Turn those Stone Age tapes into MP3s

Have you been holding off on digitizing your junior high “mixed tapes”? Presuming you still have a shoe box of cassettes labeled something like “Mike & Stacy 4 Ever” or “Mötley Crüe Driving Mix,” there is a way to forever immortalize these musical memories and play them on an iPod or CD player.

From the same folks who introduced the USB turntable comes the Ion Audio Tape2PC machine, a dual-dubbing silver cassette deck that connects to your PC via a USB cable. The company just announced it has dropped its price from $199 to $149, but hey, you can find this product “previously enjoyed” on eBay for as low as $70, plus shipping.

Digitize your entire metal and CrO2 tape collection with the bundled Windows or Mac software while also removing hisses in the process. Once it’s on your computer, you can copy to recordable media, sync it with your favorite MP3 player, or upload it to Facebook for an “old skool” throwback.

Want an even cheaper way to do it? If you still own your original cassette deck and a stereo, you can pick up an “RCA-to-mini” cable from Radio Shack for under $10 and connect it to your sound card’s input 3.5mm jack (or in a pinch, the mic-in jack on a laptop). Then use free software, such as Audacity to digitize your old tapes.

It's megapixel madness with 8.1-megapixel phone

Many people have ditched their point-and-shoot digital camera for a camera phone. Those who pick up the upcoming Sony Ericsson C905 won’t have to trade quality for convenience.

Due out by early 2009, the United States’ first 8.1-megapixel camera phone packs all the features you’d expect from a stand-alone digital camera, including Xenon flash, auto focus, image stabilizer, and face detection.

Plus, after you take a photo or shoot a video, you can immediately upload it to your favorite blog or social networking site, using GSM/GPRS, EDGE, or 3G (HSDPA) cell phone networks.

The C905 is also no slouch in other departments. It houses built-in GPS, FM radio, stereo Bluetooth, and more. Oh, and did we mention it makes phone calls, too? No price, carrier, or exact launch date have been confirmed just yet.

Multitask with this innovative PC keyboard

Convergence has been a trend in tech for some time, whether it is cameras built into mobile phones or GPS devices that play MP3s. Now we have the first hybrid computer keyboard and scanner.

Occupying the same footprint as a regular keyboard, the KeyScan KS810 ($159) is a PC keyboard and sheet-feed scanner in one. The product scans black-and-white and color documents of various sizes -- from 3.5 x 2-inch business cards all the way up to 8.5 x 30-inch paper.

A full-page, 300 dpi (dots per inch) grayscale document takes about five seconds to scan. Output resolution tops 4800 dpi, which is ideal for digitizing cherished old photos.

Included with the KS810 is KeyScan’s proprietary No-Touch AutoScan software, allowing users to scan documents without pressing any buttons. Simply insert the paper into the feeding slot near the back of the keyboard, and the scanned document automatically becomes a searchable PDF email attachment. Alternatively, you can save the scanned item as a Word document, JPG or TIF image file, or in other file formats.

A Windows XP SP2- or Vista-based operating system is required.

HP breaks 24-hour laptop battery barrier

HP recently announced a breakthrough in laptop batteries: up to 24 hours of continuous usage on a single charge. The new HP EliteBook 6930p (from $1,199) can deliver up to 24 hours of battery run time when configured with an optional ultra-capacity 12-cell battery ($189). The 4.7-pound laptop features a 14.1-inch widescreen LCD display (or it’s available with an optional mercury-free Illumi-Lite LED display), Intel Core 2 Duo processor, shock-resistant 160GB hard drive, and up to 4GB of system memory.

“All-day computing has been the holy grail of notebook computing,” said Ted Clark, senior vice president and general manager of HP’s notebook global business unit, in a company release. “With the HP EliteBook 6930p, customers no longer have to worry about their notebook battery running out before their workday is over.”

Naturally, what you do on your laptop can affect battery performance greatly. For example, word processing doesn’t eat away at system resources, compared to, say, online gaming or video editing.