A Gift Guide For The Lazy Last Minute Shopper

Last minute shoppers can’t change who they are, try as they might. The best they can do is deal with it, and luckily, there are a lot more options now than there ever were before for people who roll out of bed on Christmas morning and have even as little as five minutes to come up with a gift before someone ends up disappointed.

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One-Year Netflix Subscription

Speaking as someone who has recently received this gift, it’s a great one. Even if the person you’re buying for might be considering cancelling their own subscription, no one would turn down a year’s extension for free, and with how Netflix’s 2015 is shaping up, they might thank you profusely and return the favor next year.

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Dropbox Pro Account

This falls into the category of those things that are great to have, but that few will consider purchasing for themselves. Dropbox Pro allows for 1TB of cloud-based storage, and priority support in case anything goes wrong. The extra storage is really the primary reason to subscribe, and anyone who takes a lot of photos or shares content with anyone else will appreciate the leg room. Dropbox doesn’t make this easy, though, so you’ll have to manually pay for a friend’s account to give the gift.

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iTunes Gift Card

Be it apps, music or movies, the iTunes Gift Card provides. If you have an Apple fan in the family, there are few things that could be used as readily, and it’s less impersonal than just handing them a wad of cash. I use this for the Apple users in my life who balk at paying for iPhone apps, regardless of their price, just to get them to live a little and realize venturing beyond the free category pays off.

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Amazon Gift Card

This is like the above, but more general purpose. An Amazon gift card can be used to buy either virtual or physical goods, which is great because Amazon sells virtually everything. You probably should’ve taken the few meager minutes it would’ve cost you to actually pick something up yesterday and get it shipped via Amazon, but this is the next best thing.

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Steam Games

Give the gift that keeps on giving with games – Steam lets you gift any title in its extensive library to that PC gamer on your list who somehow hasn’t played that amazing game you keep recommending, even though it’s actually on sale and how could they not buy it themselves what the heck?! Just gift it, and then you look good and they can validate your opinion.

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Whatever Lego You Can Find

If you’re in dire straits but you need a physical gift, just go get some Lego. I mean for anyone. It’s still the greatest thing humanity has ever build, whereas most things we’ve done are terrible, and it’s available in a range of price points to suit any budget. You can usually find it fairly easily, too, and you can even 3D print your own pieces if you’re in dire straits. Even if people don’t like it, they can easily regift it, so it pretty much always works.