But we can take things too far, some technology is imprecise at best, most people realise this and adjust their behaviour, many do not with disastrous consequences. Let us consider some of the startling road traffic accidents that have been caused by a drive following their GPS unit too closely.

In the USA, a bus driver, carrying a girls softball team as passengers, blindly followed his GPS unit under a low bridge, far too low for his bus, and sheared off the roof. Ignoring the large yellow signs that were screaming LOW CLEARENCE! At him, the driver proceeded under the bridge, as he believed the GPS unit was set to truck/bus mode and trusted its judgement. A spokesman for the bus company was quoted as saying “We just thought it would be a safe route because, why else would they have a selection for a bus?” which just goes to prove that people are somewhat dumb sometimes.

In the UK, a female motorist was following directions to Carmarthen, she was following here GPS unit and came to a closed railway crossing that was not highlighted on the unit. She decided the GPS was right (mind boggling) and that the crossing was not real (even more mind boggling) and proceeded to life the first of the closed gates (idiot alert). She drove her car onto the tracks and climbed out and went to open the gate on the other side of the crossing. She was completely amazed when a train came along and totally trashed her car! I mean, how stupid can a person get?

Again in the UK, a driver was following his GPS unit through the village of Luckington (appropriate name) and was not paying attention to the actual conditions outside of the vehicle. His GPS unit directed him onto a bridge which crosses the River Avon.  Unfortunately, the bridge had been closed for repairs for over a week, the car drove straight off the incomplete bridge and into the river. When local residents were asked to comment on the accident they replied that it was nothing uncommon and that they had been pulling an average of two cars a day out of the river for the past week! One resident told that when questioned, the drivers often replied with something along the lines of “My sat-nav told me it was this way”.

GPS accidents are now becoming a common occurrence, frequently lethal and easily avoided by following proper operating instructions.

With a long history of excellent pocket knife design behind them, I was surprised to find a really rather ludicrous product in their line-up. Namely the exceptionally well named “Giant”. This crazy knife has a staggering 85 separate tools built into it and weighs in at a ridiculous 2lb. certainly not something you would want to carry around in your pocket!

Some of the more extreme additions to the veritable garage full of tools and devices which hide away into this Swiss army knife are:

• Golf club face cleaner – Why include this? What use is it when all you need is a pocket knife with a normal blade to do the same job?

• Golf shoe spike wrench – For those golfers who actually notice they have a loose spike and decide to make instant repairs on the fairway.

• Watch case back opening tool – Useful for those life and death threatening moments when you feel you need to take the back from your watch and start fiddling with the gears.

• Telescopic pointer – When a finger just won’t do!

• Shortix laboratory key – I don’t even know where the Shortix laboratory is, so why do I need a key for it? They should change the locks.

• Toothpick – Not a bad idea, but on a 2lb knife the size of a house brick, one wonders who would have the strength and dexterity to manoeuvre this small piece of metal into their mouth and extract the popcorn stuck between their molars.

I must admit I thought it was a joke when I first found details of the “Giant”, but no, it is a true production model of the Swiss army knife, ok it was created as a special anniversary model but even so, it is on sale to the general public.

Current owners of the Giant are somewhat taken aback that the model was produced too early to include the newly patented Wenger finger clipping tool, so we can expect a new model some time possibly named “Super Giant” or some other amazingly inventive name.

All joking aside, the manufacturers of the Swiss army brand have consistently created high quality and useful products for decades, it is quite a shame to see them making something of a laughing stock of themselves by falling so deeply into the “bigger is better” line of thinking.

Unfortunately for the business man behind this infamous motor vehicle, John De Lorean, many of the new forms of technology that were originally intended to make it into the production vehicle were just not ready. Certain things such as the radical chassis design, which was to be built using a new form of manufacturing process named Elastic Reservoir Moulding (ERM). The patent for ERM was bought by the De Lorean Motor Company at great expense, only for engineers to finally report that the technology was useless for motor vehicle manufacture, and scrapping the entire design concept. Slowly, little by little all of the exciting new features that could have made the car the ultimate male gadget of the late 70s were replaced by run of the mill standard technology. Possibly the only radical design feature that remained in the final production model was the use of a stainless steel skin over a fibreglass panel for the body panelling. This interesting feature kind of backfired as owners of the few De Lorean that were actually made, found out quite quickly that stainless steel was something of a pain to keep clean and maintain.

