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"Taxes" and "fun" clearly don't belong in the same sentence--unless you have a little imagination and a sense of humor as warped as ours (here's a hint: deductible bingo).

From tech tips on how to set up a room for massive tax filing to the perfect stress-relieving games and yummy tax-themed snacks, our party guide will help you make the most out of the necessary evil of preparing your yearly tax return.

See also:
Photos: TaxCut versus TurboTax
TaxCut in-depth review
TurboTax in-depth review

How to throw your own tax party

(Credit: Kent German/CBS Interactive)

The first numbers for 2008 are out and it appears that LG had a very good year. According to the South Korean newspaper JoongAng Daily, LG sold 100 million handsets last year, boosting it to third place worldwide and barely bumping Motorola to fourth place.

Nokia, of course, was the top dog. Preliminary numbers show that the Finnish giant sold 470 million handsets in 2008, putting it far ahead of Samsung, which claimed the number two spot with 200 million handset sold. Nokia shows no sign of losing its No. 1 status, even though Samsung pumps phones out nonstop.

Motorola, which is accustomed to third place in recent years, dropped to the fourth ranking with 99.9 million handsets sold. While that's not a huge difference between Moto and LG, it marks the end of a troubling year for the company.

Sony Ericsson brought up the rear with 96.6 million handsets sold.

(Source: JoongAng Daily via DigiTimes.)

This time of year there's no shortage of lists, everywhere you turn you're hammered with Top Ten and Best of 2008 harangues.

Me, I'm not going to waste your time raving about Portishead, TV on the Radio or Vampire Weekend's CDs. Why bother? I'd rather turn you onto great music that slipped between the cracks.

My favorite album of the year was JD Souther's "If The World Was You." JD was most famous for co-writing a bunch of 1970s era Eagles tunes, but this new CD demonstrates the Detroit-born, Amarillo, Texas-raised musician hasn't dried up in the intervening decades.

The new CD, recorded live in a Nashville studio, has a dark, brooding sound. JD's accompanying musicians are serious players. But it's the writing that kept this disc in heavy rotation in my house. There's a bit of the late, great Warren Zevon influence in there, so if you're a fan of 1970s Southern California rock If the World Was You would definitely be worth a listen. It's at least as good as Randy Newman's excellent "Harps and Angels" CD that was also released this year.

A friend turned me onto Lizz Wright's "The Orchard" CD and I couldn't get over her straight from the heart vocals. This woman can sing, this kind of depth of feeling is rare nowadays, but Wright comes from a different tradition.

After looking at countless laptops during 2008, a small handful have jumped out as personal favorites. I'm not saying these are the very best laptops of the year, nor the highest-rated--they're just the ones that struck me as particularly interesting, useful, or well-designed.

Chances are high that you'll disagree with some or all of this list--which is what makes the comment section below so handy. Share your personal favorites, and see how they stack up against mine.

Gateway P-7811FX
For a brief time in 2008, PC gamers had a single bright spot in their otherwise drab world (well, except for the success of World of Warcraft, I guess). Gateway made a series of FX-branded laptops that combined serious gaming power with ridiculously modest prices. The laptops, originally available at Best Buy stores, were very popular. In fact, the P-7811 version offered so much for so little, I couldn't imagine how Gateway was going to make money on these things.

Maybe they couldn't, because that P-7811 model was (very) quietly discontinued. The replacement model (the P-7801u) is about $300 more expensive and is no longer available at retail--only from specialty mail order outlets such as Newegg.

Lenovo IdeaPad U110
With low-cost Netbooks taking over the small form factor market in a big way, it was easy to forget that only a year ago, an 11- or 12-inch laptop would probably run $1,500-$2,500 or more. Sure these machines sported excellent industrial designs and fancy cases, but the low-voltage processors they used really didn't run much quicker than your average $500 Atom-powered Eee PC.

Still, it's nice to see the high-end ultraportable still has a little life in it, and the 11-inch Lenovo IdeaPad U110 from the company's new consumer-focused line is an impressive showpiece, with an intricately etched lid, a nice big keyboard, and even cool designs for the air vents.

