These retro phones won't bust the budget

Gifts for under $100
I've told you here and there about Hulger's (www.hulgershop.com) old-fashioned handsets for newfangled phones. But that is not the only way to go retro with your mobile phone or your Skype phone service. Yubz (www.yubz.com) is doing something similar to what Hulger does, with heavy-looking handsets that appear to be from the set of "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid." And you can secure one of these phones from Yubz or one of its retailer partners for less than what Hulger is charging.

Yubz (right) also offers a wider variety of colors and patterns. What you will miss out on, however, is the handcrafted cachet of Hulger's Pappa*Phone (about $300).

The latest Yubz handset is a metallic-colored number that will sell for about $60 when it comes out in December. Yubz's other models start at about $45. Its artist series phones cost a bit more. You can also get a wireless Bluetooth Yubz handset for about $100.

The Yubz website lists retailers worldwide that carry its products.

wireless

3G phone's best feature is keyboard

I love the dewy red color of the Pantech Matrix phone I've been playing with these past two weeks.

It seems appropriate for a phone designed for pleasure, not business. (The Matrix is available in other colors, as well.) I suppose, however, that it can boost your fashion-conscious tween's productivity, depending on how you define productivity.

The Matrix is a 3G phone with both a slider-style numerical keypad for dialing and a sideways-opening standard keyboard for thumbing out text messages and e-mails. This is the phone's best feature.

With a name like Matrix, you might expect a slick (if vaguely sinister) tool for darting in and out of cyberspace. But this is a chunky monkey, at roughly five ounces and almost an inch thick. Its shell seems too fragile to withstand damage from a short drop.

The phone also comes with a 1.3-megapixel camera, which is just about rock-bottom quality for a camera phone these days.

The Matrix works with AT&T Navigator, AT&T Mobile Music, and the carrier's other services. It's available for $80 from AT&T (with a two-year contract and rebate).

Urban/suburban survival

Device can wring drinkable water from the air outside for 11 cents a gallon

I've got a rain barrel, but I wouldn't drink from it. The lid of that green monster behind my Milton home is covered with bits of a bird's nest and a few other gross products of late fall. But a device that captures moisture suspended in the air? I'd take a chance on that.

WaterMill, from Kelowna, B.C.-based Element Four (www.elementfour.com), is something like an outdoor dehumidifier that you mount on the side of your house. The UFO-shaped device draws moisture out of the air to produce up to three gallons of water per day for drinking and cooking.

That should take a bite out of the water bill for most families.

And it doesn't matter how filthy the air might be, according to Element Four. What you drink from the WaterMill will be filtered, as pure as the water from a mountain stream. One reason you install the WaterMill on the outside of your home is that the air inside is more polluted, according to Element Four.

Another reason: The 45-pounds WaterMill is big and ugly, more than two feet across and about a foot deep.

It's an energy sipper, though: A gallon of water should cost you about 11 cents to produce.

Those in sunnier climes can take their water-making entirely off-grid, by powering the WaterMill with a 600-watt solar panel, according to Element Four.

Available in February 2009, you will be able to buy and install the WaterMill and use it to feed a fridge's water dispenser or a spigot fixed to your kitchen sink. It costs about $2,000.