"I've always loved flying," says Stuart Ross, a commercial airline pilot for whom flying a 767 to the Mediterranean and back a couple of times a week just isn't enough of a thrill. "A lot of my colleagues get involved in restoring old fighter planes and things like that," he says, "but I thought, sod it, let's go for something a bit different."

So Ross retreated to the bottom of his garden in Horsham, West Sussex, and spent four years and the best part of £100,000 building a rocketbelt - a Buck Rogers-style flying backpack that can shoot the wearer 1,000 feet into the air at 60mph. With testing of this most sought-after of gadgets nearing completion, Ross is preparing to take his rocketbelt on the road.

High flyer

"It's designed, quite simply, to strap on and fly," he says of the device, which will look pleasingly familiar to sci-fi fans. The rocketbelt consists of a pair of stainless steel fuel tanks, a gas tank, a rocket motor and two downward-facing rocket nozzles. The whole device weighs almost 60kg (130lb) - even without a pilot strapped into it - and is powered by highly volatile 90% pure hydrogen peroxide. Although Ross talks down the obvious dangers involved, he understandably keeps the rocketbelt tethered to a frame during testing. With an earsplitting burst of superheated steam, the contraption lifts Ross gently into the air and, for a few noisy seconds, he is flying. "The adrenalin rush starts three hours before you fly it and finishes when you go to bed," he says.

Originally imagined in Amazing Stories comic books and Buster Crabbe film serials, the flying backpack - or jetpack - is the most desirable and elusive of sci-fi gadgets. Today we carry personal communication devices in our pockets, walk through automatic sliding doors, buy robots to vacuum our carpets, and can even book trips into space - if we have a spare $200,000 (£127,450). But we still can't strap on a jetpack and zoom off to Tesco for our groceries.

This isn't for want of trying: inventors have been working on creating real working jetpacks for more than 60 years, with mixed results. An attempt to build a rocket-powered flying backpack was allegedly made by the Nazis towards the end of the second world war, and further attempts were made in the US after Nazi rocket experts were transferred to Alabama as part of Project Paperclip. None got more than a few inches off the ground.

The rocketbelt that Ross has based his design on was invented in the 1950s by Bell Aircraft Company engineer Wendell Moore, and then developed into the 1960s for the US army as a proposed method for moving troops around battlefields. However, the device had a fatal flaw: its heavy fuel consumption meant flight times were limited to just 21 seconds - too short for any practical use. The army withdrew its funding, and Bell turned the rocketbelt into a spectacular entertainment attraction.

One of the original Bell rocketbelt pilots was Bill Suitor, recruited as a 19-year-old while mowing Wendell Moore's lawn. "It sure beat the hell out of working for a living," says Suitor. Now in his 60s, he tests rocketbelts for Thunderbolt Aerosystems, a Californian business that wants to make rocketbelts available "to the masses". Thunderbolt is one of three companies offering to sell rocketbelts to the public for upwards of $100,000. However, like Mexico's Tecnologia Aeroespacial Mexicana and Colorado-based JetPack International, it has yet to produce evidence of a single sale.

Happy landing

Ross was inspired by Suitor and has sought advice from him for his own rocketbelt. In preparation for his upcoming untethered test flights, Ross also sought advice from the Civil Aviation Authority, who referred him to a psychiatrist from their medical department. Friends have suggested that the best place for Ross to test his creation might be the car park of a casualty department, but aside from a few hydrogen peroxide blisters and some ruined shoes, he has avoided mishaps.

While Ross will soon be taking to the skies, he can't see jetpacks becoming widely available to the public in the foreseeable future. His original plan was to build five rocketbelts and invite novices along to learn how to fly them. He admits, however, that insurance difficulties might scupper that idea. "I guess we'll cross that bridge when we need to go public," he says. For now, Ross plans to fly the rocketbelt at lucrative paid bookings around the world, and says it will be used to promote a "top secret" new product in the run-up to next Christmas. "Hopefully in 2009 we'll be able to take it out on the road," he says. "The rocketbelt will always interest the public and amaze spectators. There really is nothing else like it in the world."

• Paul Brown is the author of The Rocketbelt Caper: A True Tale of Invention, Obsession and Murder (rocketbeltcaper.co.uk)

HP got into the netbook market six months ago with the HP2133, but its original machine ran Vista on a slow Via C7 processor. (See my mini-review.) Now the world's biggest PC maker has followed Asus and others with the HP Mini 1000 series, which runs Windows XP on a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor. Prices start at $399.99. HP's sales blurb says:

The HP Mini 1000 is the perfect on-the-go companion for the ultra-mobile consumer. Stay connected with more people, in more places. Our HP Mini is available with an 8.9" or 10.2" diagonal display, weighs only 2.25 lb., and has a nearly full sized keyboard. Personal computing just got a whole lot smaller.

