I can remember in the early eighties, just after the first PCs started appearing, the amount of gadgets you could buy to supplement you PC. Peripherals they were called. The term referred to all kinds of interesting pieces of hardware that could be used with a PC. You could get all kinds of funny things. I remember the SpectraVideo Expander. Not that I had a SpectraVideo PC, but I had the expander. This thing had several slots resembling the old ISA slots but a bit shorter. I never figured out how the thing worked or what it actually did, but none of my friends had an expander. I also remembered those old hand-held scanners, the kind you needed to drag across a page to get the image into the PC. Boy, was that a load of work. I think I scanned about 25 pages before getting tired of it and selling it to a friend.

I loved all those dingy things. I remember that you got these little pen-like barcode scanners. In South Africa, these were and are still very difficult to find. The other day, I saw that an American Magazine gave a few cheap barcode readers away with a magazine. It’s amazing what mass manufacturing can do for a product’s price. This is even better when it gets manufactured in a country that has cheap labour, like China or India or Taiwan. In South Africa, you can consider yourself lucky if a magazine gives away a bar of soap with an issue. I received a full one-year membership with another magazine the other day but unfortunately, the gym-chain is not present in the area I live in.

A few days ago I read about a gadget that is a must-have for all PC users who have ever had the inclination to upgrade the BIOS. This little gadget enables you to replace your one BIOS with two. Yes, that’s right. Two. The first time round I saw this, Gigabyte released a range of motherboards with the dual-BIOS concept. I thought this to be very stupid, but after several BIOS re-programming procedures were performed for clients of mine, I realised that this is indeed a good thing to have. Unfortunately, my favourite brand of motherboard - Asrock - did not manufacture such boards. Then whilst I was browsing the Internet the other day, I spotted this gadget on a site dedicated to experimental hardware hacks.

For the robotic fans around here, I also discovered a little robot called “Pino.” This little robot remind of the Robosapien. It is, however, manufactured in Japan. It differs from the Robosapien in that it has built in intelligence and that it can learn for itself as well as talk to other PINOs. And it is rather cute as well. it could serve as a potential babe magnet. It stands about 30cm (12″) tall. a must-have toy for the new year.

Other things to go and get include :

• USB cup warmer

• 1Gb Flash drive
• 1Gb MP3 player
• Aibo Wi-Max NIC x 2 N.A.S
• Nokia N70
• Nokia N90
• Sagem My-X62
• Samsung 19″ 8ms LCD Display Toshiba projector Segway scooter (Or whatever you call them)
• $1,000,000
• $10,000,000

I read the other day that they now have a term similar to metrosexual for people who love gadgets. Can’t remember what it’s called, though.