Many mobile pros and road warriors have used USB broadband modems before. Typically they are large, ugly devices that hang from your sleek notebook’s USB port like a giant tumor. A tumor you can’t treat so long as you want to have Internet access.

Sprint and Sierra Wireless announced the nation’s smallest USB broadband modem called the Compass 597 USB modem. How small is the modem you cry; how about 1.2” x 2.4” x 0.4” or about 70% smaller than the AirCard 595U. Those dimensions make the modem roughly the size of a typical flash drive.

Toshiba thinks it is time to drive the price of 17-inch desktop replacement laptops down as it today unveiled a new model starting at around $750. The series is called the Satellite L350.

The Toshiba Satellite L350 sports a 17.1-inch WXGA+ “TruBrite” LCD display and AMD Turion 64 X2 dual-core processors. Possible features, depending upon configuration, might also include ATI Radeon X1250 graphics memory and a DVD SuperMulti drive with Labelflash. Labelflash lets you burn images and labels directly to a special DVD-R disc.

Do you hate it when you have to copy tons of pics from your camera onto the PC, then burn them using software so that they can later be viewed on your DVD player? Yes, there are plenty of cameras that offer TV out, but maybe you love your current camera and don’t want another.

If that’s the case, check out this device that does it all, without a PC. It’s a compact recorder for converting your JPEGs to MPEGs and burning them onto CDs. It can also burn images without converting, making back-ups easier. Comes equipped with RCA and S-Video inputs and also acts as a player.

Swann Communications has been putting out security peripherals for about ten years now and on Thursday announced the release of their latest surveillance convenience tool with the USB 2.0 DVR Guardian. This device can connect to a standard notebook computer via USB and allow it to perform as a quad-monitor surveillance system.

The Guardian can not only monitor and display the video from 1-4 cameras, but can also be set to record from the inputs direct to the local hard drive. DVR-like capabilities allow you to set it to record at specific times of the day or for a set duration upon sensing any motion in its view. The software will then let you control and monitor remotely. Combine this with its ability to send out an email when motion is detected and you can catch would-be thieves in the act.

Sony Europe is setting its sights on a new in-car CD tuner which offers multiple ways to listen to digital music. It is known as the Sony MEX-BT3600U – no pricing has been announced as of yet.

The Sony MEX-BT3600U in-car CD tuner can let you listen to digital music through it via USB or wireless. For USB one can connect a USB flash drive to its front panel USB port and browse music files via a LCD interface. The wireless option comes via Bluetooth and support for the A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile) standard.

Callpod, makers of that slick looking ChargePod (that really works as good as it looks), has launched the Drone as another piece of convenience for connecting your gadgets. The Callpod Drone is a Bluetooth adapter about the size of a typical thumb drive and plugs into the USB port of a computer.

Once connected the Drone will automatically find and pair with your Bluetooth headset or headphones and give you a 100 meter range of wireless streaming for VoIP phone calls or music. Now granted, once you pair Bluetooth devices manually the first time you are usually set from then on, but we can’t complain for making things just that much easier. The adapter also Plug & Play, works with Macs and PCs and allows you to automatically switch from music to calls when the come in.

Western Digital (WD) today kicked out some new portable USB hard drives which look good and are easy to carry. They are known as the My Passport Elite Portable USB Drives and are available in two sizes: 250 GB (around $170) and 320 GB (around $200).

WD’s My Passport Elite drives connect to a USB port to transfer data back and forth and are also USB-bus powered, so they don’t need their own power supply. They sport a soft-touch finish, weigh less than five ounces and come in multiple colors.

The Personal Pocket Safe USB flash drive from CHDT Corp. thinks pretty highly of itself as being the first “encrypted, epoxy coated, pin-protected smart drive.” That’s because according to them, the device has military-grade encryption, a password vault and a track-covering feature, so no one will be able to locate it’s presence when it’s removed from the system.

Golly. Sounds impressive, looks neat and shiny too. It also has a rubber key PIN-pad so you can enter a 4 to 10 digit code in order to access the drive. It looks like we won’t be seeing it in the US for awhile unfortunately, so until then your data will no doubt be living in fear.

Advantech isn’t exactly known for consumer related computers. While we don’t think this new Tablet PC fits the bill either, the recently released Mars-3100S seems to still be pretty cool none the less.

The Advantech Mars-3100S sports a 10.4-inch touchscreen display and is ready to go with Windows XP. It is targeted towards more rugged uses in environments like field and emergency services. It also offers optional built-in WLAN and Bluetooth for wireless connectivity.

ASUS launched its latest ultraportable notebook today and it’s a looker. The ASUS U2E is an 11-inch notebook weighing only 2.7 pounds and clad in leather. According to ASUS the notebook is hand crafted and designed to appeal to the user’s sense of style.

The U2E claims to be the lightest notebook available with a built-in DVD-RW drive and the system runs on Windows Vista. Since Vista is resource intensive ASUS ships the U2E with 3GB of high-speed DDR2 memory.

Aleratec, a developer of devices for mass duplication of data onto different media formats, announced today a new USB flash drive duplicator which can work without a computer. It is called the Aleratec 1:11 USB Copy Tower SA and pricing is set at around $1,575.

The Aleratec 1:11 USB Copy Tower SA lets you copy, compare, or erase up to 11 flash drives simultaneously. Controls are handled via a simplistic front panel interface with backlit LCD display. This display “indicates the function selected and also monitors progress and status of each operation and displays the results.”

When two devices collide into one new hybrid device, the results can often be “What the hell were they thinking?”. This hybrid from Asus is one such cross-breeding experiment. It’s a flash drive from Asus that is also a wireless mouse. While it’s not the worst I’ve ever seen, I don’t see myself using this anytime soon.

Being a flash drive, it must be as bulky as it looks, so you wouldn’t want this in your pocket. As far as the mouse goes, who can use something that small? This isn’t for me, but if it pleases your tiny hands, you’ll have to wait for pricing and availability info, as we simply don’t know yet.

Zana is hopping on the “tech with wood on the outside” bandwagon and so they will be selling wood-engraved USB flash drives that feature silver as well as “precious stones” for about $59. That will get you about 1GB of storage.

If you want a name or some other personal message engraved on it, you’ll probably have to pay more. I guess this is for the stylish geek who wants to make an impression, but frankly I’m not all that impressed. I would think they would get dented and dinged pretty easily. Then there’s termites too.

The minute you see it, you just have to love the USBee concept flash drive. Traditional USB flash drives stick out from the back, and they’re easy to knock out accidentally. The USBee solves this, because just like a bee, it is capable of bending in any direction. This helps prevent your USB port from being permanently defunct should a standard USB flash drive be broken off at its connection point.

It’s not only ergonomic, it also has a vents for cooling and a detachable protective cap that sits on the back of the device when not in use. It’s the bee’s knees baby! All zing and no sting!

If organization is your thing, you’ll love the SpaceStation from Ultra. Many of us have several various sized USB flash drives sitting around everywhere. Chances are, they aren’t labeled so it’s a mess. The SpaceStation will definitely solve this problem with 6 individual USB flash drives in a credit card sized package. It also includes a set of labels, thereby making your organization complete.

You can get the flash drives in either 1GB or 2GB capacities giving you a total of 6GB or 12GB. Some included labels are for music, videos, games and work. This will help you know where everything is at, which will save you time. Plus you get a pretty credit card sized picture of Earth. What more do you want?