HP Mini 1000
Let's be honest--for the most part, Netbooks are commodity products, using the same parts and components to largely the same effect. Therefore, any point of differentiation is a huge plus, and can even let you get away with charging a few bucks more than the competition.

HP's Mini 1000 has one major thing going for it. It largely solves the Netbook's tiny-key problem by including a really nicely designed almost full-size keyboard. Sure, the system has a few other quirks, such as a single audio jack and a weird proprietary memory stick port, but that very cool keyboard makes it our favorite of the current crop of Netbooks.

Apple MacBook
What else can we say about what is probably the single most popular laptop out there right now? The Intel-powered MacBooks have been winners since their debut, and the latest revision somehow manages to make them even better, with a thinner, lighter aluminum chassis and a killer giant touchpad.

As tinkerers and DIY types, we'll probably always be PC guys at heart, and clicking the giant button touchpad thing is about as awkward as using a Blackberry Storm (just turn on tapping, you'll be much happier), but the incredibly useful three- and four-finger gesture controls have totally ruined us for PC touchpads.

Sony Vaio AW125
Every laptop stable needs a massive desktop replacement multimedia model. With a big push from the factories that make the actual glass for the screens to move to 16:9 displays, expect more and more 16- and 18-inch laptops next year--or just get ahead of the curve and jump in now.

While not really radically different from the competition, Sony's was not only the slickest-looking of the initial run of 18-inch systems we checked out, it was also the cheapest Blu-ray model.

Dead Space was not only one of the best games of 2008, it was also the scariest.

This year was certainly a great year to be a gamer. As usual, the first three-quarters of the year had an occasion hit or two, but come October it felt like we were bombarded with an infinite amount of must-play titles.

Filtering through the hundreds of releases in 2008, we've narrowed a list down an elite crop of games that stand out among the rest. We've played everything out there and made sure at least one exclusive representative from each platform made the list. So in no particular order may we present to you the top 10 video games of 2008.

Didn't see your favorite game here? Sound off in the comments section.

If you've followed Crave in the last several weeks, you've probably come across CNET editor Dong Ngo's stories from Vietnam. Dong returned to his homeland for a visit, and he wrote a number of pieces chronicling his impressions of how technology has permeated the culture there.

Dong landed back in San Francisco Wednesday night and he checked in with his CNET colleagues at the office Thursday morning. Watch the video (right) to see a very jet-lagged Dong tell CNET News' Charles Cooper what he observed during his trip.

And be sure to catch up on Dong's series, which covers topics including widespread software piracy, solar water heaters in Ho Chi Minh City, and the young generation's common social practice of hanging out in groups but focusing more on laptops, cell phones, and game consoles than each other. It's good stuff.

Technicians reassemble my broken Dell Inspiron 530s' parts into a new case with a working power supply.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CBS Interactive)

HANOI, Vietnam--Prior to my trip to Vietnam, I bought a Dell Inspiron 530s desktop computer as a special American gift for my 11-year-old niece in Hanoi.

Despite the relatively light weight and small form factor of the PC, at San Francisco International Airport, I ended up having to pay a $60 overweight fee. This was mostly because the airline significantly lowered the allowed weight for checked-in luggage, and I wasn't aware of that.

Upon arriving in Hanoi, I personally delivered the gift and set it up for the little girl. Everybody gathered around with excitement as they waited for the moment of truth. As I plugged the power cord into the wall socket, we heard a "pop" sound and smoke came out of the tower. I was dumbfounded. "So much for American-standard quality!" I thought to myself.

But it was not America's fault, it was me. As it turned out, Vietnam uses a 220-voltage power standard, while America uses a 110-voltage one. Out of excitement and ignorance, I plugged the computer in without switching the power supply unit (PSU) of the computer to support 220 volts and, of course, it burned! It was pure physics.

What was hard to quantify was my niece's level of frustration and my own disappointment. I personally picked the specs and rebuilt the machine to run Windows XP (from its manufacturer-installed Windows Vista). Just one moment of negligence, and everything seemed ruined.