Hard-drive power for your PC

The scoop: PowerSquid Surge3000 surge protector, by Flexity, about $70 (preorders available at www.powersquidstore.com).

What it is: Most surge protectors are long, vertical strips with about six or seven power outlets that let you plug in various cords. But many power adapters are larger and eat up the space available for additional cords and adapters.

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Click to see: PowerSquid Surge 3000

The scoop: PowerSquid Surge3000 surge protector, by Flexity, about $70 (preorders available at www.powersquidstore.com).

What it is: Most surge protectors are long, vertical strips with about six or seven power outlets that let you plug in various cords. But many power adapters are larger and eat up the space available for additional cords and adapters.

The PowerSquid takes care of that by extending its female outlets away from the base in a tentaclelike fashion. This lets you use every outlet and not having to figure out the best way to optimize the power strip, or daisy-chain multiple surge protectors in order to plug everything in. The PowerSquid comes in three versions (1000, 2000 and 3000, depending on the amount of joule protection offered), as well as a special Calamari Edition, which includes two glowing outlets and is white instead of black (the $80 version also includes an audible alarm). All models include phone line and cable line surge protection.

Why it's cool: Anyone who has spent time with a limited amount of power space in their wall has purchased a surge protector for additional outlets, and then discovered that a lot of their equipment has those bulkier adapters that take up two or three spaces on the power strip. This eliminates that issue. The design really does look like a squid; it's almost a shame that the device will end up sitting on the floor instead of on your desk.

Grade: Five stars (out of five)

The scoop: External Hard Drive (400GB, dual interface), from Seagate, about $330.

Click to see: Seagate external hard drive

What it is: Just like the product's title says, it's an external hard drive that offers 400GB of space for PC users. The system connects via USB 2.0 cables or an IEEE 1394 (also known as firewire) cable to provide connectivity to your PC. Bundled BounceBack Express software from CMS Products lets you quickly back up and restore files from your PC to the external drive, as well as at the touch of a button on the front of the device.

Why it's cool: With the emerging needs of users for more storage (music, video files and photos keep clogging up the desktop, not to mention work-related documents such as Word, PowerPoint or Excel files), it's nice to have a system that can quickly and easily take care of storage needs, at least for a while. With prices less than $1 per gigabyte, users who complain that they have no space left can be satisfied by giving them one of these systems.

I was able to easily connect the device to a Windows XP PC and access the hard drive. The BounceBack Express back-up software was confusing at first: It wanted me to back up the entire C drive by default, and I just wanted to back up the My Documents folder.

After figuring out how to change the configuration, I ran the initial backup, transferring about 604MB over to the drive in about a minute. With subsequent backups (achieved by just pushing the button on the hard drive), the software monitored only what files had changed. I had added a file, deleted a file and modified a file, which the software quickly recognized, and the backup was ultrafast. I was also able to quickly restore the deleted file and return it to its rightful location on the external drive.