Many new drives support the fast USB 3.0 interface, which some newer computers now support. However, all Apple computers only support USB 2.0 connections — Apple has stated that it does not intend to support USB 3.0 in the foreseeable future. Instead, they support the Thunderbolt interface, but very few hard drives support the Thunderbolt currently.

If you’ll only be doing backups with an external drive, you can opt for a drive that only supports USB 2.0, because most of your backup process will occur in quietly in the background, and interface speed will not matter so much. However, getting the right size drive is important — it’s prudent not to skimp here, you’ll want to drive that has a capacity that’s 2-3 times the size of the drive you want to backup.

If you’ll be using the external drive to store and watch movies, or render videos, then drive’s interface speed is important you’ll want to connect the drive with eSATA, USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt, if you computer supports these interfaces.

Fireproof and Waterproof: The ioSafe Rugged Portable

ioSafe specializes in making hard drives that are fireproof, waterproof and, in the case of the portable models, crushproof and shockproof. The ioSafe Rugged Portable is encased in a machined block of aluminum (Al) or titanium (Ti) alloy. The drive can withstand being sunk in water for three days, or 1550° F heat for 30 minutes. This ruggedization certainly means ioSafe drives are less prone to disaster, but it does increase the cost of the drives, and makes them larger and heavier than comparable external drives.

ioSafe drives also come with a three year warranty, and one year of data and hardware recovery protection, which means the company will recover your data should a disaster strike, or the drive fails for any reason (this protection only covers your first request for data recovery). If your drive is so badly damaged that forensic recovery is required, the ioSafe will cover up to $2500 in recovery costs. You can extend the data recovery to three years for an additional $50. You can buy a five year warranty together with five years of data recovery protection for an additional $100 over the base price.

The ioSafe Rugged Portable 1TB is available from Amazon for about $277.

Best Overall: Western Digital My Book Studio II

The latest My Book Studio II from Western Digital has a lot going for it: a sleek aluminum case, quiet operation, low energy consumption and 3 terabytes (TB) of space.

The My Book Studio II  is now housed in an aluminum enclosure, which matches Apple’s range of aluminum devices. Indeed, this drive is primarily intended to appeal to the Apple user —  it supports the Firewire 400/800 interface and USB 2.0. Additionally, the drive comes pre-formatted as HFS+, for OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard (Mac OS X Tiger does not support drives with capacities greater than 2 TB). It is also compatible with Apple’s latest Time Machine. However, the drive can be reformatted and used with Windows XP/Vista/7 or Linux.

The My Book Studio II is available from Amazon for around $260.

This drive is the older My Book Studio II from Western Digital. I still recommend this hard drive because comes standard with a 5 year warranty — the newer drives from Western Digital now now come with three year warranties. Also, unlike the new My Book, this drive includes an eSata interface (in addition to USB and Firewire).

The drive is quiet, but it does have a distracting light that flashes whenever the drive is active. I also wish the drive’s case had a sturdier feel to it. However, the drive still gets my recommendation because of the five year warranty, it supports Raid 1 mirroring.

Recently, one My Books Drives would not turn on, but it was still under warranty, so requested a replacement drive from Western Digital. A replacement drive arrived in a few days. So Western Digital did honor their warranty quite promptly, but I did have to pay to ship my old drive back to the company (it cost about $15 in postage).

The Western Digital My Book Studio II is available from Amazon for around $190.

Simple Security: The Apricorn Aegis Padlock Pro

The Apricorn Aegis Padlock Pro is a newly released, encrypted hard drive. It locks down your sensitive information in a digital vault to protect it against hackers and data thieves. This drive gets high marks from reviewers because it offers high-end encryption into a straightforward and easy-to-use package. The keypad on the drive allows you enter a PIN and unlock the drive quickly.

PC Magazine gave this drive at rating of “Very Good” and a “Editor’s Choice” award.

The only complaint from reviewers, is that this drive has unreliable eSata connection support. You may wish to do some further research on this drive, if you’ll be using eSata.

The 1 TB Apricorn Aegis Padlock Pro is available from Amazon for about $270.

For Mac Backups: Apple Time Capsule

Apple makes a device called a Time Capsule, which is a wireless router combined with a external hard drive. A Time Capsule allows you perform wireless backups using the Time Machine application or a third-party applications that use the Time Machine format. You connect wireless to the Time Capsule with a host of devices: Mac, compatible PCs, and wireless devices such as iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Apple TV. Note that the portables devices must be running iOS 5 to connect to a Time Capsule.

