Little Jimmy wants a Nintendo, but Mom doesn’t want to spend a hundred bucks on a video game console. “How about a nice Nokia N-Gage QD instead?” she says. That way, Mom thinks, if she can’t get his attention because he’s too deeply engrossed in a game of Crash Nitro Kart, she can at least send him an SMS saying “COME 2 DNNR.”

If you put your ear close to the speaker grille on the Olympus DS-660 Digital Voice Recorder, you can hear the faint, distant screams of agonized microcassette manufacturers. For years, portable audio recording meant fumbling with these infernal tapes, which often broke, tangled, got demagnetized, or warped in the heat on your dashboard — and had terrible sound quality besides. Thankfully, digital recorders like the DS-660 will rid us of microcassettes for good.

The Zuca was born out of a mother’s concern for her daughter, and the overstuffed backpack full of books the girl had to haul to school every day. The solution was the Zuca MobileLocker, a bag unlike any other you’ve seen. Thus, a company was born.

It’s 2 a.m. and a blizzard has you stranded at O’Hare. Janitors scurry by, polishing the floors. And you, intrepid traveler that you are, unzip your garment bag, unscrew the nozzle, and blow. Yes, you are prepared. You’ve got the JourneyRest Garment Bag, and thanks to its built-in air mattress, you’ll sleep well in Chicago tonight.

Most computer users over the age of 30 have a soft spot for WordPerfect. After all, most of us were weaned on the beloved, if quaint, word processor before eventually being strong-armed into switching to Microsoft Word. Does Corel’s new WordPerfect Office 12 have the right stuff to usher in the golden age of computing? Could it finally topple the Microsoft Office juggernaut and reclaim the throne? Don’t be ridiculous.

Strokes of genius rarely survive unscathed through multiple sequels. Just look at Rocky V, Caddyshack 2, and The Phantom Menace. But when a sequel delivers the goods without obscuring too much of the original’s brilliance, as Canon’s fifth-
generation Digital Elph does, we rejoice.

If you’re tired of handhelds that just can’t connect, you need something more flexible. You need a promiscuous PDA that will hook up with anything. You need the HP iPaq h6315. With a built-in GSM/GPRS transceiver, 802.11b Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 1.1, the h6315 has an open port for any lonesome traveler. And because it’s a full-blown Windows Mobile handheld, it doesn’t just have the body — it knows how to use it.

If we had it our way, the ideal search engine would be a refrigerator-size cardboard box into which we could shovel papers, bills, appliance manuals, photos, taqueria menus, and old software boxes. On the top of the box would sit a robotic arm that could rummage around inside and fish out exactly what we needed as soon as we said the word.

BenQ’s PB6200 data projector pushes the limits of portability. Where it doesn’t approach any limits is in its design innovation: It’s a navy-blue box. And from the looks of this thing, it’s immediately clear that BenQ’s designers had no particular vision in mind when they created this projector.

What’s your portable entertainment dream? Ours is a small, light unit with a long battery life that can play any media format out there, whether it’s audio, video, or plain-old photos. We want a great screen for the video and killer sound for the audio. It’s got to be stylish and easy to use. Oh, and we want it to be affordable as well. Sound like too much to hope for? Well, the AV400 from Archos isn’t perfect, but it shows that our dream device might be closer than we thought.

You need a real pair of meat hooks to give the TDS Recon 400 the beating it deserves. At over a pound, nearly 4 inches wide, and 10 inches long with its extended cap, this PDA will prove a challenge to lug for all but the most Bunyan-esque. But the Recon will stick with you — if your wrist can endure it — whether you’re uprooting evergreens or cataloging your blue oxen.

In the future, when everyone is outfitted with intracranial Bluetooth chipsets, we will control our computers with our minds. Until then, we are stuck with the input devices we currently have: the lowly mouse and keyboard. But iBiz takes one step toward that brave new world with its near-zero-footprint Virtual Keyboard, which uses a laser projection to emulate today’s old-fangled mechanical keyboards. But despite its obvious geek appeal, the keyboard’s numerous flaws and usability problems make it little more than an expensive toy for people who like Pink Floyd.

The handheld may have one foot in the grave, but the smart phone is in its robust and rosy-cheeked prime. And one of the latest fresh-faced youths is the Audiovox PPC4100, carried by AT&T; Wireless. Though hampered by a short standby time, the compact Audiovox is a sensibly priced Pocket PC that provides phone capability and ubiquitous Internet access.

Lost? Can’t find your way? Too proud to stop for directions at the 7-Eleven you’ve passed three times? Well, if you own a PalmOne Tungsten T3 or Zire 72, you can call down help from on high with the PalmOne GPS Navigator.

Turn on. Tune in. Spend 15 minutes trying to get the remote to work. Give up. Drop out. Fujitsu’s LifeBook N6010 incorporates more home-entertainment options than we’ve seen in a notebook to date. Now if the company could only get the darn thing to work.

From head to toe, the N6010 is built for media, and especially for TV. The first thing that’ll catch your eye is the display, a 17-inch glossy Crystal View screen that Fujitsu claims is brighter than just about any other notebook on the market. We put this claim to the test by lining up a few other glossy-screen notebooks with 17-inch displays. No question: Fujitsu’s right. The amazing contrast and blazing colors on the N6010 put every other notebook to shame, making this machine the hands-down standard-bearer for portable displays.