IRL: Rosetta Stone, PocketWizard and the TomTom Via 1530

Welcome to IRL, an ongoing feature where we talk about the gadgets, apps and toys we're using in real life and take a second look at products that already got the formal review treatment.

Fun fact: this edition of IRL was compiled and timed up about a month ago -- well before we set foot in Vegas to spend a week at CES. We figured, we'd be too busy covering the show, and that we'd be too exhausted afterward to immediately get back to our regularly scheduled workloads. (Ed note: I hope I came out alive -- Dana.) At this point, of course, CES has come and gone, and despite the 18-hour work days, we'd say we had a good time. Nonetheless, we need the literary equivalent of a Tums after a seven-day avalanche of posts, and we suspect you do too. What better, then, but a column about older tech we've lived with a while? We even threw a CD-ROM mention in there for variety's sake.