There are certain circumstances which are instantly familiar to any college kid: those infuriating red digits say you’ve slept through your morning lecture (again) and you feel too tired (or maybe too guilty) to even get out of bed to check your e-mail. Or, you’re riding in the cramped backseat of your friend’s car on a weekend road trip and have a sudden urge to read The Crimson—except your roommate snagged the one in your door-basket because he or she actually gets up in the morning. And, of course, every time something memorable happens, you never seem to have a camera handy. If nothing else, think of the blackmailing potential of a pocket camera.

We’ve all been there. Thankfully, the good folks at Sprint know that. Meet the PCS Vision-serviced Treo 600, made by Handspring, which is so nifty that it deserves a place on every hard-working student’s holiday wish list.

Less than five inches long and weighing under a half-pound, the gadget features a full (though understandably tiny) QWERTY keyboard, full-color screen, camera with photo-mail capability and an Internet browser. Like PDAs, it is navigated by a stylus. It looks like a phone, but acts almost like a laptop.

With this lightning-in-a-bottle technology, you can check your e-mail lying down, read The Crimson online from I-95 and snap photos of your friends in compromising positions. All this can be yours for $599.99, though there are cheaper models available. The Treo, like many other Sprint phones, offers incentive-based savings of up to $150 for the holiday season.

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