ASHLEIGH MATTERN
Editor-in-Chief

With the holiday season soon upon us, here are three geeky gadgets to watch for. From mobile gaming to hands-off cleaning, these doo-dads are not to be missed.

PSP Go
The newest incarnation of the PlayStation Portable is the future of handheld gaming.

It’s the first portable gaming device (excluding cell phones and the iPod Touch) that does not use cartridges.

My biggest complaint, as with any downloaded product, is that I don’t have anything physical to add to my collection. But I got over that feeling with CDs and I’m learning to get over it with games.

Thanks to the lack of need for cartridges, the PSP Go is lighter and sleeker than its predecessor, making it actually portable. The screen is large and bright and you pop the screen up to reveal the controls, including a tiny yet comfortable joystick.

The number of games available at the moment is a little disappointing in comparison to the number of cartridge-based games for the PSP-3000, but maybe it’s something we should expect from Sony. They do continue to add more games to the store though, and I’m sure we will see the small selection expanded over time. You can also buy physical voucher cards but the selection is the same, so they don’t really make sense unless you’re buying someone a present.

You don’t need a PlayStation 3 to download to the PSP Go, though you do have to download a program on your computer to allow download and transfer of PSP games from the online PlayStation Store. It’s certainly easier if you own a PS3, but not necessary.

The device is heralded as truly portable gaming, which to me means that as long as there’s wireless, you can download a game wherever you are and start playing. Which leads me to one of my other complaints about the device: it won’t allow you to download in the background and continue playing a game. So if you do want to download something wirelessly, you have to be willing to wait awhile. But perhaps this is a blessing in disguise; downloading to a PC or PS3 first means you have a back-up copy of the game.

Still, travelling with this tiny bugger is much better than lugging around my collection of Nintendo DS games, however small the cartridges may be.

This is an impressive machine. It has basically the same operating system as the PS3 and holds up to 16GB of games, music, photos and videos. Skype is built into the menu, but while there’s a microphone, there is no camera.

Despite the steep price tag (about $250), I’m thoroughly enjoying the gaming world’s first attempt to rid itself of the cartridge, and I’m interested to see how the world of download-only plays out.

Roomba
It’s a robot. What else is there to say?

When my vacuum broke this summer, I went to the store with every intention of picking up the cheapest working vacuum I could find. Instead, I left with a tiny robot vacuum: the Roomba from iRobot.

The Roomba is a short, circular vacuum that bumps blindly around your living room sucking stuff up until it runs out of batteries. That may not sound too amazing but I love it, though mostly because I hate vacuuming.

It takes the robot about half an hour to 45 minutes to clean a mid-sized room. This seems a little ridiculous considering I could vacuum it in about 10 minutes, but I don’t have to. What used to take me 10 minutes now takes me less than five. I pick the bigger things off the ground, push a button, then go do something else.

It was also entertaining for the first week. The first time we used it, we watched it vacuum the entire living room — just watched it for nearly an hour. The pattern it takes on the rug is kind of hypnotizing and it’s great fun to watch it find its way around corners.

The Roomba makers claim there’s a pattern it follows, and sometimes I think I have figured it out, but it’s hard to believe watching it bump around. The flat design helps it get under couches, though it also helps it get stuck in weird places. It’s a good idea to watch it when using it in a room for the first time so you can pick out problem areas.

One complaint I read online was that it’s not powerful enough to do a real vacuum, making it best used for in-between cleans. I disagree; the Roomba was definitely an upgrade from our last vacuum, and I clean my floors more often now that I don’t have to do any of the work.

My model is the most basic and cost me about $140, though they range in price up to $600. Pricier models offer different settings and better battery life, and some also come with a home base the robot will “auto-magically” return to for recharging, and the ability to create “virtual walls,” useful when there’s a lesser-used portion of your living room (we used boxes and books as a barrier).

If you don’t mind vacuuming or you’re one of those people who needs your floors to be absolutely immaculate, this isn’t the machine for you. But if you’re like me, and you’re itching for the rise of the domestic robot to do all your cleaning for you, it may be worth the extra cash.

Netbooks
If you’re a student, you probably have a netbook.

Okay, that might be a stretch, but netbooks do seem like a perfect choice for cash-strapped students. The tiny laptops easily fit in a backpack or big purse, and with prices starting as low as $300, they’re easy on the savings account.

While I use my netbook as my main computer, it’s not for everyone. Generally, they’re used as companions to desktop computers. They have lower memory capabilities and no disk drive, so it’s a good idea to buy an external hard drive and CD/DVD drive.

Netbooks have been edging in on the laptop market ever since their arrival on the tech scene in late 2007. At first less powerful and clumsy attempts at delivering minimal services compared to their big brothers, the technology is advancing quickly and now some of the better models can compete with laptops. My netbook, an Acer Aspire One, had some of the best features in its price-range when I bought it earlier this year, but it’s already feeling out of date.

Another exciting announcement in the netbook world, Google is releasing an operating system designed for netbooks. Announced in July 2009, the Google Chrome OS is a stripped down operating system that is an extended web browser; basically like Windows only coming with Internet Explorer.

According to Wikipedia, it relies solely on cloud computing, meaning all the applications reside on a remote server rather than on the computer. But it may be a few years before they tweak the system enough to make it a viable option. Right now, for example, there would be no place to store a music library, though it would still make a good operating system for a secondary computer.

On Nov. 19, the first demonstrations of the OS hit the interweb. Google claims the operating system will be able to boot up in less than 10 seconds. Expect it to become available in late 2010.

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images: rok1966, submitted, Ryan MacFarland and Aztieak.com