What a surprise: With gasoline costs dropping from $3.50 a gallon to $2.25 (and as low as $2 in places like Portland, Oregon), fewer people are dying to buy hybrid cars. The Toyota Prius still commands a waiting list, and the Honda Civic Hybrid is also popular. But thing are different at Ford, which enlisted Kermit the Frog for the "it is easy being green" marketing campaign for Ford SUVs, the Ford Escape Hybrid, and the up-market Mercury Mariner Hybrid. Kermit and Ford incentives of $500 to $1,000 are helping, and most Ford and Mercury buyers qualify for the 2006 hybrid-vehicle tax credit, which is available until the maker produces 60,000 hybrids.

Ford's goal is relatively modest, about 20,000 hybrid sales this year. In comparison, Toyota sold 107,897 Priuses, so not all of them will qualify for a government handout. These range from about $500 to $3,000, depending on factors such as how much the hybrid improves mileage compared with a similar car from 2002. The "hybrid penalty" is about $3,000, meaning the same car with a hybrid engine costs buyers about $3,000 extra, and it takes about six years of driving to make back the premium, give or take the cash you get back from Ford and the government.

Seems like every gadget is being miniaturized these days. Enter the Optimus mini: a flexible, functional keyboard with just three keys, each complete with an OLED screen with a 96- by 96-pixel resolution and showing 5 frames per second. 

The keyboard is placed either horizontally or vertically alongside your regular keyboard and plugs into your computer via USB 1.0. Shown at the left, the Optimus Mini is set to retrieve e-mail, show the time, and display Web images.

Every key can be configured to show an image, and as the images change, you can use the Shift or Ctrl keys on your regular keyboard to execute the actions. For now, it only works on the Windows platform, but Optimus is currently developing applications to work on Mac OS and Linux.
 

The Optimus Mini keyboard is still in production, but will be ready to ship on May 15. You can preorder it now for a limited time offer of $100.

Sebastian Rupley of PC Magazine reports that full-size keyboards will arrive later this year.

I can understand why New York City's transit authority uses a Microsoft solution on their ubiquitous Metrocard machines. It gives them one point of contact for support and one point of blame if things go wrong, as opposed to the distributed-responsibility scenario of open source OSes. But come on guys, NT 4.0? I'd think a Windows CE Embedded solution would give you more stability, especially in a relatively simple e-commerce app where uptime is everything.

(Photos taken with Cingular's new LG CU320 cameraphone, by the way.)

In my opinion, if a product in question has trouble fulfilling its destiny as advertised, but still has other features that make it worth considering, it will get a 2-star (AKA 'fair') rating from this reviewer.  However if a product cannot fulfill its promised capability, and simultaneously makes me want to throw it out of a 20 story window during testing, then it will get a one star (AKA 'poor') rating.  For the record, the other opportunity for a one-star rating is if the product severely damages otherwise functional equipment it is connected to. 

For the first example of a one-star rating in my over five years of reviews, click here to go to pcmag.com

Looking to get an inexpensive new PC? SlickDeals.net has put together its usual genius of coupon stacking and rebate redeeming to cut the price of a 3 GHz Intel Pentium 4 630-based Dell Dimension E510 down to $460. The package includes a 19-inch analog LCD monitor, 1 GB of RAM, 80 GB SATA hard drive and a 16X dual-layer DVD burner. It's not a cutting-edge system, but it's not too shabby for the price.

Read the forums to see how people have been able to tweak the deal to their specific needs. But move quickly. These deals tend not to last very long.

The six-disc CD trunk changer is dead, dead, dead, we tell you. Proof comes along with the arrival of $200 replacement car radio/CD players with USB jacks. Plug in a 1GB USB thumb drive (as low a $50) loaded with MP3 or WMA files, and you've got the equivalent of a 15-disc CD changer. Kenwood has USB jack units nearly ready to ship in the U.S. market. So do Audiobahn, JVC, and shortly, Alpine.

Most are single DIN units, meaning they fit in a more or less industry-standard 7-by-2-inch dashboard opening. The cheaper your car, the more likely you've got a single-DIN faceplate. (More expensive cars have custom radios that aren't easily replaced. Sorry, Lexus owners.) The Audiobahn A1200N and the JVC KD-G720 will each cost about $200 street, with CD, MP3, and WMA playback. The Kenwood KDC-MP532 (also $200 street) adds AAC playback to the mix, and the Kenwood DPX-501 ($325 street) does the same in a 4-inch-high, double-DIN opening. Based on what we've seen, none have buttons big enough to be used when the car is moving, but that's par for the course.

