You wouldn't believe how many mice and keyboardshave recently found their way to jamesgames.com for review. Though they may look similar, and even have similar pricing, these peripherals are as different as night and day.

I've taken them for a test drive, and what you'll find here are my personal reactions. However, I always suggest that you take any product review of input devices with a grain of salt, because my hands and yours may be sized very differently.

Go to the store and take them for a spin to see if your body and their design is a good match. You can't get that info from an article or even a photo.

So far, here are the products I've looked at: Logitech Cordless Desktop Wave Pro Keyboard and Mouse, Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard, Logitech Illuminated Keyboard, Review: Microsoft Explorer Mouse, Microsoft Sidewinder X6 Keyboard, and the Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop 6000.

It wasn't long ago that there weren't too many earbuds with an in-line microphone that worked with the iPhone. Now, many (even Apple) have rushed in to fill the vacuum left by Apple's defective-by-design earphones that ship with the iPhone.

UPDATE: Media Monkey has launched a beta version of their program that purports to correct the problem addressed in this article.  I'll be posting a review soon.

I have a box - honestly, I probably have several boxes - full of unmatched power bricks. You know those unseemly, ungraceful black hunks of plastic that fit so uncomfortably in power strips and surge protectors. For me, their size was always the second worst thing about them. The bigger problem is that they nearly never say what gadget they belong to. Once the gadget and block separate you're in real trouble. Soon, you'll be like me, with boxes full of orphaned transformers.

A great home media and backup server requires rock-solid hardware and software that gets the job done without turning into a second career. Get either or both wrong and you’ve got a disaster of a product.  Can Maxtor, a hardware company, deliver a home server that home technology officers, i.e. moms and dads, can use without giving up their day jobs?

Note taking was was a problem that plagued my career as a student. "The five principle causes of the Civil War were..." would intone my professor. While I was writing I was also thinking about what was being said and invariably I'd end up with four of the five causes. If I had the Livescribe Pulse digital pen I wouldn't have had the problem. You see, as you take notes with your Pulse it is also digitally recording what is being said as an audio file.

With the economy in tough shape, the Today Show asked me to come up with four back to school tips that won't break the bank. I decided this was an opportunity to include free, top-notch, open-source software, a topic that has rarely gotten major play in the mainstream media. You can see the video here.

The Backyard sports franchise still does what it has always done best: provide simple game play for children who want to play sports games, but aren’t ready for the big leagues. There is even a bit of graph reading as kids choose ups sides, though it hardly counts as a math lesson.

Building a system to play your digital music collection throughout the house is frought with the difficulties attendant to the Tower of Babel.  The higher you reach, the more you will bang your head on the fractured welter of competing formats and copy protection schemes (DRM). Can either the Sonos or Logitech systems deliver?

PureDigital has been in the pocket camcorder business for several years now, having started with disposable video cameras. Their newest, deluxe version comes in multiple colors, like an iPod Nano and can shoot up to an hour of video at a time. They've kept to the mantra of "keep it simple". The gizmo is nearly foolproof. Four buttons control most of the functions: on/off, record, play, and delete.