You can attach additional hard drives to a Time Capsule via USB 2.0 if you want more storage space, and you can attach a printer, for wireless sharing.

I’d recommend Time Capsules, you if like the idea of backing up a number of notebook computers and other portable devices wirelessly. Time Capsules cannot be used to create a bootable duplicate your boot volume, so you’ll have to buy a second hard drive to create bootable backups. Also, Time Capsules are not mirrored drives (they don’t support Raid configurations), but you can attach an Raid drive to a Time Capsule via its USB 2.0 interface.

Apple’s standard warranty covers the Time Capsule for one year, and this includes 90 day of phone support. Apple does not an extended warranty for a Time Capsule specifically. However, if you extend the coverage on another Apple device, the Time Capsule warranty will be extended too (see this page for details).

In regards to environmental criteria, Apple has removed almost all of the the toxic substances from its products, and the company accepts old devices for recycling, under the Apple Recycling Program.

The Apple Time Capsule (2 TB) is available from Amazon for about $292.

Today, we use smartphones and tablet computers wherever we go. However, batteries life tends to be a constant issue. That’s why carrying a spare charger in your daypack or purse makes a lot of sense. In most cases, you just need a bit of spare power to make a call or access the internet.

Smartphone (USB) chargers all contain a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, and a USB socket that outputs 5 volts. The difference is the power capacity of the batteries inside the chargers, and this capacity is measured in milliamp hours (mAh). Here’s a quick guide to what you can charge with different battery capacities:

• 1000 – 5000 mAh: This is enough power to recharge a smartphone or small USB device
• 5000 – 12000 mAh: Enough power to recharge a phone, iPad or other tablet computer
• 12000 mAh +: Enough power to charge a notebook computer, tablet computer, or smartphone

These are our selections for the top rated smartphone and tablet chargers:

PowerGen External Battery Pack (Smartphone Charger)

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars from 114+ reviews on Amazon

If you just want to charge a smartphone or a USB device with modest power requirements, the PowerGen Duo-Power USB Battery Pack is a solid and inexpensive option. The charger has a capacity of 5200 mAh — enough to fully recharge an iPhone 4 twice. It can also partially charge an iPad (to about 30% to 50% of capacity depending on the iPad model).

The Powergen Battery Pack takes about 1.5 hours to fully charge a smartphone. The Battery Pack itself takes about 5-6 hours to be recharged (by plugging it into a wall socket). It also features a flashlight that runs for 250 hours. The PowerGen External Battery Pack  sells for about $34 on Amazon.

There’s also a PowerGen Duo-Power USB Battery Pack. This model has two USB ports and a higher battery capacity (8400 mAh). It sells for about $50 on Amazon.

New Trent iGeek (iPad and Tablet Charger)

Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars from 285+ reviews on Amazon

The New Trent iGeek IMP99D charger stores 9900 mAh, which is almost twice the battery capacity of the PowerGen charger featured above. This means it can fully charge an iPad 2, or charge an iPad 3 up to 60%.

The size of this charger is wider than a cellphone (as shown above), and it has two USB charging ports.

The New Trent iGeek IMP99D charger is available at Amazon for about $65.

The Brightest LED Lantern: Rayovac Sportsman Lantern

Average Amazon rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars from 573+ reviewers

The Rayovac Sportsman Lantern may not be the aesthetically pleasing lantern out there, but it does produce 300 lumens of light, which makes one of the brightest LED camping lantern available. Basically, 300 lumens is enough to illuminate your tent or cooking area with plenty of light.

The lantern runs on three D-size batteries. I recommend using “low-self discharge” NiMH batteries like Imedion D-size batteries (see our review of these batteries here).

The Rayovac Sportsman Lantern is available from Amazon for about $25.

The Most Versatile: Coleman LED Quad Lantern

Average Amazon rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars from 117+ reviewers

The Coleman LED Quad lantern produces a total of 190 lumens of light. It’s not as bright as the 300 lumen Rayovac Sportsman Lantern, but it does have a few compelling features. First, it has four detachable panels, allowing you split the lantern into four independent LED lights, each powered by their own AA batteries.  These lights are intended to be used as portable lights for trips to the bathroom or tent.

The base unit itself is powered by eight D-size batteries, providing a total of 75 hours of illumination.

