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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 22, 2001)
Majorly TGChnO The tools—or toys—you need for school By Shani Fisher Keeping on top of emerging technology is a lot more fun than keeping up-to-date with your World Civ professor's demanding reading assignments. From Psychology to English, from Marketing to Architecture, no matter what your major, you’ll want the best tech tools available. Below, Steamtunnels rounds up the gadgets that will help you get ahead. High-tech pen scanners for overbooked English majors. Multi-language dictionaries for language majors. Voice recorders for budding journalists. in >ync Personal information management (PIM) is the key to success in the fast-paced busi ness world. Stay on top of appointments and keep your contacts handy with the Royal Vista, a complete personal digital assistant (PDA) that will fit in your business-card holder. Vista’s features include an address book, calculator, schedule function, metric and currency conversions, and an expense manager. Breakthrough pricing is just right at $60 (royal.com). You Can Count on It Monitor the great returns on your investment in college using your BA II Plus calculator from Texas Instruments. Perfect for applications in finance, accounting, eco nomics, investment, statistics and more, you can solve time-value-of With 8MB of built-in memory, the DS-150 offers 160 minutes of recording time, with impressive Variable Control Voice Actuator (VCVA) technology that optimizes built-in memory by ceasing record functions when the microphone senses silence. The DS-150 also comes with automatic speech-to LCAl UULUIIICML LIC" ation—including IBM ViaVoice speech-to-text software and a headset that lets you dictate into your PC ($230; olympusamerica.com). bpeak hasy A must-have for Spanish or Latin American studies majors—the electronic Franklin Spanish-English Dictionary DBE 1440. Complete with 2 million Spanish English translations with advanced verb conjugations, 2,000 travelers’ phrases and learning exercis es, the easy-to-read five-line display has a grammar guide, spell correction and seven games. When you’re unsure of the spelling of a word, spell it like it sounds and the corrected word will appear with instant access to definitions ($59.95; franklin.com). High-Tech Savvy Camera Presenting your work in an electronic portfolio is the perfect way to get an edge on other candidates in any job search. The Philips Vesta Pro Scan camera can capture high-quality video at up to 30 frames per second at a maximum resolution of 640x480. Using PageCam software devel oped by Xerox, the Pro Scan makes scanning pictures and text very easy—a great alternative to conventional flatbed scan ners. Scan in your photos, documents, published works and even record a personal message to send along with money calculations such as annuities, mortgages, leases and savings. The BA II Plus also ^ generates amortization schedules, performs cash flow analysis and advanced statistics. A prompted display guides you through financial cal culations, math functions including trigonometric calculations, natural loga rithms and powers ($34.95; ti.com). Say What? Used by journalists, doctors and medical tran scriptionists, voice recorders make dictating and transcribing a snap. The Olympus DS-150 Digital Recorder is the perfect tool Photos courtesy Texas Instruments, Olympus, Franklin. Highlighting Political Science and English majors will love Wizcom's QuickLink Pen to scan and excerpt infor mation from textbooks, legal documents or other print media. This portable optical scanner has an electronic eye at the tip of the pen that lets you scan printed text and then easily download to a PC into a desktop application; or scan in a business card and upload directly into MS Outlook, and beam it to your PDA. Or capture, store and edit URLs and then transfer them directly to your favorite browser’s bookmarks ($179; wizcomtech.com). yvjui legume u^iug, liic uuiii-m microphone. Can you believe these fea tures are all available in one device? ($129; philipsusa.com). • 10 Worst Colleges for Laptop Theft Over 319,000 laptops were stolen in 1999. 1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2. Stanford 3. Georgetown 4. Purdue 5. Southern Illinois-Carbondale 6. South Florida 7. Georgia 8. Illinois-Urbana 9. North Carolina-Charlotte 10. Duke ^ Source: Kryptonite Corp. (kryp tonitelock. com) L. J
