Mobile Computing News, Reviews, & Tips

Reader Tip: Reduce Clutter With Iogear Cables

"I travel to off-the-beaten-path scuba dive destinations for digital underwater photography. Every piece of electronic gear, including notebooks, needs to...be as light and small as possible," writes Richard Todd of Salinas, California, in response to my February column about traveling light.

Cables and power cords can quickly add bulk, Richard notes, and when he traveled with coils of cables, airport security often wanted a closer look at them. So he now travels with Iogear's ReelQuick compact, retractable FireWire and USB cables. "They reel up to tiny spools," he writes, "take up precious little room in my bag, weigh a fraction of full-sized cables, and they seem to cast an x-ray image that's less alarming [to airport checkpoint security] than most cables."

I haven't used Iogear cables, so I can't verify Richard's statements. But if you're interested, you can read about them at Iogear's site; they're about $20 each.

Reader Tip: New Ways to Use Old Notebooks

"Our two old notebooks aren't worth selling, but they still work, so we set them up as 'multimedia stations' in our home," writes Thomas Gaida of Cologne, Germany, in response to my column about how to dispose of an old notebook.

Thomas's old notebooks "work great in the kitchen or den" for playing CDs and Internet radio; for looking up recipes; and for displaying digital photos during parties. And during long trips, Thomas says "we copy movies to the notebooks and give them to the kids for entertainment." Great ideas, Thomas--but keep those batteries recharged or you'll have some grumpy kids on your hands.

First Look: Canon's Portable Printer Is a Solid Traveling Companion

Canon's $250 Pixma IP90 portable photo printer weighs 4 pounds, prints faster than many desktop inkjet printers, and produces good-looking text documents, says PC World reviewer Paul Jasper. Although color and gray-scale photos printed on photo paper looked slightly blurry, the overall quality was good--especially for a portable printer.

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Online Backup Review: Free Streamload Service--What's Not to Like?

Streamload, an online storage service, offers free backups on the Internet, lets you easily share favorite media files with others, and has an easy-to-use interface, writes PC World's Tom Mainelli.

Streamload provides up to 10GB of free storage, provided you download no more than 100MB per month from your account. After that, you are charged according to the amount of data you access. If you only use the service to back up files you don't need often, your charges will be minimal. For instance, for $4 per month, you can download up to 1GB per month; $10 gets you 10GB/month; and so on.

For more online backup options, read my columns on the subject: "Online Backup Services" and "Online Backup, the Sequel."

PDA Review: GPS on a Pocket PC

PC World's Yardena Arar took Garmin's new IQue M5, a Pocket PC with built-in Global Positioning System technology, for a spin. Denny was impressed by the PDA's comfortable weight (under 6 ounces) and attractive design. And the device comes with a windshield mount and car power port charger. But pinpointing specific coordinates on a map was neither easy nor intuitive. And the learning curve required to master the gadget is fairly steep.

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Wireless News: A 7-Megapixel Camera Phone

Pretty soon you won't be able to tell the difference between digital camera and cell phone images, if Samsung's latest wireless handset is any indication of where the technology is headed.

Samsung recently showed off the SCH-V770, a cell phone with a 7-megapixel camera built in. At first glance, the device resembles a digital still camera, thanks to its 3X optical zoom lens, flash, and 2-inch color display for viewing images. The camera phone also offers manual focus, user-controlled focal length, shutter speed, and other controls.

There's no word yet as to when the camera phone will be sold, or for how much.

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