Late Additions to Your Back-to-School List

Koss QZPRO headphones are a nice value at $60, but Bose QuiteComfort 2 headphones are the gold standard at $300, able to block low and high frequencies, including phone calls from home.

The Choice PDA

After attending school every day at the same time for more than a decade, the transition to 8:40 a.m. seminars that meet Tuesdays and alternating Wednesdays can be a bit jarring for new underclassmen. But that's where the new Palm Zire72 personal digital assistant comes in.

"New students need to get organized," said Mike Lorion, vice president of business verticals for PalmOne. "With the Zire72, not only do the traditional Palm tools come into play -- the calendar, the 'to do' lists, the alarms -- it features a 1.2 megapixel camera. You could take a picture of a professor's notes on a whiteboard and gather information that way. Or you can take verbal notes. There's a voice-recorder built in."

The Zire72's good for more than simple scheduling and note-taking. In a pinch, it's powerful enough to replace a laptop, equipped with 32 megs of memory, a crisp color screen and Microsoft Word and Excel. With an available keyboard attachment, procrastinators can pound out papers and email them to professors.

And because the new Zire72 runs on the Palm platform, there's a wide array of software out there, enabling it to double as a graphing calculator, Cliff Notes study guide or concept mapper -- an especially good function when its time to write thesis papers.

The PDA, which costs $300, has a playful streak as well. In addition to still pictures, the Zire72 can capture and playback video. It can store and play MP3 sound files, too, making it a decent alternative for those who want their iPods to do more than look trendy. And with a couple of snappy games loaded onboard, the Zire72 can make those grueling early-morning lectures a bit more interesting.