Like everything else, gizmos too have negative and positive attributes. While, the mobile phone refuses to let us take an uninterrupted break, the portable gadgets assure a luxurious holiday even when we are literally in the middle of nowhere. “Be it a mountain top with no electricity connection, or a dry riverbed, my portable Sony CD/DVD player plays a movie just about anywhere,” smiles Smriti Uppal, a faculty member with Punjab Technical University, as she packs the approximately seven-inch DVD player with Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) screen in her handbag for a hiking trip. “Weighing about 730 gms with a battery life of five hours, watching a movie under the open sky, mountains in the background and the fresh breeze tickling your toes is the tops,” she lists, all praises about her latest buy that comes with a handy car charger.

The iPods and laptops are now passe for their “average” sound quality and “heavy weight”, what’s come in instead are surround sound speakers that you can just connect to your apple phone or iPod or can double it up as a radio, by tuning in to a local FM station. “It’s does not need electricity to run and comes in handy when we want organise a party at a jiffy’s notice,” chirps Shaloo Walia, a finance specialist, showing off a sleek black Altec Lansing. “This digital speaker system assures a playtime of five hours and also has a handy remote,” she adds. Palm size audio players have flooded the market as well. “They have about four hours of audio recording facility and come with four and eight GB chip,” informs Sunaina Nanda, a B.Com final year student.