Power of 10
A look at some new and noteworthy business gadgets and gizmos guaranteed to make your life easier (or at least more fun and stylish).
BY WILLIAM GURSTELLE
Gadgets are the new cigarettes, and I mean that in a good way. Let me explain: Really good gadgets and gizmos are frequently measured in terms of cigarette metrics ("it's about half the size of a pack of cigarettes"). A good gadget is small, gives you something to do with your hands when you're not working, and is often quite addictive. And given the cost of smokes these days, many gadgets cost no more than a year's allowance for the two-pack-a-day smoker of days gone by.
But well-designed gadgets are more than a healthy alternative to the nicotine fix. The latest generation of gizmos are remarkably useful and valuable - invaluable, to some - business tools. With that in mind, let's take a look at 10 new and notable ones.
NOKIA N95 MOBILE PHONE
The N95 entered the mobile phone marketplace in March. It’s one cool phone and the current state of the art in convergence technology, the latest and greatest thing in terms of a synergistic combination of telephone features and data processing. In fact, its devotees know it as the Swiss Army knife of mobile phones. Why? It does just about everything, and does it all pretty well. With a 5- megapixel camera/camcorder, an MP3 player, advanced multimedia capabilities for surfing the Internet, plus integrated GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, the Nokia N95 is one of the smartest smart phones to date. Heck, you can even make telephone calls with it. One downside: the price tag — the phone will cost you between $600 and $700, depending on where you buy it. But while there are a few phones more expensive than the N95, none have as many features.
IGO EVERYWHERE UNIVERSAL POWER ADAPTER
External power adapters, also known as battery chargers, convert high-voltage AC electricity from a wall outlet to the low-voltage DC that’s used to power electronic products such asMP3 players, PDAs, digital cameras, and mobile phones. By some estimates, there are about 10 adapters in use in the average U.S. home. They clutter your closet, clog up your clutch, and confuse your cabinet. Why not use a single device that powers everything? The iGo power adapter allows you to do that. The device features rapid-charge technology and better yet, interchangeable power tips so you can power and charge all your mobile devices from one adapter. It also has adapters for thousands of devices, including notebook computers, mobile phones, PDAs, MP3 players, and digital cameras. The company even makes universal power adapters that will charge a notebook and another gadget simultaneously. The price tag for such convenience: around $50. Not bad.
KENSINGTON 64068 MICRO SAVER NOTEBOOK LOCK
Here’s the situation. You find yourself at the back table at a Starbucks, preparing for an upcoming meeting. Suddenly, nature calls.What do you do with your laptop? Take it into the bathroom with you? Ask the crabby guy on the cell phone at the next table to watch it for a minute? Probably not.
There’s a better solution: the lightweight and convenient Kensington 64068 Micro SaverNotebook Lock. Most laptop computers have a reinforced slot on the side that accepts a locking device, allowing you to secure it to something — if you have the right lock. The Kensington lock is a 6-foot-long, steel-composite cable with a swiveling tab that fastens into the security slot.While it won’t stop a determined thief, a laptop lock will dissuade the casual grab-and-run hoodlum from taking your machine. Price: around $50.
KANGURU FLASHBLU
In the last few years, plenty of portable data storage devices have been replaced by thumb or flash drives that plug into your computer’s USB port. They’re portable and easy to use. But these drives are more than glorified floppy disks. From a USB drive, it’s possible to boot and run a whole stand-alone operating system.
Surprisingly, the most expensive item in this article isn’t a PDA, a digital camera, or a smart phone. It’s a Kanguru FlashBlu thumb drive. The devices are available in models that store from 1 GB to a whopping 32 GB on a stick the size of a quarter. Prices range from $19.95 for the 1 GB to $749.95 for the 32 GB model price. Not cheap. But the purpose of the flash drive is to store data quickly, reliably, and portably, and the Kanguru does that in spades.
ALIPH JAWBONE
There is no more futuristic-looking, deck-of-the-Starship-Enterprise-like electronic device than the wireless earphone called the Jawbone. The cordfree, Bluetooth-enabled Jawbone promises that it will allow you to carry on a mobile phone conversation even in noisy, acoustically difficult environments. Walter Mossberg, the notoriously hard-toimpress technology columnist for theWall Street Journal, is sold on the device. “You can stand in front of a blaring boom box or a weed whacker with a Jawbone, and its technology, derived from military research, will almost entirely obliterate that background noise,” he recently wrote. “You can also hear the other party better.”
Inside the Jawbone, two microphones and a sensor simultaneously interpret the headphone wearer’s voice and the surrounding acoustic environment. That information is processed through a digital signal processing chip that removes background noise and audible clutter. The result: a clean, audiblemobile phone conversation. Price: around $100.