Tech Saavy Christmas Gifts for Retirees, Grandparents, and Geeky Geezers

When you are in your twenties, thirties or even your forties, finding good Christmas gifts for people in their sixties and beyond can be a real challenge. Most older people don't need any more tee shirts that say "Over the Hill and Loving it" or golf and travel gadgets. Granny's closet is chock full of fuzzy slippers and she has more scented soap than she can ever use. This Christmas, how about considering an e-reader, digital camera or iPad for the older people in your life?

There are a few things that are special about buying for the older crowd. For starters, there is a wide range of difference in the abilities and interests of older individuals. Most ten year olds fall within a pretty standard ten-year-old range.They have only been on the planet ten years so the differences between most them are still minimal-- but just wait!

.At age seventy, differences between people in terms of physical health, interests, life experience and acquired abilities as well as disabilities are immense. One person may be running marathons while another is hooked up to an oxygen tank in a nursing home. Yet another will have started a new business in his sixties or be volunteering with the peace corps while his fellows have taken up golf and bridge. It is important to take the wide range of individual abilities and preferences into consideration when buying holiday gifts for older folks..

The factors that have shaped a long life make for wide individual variations, but one thing is for sure, IPads, laptops, smartphones and techno gadgets are wonderful Holiday gifts for older people and are often overlooked by the young as possibilities. If you want to give your great aunt Tillie something other than a flannel nightgown or jigsaw puzzle for Christmas this year, here are a few of my top suggestions.

This is the perfect gift for the technophobic senior who still doesn't even know how to turn on a computer.You could also go with an iPad, but the Kindle Fire is much cheaper and is like training wheels for a tablet, laptop or smart phone.

It offers an easy introduction to the online world by creating a bridge from books to electronic reading and offers an easy to access walled garden of content at Amazon.com. It gets even the most resistant technophobe used to using a virtual keyboard and to the experience of downloading " apps" and surfing the internet in a seamless, non threatening way. Once used to the Kindle Fire, a senior newbie can move on with confidence to the more complicated and pricier tablets or laptops... or even a smartphone.

Actually, the basic Kindle e-reader-- or any basic e-reader, for that matter, is perfect for older people with vision problems. They often need large print and are delighted to find that with an e-reader, they can adjust the font size perfectly for easy reading and download any book they want without having to wait till the large print version comes in at the library. In a pinch, the Kindle's text to voice function means that it can read to them -- another nice and convenient feature for the visually impaired. Just be sure that your senior giftee has access to Wi-Fi and an Amazon account and you are good to go.

A fabulous gift for anyone with WiFi and a reasonably new TV is a streaming video player, which allows one to stream movies and TV programs wirelessly, directly from the internet to a big screen TV at the touch of a button.

There are a number of these products on the market, but the best known is the Roku Box, which I recommend highly for the simple reason that I have one. It is easy to install and easy to use for even the techno-challenged. It works with HD and ordinary TV and the newest model comes loaded with features and simple games including my all time personal favorite, Angry Birds.

You can sync existing Netflix, Amazon, Hulu accounts and a number of streaming internet TV and radio channels to Roku or any streaming video player. . Great for getting golf tips or watching baseball games as well as movies, or for accessing Yoga or daily fitness workouts. While streaming video players are a boon to all ages, they are particularly useful for older people who might not go to the gym or the movies in bad weather or who can easily feel isolated. Internet TV is definitely the wave of the future and streaming video players let seniors get in on it now.

Older people have a lifetime of photos, usually stored in scrapbooks and shoe boxes. For any reasonably computer literate person, the Hammacher Schlemmer Christmas catalog offers an especially easy to use, dedicated digital photo scanner which can digitize a lifetime of memories in the blink of an eye and there are a number of excellent scanners available which can not only scan photos, but will digitize old letters, postcards, and other ephemera as well. If you have an older friend or relative with a massive photo and memorabilia collection, this is a wonderful gift. It goes without saying that the original material should be stored not discarded, but having everything all together on a computer or in the cloud would be very cool and make it easy to locate and send photos to friends and family.

A new point and shoot digital camera that is small, lightweight and easy to use would be a great gift for grandparents or for an older couple who like to travel. I came across a wonderful site doing research for this hub called Eldergadget. It is not only a treasure trove of gifts for the mature crowd, but this site also rates and suggests electronics and gadgets in terms of their usefulness to seniors. They have an excellent selection of point and shoot digital cameras with large, easy to use controls. Check out the site for reviews and tips on what cameras offer features most useful to seniors..

People are not stereotypes. I know eighty year-olds who are super techno- saavy and forty-somethings who are total Luddites. While it is true that most seniors grew up with black, rotary dial telephones in the days before computers, it is wise not to assume that they are still living in the world of their youth. All fourteen year olds do not spend all of their time text-ing their bff's either. Many older people have embraced iPads and smartphones with enthusiasm, and a number younger people have not and yearn for the " good old days" before they were born.

However, the lifestyle of older people no longer in the workplace tends to mean they have more time at home and less access to or need to know about new, cutting age technology.Their resources and needs are different from what they were in younger years and their money is often spent on medications and trips to the dentist rather than trips Europe.

What I have tried to do here is not to patronize the old, but to help younger people think in terms of technology when buying holiday gifts not just for kids and contemporaries, but also for the elders in their lives. Technology is a big tent and we all need to be inside it.

In some ways, the oldest among us can benefit from technology more than anybody else. If you don't think so, have a look at the video below in which a 100 year old, visually impaired woman uses her new iPad for the first time.