A New Class Of Supplies
Liquid pencils, Wordlocks, and USB fans
Having spent all summer instant messaging friends and zoning out on their iPods, savvy students want a techie twist with their back-to-school supplies. But can you really improve on time-tested pencils and paper? Some new products try, though not all of them get high marks.
The big trend this year is getting rid of mistakes. Pencils and erasers normally solve that problem, but you do have to deal with trips to the sharpener or loading lead into mechanical pencils. Enter the UltraSharp liquid graphite pencil ($3 for a three-pack), an implement that never needs to be sharpened. Although it claims to be as erasable as a regular pencil, our testers found that its erased marks could still be seen, a genuine concern for notes to friends that may have been too hastily written. The liquid pencils, which can be used like a No. 2 for standardized tests, also wrote less evenly than regular pencils, leaving blotches and smears.
The new Zwipes ($4.29 for a one-subject notebook) are a brand of pens and writing boards--used for everything from notebook covers to folders--that allow students to write what they want with a special pen and have those marks be permanent until erased with the pen's ink unlocker and eraser brush. Having to go over everything twice to erase can become tedious, but Zwipes could nevertheless be an indecisive doodler's dream.
If you're looking to wipe out those germs that spread around the classroom, you might want to invest in the new FlexGrip Elite ($4 for a five-pack). It looks like a normal pen but is coated with an antibacterial agent that claims to kill all germs on its surface within 24 hours, although an hour should suffice.
Book covers no longer have to be a brown paper bag affair. The Nike BookSleeve ($5) is a soft, polyester-blend cover that slips on like a pillowcase and comes off just as easily, ready to be used next semester on another book.
There's also a new tool to help with understanding what's in those books. The Zelco Bookmark Dictionary ($40) has a paper-thin keypad with a tiny screen. Type in a word, and the 50,000-entry dictionary tells you what it means. It even has a feature that suggests possible words as you type them in letter by letter, to help the spelling challenged.
The combination lock gets a new look, too. The Wordlock ($6) operates on the concept that passwords can be remembered more easily than three random numbers. Its five columns, each with 10 letters, can combine to make over 1,000 words of at least four letters, such as match and ciao, which the owner can set and change. But matching up the letters--which have to be directly aligned for the lock to open--can be difficult, especially for bigger kids with bigger fingers.
Melitta's Ready, Set, Joe one-cup coffee maker ($9-$12) is for the college student who has no need, or room, for a bigger coffee machine. Just throw the small plastic filter on the ceramic mug, stick a paper filter in, toss in some coffee, add hot water, and voila , fresh brewed coffee. Even our coffee-snob tester admitted it tasted just like the stuff from an automatic coffee maker.
Two more back-to-school products aim to make a dorm room, or bedroom, cooler. The USB Mini Computer Fan ($7.50) is a small fan that plugs into a computer's USB port for power. Meanwhile, the PowerSquid ($15) aims to make your dorm room look cool by replacing the drab power strip with a blue-tentacled surge protector. The five bendable arms help with the tangle of wires behind the desk. Now, if you could only find an extra hand to help with all of that homework.
A. PowerSquid, $15
B. Wordlock, $6
C. BookSleeve, $5
D. Ready, Set, Joe, $9-$12
E. Zwipes notebook, $4.29
F. USB Mini fan, $7.50
G. Bookmark Dictionary, $40
H. FlexGrip Elite pen, $4 for a five-pack
I. Liquid pencils, $3 for a three-pack
This story appears in the September 5, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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