Productopia

Not only is the Apple iPhone a consumer and reviewer favorite, this year, it's pretty much the coolest Halloween costume we've seen. Via the gang at TUAW, we give you Reko Rivera and John Savio in their incredibly awesome iPhone getups. The 85-pound costumes  feature 42-inch LCD TVs taking video from John and Reko's actual iPhones, which the guys can actually use to change what everyone sees on the big displays. Power comes from car batteries mounted inside the costumes, which not only supply juice to the LCD TVs, but also keep Rivera and Savio's iphones charged while they're out winning costume contests. Total amount spent on the two costumes is around $2,000, and the full backstory is posted on Savio's YouTube page, where you can watch the costumes in action. Trick or treat, everybody!

One problem with professional reviews of steam irons is that the magazines conducting the tests, including Consumer Reports and Good Housekeeping, evaluate brand-new irons. And no professional testing on new irons can predict whether an iron will still be working in a year or two.

The unfortunate fact, supported by the hundreds of mediocre reviews on Amazon.com and other sites, is that every iron will break or leak at some point. The typical lifespan seems to be two or three years -- regardless of what you paid for it initially. Our steam irons update recommends irons that hold up better than others in user reviews.

Between now and November 8, if you have an old drill -- even one that's not working -- you can bring it to your local Home Depot and trade it in for a 15-percent discount on a new lithium-ion cordless drill. The promotion is part of Home Depot's "Eco Options" drive, which is focused on getting customers to use more energy-efficient tools, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  We're kicking ourselves because we recently tossed a couple of old drills that hadn't worked in years during a recent garage clean-up. If your current drill is old and busted, don't make the same mistake we did. This might a good time to upgrade.

The results of ConsumerReports.org's eagerly-anticipated annual auto reliability survey are in, and once again, Japanese and Korean manufacturers lead the way in terms of the number of cars displaying above-average reliability. Many of the survey's granular details are still tucked behind CR's pay wall and available only to subscribers, but Consumer Reports has made the overview summary open to all, and added a fully-accessible blog post with an interesting rundown of the most and least reliable vehicles by automaker. Additionally, Autoblog.com has posted ConsumerReports.org's official press release, along with an image gallery of charts that will likely appear in the print magazine, and are probably included in the content that would otherwise be limited to the subscribers. All told, if you want a good general rundown, you can see a lot of useful information for free.