An artifact courtesy of the not-as-useful-as-you-think-it-is department: a retractable USB cable. Space is certainly at a premium in every nerd’s backpack, but come on. The only time I think something like this would be useful is during some Mission-Impossible-strength corporate espionage, and you’re gingerly feeding this cable from behind the slats of an air duct, and need to be ready to snap it back at a moment’s notice. But what would you be trying to do anyway? Charge the enemy’s BlackBerry?

Worse, because it has to coil around a plastic pulley, the cable is thin and unsettling. I couldn’t get rid of it fast enough.