July 18, 2005

powerMate Review

Buy from Amazon.com

I have always had mixed feelings about gadgets. I like the cool factor inherent in some of them, but I tend to find that the cooler they look, the less useful they are. So I rein in my gadget-buying impulse, and try to purchase only those that are both cool and useful.

Sometimes it’s hard to find whether a given gadget is useful. If a friend or colleague owns one, you can try it out; if you see it on display in a store, you can give it a whirl. But some gadgets are hard to find - especially here in my Alpine village, where mail-order is my only option.

When Griffin Technology’s powerMate came out in 2001, there were lots of articles saying how cool it was, including a mention in the traditional TidBITS Macworld Expo Superlatives article. The coolness is clearly visible - an attractive brushed aluminum knob/button, taken from the most minimal of stereo designs, sits atop a thick layer of translucent plastic with a soft blue light pulsing beneath it.

However, cool is one thing, but not one of the articles I read, nor the manufacturer’s Web site, did a good job of describing how I might apply the powerMate to my everyday tasks. This brief article is intended to do just that - you’ve gotten a gist of how cool it looks, so let me tell you how I have been using this gadget for the last week, and why it will most likely remain by my keyboard for a very long time.

Thanks to Kirk for allowing us to reprint.

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