Zoom Telephonics
Bluetooth 56K Fax Modem: $75
www.zoom.com

Most of your customers probably have their computers on a high-speed data network. But what about their notebooks and PDAs? When it comes to getting Internet access on a Bluetooth device, you usually need to have a PC powered up with a shared connection and USB dongle. How about those locations without a free-for-all broadband connection (think hard-to-reach locales, such as remote gas pipelines, and high-traffic areas like busy real-estate offices)?

Zoom Telephonics’s Model 4300 Bluetooth Fax Modem paves the way for access to Internet, email, and fax communications through PDAs and notebooks. Compatible devices simply use their Bluetooth connection to dial out through the Model 4300 Fax Modem. The dial-up connection runs at up to 56 kbps down-stream and 33.6 kbps up. Using compression, that rate may approach 200 kbps down and 120 kbps up. Bluetooth runs at up to 723 kbps, the interface’s full speed. Perhaps most attractive is the Model 4300’s impressive wireless range—up to 328 feet.

The modem does double duty as a fully featured 56K backup in the event your cable or DSL line goes out. A serial port provides connectivity to wired PCs. It also supports telephone answering machine and voice mail functionality if you have the enabling software.

Logitech
Harmony 520: $99
www.logitech.com

A media center machine is worthless without a good remote control. And while there are plenty of solid options out there, Logitech’s Harmony series has really risen to the forefront as a purveyor of simplicity and power. It functions as a unifier, incorporating the features of your home theater devices without complicated sub-menus.

Deciding on the Harmony’s 520 most attractive attribute is tough. There’s the sub-$100 price, for starters. Then you have its gorgeous aesthetic, which conveniently matches most home theater components. Even more compelling is the setup routine, which takes you to a special Web-based database that “teaches” the Harmony codes for all of your devices and establishes how each component is connected.

Ready for action, the Harmony 520 operates by invoking activities. Tell it you want to watch TV and the Harmony simultaneously powers on every device associated with that action (TV, set-top box, and receiver, for example) and sets each to its proper input or output. Push the power button one time and everything switches off. Should you encounter trouble with a device, the help button will guide you through a surprisingly thorough troubleshooting routine. This isn’t the solution you’d want to bundle with a Microsoft Windows XP MCE machine. After all, every device the Harmony 520 controls must already have a receiver. You could, however, replace an existing MCE remote (or ATI Remote Wonder) with this one and facilitate a really solid integration between your customer’s consumer electronic devices and PC. For $99, it’s a perfect upsell, too.

Symantec
Norton Ghost 10: $69
www.symantec.com

It’s time for some honesty. The various versions of Norton Ghost have spent time oscillating between greatness and utter mediocrity. That shouldn’t really come as a surprise, though. After all, Symantec is a market leader in several different software categories, and stiff competition from hungry developers keeps the company on its toes. Whereas we may have held off on recommending the last generation of Norton Ghost, Ghost 10 is a whole new monster with some incredible home office and small business appeal.

Symantec went back to the drawing board after receiving critical feedback on Ghost 9 and re-architected its latest release with a particular focus on ease of use. The interface is wizard-driven, tasks are fully automated, and recovery features are all very straightforward. In fact, the utility’s comprehensiveness covers just about every backup capability you could want—mainly hot imaging, incremental backups, and selective file recovery.

Completely new features expand the software’s usefulness. A best practices agent intelligently monitors the level of protection applied to attached drives and detects the best device for saving backups. Moreover, full integration with Maxtor’s OneTouch enables user-initiated saves on the popular external hard drive. Independent performance and network throttling sliders help define Ghost’s resource consumption. So if a particular small business owner won’t leave computers running overnight, you can set backups to run slowly over the course of a business day without affecting performance.

Although Symantec claims that Ghost is now intended for a more mainstream user, the application maintains every bit of power it used to have. The options are just easier to access now and much more intuitive. Take disaster recovery, for example. The bootable CD sports a fully functional version of Windows, complete with networking tools, support utilities, and a built-in virus scanner. This is, without question, the perfect upsell for anyone buying backup hardware, mainstream or power user.

Zalman
CNPS9500 LED: $72
www.zalmanusa.com

Zalman's brand new CNPS9500 LED has more than just good looks and a bright blue LED going for it, beginning with platform support that spans Socket 478, 754, 939, 940, and the LGA775 processor interfaces. In essence, Zalman offers one colossal cooling solution compatible with every platform you sell. Think of it as a magic bullet for all of your customers’ thermal woes.

On the performance front, Zalman makes its mark by leveraging sheer mass to keep processors cool. The snaking heat pipe design quickly moves heat away from the polished copper base, where it’s dissipated into the massive array of copper fins. A translucent 92mm fan, pre-mounted in the center, blows cool air over the entire surface. It’s a bit noisy at full speed. However, the CNPS9500 really shows off when you tweak the fan speed down to 1,350 RPM, maintaining ample cooling power and a barely audible footprint.

Granted, the cooler isn’t cheap. But at $72, it’s a reasonable upsell to anyone who values advanced acoustics. Build quality is superior and everything you need to interface with all of today’s prevalent processors is included in the package.