The basic price gets you an 8.9 inch screen and half a gig of memory. It costs an extra $50 for the 10.2 inch screen (but it still does WSVGA: ie 1024 x 600 pixels), and an extra $25 to get 1GB of memory. Since the Flash drive is only 8GB, you may also want to pay an extra $40 for a 16GB solid state drive or $50 for a slow (4,200 RPM) 60GB hard drive. However, a fully expanded version does not look very competitively priced.

Also, you can't upgrade the operating system to Vista (a Linux version will appear later) or upgrade the Intel 950 graphics, and there's no long-life battery.

However, you can get a special Vivian Tam edition, which is red and peonic. HP announced this on September 9 (press release) when "Vivienne Tam and HP unveiled the design of the new must-have digital clutch on the catwalk today at Tam's fashion show during New York's Fashion Week at Bryant Park." It says:

The peony design features a unique blend of Asian and Western cultures, antiquity and modern style, technology and fashion. It was inspired by Tam's "China Chic" style, which is recognized from the runways in Milan to the Olympics in Beijing and represents her personal mantra to live well and be beautiful.

Gizmodo has pictures of the machine, but not the fashion show. Funny idea.

However, the HP2133 was a solid and beautifully made bit of kit. The Mini 1000 looks like a standard plastic netbook, and it looks like something that HP has bought in from one of the usual Taiwanese netbook suppliers. In other words, I'm guessing that it's a bit of badge-engineering, where the 2133 was real HP engineering.

Sure, the HP2133 is bigger, but its aluminium/magnesium construction, quality keyboard, scratch-resistant WXGA screen, Windows Vista and $1,500 look-and-feel make it a much more desirable machine … if HP would just upgrade the spec a bit. Fitting an Atom would be a start, but there's a petition asking for a Nano CPU, an nVidia MCP79u GPU, and a 6-cell battery, which would make it a killer product. But don't get your hopes up: the petition has only 33 signatures.

What's your favourite piece of technology, and why?
I would say hands down, bar none, my iPhone. If you'd shown this to Benjamin Franklin his head would have exploded. The user interface is incredible – if I can use it, anyone can. It's designed for the simple-minded. It's just awesome.

How has it improved your life?
I wouldn't say it has. It's actually a bit of a distraction, though they always say that technology will free up more of our time for us. I think I've begun to take for granted how easily information can swirl around me. I don't know what I'd be able to do if I ever lost it: it's made me more dependent on technology and it's made me lazier because you expect everything to be at your fingertips.

When was the last time you used it, and what for?
About four seconds ago, playing Scrabble with my wife.

What additional features would you add if you could?
Video. And the camera isn't that great: the images it captures are not that high quality.

Do you think it will be obsolete in 10 years' time?
Probably. But it feels so elegant that I think the design will last.

What one tip would you give to non-iPhone users?
Jump off a building. Nah, just kidding!

Do you consider yourself to be a Luddite or a nerd?
I think I'm neither. When it comes to fixing anything though, I freeze; I become a Luddite.

What's the most expensive piece of technology you've ever owned?
It would have to be an automobile, right? The hybrid I have now is one of the least expensive cars I've ever had. I had a BMW 318i convertible once, the ultimate driving machine. Of course, it didn't have GPS in it. I sold it to Dominic Monaghan [Merry in the Lord of the Rings trilogy], before he did the TV show Lost.

Mac or PC?
Please! Next question, you already know the answer to that one.

What song is at the top of your iPod's top 25 most played?
I Will Follow You Into the Dark by Death Cab For Cutie.

Will robots rule the world?
They will, of course they will. I met someone the other day who's working on artificial intelligence, so I say go ahead, let them run it.

What piece of technology would you most like to own?
A jet, there's no question about that – then I could fly over there [to London] and we could do this interview in person. Or maybe some military-grade fuel cell technology, so I could be the next Henry Ford – I'd like to own the patent.

Sean Astin played Samwise Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Twoflower in Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic, out on DVD and Blu-ray on November 3

It could be argued that technology is diminishing the experience of going on holiday, but enriching the memory. Having just returned from a trip to Rome, Florence and Venice it was interesting to note that for lots of people it seemed more important to get a photo or video clip of an attraction than to savour it at the moment of contact.

