It's that time of year again, when the young and impressionable return to school to have their minds molded and instincts sharpened. Technology has come a long way in assisting kids with their school work; as computers become smaller and more compact they become an integral part of the experience, much like a three-ringed trapper-keeper was decades ago.

Casio's full color graphing calculator is sure to get a math nerd's knickers in a twist. If mathematics is your thing, you're going to get all hot and bothered for this color graphing calculator. If you're struggling to understand advanced mathematics, perhaps the pretty pictures on the Prism's screen can help?

If you're on a desktop computer, if your laptop doesn't include a web cam or if the web cam in your laptop's bezel is of the VGA (640x480 resolution) variety, it's time to step up to HD. Microsoft's LifeCam Cinema brought 720p HD video to web chat and recordings. Now, similar technology has been shrunk down to fit in this unobtrusive little cam. Perfect for keeping in touch when shipping off to school or for recording YouTube response rants in HD.

We've looked at cooling bases for laptops before. Granted, they're not to sexiest devices going. Just because they're more practical than pretty though doesn't mean you should turn a blind eye. This notebook cooling base can be used on your lap or on a desk and features on centrally mounted fan and a big air channel to keep your lap and your laptop cool.

Keyboards are utilitarian devices. As such, they tend not to be the most attractive things going. Microsoft's Arc Keyboard looks equally at home on the coffee table as it does on the desktop or in your carry-on luggage. With an ergonomic rake to the keys, a wireless "Nano Transceiver" and dedicated media keys, it's the ultimate home theatre PC keyboard.

While they're best known as a near monopolistic software company, Microsoft actually makes some great hardware too. The company's latest is the Mobile Mouse 3500 which features BlueTrack technology. BlueTrack is a new optical tracking technology that means the mouse can track on just about any surface; surfaces where traditional optical mice would fear to tred like glass, granite counter tops or even your knee.

Andy and Sean look ahead to the start of the school season and talk about what kind of computer you may want to get for the school year, if you're in the market for something new.

The

Dane-Elec ZPEN

receiver uses low frequency sound to track the position of a the ZPEN as you move it across the page. Your writing is converted into .ELI files that can then be saved off as PDFs or in a variety of image formats. PC users can use software included on the receiver to convert handwritten notes into computer editable text. While it's not perfect, there are some great concepts at work.

The

Sony Reader Pocket Edition

is a high-contrast e-Ink display

e-book reader

. Announced alongside its more capable big brother, the Sony Reader Touch Edition, this less expensive and smaller form-factor e-book reader does just what it was made to do: offer a compelling reason to ditch the paperback novels in favor of their digital versions.

Sony's latest

e-book readers

, the

Sony Reader Touch Edition (PRS-600)

and the Sony Reader Pocket Edition (PRS-300), which we'll look at in the next segment of Gadget TV, improve on the previous Sony Readers with improved display contrast, faster page response and improved software that's compatible with both the Mac and the PC. Some of the new features and functionality like on-screen annotation and highlighting are unique to the

Sony Reader Touch Edition

, which we look at in this episode.

Until ubiquitous Wi-Fi is actually ubiquitous, there will be a market for wireless range boosters, cards and antennas. The

Wi-Fire

is one example of the latter. This device sits on your desk or atop your laptop bezel and approximately

triples your wireless range

as compared to your notebook's internal wireless antenna. This allows you to get

more wireless connections

in more places. A great fit for the back to school crowd where campus Wi-Fi coverage often leaves a lot to be desired.

For students of life-long learners, Stacy Reed takes a look at some of the best

free online lecture

sites on the web. See and hear the world's best and brightest speak across a variety of topics, learn how that differential equation works and even watch

free online lectures

from academics that might otherwise cost a year's tuition at an ivy-league school.

You may have been shopping online or in a store and seen a USB drive labeled as "

U3 Compliant

". Often these drives may also be called "

U3 Smart Drives

." Sounds great!... but

what is U3

?

Good news parents! Bad news kids :-(
It's time to gear up to go

back to school

. Jay Goldman, AKA Mr. Mobile, helps students pick the

best iPhone apps

to get into a scholastic frame of mind. From creating to-do lists to doing

SAT test preparation

, the

iPhone App Store

has you covered.

Microsoft. Love 'em or hate 'em, it is hard to argue that its hardware division makes some great products. Excellent build quality, clean industrial design, many degrees of ergonomic architecture and comfort across the line. The

Wireless Keyboard 3000

is an

entry-level wireless keyboard

. It has dedicated media keys for shuffling through your music collection while you're supposed to be studying along with several shortcut keys to launch an IM client, save your work and bring up a calculator. Useful for begging a classmate for the lecture notes, avoiding the tragic loss of your work should the power go out and calculating just how much ramen you can buy on a student's budget, respectively.

