By Livia Bergovoy…

Just when we thought we had every imaginable gadget, the SmartShopper was placed in the reviewers’ bins, here at Digital Family Advisor.

So we began to examine it. It looks “old fashioned.” It has an old fashioned LCD screen, it’s big and clunky looking. We pressed the “Record” button and the old fashioned LCD Screen lit up with “Speak Now.”

In short order, we began to become anamored of it. There’s something special about the SmartShopper. It is so simple and so easy to learn to use. It has a magnet back, so you can easily attach it to and remove it from most fridge doors. That was the coolest — you don’t have to drill holes to mount it and you can easily take to your desk! (Just don’t mount anything magnetic to your metal computer case – magnets and hard drives are enemies because magnets can mess with the data on your hard drive.)

Yes, our desk, where we so frequently remember we used our last onion, and we need glue for that ceramic mug we love (been safekeeping that little chipped piece for weeks)… Speak to it and the SmartShopper almost invariable finds the item. If it doesn’t you can train it to learn to recognize items. If you’re very organized you can peruse the 83 page pamphlet the SmartShopper comes with, Master List of Pre-Loaded Items and get a sense of the items you may want to add.

Then, when you’re ready to go shopping, just press the print button the list presents itself with old fashioned printer noise (not too loud), on old fashioned thermal paper – there is a housing for a small roll of thermal paper in the SmartShopper.

So, it’s cute and fun! but will we use it regularly as long as we can lift a pen or pencil to jot those items down on any scrap of paper? Who knows?  It’s such a cute tchotchka. And the four AA batteries it needs are still running weeks after we began this review. Probably because the old fashioned monochrome LCD screen doesn’t use that much juice.

Go to SmartShopperUSA.com to find out where to get it and the little roles of thermal paper in time for the holidays; for Tech Support, and so on… Even the website has that old fashioned look and feel. Kinda nostalgic.