Ringing in the Spring.

This article presents the author's evaluation of some telecommunication and computing products. Although Nextel pioneered Push-To-Talk (PTT) on cell phones, they no longer have a monopoly on it, as Verizon and Sprint have added PTT service on their handsets as well. Even though you can only talk within your own carrier's network today, interoperability between carriers should be only a matter of time. Normally thought of as a business feature, you would be surprised how handy it can be to keep track of family members or friends out together, or as usually winds up happening, nearly together. Sprint has a whole line of Sanyo phones which are basically the same unit with different feature levels. Though the most expensive of them is the SPC-5500 (VM4500), with its built in 310k still/video camera, my favorite is the 7300, designed for an active lifestyle. The Sony Vaio Z1 packs a lot into a lightweight laptop. Thin and sleek, with a signature curve along the sides that looks like it is just there for coolness but also protect the ports and strengthens the magnesium case. The full featured Z1 features a 1.7 gigahertz Centrino processor, 512 megabytes of memory (minimum), and a 60-gigabyte hard drive.