If you've ever wanted to see what your shirt pocket sees, the

uCorder IRDC250

wants to make your acquaintance. This

tiny light-weight and viewfinder-free pocket video camera records

VGA video to an on-board 2GB of storage, expandable with microSD cards. For students or conference goers, it means you can get a visual frame of reference for your audio recordings in lectures. While you won't be recording high-quality video (and you can't view said video until you're able to plug the cam into your Mac or PC), it beats an audio-only recording. Did we mention it can also do audio-only recording?

Social networking may well be the bane of parents and educators everywhere. Keeping students on task with the world of online distractions can be an odious task. In this episode of The Sweet Stuff: Web Watch, Stacy Reed looks at

student-centric social network sites

that beat less

education oriented networks

at their own game. Designed as an online forum for students and teachers to connect,

share education information in a secure and private social networking environment.

Not too long after

desktop mice

lost their tracking balls thanks to the proliferation of optical technology, they lost their tails to the wireless trend too. Poor things. As anyone who's ever used a laptop trackpad for any extended period of time will likely tell you, sometimes a mouse is necessary and so it is that we take a look at the

Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 3000

, an optical mouse that connects to your laptop with the included wireless dongle. It's small enough to slip into a book bag and is a real life saver if your laptop's trackpad or navi-nipple thingy leaves a little something to be desired where refined control is concerned.

Listening to music on your iPod or other digital audio player is a decidedly solitary experience.

Chill Pill Audio

's namesake speakers look to remedy that. This giant pill-shaped speaker set breaks apart and comes with all necessary cables loaded in nifty retractable bays on the speakers. They're also perfect for sharing the lecture that you recorded with the Chill Pill Audio RapCap mic, seen in the previous episode of Gadget TV.

Where other digital audio players come with a built-in microphone for

recording quick voice memos or to save a college lecture

for posterity (and subsequent sharing with friends who couldn't seem to separate head from pillow that morning), the iPod offers no such perk. Enter the RapCap. This tiny little microphone plugs into the headphone port of compatible iPods, or even the iPhone, and lets you

record audio to your iPod

, including the iPod Touch. These recordings can be pulled from your iPod easily via iTunes. Not bad for $15.

We already took a look at the

FreeAgent Go

drive in the previous episode of Gadget TV. Now we meet its partner in crime, the

FreeAgent Go Dock+

. Together, they make a killer

simple computer back up

combo. The

FreeAgent Go Dock+

includes three USB ports and comes with a carrying case for the

FreeAgent Go

drive.

backing up your computer

becomes as simple as docking the drive. Now there's no excuse for not doing

regular computer back ups

.

Doing regular, predictable

computer back ups

is like XYZ; we all know we should do it, but we probably don't. The

FreeAgent Go portable hard drive

in capacities from 160GB up to 640GB ensures that we have one less excuse for not doing

full computer back ups

.

Formatted for Mac or PC

, the

FreeAgent Go

from Seagate is an infinitely portable, ridiculously simple and surprisingly good looking addition to any

back to school

shopping list.

Buying and selling textbooks online is a great way to save money and put a little extra cash in your pocket. Stacy Reed takes a look at some of the best ways to

buy and sell used school books

online. Tuition is expensive enough;

save money by buying lightly used course books online

.

Saving your notes, clippings and links in the cloud means you always have access. Wherever there's an Internet connection, you can

read, edit and share notes online

. Even from your web-enabled mobile phone.
Stacy reed takes a look at

four great (and free) online note tools

.

Create, share and synchronize your notes, tasks, reminders, clippings

, and more then access your collection from anywhere using one of these

free online note taking and sharing tools

.

There are times when all you need to do is jot a quick note, a reminder or a phone number. For times like these, a full word processor would be overkill. What you need is the

software equivalent of a Post-it Note

. For just such occasions, here are the

top five free note taking programs for Windows

. Doc Callahan delivers.

From the traditional and academic to the collaborative and democratic, Stacy Reed runs down

five great online dictionaries

. Picks include an online

talking dictionary

, a great collaborative wiki-based dictionary, even a dictionary that can

define technical terms and acronyms

from across the web.

This week, Doc Callahan looks at four,

free reminder programs

that will ensure you

never miss an important date

. Whether you're working hard or playing a game on your PC, you'll never miss another appointment, birthday, meeting, class, or assignment. These reminder programs offer a variety of features, but all of them are

free Windows software

!

When reading through a wall of text online, wouldn't it be nice if you could

highlight certain important passages on a web site

to come back to later? Wouldn't it be nicer still if you could save those highlighted passages for later reference? While the promise of the

paperless office

seems like a pipe dream, these handy

web highlighters

bring it one step closer.

