Across the country, freshers are packing up textbooks, gap year souvenirs and enough clothes so they won’t have to do any laundry til Christmas. If you - or your son or daughter - is in this situation, be sure to leave enough room in the car for the electronic kit that’s indispensible to student life. You’ll need a laptop and a kettle, of course, but it’s the other stuff that will really make your time at Uni.
Here is our list of the top 5 gadgets you can’t do without:
There isn’t enough room in most halls of residence for a big hi-fi system, but a set of iPod speakers will fit in perfectly. An added advantage is that any visitors can plug in their mp3 player, and most ipod speakers are small enough to move around - perfect for parties.
There are options to suit any budget, but the pick of the crop are the Sony SRSGU10P, from £55, rated at 9.6/10 by people who actually own it, and the top-of-the-range Bose SoundDock, rated 9.2/10 and costing £128 upwards.
Whether it’s for recording your best memories or working out what you did last night, a digital camera is essential. Ideal student cameras are small enough to fit in a pocket, with a flash and good battery life. Remember that megapixel count isn’t everything - see our Digital Cameras Buyers’ Guide for an in-depth guide to getting the best camera for you.
It’s very important not to overwork yourself during your first few weeks at Uni - or for the rest of the time. The energetic games are almost as good as going to the gym (especially if you get the Wii Fit as well) and will come in handy breaking the ice with your neighbours in halls.
As surprising as it seems, students are required to do some work. Make this part of student life as painfree as possible with a large-capacity USB stick - 2GB should be enough for all your notes and essays. Not only can you keep all your work to hand, but this also acts as a back-up if anything ever happens to your computer. Keep your work doubly-safe by backing it up online with a free service like Google Docs or Dropbox.
Insurance
Once you’ve bought the gadgets you want to take to uni, be sure that you’ll still be able to bring them home by buying some insurance. Student accommodation is frequently a target for opportunistic burglars - and most students don’t have enough available money to replace a broken laptop or a lost mp3 player. The National Union of Students recommendsEndsleigh Insurance, whose special students contents insurance covers laptops, phones and other gadgets as well as everything from your bike to your winter coat. It even covers your possessions on the journey to Uni and when you leave them in your student accommodation over the holidays.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if your stereo could play all the music on your computer? Or play the same music in all the rooms in your house? Or if you could watch the videos you’ve got on your computer on your TV?
If any of this sounds appealing, you should consider buying a wireless media streamer. These devices use a wireless internet connection to share music and videos between devices including hifis, computers and TVs, and between different rooms.
Although this arrangement might sound tricky to set up, you don’t need a degree in electrical engineering to set up most streaming systems. Some manufacturers, like Sonos, go out of their ways to make it easy, by selling ‘bundles’ of everything you need to get started, while others design ’single unit’ systems, like the Sony NASSC55PKE
There are two main varieties of media streamer. The first variety concentrates on music, detecting the music files on your computer and either plugging into your stereo system or speakers to play them. Audio streamers from the upper end of the market will usually work with a subscription to a music-streaming service like Napster, Spotify or Last.fm (more about these services later).
The other kind streams both audio and video content, and is usually used to display videos saved to your computer hard drive on your TV, or show TV on your computer. More high-end versions also display your photos on your TV or offer direct access to sites like YouTube.
Unfortunately, the variety of different types of streamers on the market means that it’s much harder to decide which streamer to buy than, for example, which TV to buy.
We’ve just added a dedicated media streamers section to Reevoo.com which is a great place to start. We’ll add in more detail on the different types over the next few weeks and we’ll also be writing some blog posts to guide you through this complicated market.
Off to a festival in the next few months? Take a look at our festival survival gadgets to make sure you avoid all the usual festival pitfalls.
Don’t lose your tent or your friends this year, use Google Maps with Latitude to keep track of both. Go for the popular Nokia N97 or the new Apple iPhone 3G S and, while you’re at it, download the Shazam app which will recognise a tune within a few notes and then helpfully take you to iTunes to purchase the track.
