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If tablets are really going to kick laptops to the curb, they'll need some of the same important accessories road warriors rely on. Like, say, mobile scanners.

Enter the Brookstone iConvert Scanner, which combines a sheet-fed document/photo reader with an iPad dock. It's due to ship February 1 for a list price of $149.99.

As shown in the above demo video, you just plunk your iPad (1 or 2) into the iConvert, run the accompanying app, then start feeding your documents, photos, business cards, kids' scribbles, and what have you.… Read more

Ah, we are but mere mortals, and scientific research has a way of reminding us precisely how.

Not only has one recent study found that humans can experience age-related neurological decline as early as 45, but scientists are also reporting in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine that positron emission tomography (PET) can safely and accurately detect dementia early on.

The technique, according to lead author Nicolaas Bohnen in a news release, not only helps diagnose dementia, but also improves physician confidence: "This process can be difficult for physicians, especially when evaluating younger patients or those who have subtle signs … Read more

Dilbert, the technoverse's personal hero, treats other users' USB drives like rats carrying fleas infected with bubonic plague. We sympathize: you don't know where that thing has been and what it might be carrying. The same is true if you carry a USB drive with important (maybe life-saving) data; you may be 100 percent sure your flash drive is virus-free, but can you say the same thing about the PCs you plug it into? No, and that's why you should have ClamWin Portable on your USB drive, CF card, or other high-capacity media. ClamWin Portable is the … Read more

A decent registry cleaner can help you keep your computer clean, safe, and running at its best, but with so many available, how do you choose? First off, any program that makes changes to the registry should do no harm. It should have a scheduler and other performance options, and a good Help file. Make it open-source freeware and you have our attention. Little Registry Cleaner provides safe, effective registry cleaning with automatic registry backups. It requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0, which you can download and install from Little Registry Cleaner's setup wizard, if your system lacks it.… Read more

This week's post is a special early edition of my weekly iOS app collection. Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year, and though I can't help you beat the lines or navigate through the crowds, I've rounded up a few apps that might make your holiday shopping a tiny bit easier.

These apps are made for price-checking on the go, so you know you're getting the lowest price for the item in front of you. The best apps in this category are the ones that locate the item online and in nearby stores, but even apps that are only strong at scanning will definitely help to organize your holiday shopping and will hopefully result in fewer Black Friday headaches.

This week's iOS app collection is all about tools for holiday shopping. Get quick access to a huge database of products and prices and some helpful shopping tools.… Read more

With a tap of your finger, Amazon's Price Check app for iPhone lets you cross-check prices against those on Amazon.com. Big time shoppers should definitely consider adding it to their download queues.

Using Price Check is as simple as it gets. Just fire it up, and point your phone's camera at the bar code of a product while you're out shopping. The app will then pull up the matching product (if available) for you to see its price on Amazon.com. If you can't access the bar code, you can also search by typing or … Read more

With a tap of your finger, Amazon's Price Check app for Android lets you cross-check prices against those on Amazon.com. Big-time shoppers should definitely consider adding it to their app drawers.

Using Price Check is as simple as it gets. Just fire it up, and point your phone's camera at the bar code of a product while you're out shopping. The app will then pull up the matching product (if available) for you to see its price on Amazon.com. If you can't access the bar code, you can also search by typing or saying … Read more

Mz Ultimate Cleaner is a light, fast, free tool that scans your hard disks for junk files, browser traces, temporary files, and other files that can accumulate in your system, slowing it down and maybe even compromising your security. Its proprietary algorithm scans quickly, and it cleans quickly, too. It's by Mz Tweaks, a one-man band known to some as Michael Zacharias.

Mz Ultimate Cleaner's simple interface is all business. The compact dialog displayed our system's two hard disks with their total size, free space, and format. The program uses the Mz Intelligent Scanning Method by default, … Read more

eBay speaks out against the latest Internet sales tax proposal, BlackBerry Messenger adds a music service, and Amazon sweetens the Kindle with free book-borrowing for Prime subscribers.

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded: