Lifehacker has a nice round-up of very useful software tools for the returning student, from printable graph paper, to socially networked class notes, to Google Book Search and Google Scholar. Forget school kids, *I* plan to make use of a bunch of this stuff. I would add JetEye to this list. I continue to find it a very useful tools for building up databuckets of info, images, notes, etc.
Hardware Beyond the Hype