The techheads at Wired recently declared we’re in the “Petabyte Age,” in which massive quantities of computer storage can fundamentally change scientific research. Astoundingly, for just a couple hundred dollars, you yourself can own a terabyte of storage — just one notch below (a thousandth, in other words) the earth-shattering petabyte. (Just in case you aren’t good with the numbers, the terabyte holds 1 trillion bytes, or 1,000 gigabytes.) For a mere $220, for instance, Maxtor’s OneTouch 4 Plus can be yours, resplendent in brushed metal case and boasting a quiet operation that belies the muscular operations within. Just for your edification regarding the heft of a terabyte, entries on Wikipedia say that all of Walmart’s data is stored on 500 terabytes of data, and YouTube holds more than 600 terabytes of video. The Maxtor is compatible with both Mac and PC, the OneTouch naturally comes with backup software that stores duplicate copies of everything on your computer without your having to worry about it; it also can encrypt all that data for you, lest prying eyes want to snoop through personal records. Less common is its ability to sync data between multiple computers, eliminating the frustration that sometimes arrives when you’re in the middle of a project and realize you left an important phone number on your laptop at home. But backups and data-syncs are like laundry and dishwashing: Happily, having a terabyte at your disposal means all the chores can be done by one little corner of the hard drive while vast swaths of disk space are available for the good stuff: 1 TB, after all, is enough room to store a thousand hours of digital video (depending how it’s compressed) or nearly two years of continuous music. By the time you’re tired of all those songs, you’ll probably be able to afford a petabyte, which would hold enough music for the next two millennia.

There’s a long history in the audio-visual industry of fetishizing the little bits of gear that make the high-priced electronic components work together. If you’re going to spend a few grand on a stereo receiver, after all, you might look like an easy mark for salesmen hawking $100 Monster HDMI cable and 24 carat gold wire connectors — you might even be talked into spending $465 on a string of speaker wire with a “slender profile and jewel-like finish.” Who cares if the benefits of these hyped products are often dubious, with plenty of tech-heads providing hands-on analysis in exposés like this one. Consumer annoyance with this trend seems to have come to a boil recently, as influential blogs like Boing Boing Gadgets note that the luxury cable trend is migrating from A/V gear to mundane objects found in any computer user’s drawer. In response to Denon’s introduction of a 1.5 meter Ethernet cable costing $500 (pictured), Amazon users have taken to the barricades, using the site’s customer feedback system to post what BB describes as “perhaps the best Amazon reviews page of all time.” Scrolling through the list, Rob Beschizza found triumphs of facetiousness like a one-star review by a man who claims to “regularly spend over $1,000 on cables to get the ultimate sound” and warns readers that, if readers ignore Denon’s directions and accidentally plug the cable in the wrong direction, “your music will play backwards.” Others feign geeky ecstasy, praising the cable while wishing they could plug it into their own bodies or boasting that it moved data along with such speed the electrons left black holes in their wake. The cables also solve global warming, we’re told, and deserve “eleventy million stars.” Even for people who ignore customer reviews as a rule, the thread is well worth a read — and might even contain a few tidbits of non-sarcastic information.

Artists and designers have long embraced pen-based devices, such as those made by Wacom, which use tablets to translate your drawings into high-quality digital artwork. Wacom’s tools have brought professional quality to normal Joes, but some customers want something else out of a digi-pen — or at least, that’s what electronics companies hope. They’ve experimented with items like the Chatpen, which claimed to send SMS or email directly from what you wrote manually. They’ve built phones into them for wannabe Dick Tracys. Currently, there are two standouts among pen gizmos that don’t require computers to do their thing. The $50 FLY Fusion, which emphasizes built-in homework help, says it can record what you’re writing and do everything from spell-checking to translating to French or Spanish. The Pulse Smartpen ($150 to $200) has higher- and post-educational users in mind, offering to make MP3 recordings of a lecture or interview that are automatically linked to your ink-on-paper notes. Both require special paper to work their wonders, meaning that you’re not able, as one might assume, to simply slip all that helpful computer power into your shirt pocket and go.

