If you were to buy a Gateway computer today, would you also purchase an extended warranty?

This is a trick question. Take your time. Think about it very carefully. Think about all the news you may have heard about Gateway over the last three months, Think about it in terms of everything that is going on in the economic world. Think about whether or not you’d be able to actually find the last 5 remaining Gateway employees.

Yup, Google has filed for a $2.7 billion IPO. Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston were named as the underwriters for the deal. People are expected to gobble up the stock with both hands. Folks, it’s a search engine…

Now that we know that green tea is good for almost anything that ails us, how about things that ail hard drives? Yeah, you got it… John Lombardi, at Ventana Research based in Tucson, Arizona in the US, somehow figured out that the tannin in tea, mixed with a few other herbal ingredients, can be used to polish the read/write heads of hard drives. Apparently it works better than the compounds now used and it’s environmentally friendly. Next week we’ll discover a common household use for bananas and your sound cards…

Looks like “smartphones” and other two-way communication devices are taking a bite out of the old PDA market. According to The Register, “PDA shipments may be rising in Europe, but around the world as a whole they continued to decline during the first three months of the year, market watcher IDC reports.

“A dip between Q1 2004 and Q4 2003 is only to be expected given consumer spending patterns in the holiday season, but as IDC’s fuller European figures show, consumers are proving more interested in smart phones than PDAs. Buyers of high-end devices in particular are opting for handhelds with voice communications built in, the researcher said.”

The BBC has an outstanding story on a new technology that will radically change the way we look at the world around us. “US firm Microvision has developed a system that projects lasers onto the retina, allowing users to view images on top of their normal field of vision. It could allow surgeons to get a bird’s eye view of the innards of a patient, offer military units in the field a view of the entire battlefield and provide mechanics with a simulation of the inside of a car’s engine.”

“The first generation product, called the Nomad Expert Technician System, consists of a wireless computer and a hi-tech monocle, costing around $4,000.”

Who knew that the monocle would be making such a fantastic comeback?

Those wacky French. A company in France has developed a combination barometer, thermometer, hygrometer, and data logger shapped like a frog. (Wasn’t the term “frog” a slur against the French?)

Attach the device to your serial port (what no USB??) and you can start tracking weather trends on your PC. The software actually looks pretty interesting, but let’s just say we’re not especially motivated to take readings from a rubber frog every day.

This must be bodily functions week, but we’re just rolling with the trends and keeping you up on everything just the same. Looks like Yamaha has developed a gadget that can detect and measure a person’s level of stress from their saliva.

Maybe it’s just us, but have they considered asking the person how stressed they feel? The whole testing process looks pretty stressful. Bring back the mood ring.

With a 250 GB hard drive for 30 hours of record time, and a $999 price tag, this TiVo isn’t for the gentle newcomer. But for those itching to go high definition, it is the one you’ve been waiting for. We’ve heard that there’s a ton of talk on the TiVo boards about setup problems and getting HD to work. Best Buy apparently has a huge waiting list.