Actually, I can think of a whole slew of good uses for Zink’s hybrid digital camera/portable printer. Imagine meeting your insurance adjuster at the accident scene, and you get an instant copy of the picture he’s going to use in deciding how much money you should get. Sounds convenient to me. It’s a 7 megapixel unit with a 2-inch display and SD memory card, and so as a camera it’s just so-so. No pricing, but availability is expected by the end of the year.

Let me say that, even though I’m a sucker for ultraportable notebooks, and I think the Sony Vaio TZ18GN is a nifty machine with some nice specs:

• 11.1-inch LCD
• 32GB SSD
• Core 2 Duo
• 1GB RAM
• 2.5lbs

I still feel that $4,300 is a lot to pay for a notebook that’s not some sort of crazy beefed-up 21-inch monster desktop gaming replacement rig. And the striking thing to me is that the SSD option adds "only" $700, which means that the standard HDD version of this puppy is $3,600 if my math doesn’t fail me. And that’s a lot, as well. And, yes, of course, Sony’s not really asking for $billions.

Two new offerings from Crate for the guitar lovers:

The 5 watt USB-equipped Profiler 5 weighs in at only 6 pounds and can be powered from an AC power supply or from six AA batteries, making it portable. It also sports a mini-jack for your iPod to play along with your songs and all for a street price of $159.99.

The new V-Series tube amps feature a universal power supply making it possible for you to play just about anywhere on this planet without those transformers to lug around. Prices start at $299.99 for the 5-watt V5 combo priced and climbs to $789.99 for the 33-watt, dual-channel V33-212.

Now these are sweet…. Buffalo has introduced a "shock-resistant" 300GB, external USB drive in a skinny little black or white housing.

Available next month in Japan for ¥38,000, or around $315.

The Buffalo SHD-UH 56GB SSD portable unit is svelte, quiet, power-efficient, and, well, SSD. There’s just something magical about removing all those moving parts required just to store stuff in a hard drive. No release date for the 56GB monster (priced at about $783, youch!), but 8GB, 16GB, and 24GB should be released in late July. No pricing on those, though. So, if SSD’s are your thing as much as they are mine, start saving those pennies, kids!