Most of us remember Doc Brown of Back to the Future fame, and his amazing time travelling De Lorean (possibly the greatest gadget ever) replete with flux capacitor and a dashboard full of esoteric lights. Interestingly enough, all of the four cars that were used in the filming of the original movies had their standard PRV-V6 (Renault produced) power plant ripped out and a more powerful Porsche engine installed. This should give some idea of just how bad the performance was in the original vehicle, if you need to stick a bigger engine into a sports car just to get it up to 88 miles per hour quick enough to keep movie goers entertained, then something must surely be wrong?

The De Lorean did make it into production, although the retail price had risen dramatically from original expectations. The DMC-12 took its name from the fact it was designed to retail at $12,000, but actually went on sale at $25,000 which represented over 100% slip in pricing from concept to launch. Only around 9,000 cars were ever built before the De Lorean Motor Company went bust in 1982, following the arrest of its founder on drug trafficking charges (later disproved). What could have been one of the most innovative and technically exciting motor vehicles of all time became a legend in bad business management and silly ideas.

I have owned an EEE PC 701 since just after they were launched, and at first, I thought it would be an incredibly useful tool to me, it was the first truly portable device that did everything I needed in a single, small and robust package. It was light, shock proof and very portable.

In reality things didn’t work out as I expected, there were three problems with the machine, that although they could be overcome, were enough when combined to stop me using the device as I had intended with ease. Firstly, the screen is just a little too small, the 7” 800×480 display is fine for checking email and a little occasional browsing, but working on it for any more than a few minutes was just awkward. Secondly, the battery life is a joke; ASUS implied that users would get around 3.5 hours from a single battery charge, in reality I am lucky to get 2.5 hours. Lastly, the storage space is just too restrictive, the 4GB SSD drive fills up quickly, which stops me installing an entire application suite.

So when ASUS revealed the 901, I was fairly pleased to read the specs, it seemed to me that they had addressed every issue I have with my old 901 model. The new 8.9” screen has a native resolution of 1024 x 600, definitely large enough for me to use for an hour or two at a time. Battery life has been greatly extended by incorporating the new Intel Atom CPU into the design. This tiny processor draws a very small amount of power and extends the battery live to around 8 hours on the 901. The storage problem has been banished by increasing the size of the SSD to 20GB, this means I can install every application that I currently run on my desktop PC and still leave enough space to carry a cut down version of my MP3 collection. Asus have also included an internal Bluetooth adapter, which is something else that was missing from the older models.

I will definitely be picking one of these sub-notebooks up as soon as they go on sale. My old 701 model has shown me how useful it can be to have a fully functioning PC tucked away in my bag, but it has also shown me how frustrating it can be to have to use something that has some basic design flaws.

The new ASUS EEE PC 901 is definitely top of my lists of best gadgets released in 2008. I hope that it will become a useful and productive tool in my social and working life.

History has a long line of gregarious characters that have competed for the title of “Craziest Inventor Ever”, and during the late 1970s and early 1980s the UK had a major contender in the form of Sir Clive Sinclair. Quite why the Queen decided to issue him a knighthood has never been truly understood, but it could be the only clue to the fact The Queen of England does actually have a sense of humour.

Sir Clive was actually pretty smart for a while, most home computer enthusiasts of the day would glance lovingly at their ZX81 and quietly inform their visiting Aunty that it was like a calculator but bigger and it could actually play chess. Of course, you also knew you could not demonstrate it to her, as there was only a fifty percent chance the tape drive would actually load that whole 1k of data, and you didn’t want her to think you were any crazier than she already did. Thousands of young computer professionals (geeks to you and I) almost worship Sir Clive back in those days. He followed up with the ZX Spectrum, which became the bedroom accessory to be had by anyone who still had acne spots. It wasn’t until he started messing with the Sinclair QL that people began to realise he really was a very clever person, so it was time to stop liking him.

After being almost solely responsible for the home computer boom, Sir Clive decided it was time to tackle something more challenging. He settled upon designing a means of reducing global pollution and solving traffic congestion in all major cities around the world. After a brief period of time in the development labs he wheeled out the Sinclair C5 (he had to wheel it out, the prototype was made of cardboard). This innovative little vehicle was a cross between a go-kart and a supermarket shopping trolley, with a healthy chunk of golf cart thrown in for good measure.

In reality it was a very good design, the little vehicle could travel at 15km per hour, for an extended period of time. It came with full weather gear and would have made a great commuter vehicle. Unfortunately, the general public took one look at it and laughed, they continued laughing until the C5 was withdrawn from the market, after only 17,000 units had been sold.

The Sinclair C5 is seen as one of the worst launches of new technology ever witnessed in the UK, and is deemed a commercial disaster by financial analysts. The real disaster in this story is the fact that had the public accepted this new form of transportation, they would be living a healthier life that was less harmful to the ecology.