they take pride in the fact that they will never sell your information to outside companies/mailing lists.

Think Geek now has a rewards program called “Geek Points”. You earn points when you buy merchandise, and can redeem them for rewards such as cool geek gear or special discounts.

They also run contests from time to time. Currently there is a contest to win a “year’s supply” of Think Geek t-shirts (23 t-shirts of your own choosing). All you need to do to enter is sign up.

You cannot be a respectable geek-site without a webcam. Here is the link to the webcams at the Think Geek offices:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/

You can also keep a “Wishlist” on the site — handy for when you have non-geek family members who want to get you something you’ll really like.

I usually hate buying clothes online because I cannot try them on to make sure they fit properly. Think Geek helps take the guesswork out of online shopping by supplying charts of the size measurements for the shirts babydoll tees — something I greatly appreciate.

Gift Certificates are also available in a variety of amounts from $25 to $150.

More About the Merchandise:

I really love this site, so I would like to ramble on about the merchandise a bit…

Geeks love having shirts that make non-geeks scratch their heads and wonder what it’s all about. The epitome of that idea is represented in the “You are dumb” shirt, which spells out the phrase in binary (so when someone asks what your shirt says, you can tell them “you are dumb” — I never said geeks had great humor, now did I?).

For a few blissful years my company allowed geeks to wear casual attire, and I know that Think Geek made a ton of money off of us back then (they just made us go back to business-attire a few months ago — what a drag!) I happen to be a “coder” myself, and coders get their own set of t-shirts on the site (lumped in with hackers, gee why is that I wonder…) By far I would say the most popular t-shirt amongst us programmers was the “Kung Fu” t-shirt — available in a variety of colors, it has a simple “Kung Fu” on front with the beautiful Chinese characters for “skillful coder” on back. Another popular one was the “Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script” t-shirt. Some newer shirts that really appeal to me are the “There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don’t” and the “There’s no place like 127.0.0.1″. For the gamers out there, you cannot consider yourself an über-gamer unless you understand the shirt bearing the infamous “All your base are belong to us” phrase.

Nowadays I’m salivating over the babydoll tees! If only they had had them back when I ordered the bulk of my geek t-shirts! I would love to trade in some of my normal geek-wear for the babydoll versions.

Now that I’m a mother, I also love some of the stuff in the Kid’s section. Although some are very tacky (such as the “Mostly IP” and “Input/Output” creepers), I like the “Newbie”, “Geek in Training” and the newly spawned “Child Process” t-shirts. I also love the baby tux shirt (Tux with a pacifier, wearing a diaper) — a great baby-shower item for my soon-to-be-parents co-workers.

But enough about the t-shirts. I have also gotten some very nice golf shirts and ties for my father (such as the tie that has “ties suck” running down it in binary). In the “Cube Goodies” category I have purchased some of the infamous “demotavational” stuff to give as gifts (we simply had to have the “Consulting” one at our office, which states ” If You’re Not A Part Of The Solution, There’s Good Money To Made In Prolonging The Problem”).

Most of the cool gadgets and electronics are outside of my normal gift-giving price range, but there is certainly some nifty stuff there, including DVD Recorders, phones, and digital cameras.

I must admit that I have never ordered anything from the Caffeine section of the site (as I am not a coffee-drinker), however they offer other funny gifts that would be great for any coffee-lover, techie or not (such as the “Shower Shock Caffeinated Soap”, the “Caffeine Candy Sampler”, or the “Jolt Gum”). Remember Jolt cola? They sell it by the case at Think Geek.

The book section is chock full of geek-lore titles, including User Friendly books, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Lord of the Rings, Microserfs (one of my favorites), the BOFH series, and Snow Crash (another one of my favorites). I was actually surprised (and perhaps a bit embarrassed) to see how many of the books listed on their site are already well-entrenched in my own personal library.

Experiences/Final Thoughts:

I have always been very impressed with the Think Geek site. Clearly this is run by geeks for geeks, so the software works and works well (thanks Code Monkey!) I love the silly, tongue-in-cheek, winking attitude that can be found throughout the site, plus I am impressed with the quality and quantity of cool items to be found. Think Geek is my absolute favorite geek-gift site.

ThinkGeek

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