Using tech to work while you drive is a great concept. But for the time being, it's widely accepted that sending and checking e-mail or texting while behind the wheel is very unsafe.

The temptation is great, of course, to sneak a peak at your Blackberry or iPhone to check messages or to take a call, especially when stuck in stop-and-go traffic, even though it is illegal to do so in many states and despite the tremendous risk. According to the results of a Pew Research Center survey, 27 percent of all American adults sent or read text messages while driving in 2009.

That shiny new Android phone you just bought? Yeah, it's a piece of trash. No, I'm not some Google-hating Apple fanboy. The iPhone 4 is junk, too.

So is that giant, flat-screen 3D TV and tablet you bought in the past year. It's trash. All trash.

CES might be over, but the 4G phones keep trickling in. As a part of its aggressive 4G plans, T-Mobile announced that the Samsung Galaxy 4G will launch in the first half of 2011. But will it have the specs of the hot next-gen Galaxy phones? It doesn't seem like it.

Specs for the Samsung Galaxy 4G on T-Mobile aren't clear, but we do know that it will have a Super AMOLED display--not the newest Super AMOLED Plus display. At CES, Verizon unveiled an unnamed LTE phone with a 4.3-inch display as well as a phone on AT&T, the Infuse 4G, with a monstrous 4.5-inch display. According to Samsung, Super AMOLED Plus displays have an increased number of sub-pixels by 50 percent and perform even better in bright light than the first-gen Super AMOLED displays.

Editor's note: Acer denied on Jan. 19 that it is phasing out netbooks in favor of tablets, saying in a press release, "the range of devices available to users is getting wider and tablets are just another piece of the mosaic. Therefore, they will find their space next to netbooks and notebooks."

So long, netbooks.

You need your printer to print, but do you need it to access the Internet? HP and Lexmark are hoping you'll think so, as they launch more and more of their printers into the cloud. Through Web-connected printers you can access maps, games, and coupons, or add functions such as sending print jobs via e-mail, viewing Facebook or Twitter updates, or uploading data to services such as Evernote.

These new capabilities are interesting, but are they worth purchasing a new printer for? I spent a week working with two Web-connected printers, HP's Photosmart eStation and Lexmark's Genesis, to see if they offered something I couldn't live without.

With so much chatter about tablets this year, you might think that the handheld, rectangular devices being unveiled represent a significant innovation. The reality is that so much of what we're seeing is not a whole lot different than what we saw in previous years; these products offer only a few new twists. But those new twists could make the difference between tablets' remaining a niche item and their finally busting out to the mass market in a meaningful way.

RIM PlayBookI spent a lot of time scouring the booths at this year's CES show for tablets, and what I'm seeing feels like déjà vu: With the occasional exception (the lightweight RIM PlayBook, for example), none of the tablets I looked at departed dramatically from what has been shown before.

The GeekTech Blog Crew convenes again after recovering from CES! Join us as we discuss some of our favorite gadgets and happenings from this year's show. Learn about Nvidia's keg PC, Razer's portable PC gaming concept, and more, and get a taste of what it's like to be a journalist covering the show.

The GeekTech Blog Crew convenes again after recovering from CES! Join us as we discuss some of our favorite gadgets and happenings from this year's show. Learn about Nvidia's keg PC, Razer's portable PC gaming concept, and more, and get a taste of what it's like to be a journalist covering the show.

Download the podcast.

Last week, the formidable International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) ravaged the Las Vegas Convention Center, leaving behind a devastating trail of cutting-edge consumer electronics...and a whole lot of new iPhone 4 cases. Fortunately, we're here to pick up the scattered pieces and neatly arrange them for your convenient digestion. As you can see, there's no shortage of new iPhone 4 cases on the market--and this roundup doesn't even take into account the recent flurry of cases for the Verizon iPhone. (Yes, the Verizon iPhone 4 will require its own version of many cases--we'll cover those in the near future.)

BaseOneLabs

My pockets are stuffed full of business cards from people I do not remember meeting, my head is thumping like a flamenco dancer, there's margarita salt on my laptop, and I can't seem to locate my pants. That can mean only one thing: I just returned from my annual pilgrimage to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Fortunately, I scribbled down a few notes, which I can now just barely read. Here are some of the highlights, as best as I can recall.