Wallet wise
Charles Wright finds a phone that protects an endangered species: his money
Inspector Gadget admits to being increasingly concerned about the survival of his particular ecosystem's most endangered species: his bank account. You can cut your phone bill to a fraction by signing up with a VoIP provider, with no obvious reduction in call quality.
The stylish Siemens Gigaset C470 IP DECT/IP cordless phone makes it much more approachable. Plug in your PSTN line, then hook up the base station to your broadband router, and it will seamlessly accept all your incoming PSTN calls, and make all your outgoing calls over up to six, admirably cheap VoIP providers. You can connect up to six handsets, and handle two VoIP and one PSTN call simultaneously.
Depending on your calling pattern, it's possible to cut your phone bill from hundreds of dollars per month to less than $20.00. The phone looks particularly smart, and Siemens has simplified the features that used to require a separate, quite complex analogue telephone adapter and Byzantine dialling plans. The RRP for one handset and base station is $199.00. The local distributor, Freshtel, also offers it as part of a VoIP call package.
Price: about $199.00
A little beauty
If it's true that from little things big things grow, the Logitech V550 Nano cordless laser mouse for notebooks ($79.00) could start you on a course of conservation and environmental protection. The particular environment you're conserving is the space inside your briefcase, and possibly your time and emotional state.
In this case we assume 'nano' means 'dwarf', rather than one-billionth. But the mouse is not that much smaller than a normal desktop model, and it has a comfortably solid heft, not least because it uses two AA batteries, and with new power management, automatically turns off the power when it's docked in a 'clip and go' dock. The dock means you can move your notebook around the house or office, without having to juggle the mouse.
The scroll wheel can spin freely to let you navigate quickly through long documents and web pages, or when you press the wheel down, switches to click-to-click mode to scroll precisely through lists, slides or photos. Download some additional software, and a button directly below the scroll wheel allows you to switch between applications. The laser sensor tracks smoothly on practically any surface.
Price: $79.00
Power on tap
If you've succumbed to the adoration epidemic of the 3G Apple iPhone, you will have discovered by now that some of its capabilities are less than optimum. Its battery life, for instance, isn't fantastic, and it isn't user replaceable. If you regularly find yourself in possession of a dead iPhone, you'll find the resuscitation capabilities of the Kensington Battery Pack and Charger irresistible.
Charge this slim, shiny, 85g black slab of lithium ion polymer battery via its power adaptor, and you can carry it with you, attaching your iPhone, or current model iPod, for a reviving top-up when necessary. It will give you up to one hundred hours of music, 21 hours of video and six hours of extra talk time.
There's a mini-version ($59.95) which, with the iPhone's original charge, will get you through a day of conversations and entertainment. A dock connector allows you to power and charge iPhone or iPod simultaneously while charging the battery pack.
Price: $89.95
(Almost) instant pictures
Printing colour images on your own inkjet printer seems such an attractive proposition until you notice that the colours you see on your computer screen aren't the same as those on your prints, and you begin the tedious process of fiddling with PhotoShop parameters, or ICC profiles, or trying to match specific colour cartridges and printers to specific paper.
Kodak's ESP 5 all-in-one printer is possibly the most well-named colour printer in existence, because it does in fact seem to have some sort of extra-sensory perception that allows it to produce images that are sharp and accurately coloured. It uses two cartridges, one black, and the other a five-colour unit that also applies a clear layer that overcomes one of the historic flaws in Kodak printing: less than optimal longevity. The pigment inks used by the ESP 5 may be the longest lasting available.
You get all of that, according to Kodak, for an average cost of 20c for a 10x15cm print. The unit has slots for most memory card formats, and Bluetooth. The small LCD screen allows for some basic image enhancing. While Inspector Gadget can't recommend it as an everyday printer, at $200.00, it's a great solution for (almost) instant pictures.
Reference: October 2008, volume 78:09, p. 78-79
