Despite the fact that the whole point of s Swiss Army Knife is that it has lost of features, my favorite has always been the Spartan, since it has just enough to be genuinely useful while still being thin enough to grip properly.<p /><p />Its kind of ironic that the nation most associated with being neutral and whose most famous weapon is a pen knife is actually the second most militarized in terms of compulsory army service.

Like the Macbook, this is no surprise, except for the fact that i dont actually own one at the moment.<p /><p />Having left my iPhone in the back of a cab and having reverted to using my Blackberry, temporarily this is what I have found.<p /><p />The Blackberry is a festering pile of amateur crap when it comes to anything but sending and receiving email. However, this is really important and it does it pretty well. <p /><p />The iPhone tries very hard to solve the problems of a touch screen easy to use keyboard in a way that would be easier solved with a real keyboard and misses out on some absolutely essential email functions such as search.

The most important part of my gadget bag is also the least interesting, since its so predictable.<p /><p />Because of that, I am going to list my gripes:<p /><p />1. I would rather the case were plastic or carbon fiber or whatever. The obsession with brushed metal for premium Mac products seems ostentatiously tacky (metal somehow equals expensive). It also seems weird to use a heavy, heat conducting, dentable, Faraday cage as a laptop enclosure.<p /><p />2. The keyboard. Its almost certain that when the new MacBook Pros come out, shortly, they will have the nice looking but horrible to use, chicklet keys. Please, no.<p /><p />3. Single button trackpad. This is form over function masquerading as the opposite.<p /><p />

A flashlight is a must have for a gadget bag and here there is only one real choice, In my opinion - a Maglite.<p /><p />Maglite torches are a design classic. They hark back to an era of industrial design when the US was a world leader.<p /><p />They have managed to produce excellent LED versions without messing up the original design.

For the perfect gadget bag itself, its a toss up between Tumi and Victorinox. <p /><p />Although Victorinox are using their brand to expand into products they are not known for, unlike brands such as Caterpillar who basically license the logo to third party clothing manufacturers, Victorinox bags are the real deal, with some excellent features such as their lost bag tracking program.<p /><p />Ultimately, I vote for a Tumi bag, since thats what they do and there really is nothing else like them. True, they are very expensive, particularly when you can get something that looks identical for a few bucks on Canal Street in New York. But if you are using something every day then a really good quality bag matters.

Having gotten completely sick of tangled headphones, I migrated to using larger ones that seem to somewhat solve the problem.<p /><p />Large, but not too large - so I opted for over ear Sennheisers, which are adequate but not ideal. In fact I couldnt find a pair of headphones that I really really liked, so am open to suggestions.

The Moleskin notebook with its illustrious roll call of users like Van Gogh is largely a marketing exercise, the brand having nothing to do with the original manufacturer.<p /><p />Nonetheless, there is something very nice about them - but not quite nice enough. My problem is that the paper is slightly too thick in the sketch book versions. Luckily there are many clones that accidentally get things just right.

Rotrings largely went the way of the dinosaurs when CAD took over from conventional drawing, however, there is nothing really like them, when it comes to pens.<p /><p />Use a 0.18mm pen for sketching and a 0.25 for writing, and Jet Black Rotring ink. If possible get the gold nib versions which were designed for drawing on film and clog less easily. <p /><p />If you want a classic looking but less reliable Rotring, then go for a Black Rotring Isograph.

A digital SLR and half a dozen lenses, is not something I am going to be carrying around every day, but a cellphone camera still doesnt quiet cut it.<p /><p />For me, the single most important feature on a single unit digital camera, is the optical zoom. There are 3 or 4 cameras with 18x optical zooms, now on the market. My own choice is the Lumix, for no other reason than thats what I am used to.

In a perfect world, there would be no hunger or wires.<p /><p />I like to occasionally work in the New York Public library in Bryant Park, which seems to be the worlds best free office space. Unfortunately, they only have ethernet Internet access - which means cables.<p /><p />The best solution I have found is to scour the web for as many types of retractable cable as I can find, to avoid the perfect gadget bag becoming a can of worms, as it were.

Pictured here is the Kyocera KR1. I am sure there are better alternatives, but the ability to create a network anywhere is for me a truly liberating feeling. <p /><p />Part of the fascination with having the ideal gadget bag is the idea that you are free to work anywhere as a digital nomad. An Evdo WiFi router is therefore a must have.

When I was an architect, I used to use on of these $5 devices, even when a real drawing board was at hand. I would say that this is a must have for any UI designer, for example. With a bit of practice a device like this will allow you to produce professional looking drawings anywhere.<p /><p />I now use an antique version of this with a brass roller, that was picked up from eBay.

All hotel rooms have alarm clocks which take half an hour to figure out how to use, and then leave you with the uneasy feeling that you may not have set it correctly, so you end up calling downstairs for a wake up call.<p /><p />What you need is a dedicated alarm clock, that does one thing well - alarm clocking. I like the Braun, and being a total gadget pedant, I only like the minimalist non travel conventional battery powered AB1.<p /><p />Like a Ford model T, it should be in any color as long as its black. A black Braun.

I have always preferred the original Shuffle to the latest version.<p /><p />The old version meant that I didnt need to remember where my charger was, and was small enough that reducing its size for a new version was irrelevant. It was the quintessential USB thumb drive gadget, before there were many of those.