Grab yourself a wind-up charger too, to make sure your mobile never runs out.
If you’re after a festival-proof camera, the Olympus MJU 1050 is tough, waterproof and shockproof so it should last the summer. It’s 12x digital zoom and 30fps video capture mode will keep your festival memories for ever. Owners love this camera and it receives a score of 8.6/10 with one reviewer labelling it “virtually indestructible”.
Going to the loo is a mission at festivals but there’s no need to miss out on all the action while you’re in the queue. This Roberts Solar DAB radio is, as the name suggests, solar powered, so running out of batteries is not an option. It’s rated 8.9/10 by very impressed owners.
After the artists have finished, the music doesn’t have to stop with the Sony NWZ-A816 Walkman which scooped gold in the Reevoo Customer Choice Awards earlier this year and scores 9.3/10. But if you want to share your music, go for the iMode Boombox dock which is rugged and a steal at only £25.
If you have to queue for the loo, at least avoid queuing for the shower. Take the Super Solar Shower in a bag and have a leisurely soak under a branch at your convenience. It can be refilled time and time again and the solar panel will heat the water. An absolute bargain at just £5!
Finally, a festival kit bag wouldn’t be complete without a wind-up head torch. £15 will get you the Uni-Com wind up head torch – hours of fun without running out of batteries.
Meet the Chairman. We’re talking VIP but Very Important Phone as opposed to Person, because the Chairman is a new phone with a difference.
The clue is in its maker - Ulysse Nardin, watch maker extraordinaire. This phone takes top-of-the-range watch technology and teams it up with a touchscreen giving us a stylish hybrid handset. Its built-in battery is charged by the kinetic energy generated by the moving rotor so that your phone charges without you even noticing, while it’s working.
But if you thought this was a gimmick phone, think again. Ulysse Nardin have created an interesting multi-touch smartphone. Complete with Wi-Fi, 5 megapixel camera and 2.8 inch screen, the Chairman certainly sounds like a phone to look out for. Release dates and price are currently under wraps but we’ll keep you posted.
People have been talking about all the technology in your house communicating with each other for years but Microsoft’s taken the bull by the horns and done something simple about it.
They’ve teamed up with Californian company Fugoo to create a Windows-based platform which can be plugged into a whole heap of gadgets so that they can all talk to each other. And the result? An alarm clock which can talk to your coffee machine and tell it you’ve woken up and to start brewing your coffee, not only that, it can remind you of your first appointment and calculate how long it will take you to drive to work based on current traffic conditions. Your digital photo frame will also be able to sync up with your PC and display your favourite photos, stocks and shares info or the latest news as you slurp that freshly made coffee. The possibilities are endless. Pretty nifty, hey?
So what does it all cost? The system will be released in the US in June and will set you back a cool $99. The rest of the world will have to wait until 2010.
The guys behind the technology are already working on future uses for the gadget, envisaging “a refrigerator that can generate a weekly shopping list based on staples that have been used up, and then place a delivery order at a local supermarket’s web site. Or a lawn sprinkler that checks the weather forecast for the possibility of rain before turning itself on”. Watch this space!
If there’s one thing in your house that you thought they’d never computerize, would it be a tap? Well, the guys at iHome have decided that a touchscreen tap with face recognition is the future in household gadgetry. I have to admit, this is pretty cool. The SmartFaucet recognises your face and then remembers exactly what water temperature and pressure you like. And if you get bored while you soak? Just use SmartFaucet to catch up on a few emails or find out how your calendar’s shaping up for the weekend.
What do you do when your sense of direction is about as accurate as a Fred Goodwin’s in a financial crisis? You buy a pair of these sat nav shoes, that’s what. Now I know I’ve talked about super shoes before but these are pretty cool. Just enter the postcode in your heel and you’re away.
