Gadgets: These StaySafe LED lights are perfect for roadside emergencies

What is it? Remember those old roadside flares that looked like a stick of dynamite and burned like a torch?

These days technology has brought us LED warning lights that are really bright and durable, and they won't burn you. The StaySafe Buddie LED Emergency Roadside Flashing Warning Lights are powered by AAA batteries and are perfect to keep in your trunk to warn others if you have a roadside emergency.

They come in three-packs of lights.

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Parallels Toolbox, from the maker of software that runs Windows alongside the Mac OS, has taken just about all the useful utilities and put them in one place. You can archive files you don't use much anymore, and then unarchive them. You can disable pop-ups during presentations. There are keystrokes for putting the PC or Mac to sleep.

In its latest version, for both Windows and Macs, Parallels Toolbox has grown in scope and simplicity. The titles (archive, for example) are self-explanatory, and their execution is much simpler than similar shareware programs of decades past.

For example, there's an app that will free up memory, similar to shareware ones that typically messed up memory functions in the early days of Windows.

Unlike its shareware counterparts, there's a "clean drive" program that gives users a fighting chance to choose which programs to delete permanently and which to keep. There's even an "airplane mode" in the Mac version that turns off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

There are several versions of Parallels Toolbox, including the Teams version for $80 a year; a screen and video version for visual content for $10; a collection for students, teachers and small business owners and others for $10; and a collection of the dozens of apps for $20 a year.

The $20 version is a bargain, and, unlike shareware, all the apps work as advertised.