Introduction

Gadgets are fun.

It doesn't matter whether you're talking about one of those cheap little keychain memory gizmos or an expensive personal hovercraft, gadgets tickle my fancy. They don't even have to be practical in fact, it's sometimes better if they're not. To capture my attention, a gadget only has to be interesting and innovative and imaginative in a single word, cool.

So, this book is all about cool gadgets, of all shapes and sizes. Gadgets you attach to your computer. Gadgets you carry around on a belt clip. Gadgets that ride along with you in your car. Gadgets you talk into, or type on, or shoot pictures with. Gadgets that have absolutely no useful purpose at all, and gadgets that actually help you do something more efficiently.

In short, Leo Laporte's 2006 Gadget Guide is a "wish book" of more than 400 of my very favorite gadgets. I find all the gadgets here terribly interesting, and some of them either quite useful or hilariously funny or both. (You can't beat the USB sushi drives for both novelty and practicality.) These are gizmos you can marvel at, laugh at, and drool over. With only a few exceptions, they're actual honest-to-goodness consumer products, which means you can purchase them for your own personal use. Or not.