Dell calls its new Inspiron Mini 9 laptop "your new best friend." The petite laptop is an ideal travel companion if you want to blog, keep a journal, surf the Web, send email, and listen to music while on vacation. The Mini 9 has a 9" display and 4 hours of battery life, and weighs all of 2.3 pounds. Under the hood, the $349 base configuration will get you an Ubuntu Linux OS, 512MB of RAM, and a 4GB hard drive, but of course you can spend a little more if you want additional upgrades (Bluetooth, Windows XP, more memory, webcam, larger hard drive). It's not something we'd want to spend 8 hours a day with, but for vacations it sounds like it has everything we need.

"Michael, where would you like to go today?" That's how K.I.T.T. greeted David Hasslehoff in "Knight Rider," and that's how the Mio Knight Rider GPS greets you when you turn it on. In the exact same voice, thanks to Mio's partnership with Universal Studios. (You can then change it to one of 300+ other names.) K.I.T.T. (William Daniels) will give you voice guidance and turn-by-turn directions (accompanied by LED synthesizer lights), and make you feel like a 1980s TV star. The GPS device doesn't ship for a few weeks but you can preorder it from Radio Shack. Shiny jacket and curly wig not included.

Introducing the Peek, a handheld device for email and only email. No phone, no text messages, no Web browser, just email. Designed for "everyday people," or people who don't want all the bells and whistles of an iPhone, Blackerry, or Treo, the Peek is super easy to use, has a well-designed QWERTY keyboard, a full color display, and supports Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, AOL, and other major email clients. The fee is $20 a month for unlimited emailing - with no contract. We're wondering if we can get our grandmother, who's a bit scared of "computers," to use one.

If you are hyper-organized, slightly OCD, and have tons of Stuff (we plead guilty to all 3) you might be interested in the Groqit. It's a handheld scanner that looks like a pen. Use it to scan the barcodes on all your books, CDs, DVDs, games, etc. (it can store up to a million barcodes). Next time you see something in a store and wonder if you have that item at home already, just scan it and find out. To add another level of geekery to the mix, connect the Groqit to your computer and use the Groqit website to "translate" barcodes into product names and make online inventories and wishlists. We're thinking this could be a useful tool for first-time eBayers who want to get rid of a lot of their stuff.

With an Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a big 320GB hard drive, the Dell Studio S1535-125B laptop, at $980, offers students and mainstream home users some serious bang for the buck. The laptop has a 15.4" screen, a 2-megapixel webcam for Internet chatting, Bluetooth, 4 USB ports, and Vista Home Premium. And it's Dell, so you get toll-free phone support. The downside: It weighs 6.1 pounds and has just average battery life. See all Dell laptops.