Today only, Amazon.com's Gold Box Deals is offering AT&T cell phones for one cent ($0.01) with the purchase of a two-year service plan. Some phones—including the BlackBerry 8820, Treo 680, and Treo 750—will actually earn you cash back after rebates.

Sorry, kids, the iPhone is, of course, not included.

If you're a tech lover like me--and since you're reading a gadget guide by geeks, for geeks, you probably are--then it's a safe bet that you've been carrying around a hoopty too. I've carried the same USB thumbdrive on my keychain for about two years now. The cap doesn't fit, the plastic is worn down, and the design? It's basically a stick. But still, it's functional, and 2GB seemed large (well large enough, anyway), so I didn't give two thoughts about upgrading it.

Until I saw the new hotness from Transcend, anyway.

The Transcend JetFlash V90c packs 4GB of flash goodness into a tiny metal body barely bigger than the first joint of your thumb. The memory modules themselves are hidden within the body of the drive, and fold out easily enough. But it's the distinctive swirly pattern that really caught my eye--and that of the judges behind the Red Dot Design Awards, who just awarded Transcend for making such a neat device.

Still not sold? Transcend sells these things online for just $27 bucks. Isn't it time you upgraded too?

Attention camping gearheads who ask for REI gift certificates at holiday time: Your dream device is here! The Life + Gear LifeLight is a multitasking lantern that works on crank power (or batteries) and fits easily in a rucksack. The LifeLight combines a 15-LED lantern with an AM/FM radio, emergency siren, night light, and even an external speaker to play music from an MP3 player. There's even a compass on top. The LifeLight is also lightweight.

As far as the crank power goes, the company says that one minute of cranking at 120 rpms will get you 45 minutes of light from 3 LEDs, 10 minutes of radio, and 20 minutes of siren, if you can stand it that long. The LifeLight is available from the Life + Gear Web site or at Wal-Mart for $69.95.

Cheapsters looking for a handsfree solution need look no further than the Soyo FreeStyler 500 Bluetooth Headset, available for $10.99 from Buy.com. But, if you check out using Google Checkout (first time users only), you get $10 off. How's that for a deal?

Now, we haven't reviewed this particular headset, so we can't vouch for its quality. But it's 99 cents, right? Still, it's lightweight with a removable and adjustable earclip and has a claimed 4-6 hours of talk time.

Now through March 22, Lenovo.com is cutting 20 percent off the price of X-series ThinkPad notebooks and tablet PCs. Use coupon code USPMARCHSAVINGS at checkout.

To help you shop, check out the most recent ThinkPad reviews from PC Magazine:

• The ThinkPad X300 ultraportable challenges Apple's MacBook Air to manila-envelope-fitting supremacy, packs an optical drive, and scarcely weights 3 pounds.
• The Editors' Choice X61 Tablet is sturdy, convertible, and speedy.

I've been waiting for months for my favorite digital camera, PC Mag Editors' Choice Canon PowerShot SD1000, to go down in price. I've actually been a bit obsessed, going on price-comparison sites almost every night to see how much it was being sold for. I wanted to wait until after the holidays to buy it, since I figured that eventually it would be offered at a lower price. Sure enough, I struck gold: The silver model is being sold on BestBuy.com for just $149! That's a steal, considering I've seen it for as much as $249. You can choose to pick it up at the store or receive free shipping.

I ordered the digital camera last night and will pick it up at Best Buy just as soon as I leave work today. But hurry, because who knows how long the sale will last? See, sometimes it does pay to wait!

Today only, Walmart.com is selling the Garmin nüvi 200 GPS system for just $178, regularly $320. The nüvi 200 features a 3.5-inch color TFT touchscreen, turn-by-turn directions with voice guidance, preloaded maps for the U.S. and Puerto Rico, world clock, currency/measurement converters, SD memory card slot, 2D and 3D mapping, and a battery life of up to 5 hours. Get it now while it's in stock!

If the number of people on your holiday shopping who are utterly impossible to buy for has increased to epic proportions, gift cards may be your only hope. Now, thanks to the American Express Incentive Services, you can give your self a little somethin' while you're at it. Today AMEX announced its Gadget Lovers' Card, a $25 promotional card that can be redeemed at participating retailers including f.y.e., Sam Goody, and The Sharper Image.

All you have to do to earn your Gadget Lover's Card is purchase five AMEX Gift Cards in one order on or before December 31, and fill out and mail a rebate form by January 21, 2008. Each Gadget Lover's Card is good for three months after the date of issue.

Imagine the joy you feel when you pick up a shiny new gadget from the store. You return home, take it inside, and then spend twenty minutes trying to remove it from the #^@%$!! blister-pack plastic. If you're lucky, you might not slice your hand open. Sure, they prevent theft, but is that worth a severed thumb?