It may be inevitable because of the vast crowds that pour into the tourist areas, making it difficult to enjoy a personal experience. Even in October, if you visit St Mark's Basilica in Venice you have to walk along a predetermined route without stopping, in order to accommodate the numbers queuing outside. In the case of St Mark's, you are not allowed to take photos, so you won't get the experience of emotion recollected in tranquillity that a photo might have allowed. Galleries and churches have yet to come to terms with the growth of digital cameras and cameraphones. St Mark's church bans them, but in St Peter's in Rome (though not the Sistine Chapel) you can use cameras including flash with abandon. The Louvre in Paris follows a laissez-faire approach, but if you try to take a snap at the Tate or National Gallery in London, attendants are on to you in a flash, so to speak.

Maybe the European Commission should harmonise policy with a simple rule: everyone should be allowed to record images, as it is now part of the experience of visiting a gallery, but with a total ban on flash, which is disruptive to other visitors and can accelerate the deterioration of old pictures. The trouble with this is that turning off flash from a lot of cameras, and being confident enough to know it has been turned off, is not always easy.

In these conditions I found my recently purchased Flip (flipvideo.co.uk) surprisingly effective. Flip is a sub-£100 video camera that ought not to exist. It doesn't do anything your digital camera or cameraphone can't do, it adds yet another gadget to your pocket and it doesn't have flash. The reason it is becoming the latest must-have gadget for the YouTube generation is precisely because it is so easy to use. Instead of four or five moves to activate the video on your phone, you simply point the Flip at your subject and press a large red button to start and stop it. Flip now has several devices, and others from Kodak (with the Zi6) and Creative (with the Vado) are all worth looking at.

Suddenly, technology gives you the chance to record the highlights of your holiday for later enjoyment. I started taking a series of short clips of everything I did on a day – from the experience in a museum to the inside of a restaurant. Taking a 15-second video sweep of the inside of the Santa Croce basilica revealing the resting places of Florence's favourite (though under-appreciated at the time) sons, Machiavelli, Michelangelo and Galileo will bring back images of the holiday later in a way that fading memories cannot. You can be your own Boswell by adding a commentary. The main holiday memories can easily be contained within the hour or so of video before plugging into the USB port of your computer for automatic uploading.

Technology is also subtly changing holidays through the emergence – as the Luddite resistance of the mobile operators crumbles – of unlimited tariffs, so you are not charged ludicrous sums to download data. It makes guidebooks almost superfluous. Visiting a church, you can not only read its history but also the details of most of the paintings as well from a mobile search engine.

Where all this is leading, goodness knows. If the world's tourist areas get so crowded (Venice's 60,000 inhabitants get upwards of 20 million visitors a year), the arrival of high-definition life-size videoconferencing means some people might prefer an experience at home to the energy-guzzling experience of a visit. It is no substitute for the real thing. But that doesn't mean it won't eventually happen.

vic.keegan@guardian.co.uk

I have collected vinyl for 20 years and have more than 20,000 12-inch singles. Apart from spending months with a USB turntable, is there any way to transfer them to computer? If I were to download all the songs from a filesharing service, would I be breaking copyright laws?

People who download from filesharing services such as LimeWire and eDonkey are breaking the law - even if they already own a copy in another format - but the music industry has so far focused on tracking down those who upload music so others can copy it.

In fact, according to strict legal interpretation, you are not even supposed to rip music from the CDs or vinyl you own. Of course, that doesn't stop millions of people doing it, and the ripping rule is now considered an archaic piece of legislation that would crumble if anybody ever challenged it.

Whatever you decide to do, the real problem with having such an vast catalogue of music is that many of the more obscure tracks are going to be difficult to find anywhere. After all, even if you could find 80% of the records you own online, you'd still be left with 4,000 singles to copy. You may need to start getting used to the idea of spending some serious time with your turntables.

Is there a cheap (preferably free) program that will wipe the contents of both Macs and PCs? I have a couple of old computers I want to get rid of, but am concerned about sensitive data remaining.

Lots of us recycle our computers by passing them on to friends, schools or other worthwhile causes, but it's worth thinking about what will happen to the data on your machine. Simply deleting files won't be enough to stop someone getting hold of them, should they want to. That's why you can sometimes recover lost files or photos even if they seem to have been erased.

The most effective way to wipe a disk is to copy over every single piece of information again and again with blank data, until all trace has gone. Macs have a built-in tool for this, Disk Utility (it's in the applications/utilities folder), but to be sure that everything has gone, set it to pass over your drive the maximum 35 times. It will take a while, but it's worth it.

For a Windows PC, I'd recommend downloading a free tool such as Darik's Boot And Nuke (dban.org) or Secure Erase from the University of California (icanhaz.com/erase). They're not so straightforward, but the accompanying instructions should help you through.