The time mode features the standard stuff - time

But the upside to Apple phoning it in to the expo is that its news didn't swamp products offered by the many vendors that show their wares there, as typically happens when Apple releases something revolutionary like the iPhone or the MacBook Air. Here are a few noteworthy items I found while walking the show floor and talking to developers.

If it lasts 7 to 8 hours, Apple considers it acceptable. Never mind that I can't read the screen without a backlight and would never listen to a single song continuously. Still, I follow his directions and on those settings, the battery endures for 7.5 hours.

While solar chargers on the market today are bulkier than the cellphones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) they charge, Konarka's first retail product, likely out next year, will be a foldable charger HP NC6400 battery about the size and weight of a laminated pocket map, said Daniel McGahn, the company's executive vice president and chief marketing officer.

Konarka's solar cells could just as easily be part of the device, McGahn said. Manufacturers could wrap laptops in the company's thin plastic solar cells, which can be printed in an array of designs and colors. For smaller devices such as cellphones, sails could catch enough sun for an adequate charge.Nanosys and Nanosolar, both of Palo Alto, Calif., are developing solar cells that can be sprayed or painted onto surfaces. So far, neither company has announced any products.

By contrast, some plug-in hybrids on the horizon would require motorists to charge their cars in a wall outlet overnight and promise only 50 miles of gasoline-free commute.

"It's a paradigm shift," said Ian Clifford, chief executive of Toronto-based ZENN Motor Co., which has licensed the EEStor invention. "The Achilles' heel to the electric-car industry has been HP mini 1000 battery energy storage. By all rights, this would make internal combustion-engines unnecessary," he said.

The time mode features the standard stuff - time, day of the week, date, stopwatch and alarm (three actually) - while the altimeter mode boasts an extremely accurate altimeter with a range of 29,000 feet, and a powerful trip memory and evaluation function.

The barometer can be used to help forecast changes in the weather as it keep track of the previous four days worth of barometric readings and displays the information on a small grid in the main display.

I've found the final mode to be my favorite, the digital compass. A small bubble level is fitted in the Vector's display window to ensure accurate compass readings, and the compass can be set for declination. When in compass mode or whenever you press the "take bearing" button, the Vector displays the current bearing in both degrees and in cardinal or half-cardinal points.

At long last, however, I'm finally finding tradeoffs I can live with. The latest crop of ultralight notebooks HP DV1000 battery offers desktop performance in packages weighing in at, in some cases, less than 3 pounds. At the same time, they offer faster processors, faster and brighter displays and larger hard drives than their predecessors.