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
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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).
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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