I haven’t used a microscope since I was in college. I had on old school microbiology teacher that liked to torment students by whipping out an old microscope that actually used a mirror rather than a plug in light source. Thankfully, for identifying unknown microorganisms we got to use modern microscopes.

A company called Extech has unveiled a new digital mini Microsoft that looks more like a digital camera than a microscope that we would see in school today. The device has an optical zoom of 7x to 27x and includes an additional 4x digital zoom for a total of 108x magnification.

If you’re a science geek and like to watch stuff squirm under the microscope for hours on end here’s a neat 1.3 Mega Pixel camera/Digital USB microscope. Just plug it into your USB port and watch magnified objects at up to 200X. Either take 1.3 mega-pixel still shots, or 1.3 mega-pixel AVI movie clips for storage and later viewing.

I don’t know that you’ll win a nobel awards or cure any diseases, but you’ll probably cure your own boredom. It saves pictures up to 1280X1024 in JPG, or in AVI format at 30fps under 600 LUX Brightness. It will cost you $95.99. So start checking out the creepy crawlies that live on your hair and taking skin and blood samples.

A USB microscope is only one of the cool new science gadgets that Celestron is showcasing at this years CES 2008 conference. The company is also going to be showing off this LCD Digital Microscope (LDM) that’s targeted for everyday science enthusiasts and features a built-in, high-resolution 3.5″ LCD screen to view your various microscopic items.

The LDM has multiple magnification levels including 4x, 10x, and 40x, and a 4x digital zoom giving it the ability to view things up to 1600 times their actual size. With this microscope, squinting through an eyepiece to share with others is just not necessary due to that handy color LCD screen.

Celestron is bringing a number of cool new viewing products to CES. One grabbing our eye the most is a new USB microscope which is handheld. It’s called the Handheld Digital Microscope and it prices at around $140.

The Celestron Handheld Digital Microscope connects to a host computer through USB and can be used to view and capture images (snapshots or video) at 20 to 400 times magnification power. It weighs around three ounces and is designed with a digital camera and LED illuminator.

There are quite a few webcams available these days for everything from simple communications to security monitoring, but most of these focus on the macroscopic world. Bodelin Technologies has a USB device that can deliver images to your computer on a little smaller scale.

The device they’ve created is called the ProScope HR and is a digital microscope that connects to your computer via a USB 2.0 connection. The device is compatible with Windows and Mac’s and has software for each. Depending on the attachments the ProScope HR can focus in on items from 50x to 400x magnification.

Bodelin has a gallery of examples taken with the USB microscope such as a fly eye, and earthworm at 400x and our personal favorite, a sweaty finger at 50x where you can actually see the sweat pores.

Along with still images the …