By James Wysong

Travel columnist

James Wysong Travel columnist • Profile • E-mail

After many years as a flight attendant I have seen just about every gadget and gizmo designed for in-flight comfort and safety. But with new technologies come new trinkets — some are good ideas, and others are outright laughable. I have seen passengers with everything from suits to ward off solar radiation to knee-clamped lights to prevent jet lag. The following is my list of the best and worst of them — no endorsements, just my humble two cents, along with some feedback from readers.

Bose Noise-Canceling Headsets: Tune out the crying babies, annoying announcements or the loudmouth in back of you with these wonderful headsets. They are a must for the frequent flyer and, to my mind, the No. 1 in-flight product of 2006. They are not inexpensive by any means, but every passenger I asked told me they were well worth the price.

In the MP3-player category: the Apple iPod Nano, 4 gigabytes. Small, yet it holds plenty of songs and photos. I am normally not a huge fan of Apple, but this is one of the best MP3 players I have seen.

Want video with your MP3 player? Then go for the Creative Zen Vision M, 30 gigabytes. Much better than the video iPod because it accepts video in all different formats, has a radio and microphone, and has twice the battery life. I hear the Zune will give it a run for its money, but the jury is still out on that gadget.

Dell Inspiron Laptop Computer. It’s small, powerful, inexpensive and has been made even better with extended battery life.

3M Privacy Filter. Stop the annoying looky-loos who feel entitled to watch your screen. The filter is a small screen that fits right over your monitor, making it viewable only from your angle. I wrote this article on a recent flight and the filter worked like a charm. The only problem was that my overcurious neighbor kept commenting about how effective the filter was.

Earphone Jack Charger. Apparently, there is a new device out there that can recharge your USB gadget (cell phone, game system — you name it) just by plugging it into the airplane’s headset jack. I have not yet tried this but if it does what it says it does, I definitely have to get one.

Headphone Jack Coupler. This is a $3 item at Radio Shack but every frequent flyer should have one. It turns one headphone jack into two, so if your audio jack is broken, as many of them are, you can use your seat neighbor’s jack. Or share your MP3 player, movie rental or laptop with a travel companion.

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