If there’s one searing memory that will live in my sweetheart’s brain until the day she dies, it’s the moment she realized I had sold all of her LPs to an enthusiastic buyer for a dime apiece at a yard sale many years ago. I often rationalized the loss by telling myself she didn’t have a turntable upon which to play those albums anyway — so what good were they?

No longer. Now I have to own up to my grievous blunder. ION has come out with its Audio LP Dock, a USB turntable that transfers your vinyl collection to your iPod.

The package also comes with software to let you record your records to CD or MP3. But the coolest aspect of this product is the fact that it includes something called Gracenote MusicID technology, which, according to the company, analyzes the record and retrieves album, artist and song information.

You simply play your record and record it with the conversion tool. At the end of each track, you click a button. When it’s finished, the song goes straight into iTunes. Of course, listening to your old tunes may send you down memory lane, making you forget to click that track button.

When you’re not moving music, you can just haul the turntable over to your sound system and play the albums through that.

Look, do me a favor. Don’t mention this one to my spouse, please? It’ll start the grieving process all over again, and, as the saying goes, when mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

Summer’s here, and the living is easy. In fact, it’s downright besotted, what with baseball games, neighborhood potlucks, riverside picnics and work-time happy hours come a Friday evening. But how do you know if you’ve quaffed too much alcohol to get behind the steering wheel? Face it, somebody who’s had a few isn’t the best judge of whether or not he or she is sober enough to drive.

That’s why a little gadget like the AlcoHawk Elite Digital Alcohol Detector might be a smart gift for the designated non-drinker in your life. This is a device that person can make you breath into to find out your blood alcohol concentration, thereby preventing arguments.

There’s one button on the unit, which presumably makes it easy to use. And it comes with a carrying pouch and five mouthpieces. So, here’s a clue: If the person to be tested can’t see the single button, it’s probably best not to waste a mouthpiece. Just hide the car keys before you begin.

According to the vendor, Q3 Innovations, the Elite has an electronic airflow sensor to ensure the user continues to blow through the unit. This is a “vital new function,” says the company, “because only samples of air from the deep lung are proportionate to blood alcohol content. This new innovative sensor ensures the user exhales through the mouthpiece over the 4-5 second exhale.” No quick breathing to get a favorable reading.

The detector also includes a temperature sensor that displays the temperature at the time of testing. If it’s too hot or cold, apparently, the readings may not be accurate.

How does it work? You put in a new mouthpiece, prime the sensor by having the subject blow into it for a few seconds, then turn the unit on. A beep will sound and the temperature will display. Then a countdown occurs and another beep sounds. RDY will show up in the little display. From there, the user takes a deep breath and blows steadily into the unit until another beep sounds to signal that the test is over.

If the number showing is greater than .02, the vendor advises against driving. This is, of course, way below the .08 that most states consider you intoxicated. But as the saying goes, never drink and drive.

Oh, oh. We’re in that mode again — purging anything that isn’t nailed down or moving out of the way fast enough. My beloved is in her spring cleaning mode and that means eliminating objects we haven’t touched in a year.

But what to do about all of those videos stacking up and gathering dust? Sure, the ones that are pre-recorded can go off to the public library and my son’s schools since video still has meaning for them. But what about the ones we recorded ourselves? Our commitment ceremony, family gatherings, a copy of a video about midget racing that featured a brief tribute to a grandfather. Pretty precious stuff that I don’t want to hand off to the over-sized garbage bag.

Here’s an interesting offering: VHS to DVD 3.0 Deluxe from Honestech.

The package, which includes hardware and software, allows you to take the data contained on those VHS videos and convert them to DVD, MPEG-4, even PDA or mobile device format. Or, you can convert audio from cassettes, LPs and videotapes.

The software is easy enough to install, the “VidBox” slightly more complicated to use. About the size of a tin of Altoids, it has five ports or connections. You plug the USB cable in the box into the VidBox. You plug the other end into your computer. Then you take the composite and audio cables from your VCR or camcorder and connect those to the back of your VidBox. (A handy start guide with color photos shows you how to do this.) If you’re doing audio, you need to get a 3.5mm audio cable that links the two devices — the VidBox and the boombox or whatever you’re playing from. It plugs into the headset jack.

That’s it. Then you crank up the software, choose audio or video and go through the paces: capture, edit, burn. If you’re a novice, you can choose the wizard, which will walk you through the steps of conversion.

This is a pretty slick device that’s reasonably priced. Adios, brown tape!

Come July 1, those of us traveling in California will be facing fines if we drive while holding a cellphone to our ears. The fines aren’t huge — a first offense is $20, but with penalty assessments that adds up to $76. Personally, I can’t use my phone while I’m behind the wheel — I weave all over like Carol Migden on a bad allergy day. But I can’t say the same for Significant Other. She frequently calls me while I’m at my desk, and I say, “Are you driving right now?” If there’s a pause on the other end, I know what the answer is.

So it’ll be easy for me to justify the cost of a couple of new headsets for our vehicles. I’d rather it went to buying new stuff than to landing ignominiously with a small tinkle in the State of California general fund or, worse, having somebody I love plow into a tree.

I’m looking at the Aliph Jawbone Wireless Cell Phone Headset – an elegant choice SO is sure to approve of. A lot of readers have weighed in on this model, and here’s the sense I get:

This headset does an amazing job of blocking out background noise. (I’m thinking our 5-year-old counts in the backseat definitely counts in that category.)

