Is your late night keyboard clattering keeping your partner awake? Is your incessant mouse-clicking sending your friends mad? Or have you just got a bit of a problem with clattering, clicking things?
Then be thankful for Japanese manufacturers Thanko, who have produced a matching silent keyboard and mouse combo for the noise-bothered.
Silent Mouse, Scrolly Mouse
The silent mouse is a standard looking affair with two mouse buttons and a scroll wheel, but the makers claim that both the wheel and the mouse buttons have been silenced to one-fifth that of a normal mouse.
The illustration on their site seems to suggest that they’ve achieved this hush factor by simply slamming in a slab of silicone stuff into the mouse, but we’re sure there must be a bit more hi-tech jiggerypokery involved than that (surely?!!).
Sporting an 800 dpi optical sensor and measuring up at 60x105x35mm with a weight of 90 grams, the USB Silent Mouse is compatible with both Microsoft Windows 2000/XP and Mac OS X, and is available from dynamism.com for $35 (~£19, ~€28).
The keyboard that’s as quiet as a, err, mouse
Partnering the shhhhhhhh-tastic mouse is Thanko’s new Silent Keyboard, a silver and black USB affair.
Once again, Thanko have broken out the silicon to dampen the rattle of keys down to a hush-hush 30.2db, which should let you bash out your magnum opus late at night while your partner/cat/pet donkey snoozes on undisturbed.
It’s a pretty basic looking affair with none of the groovy extras that Logitech like to bolt on, so gadget freaks are unlikely to be impressed.
Release date is set for the end of the month, priced at around 4,000 Yen (~£19, ~€28)
Designed exclusively for idiots with more money than sense, the official Formula 1 carbon and leather mouse mat can now be bought online for just £260 ($489, €380) 
The blurb on the Formula 1 webpage insists that the carbon mouse mat was designed “using state of the art automotive 3D modelling software.” 
(There is a rather better looking all-carbon version available for ‘just’ £250, but this won’t work with an optical mouse). 
Look, we know there’s something a bit sad about wanting a PC that glows brightly with useless dials, flashing lights and obscure read outs, but we just couldn’t hide our juvenile excitement when we saw this new gizmo from Japanese manufacturer Scythe. 
The panel is dominated by a large, circular colour LCD display giving readouts for computer temperature (centigrade/Fahrenheit, with up to four temperature sensors supported), fan speed, warning temperature and current time. 
Pricing and availability to be announced. We’ll take two please! 
PoweredUSB
“Would you like a single piece of sheet music that contains all your favourite pieces, and never needs to be turned over?” 
The universal piece of music wasn’t even the first prize winner in this competition. It was a contest sponsored by one of the world’s leading e-paper technology designers, Plastic Logic, which has demonstrated a flexible sheet of A5 “paper” that has the contrast and readability of real paper, the flexibility of soft cardboard, and the power consumption of a watch. And the prize went to something that is, in the end, “just a book.”
When you invent a new technology, you always start off by producing something which you know has a market already, and which you think you can do better. 
If you’re a regular train traveller across the UK, or you’re planning a holiday involving lots of different journeys, keeping track of all the various train times can be a bit of a pain. 
Then it’s a case of bashing the ‘create’ buttom and waiting for a few minutes as the Teutonic technlogoy does it thing, before being presented with links to your timetable (you can elect to download the timetable directly from the site or have the files emailed to you). 
This small download provides a simple interface serving up enough timetable-related data to give train buffs a moist spot or two. 
Details are still a bit sketchy on these shiny new fellas, but Sharp’s new range of flash based MP3 players sure look mighty purdy to our jaded eyes. 
As is de rigueur these days with (non Apple) MP3 players, there’s an FM tuner onboard with direct audio encoding – great for recording radio shows or capturing your mobile mumblings via the built in microphone 
The measurements of the MP-B200 and MP-B300 are 49 x 87.6 x 8.9mm – pretty damn small, but positively bun-scoffing compared to 6.8mm thickness of the Apple iPod. 
The geek bit 
Tech specs 
Yamaha’s YSP-1 is a marvel of technology, it’s about 42 inches long by 4 inches high and about 4 inches deep but can produce 5.1 audio that really does sounds like a conventional set-up with speakers in-front and behind you. 
A box is a box without careful set-up
If you’ve got a big stack of top notch vinyl gathering dust at home, you may want to consider using this natty USB Turntable to record the platters that matter straight on to your desktop or laptop PC. 
The turntable can also be hooked up to any home stereo with CD or auxiliary inputs so you can rock out to your old punk rock 45s after a night in the pub. 
Using your existing turntable
Things are heating up in the entry-level/enthusiast end of the photography market, with Pentax announcing two new new dSLR cameras offering 6.1 effective megapixels. 
It’s Pentax’s first DSLR to feature a CCD-shift Shake Reduction system – and works by oscillating the CCD image sensor vertically and horizontally at high speed using magnetic force, while adjusting the speed of oscillation in proportion to the amount of camera shake detected by a built-in sensor (err, got that?). 
The Pentax K100D (with smc 18-55mm lens) will be shunting off the shelves for around $700, while the K110D will ship with the same lens for a competitive $600.