Mobile Computing Tips: Cool Gadgets for a Hot Summer

Best portable products of the year, Tablet PCs, Palm cradle tip.

James A. Martin

Feature: Cool Gadgets for a Hot Summer

In the heat of July, a cool drink of water is good, but a cool gadget is even better. To help you through the long hot summer, I've put together a guide to the coolest, latest, and greatest must-have gizmos for mobile professionals.

Coolest Notebook: Toshiba's Satellite 5105-S607

Last year, kudos went to the Apple IBook, and in my humble opinion, that sleek white portable is still the number one cool cat. But the Toshiba Satellite 5105-S607 is no slouch, either, particularly for mobile professionals who like their music. Decked out in deep blue and featuring a silver-and-black audio panel with five colored lights and a status LCD, this notebook is all about style. Best of all, a built-in set of Harman/Kardon speakers, powered by a subwoofer, cranks out enough juice to blast the fillings right out of your teeth. You also get Secure Digital and SmartMedia card slots, so you can quickly transfer those digital camera photos of yourself--looking cool, of course--into the computer. In a perfect world, however, the battery would last more than 1.5 hours.

You can find the latest prices at the PCWorld.com Product Finder.

Coolest PDA: Clie PEG-NR70V

Sony upped the cool quotient with its earlier Palm OS-based Clie handhelds, and its newest model ($599) is no exception. The PDA's innovative clamshell design, which includes an attached keyboard, makes it look like the world's teensiest notebook. The color screen is gorgeous and brilliant (no surprise, given the Clie's track record), and it flips up and twists around 180 degrees. An embedded digital camera lets you snap pictures at a decent 320-by-240 resolution, and you can rock to your favorite MP3s.

The Clie earned our World Class Award for Best PDA. You can read more about it at "Handhelds: PDAs for Typists" and "PC World's 20th World Class Awards."

Check out the latest prices at our Product Finder.

Coolest PDA Accessory: Wrist PDA-FX2001

Fossil's $145 wristwatch syncs with your Palm OS device via infrared link, putting read-only Palm data (appointments, contacts, and so on) where your Rolex used to be--before you had to sell it on EBay during the dot-com crash, that is.

Coolest Mobile Phone: Motorola V70

With its rotating cover and circular display, this GSM/GPRS compatible, Web-enabled phone will call attention to how cool you are for using it. The downside? The phone's expensive (about $550) and available to Cingular Wireless subscribers only. You can see a photo and get more data at Cingular's Web site.

Coolest Gadget: Panasonic SV-AVI0 E-Wear SD A/V Recorder

It captures low-resolution digital photos and video clips. It plays music. It takes dictation. It weighs only 3.5 ounces (without a battery), and it's not much bigger than your typical mobile phone. You can store MPEG4 videos and JPEG photos on a Secure Digital memory card (up to 512MB). It's a bit pricey (about $450), but the Panasonic SV-AV10 is what cool is all about.

Notebooks

News: More Cool Stuff on the Way

Japanese gadget-heads often get the exciting stuff before we do. But eventually most of their gadgetry arrives on our shores. Among some of the cool notebooks coming soon in Asia is Sony's VAIO-U, reportedly the smallest Windows XP notebook on the market to date, measuring 7.2 by 1.4 by 5.4 inches and weighing less than 2 pounds. Read more about the VAIO-U and other chic new notebooks and electronics in "Cool New Notebooks Lead Gadgets in May."

News: LifeBook, ThinkPad World Class Winners

PC World's World Class Awards have been announced, and (insert virtual drum roll here) the notebook winners are: the IBM ThinkPad A31P, best performance by a notebook; and the Fujitsu LifeBook P-2000, best performance by an ultralight notebook. The ThinkPad earned praise by offering plenty of high-quality features, from wireless networking to Mobile Pentium 4-M processors to Radeon 7800 graphics chips. The LifeBook wins applause for packing a FireWire (IEEE 1394) port, a long-running battery, and other goodies into a 2.8-pound package.

Go to our Product Finder to find the best prices on the ThinkPad and the LifeBook.

Review: HP Omnibook's Optional Big Screen

The Hewlett-Packard Omnibook XT6200, a highly rated notebook, is available with a 15-inch screen that provides HP fans with a little more screen real estate for those endless Excel spreadsheets. But unless you need to see those extra cells, you might be better off with the new HP Omnibook XT6050, which performs nearly identically but has a 14.1-inch screen and longer battery life. The reasonably priced XT6050 recently made our Top 15 Notebooks chart, too.

Get the latest prices at our Product Finder.

Handhelds

News: Acer Tablet PC Due This Fall

Acer's TravelMate 100 Tablet PC, aimed at corporate users, is scheduled to begin shipping this October. The portable device will use Microsoft's Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and will feature Intel's 800-MHz Ultra Low Voltage Pentium III processor, built-in 802.11b wireless networking support, and a 10-inch TFT-LCD screen that swivels 180 degrees to convert the Tablet PC into a notebook. Price: $1999. For more details, see "Acer Expects Modest Start to Tablet PC Sales."

News: HP Has a Tablet PC in the Works, Too

Elsewhere on the Tablet PC front, Hewlett-Packard is set to release its first entry by year end. The Compaq Evo Tablet PC will run on a low-power Transmeta 1-GHz Crusoe processor and use Microsoft's Windows XP Tablet PC operating system. Target customers are mobile sales forces as well as medical and legal executives and employees. No price has been set, the company said.

Tip: How to Pick Up Your New Palm

The Palm M515 fits much more snugly into its HotSync cradle than other PDAs I've used. Initially, I tried removing it from the cradle as I would other Palm devices: by pulling it straight up first, then out. But each time, it was a struggle to dislodge the M515, and I worried that the cradle's connector would break over time. Here's the right way to undock the device: While the PDA is in its cradle, gently tilt it toward you until you hear a snap, then lift it up.

Wireless

News: Microsoft Shows Off Mira Prototype

Microsoft recently demonstrated prototype devices based on its new Mira technology at a tradeshow in Taiwan.

Mira devices, expected to be available from hardware vendors late this year, are touch-screen, flat-panel monitors that allow you to remotely control and access applications on a nearby base station PC. This means you can walk around the office with the tablet-like monitor and access e-mail, surf the Internet, crunch spreadsheets, and more. The monitor communicates with the base station PC via a wireless local-area network connection.

Mira-enabled devices will work with Windows XP Professional but not Windows XP Home. Hardware prices should range from $500 to $1000.