It’s nice looking — always a good thing when you’re walking around with a dongle dangling off your head.

The sound itself gets mixed reviews. Some say it’s excellent; others call it “tinny.”

The controls are in a weird position on the device, but since you don’t really need to use them much, that’s OK with most users.

You can easily bust something when you take it out of the recharging cradle. On that recharger, apparently, the company doesn’t offer one for the car — rather an oversight.

The earpieces included with the unit are horrible. They don’t fit well, especially if you have small ears. (But even if your ear isn’t small, it’s still custom to you.) Many users seem to be replacing them with Jabra EarGels.

Well, looks frequently trumpet usability in this household. Tinny tone and lousy earpiece be hanged! California Highway Patrol, here we come…!

Now that Shakey has decided Blu-ray is the way to release his music archive, you may decide it’s time to look into updating your play equipment. Blu-ray, as you probably already know, holds more data than DVDs (five to 10 times the capacity!), offers amazing picture and sound quality and you can update their disc contents via the Internet.

Of course, I’m a hybrid kind of gal. I don’t like to have a bunch of specialized equipment around when hybrids will do the job too — especially if I’m not paying more for the multi-functionality. So let’s look at two “duo” players, electronics that play both Blu-ray and HD.

First up, the Samsung BD-UP5000. Pricing runs from about $380 to about $790. It exploits the interactive features and offers Blu-ray Disk playback at 1080p resolution. Don’t worry; it’s not limited to playing just Blu-ray or HD disks; you can also run your DVD Video and DVD-RW/-R discs too. The software lets you customize your viewing experience.  For example, if you — like I — run subtitles just to understand what those mumbling actors are saying, you can specify subtitles in a different color, you can animate them and you can fade them in and out. Is that cool or what?!

Reviewer pzprods likes the unit, although he or she detects a delay in loading movies.

LG Electronics offers the BH200, which is priced between $422 and $800. The functionality is basically the same as the Samsung, though reviewer bballcards from MO reports that load time for “Superbad Blu-Ray” is speedy compared to alternatives and that bugs reported in the initial release have been repaired in firmware updates put out by the company. Bballcards complains, however, about a short warranty (a year, the same as the Samsung model) and a high price (again, pretty comparable to the Samsung model).

Of course, upgrading from a HD player to a hybrid player almost demands that you run a high-def viewer too. Otherwise, why bother?! So, if you haven’t upgraded your TV to install one of those drive-in-theater hi-def models that take up a wall and form the centerpoint of dinner conversations with your friends for easily a full three months after purchase, not to worry! Your economic stimulus check is in the mail!

The time for spring cleaning is upon us. I’m the kind of person who usually prefers moving things around than actually getting rid of them, so anything that’ll help me compress the space an object takes up is a good thing.

In that spirit, I’m going to share a few devices that will do just that. Today: the Veho Film and Slide Converter.

If you’ve been holding onto boxes of family slides and you’d like to put them into a form where they’ll actually be seen by family members, digital is a natural. According to the company description for the Veho, this “negative” scanner hooks up to your computer via USB 2.0 port. It works with Vista and XP and features five megapixel resolution. It includes photo editing software too, to let you do some editing and cropping on the fly.

If you’re on a Mac, one reviewer suggests looking at the 8800F color image scanner. And that brings up a good point. Can you use a regular flatbed scanner to capture a slide and convert it into digital form?

I picked one at random: the Epson Perfection V500 Photo Flatbed Scanner, which sells for about $70 more than the Veho. Its description mentions working with slides. One reviewer points out that it includes holders for slides and negatives, which eliminates the problem of having to figure out where the slide should go for optimal conversion.

So it comes down to this: Do you go with an addition to your household arsenal that addresses a single solution and takes up a little bit of space or spend a bit more and get a solution that has a bigger footprint while tackling more jobs for you? What’s your take?

I don’t know about you, but I’d have trouble laying out a few hundred dollars for a WiFi Internet radio. Yet that’s what Sangean is asking for its WFR-20. What exactly does that get you?

According to the product description, this radio offers direct access to 6,000 Internet radio stations in 250 locations from 60 genres. (Maybe it includes my personal favorite, KVMR.org, the community radio station that broadcasts from my little town, Nevada City. If it doesn’t, the company says I can get it added with a request.)

Apparently, you can find your favorite stations and upload them to a My Stations folder on a special website. Once the stations are there, you can play them from the radio. If you don’t have a computer, it works as a stand-alone unit, but the advantage of tying it to your computer is that it can play the music you have stashed on your hard drive. All you need for either set-up is an Internet connection and a wired or wireless router.

It includes a socket for plugging in your iPod or other MP3 player and another socket for a headset.

But we’re talking truly geek in design. It looks like something your great-uncle would crouch in a kitchen chair next to and listen to the ballgame with — except because it comes with a remote control, he can flip stations without sitting up. It comes in a “high-gloss piano-black finish,” includes a “large, easy-to-read line display,” and weighs in at whopping 6.1 pounds.

Didn’t anybody tell these people that Moore’s Law mandates that technology is supposed to get smaller? Aren’t we supposed to be able to fit our devices in our pockets these days?

So what gives? Is it the audio quality that’s spectacular? Is it so bleeding-edge, I’m incapable of appreciating its inner beauty and elegance? Could it be that I don’t listen to enough music that the idea of paying more than 99 cents for a song grieves me? Dear reader, if you can explain the magic and charm of these machines, I’d appreciate an education. Add your comment below.