Back-To-School Tech Toys

(or “The Paper Chase Goes Digital”)

What’s the well-equipped dorm-dweller carting off to college these days? More tech toys than you can shake a professor’s pointing stick at. I’ve spent the past few weeks reviewing several gadgets I wish had been around back in my university days.

What if you just want to get organized, but don’t have that kind of cash to throw around? Sharp Electronics has been at the forefront of building handheld personal organizers since long before upstarts such as Palm and Pocket PC showed up on the scene. They not only do a very good job – they do it cheap. Take the new Sharp  Wizard OZ-290H Organizer. It’s slim and sleek, with built-in backlighting and the ability to synch with your PC’s Microsoft Outlook address book and calendar, yet it costs less than $30. Along with the standard organizer features for storing contacts and appointments, you can load up the device’s 1.5MB of memory with the carb counts for more than 800 different foods, and its pedometer feature will let you figure out how many calories you’re burning as you walk between classes.

 

One thing that’s intensely important to high school and college kids is their music. I wrote about the addictive XM Satellite Radio service in my recent column, “Top tech for your summer road trip.” One of the newest accessories to make those 200-plus music and talk channels even more portable is the Cambridge SoundWorks PlayDock. This is a “boom box” for true audiophiles. The PlayDock is a $199 rechargeable battery-powered, high-fidelity speaker system, outfitted with with a docking station for a $129 Delphi Roady2 XM Satellite Receiver. Together, they allow you ten hours of uninterrupted listening to any of XM’s mostly commercial-free audio channels. When the party’s over, you can pack up your PlayDock and plug your Roady2 back into the dashboard of your car for the ride home.

 

Of course, you can hardly send a kid off to college without a decent camera to record and send home images showing just how that higher education is unfolding. I was impressed by Olympus’ new “all –weather” $349 Stylus 410  digital camera and its impressive list of features: 4-megapixel resolution and 3X optical zoom – all enclosed in a water-resistant metal shell. It’s not sufficient for full immersion – that is, unless you add the $199 underwater housing made of transparent polycarbonate. Now you’re ready to descend down to 131 feet for some photos that will really rock your parents’ world.

 

We’ve got just about all the back-to-school basics covered, except one: Where do you stow all those high-tech gadgets? That’s where "technology-enabled" clothing from SCOTTeVEST comes into play. Along with his existing line of jackets, vests and even neckties sporting hidden and interconnecting pockets, Idaho-based lawyer-turned-clothing-designer Scott Jordan has now added a pair of “Hidden Cargo Pants.” The slacks feature 11 hidden pockets and compartments, all of which are designed to cleverly conceal a hefty “cargo” of high-tech toys.  The $109 chinos look like a conventional pair of khakis, and feature a Teflon coating to repel liquids and stains.

 

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What do you consider the ultimate tech toy for the back-to-school set? Address your e-mail to steve@TVTechToys.com

 

Of course, the quintessential tech accessory for back-to-school time is the personal computer. The perfect PC for a student is powerful yet compact, and equally suited to hard work or hard play. My pick is a shoebox-sized Media Center PC, such as the $999 G2 4100m  from Shuttle Computer.

 

These systems take up a minimum of desk space, are extremely quiet, and can play a multitude of roles for the student user. Not only do they function as a typical desktop computer, running the Professional Version of Windows XP, but the Media Center hardware and software extensions allow them to double as a TV set with Digital Video Recorder (DVR) capabilities, a DVD player, a digital stereo jukebox with FM radio reception, and much more.  If you want a version that takes up even less precious real estate in the dorm, check out the $1,449 Harmony 2000 “All-in-one LCDPC” from ABS Computer.