One of the biggest disappointments faced by many new owners of handheld video devices is that you can’t easily transfer your favorite DVDs to them for on-the-go enjoyment. If you’ve already bought every season of Lost on DVD, why should you have to fork over two bucks an episode at the iTunes store just so you can watch it on your iPod instead of your TV? Enter the Pinnacle Video Transfer, a $130 gadget designed to address this very problem. The little black box plugs into a video source on one end, into a media player (or hard drive) on the other, and transfers any analog video signal with no computer required. You can transfer old home movies from VHS, save DVDs in iPod-friendly format, or — hard as it is to believe, I know people do this — record yourself playing your favorite video game so you can replay all the shoot-’em-up action for friends. All by pressing a single button when the program you want starts playing on your TV. As with many gadgets, this one may play better with PCs: My iPod is formatted to communicate with my Mac, and as a result I couldn’t record anything to it, even after following Pinnacle’s support instructions and reformatting the iPod’s hard drive (and losing tons of data as a result). The company says few users have this problem, but it has released a $100 device aimed solely at Mac users — the main difference being that the latter needs to be hooked up to your computer while you do transfers.

Last summer, Paramount complicated the high-definition format war by yanking its Blu-ray movies off retail shelves, vowing to release movies only on HD-DVD. Well, things change. Now that HD-DVD is good and dead, with discs in the defunct format starting to show up in greatly discounted clearance sales, Paramount can dominate the new release shelf simply by bringing its old titles back into print. While early reports suggested the deluge would occur this week, online shoppers seeking The Untouchables or Disturbia (starring Indiana Jones’ new sidekick Shia LaBeouf) will find they aren’t yet in stock at some retailers, who expect them to arrive next Tuesday. Some brick-and-mortar stores like Fry’s appear to have these titles on shelves, though, and smaller online retailers like CD Universe are offering Paramount titles like the Mission Impossible trilogy for immediate delivery. Whether the discrepancy is just a matter of mixed signals in the shipping department or something more complex, the studio is definitely back in the Blu-ray biz, with new (that is, non-reissue) films in the pipeline for early June release — most notably, the magnificent There Will Be Blood, which earned star Daniel Day Lewis an Oscar and will surely take advantage of the format’s crisp visuals and rich sound.

It’s funny the way everyday objects of the past morph into “vintage” models of good design. We marvel at what used to be because it reminds us how quickly things change. When I see a “classic” telephone like this ITT rotary dial model in someone’s home or a collectibles shop and hear the ring of its bell, I think, “How cool is that?” It has heft, maybe a pleasing color, and none of the features we’ve become accustomed to, such as Caller I.D. and speed dial. The market for retro phones appears to be quite healthy. Plenty of models have been cleaned up and retrofitted with a modern cord, and there are loads of replicas, too. Rotary Dial Phones has mint condition, never-used phones made decades ago — in fabulous colors such as lime green (extremely rare, $150) and bright orange ($130). The only problem is nabbing one before someone else gets it. But at Everything Furniture, there are loads of reproductions to choose from. For $49 you can get a Princess phone, circa 1959, in blue, pink (pictured), or yellow and a late-1930s Dreyfuss-designed desk phone (think of Humphrey Bogart). For $69, you can own an early 20th century candlestick phone in brushed chrome, no less. Ebay might just be the best place to pick up an authentic phone of bygone years. When we visited, the bidding was on for an Ericsson Ericofon “Cobra” telephone (bid was at $50 when we checked) and a vintage Western Electric phone ($85 bid). And for those who cannot part with their cell phones, check out the retro phone handset at Think Geek ($5 to $30). It’s a replica of a classic Western Electric handset that works when plugged into the headset jack of your cell phone or Blackberry.