I recommend using rechargeable Imedion D-size batteries for the base unit, and Eneloop AAs for the individual panels.

The Coleman LED Quad lantern is available from Amazon for about $60.

The Best Budget Mini-Lantern: Coleman Mini Lantern

Average Amazon rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars from 27+ reviewers

This LED lantern from Coleman is the highest rated AA-batery powered LED Lantern on Amazon. It shines with 85 lumens of light for 6 hours using just three AA batteries.

The Coleman 3AA High-Tech LED Mini Lantern is available at Amazon for around $20.

The Best Overall Mini Lantern: Black Diamond Apollo LED Lantern

Average Amazon rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars from 8+ reviewers

The Black Diamond Apollo lantern runs on 4 AA batteries. Reviewers like the even light of this lantern, which can shine at maximum of 80 lumens for 15 hours, or at (up to 60 hours at 10 lumens). The Apollo also features a dimmer switch and battery-life indicator.

The Black Diamond Apollo LED Lantern is available at Amazon for about $42.

In A Nutshell

The best rechargeable C-size batteries are Acculoop C cells, by Accupower. These batteries are the new low self-discharge NiMH (Nickel Metal-Hydride) cells, and they have a high capacity of 4500 mAhs (milliamp hours). Acculoop batteries are also rebranded as “AccuEvolution” — these are the same batteries marketed by a Michigan company in the USA with a partnership with Accupower in Austria.

The Details

Rechargeable batteries have made some real improvements in the last five years. Most notably, you can now get rechargeables that don’t go flat after a couple of months! The technology is called “low self-discharge” and means rechargeable batteries can hold 80% of their charge for a year. Low self-discharge batteries (LSD) NiMH cells were first introduced by Sanyo in their Eneloop AA cells in November 2005. Since then, other battery manufacturers have adopted this technology. Then in 2010, companies like Accupower and Maha started releasing LSD NiMH cells in C and D sizes.

An alkaline C cell is typically rated for about 8000 mAh, but only at a very low current (around 30 mA). When used at a load of 500 mA (such as flashlight), the capacity of an alkaline drops to about half. Basically, the advantage that alkaline  cells have over NiHM cells, is that they have a shelf life of about 10 years, with minimal self-discharge.

We recommend he Acculoop C cells, which are available from Amazon. A set of two Acculoop C cells costs around $15.

It is possible to get a higher capacity LSD C cells — the 5000 mAh Imedion C cells by Maha. However, they cost about $25 for a pack of 2, which is about $5 for a 500 mAh increase in capacity.

In A Nutshell

NiZn (Nickel-Zinc) batteries are a type of rechargeable AA battery that operates with a nominal voltage 1.6 volts, which is very close to the 1.5 volts of alkaline batteries. This makes NiZn battery perform well in high-drain devices like handheld games. However, NiZn batteries do not have a long life — after about 30-50 recharges, they tend to go flat easily. NiZn batteries also require a special charger optimized for their chemistry. Overall, these batteries are good for high-drain devices that require a high voltage, but whenever possible we recommend sticking with high-capacity LSD NiMH batteries.

The Details

Nickel-zince batteries have been around since the 1920s, but NiZn batteries only became available in the AA size for the consumer market in 2008. NiZn batteries works wells in devices that are finicky about voltage levels. Some devices even refuse to operate when 1.2 volt NiMH batteries are used. However, when freshly charged, the terminal voltage of NiZn batteries is around 1.85 volts, which can be hazardous to many battery-operated appliances — they are usually built to handle a range of 1.2 to 1.6 volts.

Another issue that photographers and other reviewers report is that NiZn batteries work well for the first 30 charges, then after this point they tend to self-discharge (go flat) quickly. However, others say the batteries perform well for a longer period of time. Usually these different experiences can be explained by how the batteries are used, and how often they are recharged. Overall, NiZn batteries are a good choice when a high-power, high-voltage battery is needed and longevity is not necessary.

NiZn are non-toxic batteries, and they are good candidates for recycling because the nickel inside is worth enough to cover the cost of recycling.

PowerGenix is developing next generation AA cells, they company says they expect them to available in the “second half of 2012″. PowerGenix is also working on NiZn batteries for electric and hybrid cars. It will take time for these batteries to catch up to and overtake the more common lithium-ion batteries, especially in this application.

Currently, only one company, Powergenix, makes NiZn AA batteries. You can find them available at Amazon — a charger and pack of 4 is priced at around $20.