New Products

• LaCie Hub ($80; lacie.com). Prevent a peripheral pileup with this handy hub. The eye-catching gadget enables you to connect as many as six devices simultaneously - such as external hard drive, keyboard, mouse - via four USB and two FireWire ports. It comes bundled with eight flexible cables.

($499 for 4 gigabytes, $599 for 8 GB; apple.com) With hip-hooray and ballyhoo, Apple CEO Steve Jobs previewed the much-anticipated iPhone at the Macworld convention. Combining a 3.5-inch widescreen iPod, a Wi-Fi-enabled "Internet communications device," and, oh yes, a cellphone, it also includes a 2-megapixel camera.

SHADOW DEMON JVC must have thought the badge of honor you got when you opted for a front projector could use a little polish, so it created the DLA-HD1, said to have the greatest contrast ratio in Projectorland (rated 15,000:1 - without the need for a mechanical iris that reduces the brightness of whites).

YOU'RE SO MONEY A few short years ago, a 50-inch plasma TV was a toy of the super-rich, reserved for those who could drop as much coin on a set as their kids' college tuition. At $2,500, Hitachi's P50H401 HD plasma heralds a new era, where bigscreens are within reach of ... well, at least someone you know.