If you have trouble

keeping track of all the things you have to do

what you probably need are some reminders. That's where a site like Remindd (pronounced "reminded") comes in. You can create reminders for free anytime.

The

Amazon Kindle

is not the only player on the e-book stage. Sony has several models competing for your attention. Among them, the touch-screen

e-ink PRS-700BC

, also known as the Reader Digital Book in the Sony Style store, where it retails for $350. Is the PRS-700BC worthy of your attention? Can it compete with Amazon's now iconic

Kindle e-book reader

? Tune in to find out.

Cheryl Poirier, AKA Miss Download, somehow managed to obliterate

Microsoft Office

from her home PC only to discover the

open source equivalent to Office, OpenOffice.org

. Not a moment too soon either; she had an important spreadsheet due in two days' time!

Sean Carruthers sits down with Ray Sawall, Senior Product Manager at Acer Inc. to get a peek at the latest netbooks from Acer. The 10.1-inch Acer Aspire One and the 11.6-inch Acer Aspire One. We find out why the massive netbook category shows no signs of slowing down, and how some of the key complaints that netbook users have had will be remedied with the next generation of the popular Acer Aspire One.

With interest in its Aspire One netbooks Acer is poised to create what it's calling the nettop category with its tiny Acer Aspire Revo desktop PC. We also get a look at the Acer easyStore network attached storage server.

Doc leads us through how to create a basic encrypted volume using TrueCrypt on the Mac. An encrypted volume is password protected and holds files, folders, documents and so on that you don't want other people to be able to access.

There are times when you have files that you want to protect. Files that you don't want others to have easy access to. For files like that you may want an encrypted disk. You have software right on your Mac that will let you make an encrypted disk in just minutes.

Andy and Sean take a look at netbooks, a hot category of small laptops perfect for taking on the go. They're great for checking email, surfing the web and composing documents. They feature good battery life and are super portable but have smaller screens and keyboards. So, is a netbook right for you? Stay tuned as the Lab Rats break it down.

Long have we been faced with the choice when it comes to computers: full-sized and powerful or small and sleek and severely lacking in the power department. Nvidia showed off its reference design for the Ion Platform PC. This tiny computer offers the graphics power we want in the small size we need.

They're calling it a "lifestyle PC" but not a netbook. Sony's VAIO line got an update from the CES show floor with the VGN-P500 series notebook. This truly tiny little lappy could literally fit into a large pocket yet it sports a keyboard no smaller than your typical "netbook" small-format PCs.

So, there's a new computer in your life, whether it's a desktop or a notebook. Let the Lab Rats be the first to say congratulations on your new addition. And, in classic Lab Rats form, offer some practical advice.
In episode 152, Andy and Sean take a look at what you should do after you've unboxed your new PC, have connected everything and are ready to boot it for the first time (how exciting!). The guys give some useful tips on how to stay safe and secure, along with a chronological listing of everything you need to do to make your PC your own.

You've got important files and you need the ability to access them no matter where you might be. Find out how

online file storage

can provide an easy and quick way to do so, as well as sync and share files across multiple computers.

Learning how to use basic boolean search terms will help you narrow or broaden your search when you're using most search engines. It's a powerful skill that, once mastered, allows you to find what you're looking for and find it faster.

Make the folders in your profile private, including My Documents, Favorites, Cookies, the Desktop and the Start menu, so that users who share your computer cannot access them or the files within.

Google Calendar provides a great way to keep yourself organized. By sharing your calendars with family, friends and colleagues, everyone can be kept in the loop.

Andy and Sean discuss how to choose a flat panel display for your computer.

Andy and Sean debate where you should design your own or buy a pre-built computer.

Evernote

makes it easy to

take web clips, create notes, save pictures and much more in the cloud

. With Evernote, your data is available anywhere you can find an Internet connection... even on your

BlackBerry, iPhone or other smartphone

. Creating clips and notes is easy and

Evernote

makes it easy to

save and access notes online

.

Our ten-part series on the Firefox browser gets in-depth, up close and personal with Mozilla's browser. This browser is available on Windows and Mac platforms as well as Linux and has gained significant market share in the past couple of years. It's time to figure out what the fuss is about!

The world's preeminent community encyclopedia and the site that brought the "wiki" to the main stage, Wikipedia needs no introduction.
While we've all happened upon the site in our surfing, there's much more to Wikipedia than just encyclopedia articles. Molly McDonald, AKA Demo Girl, explains.

A five-part look at the best thing to happen to free screen sharing and remote control PC software since, well, ever. Michael "Doc" Callahan leads us through the finer points of Yuuguu including how to share your screen with one person or many, how to take control of a remote PC and how to conduct a virtual meeting with friends, family or business associates.