(FORTUNE Magazine) – One of the most indispensible tools of campus life is the cellphone, and I have two recommendations: the T-Mobile color Sidekick phone/PDA/web browser and e-mail device ($300) and the Nokia 3650 (right; T-Mobile recently offered it free with service activation). The 3650 sports a built-in digital camera, oversized color screen, and other goodies. The phones are so much fun, you might even call home.

The new Canon i560 desktop photo printer ($130) churns out school papers at a top speed of 22 pages per minute, which is handy when you procrastinate until the last possible moment, but it also prints brilliant, borderless color photos up to 8.5 by 11 inches. If you're taking a digital camera to school, take this printer too.

Is there cable TV in the dorm room? Sweet. Samsung's 17-inch 172MP LCD display ($789) saves precious desk space and doubles as a television. It comes with a snap-on TV tuner, allowing you to watch MTV's Sorority Life in picture-in-picture mode while researching Elizabethan literature on the web. Text, graphics, and video sparkle at the maximum resolution of 1280 by 1024.

Keychain drives are the new floppies, only smaller (about the size of your pinkie) and a lot faster. Just plug the M-Systems DiskOnKey USB 2.0 flash memory keychain drive ($420 for the one-gigabyte version, left; www.diskonkey.com) into the USB 2.0 port of your roommate's computer and copy hundreds of MP3 songs in a flash, assuming you're not violating anyone's copyright, of course. Cheaper models are also available, starting at $60 for 64 megabytes.

Here's one technology product where bugs are welcome. The Olympus MIC-D digital microscope and camera ($995, www.mic-d.com) connects via USB to a Windows PC (sorry, Mac users) and displays highly magnified (21X to 270X) images on a computer monitor instead of through the eyepiece, which makes it ideal for sharing. The images can be captured via the built-in camera and saved, or posted to a website.

What luck! There's a hot spot at your local bar! Press the button on the Kensington Wi-Fi Finder ($18 on www.dell.com, up to $30 elsewhere), and it will tell you if there's an available 802.11b wireless network nearby and the relative strength of the signal. (Coming soon: an updated version that can detect faster 802.11g networks.) It's smart enough to ignore cordless phones, microwave ovens, and other unwanted 2.4-gigahertz signals.

If the school prefers one brand or model of computer (and you don't already have a PC), go with what's recommended: Technical assistance will almost certainly be easier to come by. If the school has no preference, the best value comes from Apple, even though prices tend to be higher than for most Windows-based computers. The 17-inch Apple iMac with SuperDrive ($1,799 and up) is a space-saving beauty. On the portable side, I'd pick the 14-inch Apple iBook ($1,499). Still, Windows machines dominate in the work world. On the desktop, it's hard to beat the new Dell Dimension 2400 (above) for value. Prices fluctuate, but recently a model with a 2.2-gigahertz Pentium 4, 256MB RAM, a 40-gigabyte hard drive, a DVD-ROM drive, a 17-inch tube display, and Windows XP Home Edition could be had for $579. There are suddenly a number of decent laptops available for less than $1,000, but I'd recommend stretching for the surprising vpr Matrix 220A5 (below). Yes, it's a Best Buy house brand, but it lives up to the best-buy moniker. For $1,300, you get a 15.2-inch widescreen display and a slot-loading DVD-ROM CD-RW combo drive--cool!--with a 2.2GHz Pentium mobile processor, 512MB RAM, a 40GB hard drive, and nVidia GeForce4 graphics.

At college, notebook computers have been known to walk. The Kensington MicroSaver Guaranteed Notebook Replacement security lock ($45 on www.buy.com, up to $68 elsewhere) is a six-foot steel leash with a Kevlar core. If someone manages to cut the cord and steal your notebook, Kensington will pay up to $1,500 for a replacement, based on the Orion Blue Book price for used computers.

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For more tech advice, see Peter Lewis's weblog at www.fortune.com/ontech.