I've shopped high and low for these little gizmos, and the best deal I've found is from PC Cables, which sells the IDE DIST FL001 USB Flex , plus $4.95 for shipping (I know: ugh). If you know of a better/cheaper source, be sure to share a link in the comments.

Even at $9 out the door, this is a terrific little accessory for anyone looking to reduce USB cable clutter.

I recently spent a few weeks using a laptop as my primary PC. It was fine, but the one thing I really missed was the dual-monitor setup I had with my desktop. Well, that's no problem. One of my monitors supports HDMI, and the laptop has an HDMI output. With two shakes of an HDMI cable I'd be back in dual-LCD business.

Or so I thought. Although both displays have a native resolution of 1920 by 1080 (also known as 1080p), and although I'd configured Windows to use that resolution for both screens, the second monitor displayed a black bar (roughly two inches thick) around the image. In other words, it wasn't running full-screen, despite having all the proper settings.