Gear on The Go.(Brief Article)

Nowadays, well-equipped business travelers have so many metallic objects hanging from their bodies that a flight can take less time than passing through airport security. Too many of these gadgets sound great in theory but fall short in practice. Take the recently tested voice translator that kept saying "post office" every time it was asked to convert "Where is the bathroom?" into German. For all the duds, though, there are a few gadgets that can truly make travel easier for the techno-savvy executive, from a briefcase that calls you from afar to a charger that feeds on sunshine to a phone that thinks it's a camera. Here are seven of the most promising devices:

Sony Ericsson P800

Think of The P800 as the Swiss Army knife of the wireless set. Not only does this soon-to-be-available tri-band "multimedia smartphone" (www.sonyericsson.com)let the ober-connected business traveler keep in touch from just about anywhere in the world, but its built-in digital camera can even snap some photos along the way--and then transmit them home. The large color touch screen (up to 208 x 320 pixels, 40 x 61mm) displays everything from e-mail and Web sites to calendars, address books and document files. Included is a 16MB Memory Stick Duo that more than doubles the phone's already large storage capacity and clears room for fun things like video clips, MP3s and games. It's even Bluetooth- capable. One question: where's the corkscrew?

Handspring Treo 90

For those who love their PDA but hate scribbling and rescribbling on a tiny screen, the Treo 90 (handspring.com) may be just their "type." With the Graffiti writing area replaced by a built-in QWERTY thumb board that offers a more familiar and quicker way to input data, this curvy and compact organizer looks like the secret love child of a Palm and a BlackBerry. It also comes with a full-color display, 16MB of storage and Secure Digital (SD) expansion slots. This latest offering from Handspring lacks the wireless-communication capabilities of its more expensive sibling the Treo 270. But it's the smallest Palm OS organizer on the market to have a 70mm color touch screen, and at 115 grams it's also one of the lightest. For design alone, the device gets a thumbs up.

ISUN Portable Solar Charger

Tired of fumbling around with a half-dozen adapters each time you need to charge your cell phone or PDA in a new hotel room? Now you can make do with a little sunshine and the iSun Portable Solar Charger. About the size of a video-cassette, the iSun (isunpower.com) draws enough power from the sun to juice phones and most other small electronic devices that require up to two watts, and has adapters to fit the most common models. If you need to charge something larger, like a laptop, two or more iSuns can be daisy-chained together to produce more power. Of course, the brighter the sunlight, the faster your electronics will charge--so visitors to the British Isles may be out of luck.