These new products arrive in addition to replacement radios that have slots for SD Cards or Memory Sticks (the latter from Sony, in case you couldn't guess). A couple automakers integrate SD slots in new-car radios, and the Mercedes-Benz S550 has a PC Card slot. All play unprotected MP3 and WMA files; support for protected (downloaded) WMA and AAC music is variable. And Fiat's Grande Punto, not available in the U.S., has a glove-box USB jack capable of playing MP3 and WMA files from any USB device, including music players—even the iPod, but only if the iPod plays unprotected MP3s. The Blue&Me option uses Microsoft Windows for Automotive.

La plus belle cite dans la belle province, Quebec City is the closest you'll get to Europe without hopping the pond: an idyll of winding streets, 16th-century walls and a great chateau overlooking it all. So I got curious when I saw the announcements from both Bell Canada and TELUS that they were turning on high-speed EV-DO networking in downtown Quebec City, making QC certainly the most historic town with high-speed wireless. Both networks already have service in other major Canadian cities, including Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

Here's the exciting part, though: Bell Canada's Marie-Camille Blais told me that Sprint EV-DO cards such as the Novatel S620 will now be able to get high-speed service in Canada. This marks the first international EV-DO roaming agreement from the US that I know of. When I called a Sprint rep to confirm, she said, "We're testing in that market ... so if it works, it works." You won't be charged anything additional over your current EV-DO plan to roam to Canada (yet), Sprint said, but you should call 888-226-7212 to make sure your card is provisioned for roaming, and to get the roaming information updated on your card.

I called competitor Verizon Wireless and their roaming partner TELUS, and both said that Verizon doesn't allow EV-DO roaming into Canada yet -- you'll drop to the slower 1X network when you cross the border. Verizon and TELUS need to get on la boule.

Cingular introduced their first two 3G phones today, but the Samsung ZX10 and LG CU320 are a very modest introduction to the world of high-speed cellular networks. Both are nice, midrange phones with megapixel cameras and a new Cingular Video service which delivers clips of the usual news, sports, weather and entertainment content (Cingular's flagship partner is HBO.) But they run at less than half the maximum speed of Cingular's network and don't have much of a focus on e-mail or Web browsing. Cingular's new HSDPA network would shine in those two apps because, unlike with Sprint's and Verizon's networks, you can talk and transmit data at the same time. The phones are both $99 after rebates, though, so maybe I was expecting too much. Check out a full gallery of the Samsung ZX10 and my news story on PCMag.com with more details, and look for reviews of both phones on PCMag.com later this week.

In a slightly related matter, City Cafe is, in my mind, the most pleasant and charming cafe in Charm City (that's Baltimore.) But it's a mysterious black hole for Cingular's 3G network. Note to Cingular: stick a tower on Eddie's so I don't have to go to Harborplace to do my testing!

Lots of things get in your keyboard on a daily basis: food crumbs, skin, hair, dust. . .it's pretty gross if you think about it. It doesn't stop there. Just think about all of the germs that are on your computer mouse right now. One solution has always been to wash your hands before and after using your computer equipment. Another has been to use wipes to clean off your equipment. But do they really do the job?

Enter Unotron: a company that designs and manufactures washable devices. That's right, washable devices. Dubbed SpillSeal, Unotron's patented technology seals and protects your keyboard and mouse from lingering bacteria, dust, and food spills.

Unotron's Wireless and Corded Keyboards are just like any keyboard; the only difference is that you can actually put them in the sink next to your dishes and wash them. Available in black or gray, the Wireless and Corded Keyboards are compatible with the Windows OS and come with 15 hot keys for one-touch Multimeda/Internet and 40-programmable Hot Keys for different actions.

The Washable Optical Computer Mice come in three different models: the M10, M20, and M30, also available in white or black. All three can be easily sterilized with a variety of detergents and anti-bacterial solutions to keep them clean and germ-free.

The SpillSeal technology would most likely come in handy for hospitals and healthcare facilities that deal with germs and disease every day around them. But between our cats and puppy at home, I'm sure there's enough germs as it is to go around.

The Spillseal Washable Corded Keyboard sells for 39.97 and the Wireless Keyboard sells for $49.97 at TigerDirect.com.

I couldn't find many places that sell the washable mice, but this is what I did come up with. The M10 sells for $49.99, M20 for $77.31, and M30 for $79.99.