Get directions from the LED DNav Bubble on the front of your left shoe which will point in the direction you need to walk and beep if you’re heading the wrong way. You can also use a Bluetooth headset so that you don’t walk around sounding like that guy out of Police Academy and you will hear instructions like “bear left at the next McDonalds”.
It runs on two rechargeable AA batteries and it’s speakers are waterproof so jumping in puddles is still very much on the cards. And do you remember the robot legs we featured a couple of months ago? These would go perfectly on the end of them for completely effortless travel!
So next time someone tells you to get lost, just pull up your trouser leg, show off your shoes and walk away, content with the notion that getting lost is very much a thing of the past.
If you have a tiny kitchen and thought that you never be able to fit in the luxury of a dishwasher, think again. The Gota dishwasher is so tiny it can fit on your worktop. And it’s a nice little energy and water-saver too.
It’s been designed by Ibsen Caldas and is made from ABS polycarbonate. The pre-wash steams up all the dishes and then saves the water from the steam process to wash the dishes later on in the cycle. Its internal tank stores enough water for a round of cleaning.
It’s a great gadget for singles or couples without children. They’ll even be really handy for holiday homes. It has enough room for six plates and six glasses so whatever you use it for, it’ll certainly beat washing up! No news about when we might be able to get our hands on one yet but we’ll let you know.
Now here’s a new way to use a phone – with your feet. Aussie inventor, Dr. Paul Gardner-Stephen has created a phone that sits in the heel of one of your shoes. So instead of fumbling around to find your phone in your bag, just slip off your shoe and flip the heel. Dr. Paul is frequently seen around his campus in Flinders University, Adalaide doing just that. And the phone has proved so popular that Dr. Paul is thinking of starting selling them online this year.
As soon as you attach a Bluetooth headset, it’ll be a whole lot more viable and a great place to hide a phone from thieves!
But apart from being a cool accessory, Dr Gardner-Stephen’s thought of how it can be used for the good of humankind. He is confident that his phone in a shoe (I’m sure there’ll be a nice catchy name soon – perhaps a “shone” or a “phoo”?), could be used to monitor patients’ vital stats such as blood pressure and pulse via a bluetooth device which will sit in the other heel. The info can then be automatically sent through to doctors wiithout the patients having to come into hospital.
It will also be used to tell emergency workers when a patient has had a fall by monitoring shocks and orientation changes. The shoe will then automatically call emergency services and put the whole conversation on speakerphone so that the patient can communicate when they’re in trouble.
So why house this genius idea in a shoe?
“Shoes are well accepted by most people, and are simple to put on and take off.”
But that’s not all of it…they’re also ideal for charging the device as “our feet, and therefore our shoes, conduct large forces as we stand and walk, and energy can be harvested to charge the device during ordinary activity.”
So it can all be recharged by walking or even standing still – now that’s my kind of gadget!
Fancy thousands of radio stations from all over the world in your car? Wish you could listen to the best US rock stations or the most popular Australian channels from the comfort of your own motor. Well, the waiting’s over - the internet car radio was unveiled by Blaupunkt and miRoamer at CES earlier this year and proved a big hit.
The gadget will bring you thousands of global radio stations which you can preset and listen to through the panel in your dashboard. At the moment, internet connectivity is through an external device such as 3G/HSDPA/HSPA devices which then connect to the panel via Bluetooth but later models will come with a built-in modem. However, this Bluetooth connectivity means that you can also access your phone, address book and sat nav through the radio. Anyone else thinking Knight Rider?
The Blaupunkt/miRoamer internet car radio will be launched in Europe late this year for around £275 US $399. It’s sure to be the first in a line of new and exciting in-car technology.
Digital Camera
Nintendo Wii
panel in your dashboard. At the moment, internet connectivity is through an external device such as 3G/HSDPA/HSPA devices which then connect to the panel via Bluetooth but later models will come with a built-in modem. However, this Bluetooth connectivity means that you can also access your phone, address book and 
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