Nice. Just plopped a forkful of salad on my Logitech DiNovo keyboard. This keyboard is so superthin, the salad dressing didn't just drain out between the keys as usual--it actually welled up and capsized a couple of 'em. There's just nowhere for such stuff to go in this thing. (Companies marketing full-size keyboards, feel free to use this copy on your boxes: "Deep design: Drains dressings and soup better!" ) My fellow editor Rafe Needleman walked in while I was installing the DiNovo and, in his inimitable way, quickly identified the emperor as a nudist: "What's the point of a keyboard being thin?" I think DiNovo is one saucy monkey, but I could only stare back at him blankly. Maybe you'd have a better response. What do you think of the Logitech DiNovo keyboard?

Now we're cookin'
What a resourceful bunch you are. I'm loving the thread spawned by my thoughts on "erasing" hard drives last week. I particularly like the suggestion by aj226, who recommends strapping the drive to the alternator in your car or truck. A couple of years ago, researchers found that the electrical field coming off the alternator in a Volvo was about four times stronger than what you'd get standing under a high-voltage power line. aj226's ingenuity also reminds me of my friend Norm O'Neal, who was known to wrap up a piece of chuck roast and a few potatoes in three layers of foil, then bury it in the bowels of his Alfa Romeo's exhaust manifold for the drive home from HP. When he got there, dinner was served (and done to a turn, I might add). Yes, Norm was a thermodynamics engineer. When he died a couple of years ago, Silicon Valley lost one of its best.

Should we continue doing our tests in a clean room? Or should we use a fleet of dirty machines?

Who's smoking dope here? Our review of Pinnacle Studio MovieBox DV carries an almost unheard-of 8.7 rating by CNET. Yet 86 percent of users give it a thumbs-down. I checked with Don Labriola, who wrote that review, and he stands by his experience. But he also points out that perhaps it did well because we conduct our tests on clean machines; each one is a Windows virgin with none of the detritus, dreck, and DLLs that accumulate on and plague real-world computers such as yours. So I ask you: Should we continue doing our tests in a clean room? Or should we use a fleet of dirty machines? Would the latter course be fair to subsequent products, which have to run on sloppy seconds or worse, sloppy 54ths? Would "dirty box" reviews mean more to you? (And note that I have the ear of our reviewers; I'll make sure they listen.)