Modern Marvels on the History Channel is one of my favorite TV shows. I seldom sit down to watch it deliberately, but sometimes it's nice to affirm that there's something on the tube these days besides American Idol.

Tonight's episode, which focused on cans and canning, introduced me to a company called Edlund, and a great mechanical beast known as the 825A Can Opening System. This is the most awesome can opener I've ever heard of. It opens, dumps, cleans, and crushes 30 cans per minute

Now I know why the old southern lunch ladies at my high school always looked so chipper. They never had to break a sweat, because all their cans were opened for them. In fact, this thing reminds me of a scene in the movie Super Size Me, that features a cafeteria worker brandishing a box cutter. She proclaims it to be their most common tool of the trade.

Soylent Green, anyone?

2006 held a couple of great opportunities for new hardware. It wasn't time to upgrade when the first MacBook was released, nor when the 2nd generation MacBook arrived, all decked out with a Core 2 Duo processor. Other options? How about a PC laptop? Sure, just as long as it's free.

When I found that the Toshiba booth at this year's Consumer Electronics show was giving away chances to win one of their laptops, I thought mine was in the bag. So I took my seat in the audience to play their version of the game show Deal or No Deal. I was the first contestant called on stage that round. I made small talk with the host, eyed the wall of cases behind me, and decided that Case #6 must contain the laptop.

Had I chosen wisely? They tried to bribe me with a padded laptop-toting backpack, but I don't need one of those for my aging PowerBook. My good ol' man-purse case works just fine for this tiny machine. The audience shouted CASE! CASE! CASE! I made my decision; the case it must be. As the lovely stage hostess cracked that silver briefcase, my hopes for portable computing in the new year faded a little. I won...another backpack.