Plane Quiet Platinum noise-reducing headphones won’t silence the chatty guy in the next seat, but it will reduce ambient noise and make it possible for you to listen to your iPod more easily. These cost much less than the classic Boise ones, and they also fold flat for storage.

$99.95 at ProTravelGear.com.

Going on a business trip? Check out our must-have products for business travelers!

Wake up to a view of your loved ones with this smart travel alarm clock and digital picture frame combo. It holds 60 pictures that you can scroll through or wach like a slideshow; the alarm clock has a date and temperature display, 12- or 24-hour format, and that all-important “snooze” feature.

 
$39.85 at Magellan’s.

Going on a business trip? Check out these must-have products for business travelers!

I’m a gadget lover who balks a bit at the latest in tiny technology — why are those little things so darn expensive? — but this MP3 player has won my frugal heart. SanDisk’s cool little MP3 player, the Sansa Fuze , one-ups the practically microscopic iPod Nano in a few big ways: It has a built-in digital FM radio; it plays all sorts of audio formats, not just those from iTunes; and it costs less than Apple’s ubiquitous device. Its 1.9-inch color screen is remarkably clear, and the eight-gigabyte model shown here holds up to 2,000 songs and has a battery that will let you play music for an entire day or video for five hours. Need to store even more? Additional memory cards are sold separately.

8GB model, $129.99 (2GB models are about $80, and 4GB ones are $100) at RadioShack .

There’s nothing worse than getting out the door and realizing that your blackberry isn’t charged…Well, OK maybe a hurricane and lots of other things are worse. But still, it’s pretty annoying. The Power Station will keep your portable electronics charged and easily stored.

$24.99 at The Container Store

If you have a spouse who snores — or, if you’re like me and willing to admit that your spouse is the one with a spouse who snores — this slim little speaker might buy you a good night’s sleep. Just plug it into your radio or TV; it slides under your pillow to direct sound right to your ear, allowing you to listen to something other than the dulcet tones of your partner honk-shooing the night away. $9 at Radio Shack.

As a single business woman, I have very little time to work out, so when I do exercise I have to make it count. Since I have an aversion to any sport that requires hand-eye coordination, running is my exercise of choice. It’s fast, efficient, and it can be done during the lunch hour within the span of 45 minutes.

I have to run to music: fast-beat, loud angry music to keep me motivated for runs longer than half an hour and to make sure I don’t get tempted to take a quick walk to let my heart and legs calm down. The problem with running with my iPod was the awful stock iPod earbuds: they’d slip out of my ear halfway through every song and I’d have to slow down to re-insert them, only to have them fall out again just as I was getting my groove back. Annoying.

Two weeks ago, I broke down and invested in a pair of snug-fitting in-the-ear buds that have taken my running to a whole new level. I stared at rows of ear buds in the drug store, eventually settling on this inexpensive JVC pair.  Truth be told, I liked the girly pink color and the fact that they had the word “marshmallow” in their name.  But they were also some of the cheapest in the store — the price range was    $ 8.00 to $ 200.00 for supersonic fancy earbuds — but, for me, they’re absolutely perfect.

Their soft texture allows them to stay put comfortably in my ear, blocking all noise and resisting any kind of jiggling or fall-out. My workouts just got a whole lot better.

A regular mouse forces your wrist and fingers into an unnatural flattened position, putting you at risk for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. In contrast, the Natural Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 is shaped sort of like a smallish mango, with a nice, soft indentation for your thumb to rest in (the “thumb scoop”). Best of all, it’s designed so the sides of your hand and wrist rest easy on the desk while you work, which takes all the strain off the carpal-tunnel area. Finally, the Natural keeps your fingers in their natural curved position. Oh, and it comes with all kinds of cool features like a magnifier button, extra-smooth tracking, and a low-battery light.

“Designed to feel as natural as a handshake,” says Microsoft of its creation. And at $65.99 (at Dell.com), it’s also on the pricey side. However, it’s totally worth it. I splurged on one a few months back after developing mouse-related hand pain. The pain is totally gone now… I love this thing!

Since many of my business trips are day-long excursions, I like to pack as lightly as possible: basically, a purse and my laptop.  I no longer bring paper copies of presentations with me; the less paper the better.

Recently, my best friend (and fellow frequent traveler) alerted me to the fact that one of the airlines I use regularly, Air Canada, has implemented paperless boarding passes.

“Wha?” I said.

“Yeah,”she replied,”They send you a text message to your phone with a bar code and then scan it at the airport.  You just walk right on to the plane and don’t have to worry about losing your paper copy.”

Awesome!  Though the service is only available for domestic flights on a few airlines at the moment, I’m hoping this becomes standard procedure, and I’ll use it whenever I can to thank the powers-that-be at the airlines that are currently participating.

I was a late bloomer on the Personal Digital Assistant front. I watched friends become addicted to the flashing red light of their high-amp cell phones, bowing mid-conversation to check an incoming email or an incoming picture from a long-lost relative.

But my need to stay connected to clients during business travel eventually forced my hand and I succumbed to the omniscient powers of the Blackberry.

I don’t have any idea of the actual mathematics, but my inkling is that my productivity has skyrocketed since acquiring a device that handles my phone messages, texts, calls and emails. I don’t know if it’s healthy for my work/life balance, but I do know I have taken to bringing my Blackberry to bed with me. They call them Crackberries for a reason.

Recently, because I’m a "heavy user" (read: I spend way too much on my cell phone bill every month), my cell phone provider sent me a note inviting me to upgrade my Blackberry to a new smartphone for free. I was leery (I just got used to the strange keyboard on my old device), but now I am firmly addicted.

The new smartphones — mine is the Blackberry curve — has all of the old PDA standbys (text messaging, email, voicemail) with some very persuasive bonus features. With your smartphone, you can now download an application that converts voicemail to text (because who has time to listen to messages?), send your cell-phone photos straight to Flickr, (OK, that’s not work-related but it’s pretty fun) and even record to-dos via voice while on the go. Mine also comes with built-in google maps, indespensible for business trips where I don’t know where in Tarnation I am going.

I’ve heard negative things about the Trio (I’ve never had one) but I have nothing but good things to say about the Blackberry Curve.

This website has some great tips on the new must-have Blackberry features for businesswomen on the go.

There’s few things more embarrassing than standing in a boardroom in pin stripes, about to give an important and polished presentation to senior buyers and realizing your laptop is covered with small fingerprints. And smeared lines. And possibly — is that iced tea? Or coffee? Or perhaps a bit of stray peach clinging to the ‘g’ key?

It’s not that I don’t clean my laptop, I’ve just never found a really effective cleaner. Most I’ve tried have left my laptop with subtle, translucent streaks that weren’t much prettier than the toddler-provoked streaks.

This weekend, though, I picked up a package of iKlear. It’s packaging says its especially made for Apple gear (I mostly use a Mac) - but I road-tested it on my old PC and it works great on that computer, also. The stuff comes with a soft cloth and a spray bottle, but it also comes with a bunch of for-the-road packages, so you can just stuff them into your laptop bag before a business trip, and dust off your screen before a big presentation. Crystal, shiny perfection. Not sure what they put in their cloths that the competitors don’t have, but it’s golden, and blessedly streak-free.