Digital projectors are the best way to get the biggest possible image for a PowerPoint presentation or a movie. But the projectors are often pretty big themselves, with even most "pocket projectors" too big to stuff into the typical pocket or laptop bag.

That is changing. A new miniature-chip technology from Texas Instruments called pico is making digital projectors truly portable, instead of merely luggable. For the past couple of weeks, I've been using two of the first pico-based projectors on the market, Dell's M109S and...