Ellington

There can't possibly be a better time than back-to-school week for students (of all ages) to hit up their parents or loved ones for a laptop. After all, they do want to see you succeed, right? Right?!

The key is to pitch your Units something that seems educational—that's why I'm suggesting the LifeBook P1500d from Fujitsu. The tiny LifeBook sports decent computing specs and built-in wireless access for a relatively low price—it starts at $1499—considering that the screen swivels around into a tablet mode, allowing you to take notes and draw right on the screen. Doesn't that seem scholarly of it? It's also got a biometrics option (fingerprint password) and it's extremely light for carrying between classes in a backpack—only 2.5 lbs. Not to mention that all the cool kids—well, I'll let you build that part of the pitch yourself.

If you've got a Video iPod, then XtremeMac (http://www.xtrememac.com) offers the new MicroMemo, a new high-fidelity recording device that's supposed to work particularly well for things like recording lectures or audio notes and reminders. (It would work well for podcasting while you're on-the-go, as well.) The MicroMemo includes a removable microphone for getting it a little closer to the action, and it plugs directly into the iPod's dock port, with full integration with the display for on-screen controls.

Got an earlier iPod? The venerable Belkin Voice Recorder (http://www.belkin.com) does much the same thing but has an inflexible microphone. It does sport a built-in speaker, however, making it possible to play back your recorders or voice notes as well as using your iPod as a portable alarm clock.

Cool Tool

Futureme.org
Need to tell yourself something very important—next week? How about in three years? Futureme.org will store an e-mail for now, and then send it to you (or any e-mail address you specify) at some point in the future. You can use it for reminders, virtual time capsules or anything you can think of it that might be fun to see pop up in your e-mail inbox in the future. Futureme.org enables you to create a public or private message—if public, the site makes your message available for others to browse (without some relevant personal info), Doing so—there's a "random" button for jumping around in the public messages—can be an diverting, sometimes poignant, utter waste of time.