For about $10 apiece, save yourself (and your loved ones) a few curse words on Christmas morning, and buy either the OpenX or the new Open It! tool to crack that plastic.

I recently had a chance to test out the StarTech InfoSafe External Slim USB 2.0 DVD+/- RW Dual-Layer Drive ($149.99). As its name implies, this device is fairly slim and portable. It weighs just over 12 ounces and measures 0.91 x 5.3 x 5.31 inches. The InfoSafe drive also has some handy features, such as dual USB ports (for power if you don't have an outlet handy) and support for DVD+/- as well as CDs. The drive is capable of up to 8X speeds.

The included software, Nero 7 Essentials, is a well-intentioned addition, but it's a bit bloated and unintuitive. In addition to the DVD-burning app, it also installs apps for audio, photos, data, video player, home networking utility, and a multimedia-file organizer called Scout. You could consider this a value compared with the simple drivers that most burn drives come with, but the whole suite is a 433MB install, so if you already have your favorite media apps, you may want to skip it.

I tested the InfoSafe drive by burning a 1-hour episode of the HBO show "Deadwood" in AVI format. To covert and burn the file using the Nero software took more than the running time of the episode. Needless to say, this drive is no speed demon. But if you want a portable dual-layer DVD drive, you could do a lot worse than the InfoSafe.

Happy Cyber Monday, online's answer to Black Friday. The web is just crawling with sales today--check out our Cyber Monday roundup on PCMag.com for proof. Telenav has jumped on the bandwagon with a deal of $99 for an entire year of GPS Navigator service.

Telenav GPS Navigator (with Telenav Traffic) offers turn-by-turn directions, location-based services and re-routing around traffic jams. Normally it goes for up to $10/month, so you're getting about 2 months free.

From our review: "I tested TeleNav on a number of routes, both driven and simulated, to see how well it worked. I'll admit that I really liked the traffic function. To be able to preview bottlenecks along your route is a nice feature, but to see just how slow the traffic is and how much of a delay you're likely to experience is priceless. For my test routes around New Jersey and into Manhattan, the traffic-optimized routes worked well. Route recalculation times after a missed turn were similar to those of a dedicated GPS device." Read our full review of the Telenav GPS Navigator (with Telenav Traffic). Get the $99 Telenav deal here.

Those of you who remember the secret $99 HD DVD sale at Wal-Mart may be interested in the "sequel": a Sony PlayStation 3 game console with ten Blu-ray movies, for $499.

The model being sold is the 80-Gbyte version, which costs about $499 or a little more just by itself. Tacking on ten additional Blu-ray movies, which can cost $20 or so apiece, is a heck of a deal.

One little tidbit that Steve Jobs didn't mention on stage today: I just got Mark Siegel from AT&T to confirm that 4GB iPhones are now $299, while supplies last.

Yes, Apple is discontinuing the 4GB model, but until they run out, you can snap one up at your local Apple or AT&T store for a steep, steep discount. If the device price was stopping you from getting your very own iPhone, now's the time to grab one.

So you've got a problem: You're an amateur graphic designer or digital artist who spends hours a day creating content with Adobe's snazzy new CS3. You're getting to the point where the trusty mouse just isn't doing what you need it to. You'd like to introduce a little more finesse to your art, maybe some hand-drawn shapes and shading. But let's face it, after handing $400 to $1,800 to Adobe, you just don't have an extra $230 tot $750 to fork over for the Wacom tablet that would surely solve your problems and allow you to take your creations to the next level. Well fear not, starving artist. Genius has you covered.

The Genius PenSketch 9x12 packs all the pen-and-mouse graphics input punch you're likely to need, unless you're a professional. And at $149 (or even less, if you shop around), this graphics tablet is just a third the price of the comparable Wacom Intuis3 9x12. Sound too good to be true? It's all true, but don't expect to get the same build quality as Wacom's offering, though the feature set is surprisingly similar.

"Supersize me" applies to scanners, too. Mustek's new ScanExpress A3 USB handles 11-by-17 tabloid pages yet sells for a dirt-cheap $200 street. Just make sure you shop for the 2007 version with a USB 2.0 interface. PC Magazine tested the predecessor in 2002 with the same product name and found that one weak on dynamic range. This one has better if not perfect quality, shorter scan times, and still no front panel buttons (keeps the cost down). Once you've got one, you'll be surprised how many uses you'll find, from plagiarizing two pages of magazine text at once to scanning four to eight snapshots at a time (use your software's auto trim feature to cut them apart). Other tabloid scanners run $1,000 and up.

Post by Bill Howard