Think twice before getting your geek a digital picture frame

Digital picture frames. There are no end to them. Around this time, many vendors are pushing the frames as a great geek gift.

I’m a geek, I fell for it, and am now over the idea of digital picture frames. Let’s look at what these things promise. You can view all of your photos in such a small footprint. Get a Wi-Fi enabled one and you can subscribe to RSS feeds of people’s pictures. Some even allow you to do picture correction right from the frame.

Then there’s real life.

Let’s assume that the frame works as advertised, there’s a viewing angle question. I had an eStarling frame that had about a 10 degree viewing angle. Unless this thing was directly on my desk facing me, I could not place the frame in a convenient spot.

Sometimes it’s nice to turn down the lights to watch a movie. Don’t forget to turn the frame off. Oh, that’s right, they need to be placed near an electrical outlet, so you will probably have another wire to wrangle. If you don’t want to waste electricity during the night, you’ll also have to turn off the frame.

This may be one area where technological advances may not be so great. Printed pictures have great viewing angles, are cheap, and don’t crash. You don’t have to “operate” a regular picture and picture frame.

If you know a geek and are planning to grab a frame for them, think twice.