Here are two more products we've been testing recently:

N-Charge Power System

Devices that give your laptop extra power when you're traveling are nothing new, but having the same device recharge your handheld device and mobile phone at the same time is. Valence Technology sent us one of its N-Charge Power Systems (VNC-130), which gave us extra battery life for our notebook and could recharge our iPaq PDA at the same time (it also can recharge a cell phone).

The system works with several models of notebooks (including Apple, Compaq, HP, IBM, Dell and Sony), and is small enough (11.81 by 9.06 by 0.51 inches) to fit in your laptop bag, although it adds about three pounds of weight. Still, when you're on the road, it can be worth it to get the extra battery life, up to 10 hours, according to Valence.

The setup is simple - just take the power adapter from your notebook to charge up the N-Charge device. Another cable lets you connect to the notebook so you can charge the N-Charge device and your notebook at the same time (charging in this case takes longer). After the N-Charge is charged, you now have an extra "battery" that can recharge your notebook and your handheld.

The VNC-130 costs $300 (Valence also has a $150 model that has less battery life).

Sunbelt Software's IHateSpam

When your e-mail address is as public as mine is (it's at the bottom of this column and all over our Web site), you get a lot of spam. But I also get legitimate e-mail that looks like spam, such as product pitches from public relations agencies and technology e-mail newsletters.

Blocking spam based on e-mail addresses doesn't work anymore; spammers just get a new e-mail address from a free service. I can't block entire domains (many public relations people use free e-mail services), and I can't allow only certain e-mail addresses, as public relations people change almost every week. I need a filter that can tell what e-mail is spam and what e-mail is legitimate.

The $20 IHateSpam software from Sunbelt Software comes very close to this goal. It uses a scoring system that reads everything about the message - the sender, subject line and body of the e-mail - and gives it a score threshold. Scoring high on the threshold moves the message into a "quarantine" folder that sits underneath the Inbox folder in my Outlook client. It also sets up a list of "friends" and "enemies" that lets the user tell the software which e-mail addresses are good and which aren't.