We built Medusa here at SnapStream to show off the new multi-tuner capabilities of Beyond TV 3.5. Yes, it's true: some TiVo's and other PVRs let you record two shows at the same time. But how about turning up the volume on that idea? How about recording SIX of your favorite shows at the same time? Well, that's what we set off to create using off-the-shelf computer parts and Beyond TV 3.5.

So we agree that not everyone needs a PVR with six TV tuners -- not unless you have a big family and watch a lot of TV or if you live in a fraternity/sorority house -- but Medusa gives you an idea of the possibilities with SnapStream's Beyond TV 3.5. Beyond TV 3.5 delivers a big punch! Be sure and check it out.

What you are about to read are my impressions, as a devout PC user, of the Apple way of life.

The MSRP on the system when I bought it was $2999 ($2699 with a student discount). Since then, it has dropped to $2499 ($2299 with a student discount) with the dual 2.5GHz system taking its place at the $2999 pricepoint. Needless to say, at almost $3000, the G5 was one expensive system considering its specs.

There is a bit less cable clutter with a Mac, but it's nothing too significant ... The ADC interface cuts down significantly on cable clutter, since three cables are now merged into one; unfortunately, there is only a single ADC port on the video card, meaning that I had to use an ADC to DVI adaptor for the second display. [But] the ADC to DVI adaptor is pretty expensive (around $150).

Customization is much more possible (and easy to do) under OS X than any variant of Windows that I have ever encountered. Icon sizes are just the beginning; through the view options menu alone, you can change the positioning of the labels on the icons, the text size as well as the normal array of Windows options. And any changes you make here occur in real time - no clicking "OK" or "Apply". Just check a box and it happens instantaneously; and uncheck it, and everything goes back to normal. It's a small thing, but as I soon found out, much of OS X's appeal to me came in tiny gems like this.

There is one aspect of the keyboard shortcut support that OS X does fall behind on, and that is support for keyboard shortcuts in dialog boxes. In some dialog boxes, hitting Command and the letter of the option you want to select will work, but in others, it will not. Furthermore, finding out the correct key to hit to select the option that you want is most definitely a guessing game, as there are no underlined characters or anything indicating what key to hit. [For me, this is a woeful problem in OS X usability. --Paul]

The biggest complaint that I both had and levied against was that it always seemed like you had more applications opened than what you wanted. In Windows, once all of the windows of an application were closed, the application itself was usually exited. Under OS X, until you actually quit the application, regardless of how many or how few windows of it that are still open, the application remains running.

Multi-tasking under OS X works just like it [does] under Windows ... OS X does one thing very well that Windows does not - the foreground application is never intruded upon by any other application that's running. [Well. OS X also does one thing very poorly that XP does well - the application that wants your attention trigers a very annoying dock icon bounce that NEVER stops until you address it. On the other hand, I've been bitten by Windows' habit of jumping a backgroun app to the front enough to admit it's a problem. --Paul]

Since the OS X desktop environment is completely OpenGL accelerated, the performance of features like Exposé are not CPU limited - instead, they are GPU limited. Luckily, using Exposé with many windows open is not very stressful on even a Radeon 9600, but you do run out of video memory very quickly - in which case, your system ends up swapping to main memory over the AGP bus, making the Exposé animation considerably choppy.

Although the performance of OS X on the dual 2GHz G5 system that I'd been running was definitely acceptable, there is definitely room for improvement. The overall responsiveness of the system was decent, but go back to using a top-of-the-line PC in Windows for a few minutes, and you definitely feel a bit sluggish on the G5 ... I've already mentioned video memory as being a bottleneck under OS X, thanks to the OpenGL accelerated UI. But luckily, with a more expensive video card (note: it's a shame that even a $3000 G5 comes with a measly ATI Radeon 9600 - shame on you Apple), that problem can be resolved.

The obvious requirement for any OS that caches heavily is a lot of memory; while my system shipped with 512MB of memory, I quickly found the need to upgrade to more. At first, it was 2GB, then 4GB and I even contemplated going up to the 8GB limit; although, with 4GB, I definitely have memory to spare. [So, that's insane. I'm definitely in Power User territory, and I've never needed to go past 1 GB of RAM on Windows. --Paul]

My G5 machine crashes a bit less than any of my Windows XP machines ... Apple has it very easy. They have complete control over the hardware and drivers that go into every machine they build, they don't have to deal with multiple chipsets for a particular platform, and they don't even have to deal with multiple video card vendors. Apple controls every aspect of the hardware and software that goes into their computers. There are no strange driver or BIOS revisions out of Taiwan that don't play well with some configurations, and there are no worries about memory timings set too aggressively causing even the slightest bit of instability. ... OS X [is] a bit more "stable" of a platform than Windows, but also, remember that the tight quality control that Apple has over the components that go into their systems does also play a very large part in assuring stability.

The end result is that my Mac is a bit more stable than my PCs. It's not night and day, and the Mac does crash, just like my PCs do - it just crashes a little less frequently.

The system is incredibly quiet. I'd say that it's definitely on par with the quietest PCs I've ever used. You do notice it when the fans spin up and yes, upgrading to a Radeon 9800 Pro did make the system noticeably louder - courtesy of the 9800 Pro's fan. The 9600 that ships with the system is passively cooled, so it managed to spoil me.

As I mentioned before, the 2GHz G5 processors that were in the system didn't "feel" slow, but they definitely didn't feel like the fastest things out there. The system itself could use a little kick in the pants. I'm hoping that the new 2.5GHz system will alleviate some of that feeling, but at another $3000, it's difficult to justify the upgrade. That being said, it's not a system with which I find myself complaining about speed - mostly due to the performance of a couple of key applications as well as OS X's excellent job of caching.

The keyboard and mouse both look great but fall flat on their face when it comes to functionality. For a company that has seemingly done a good job of allowing form and function to go hand in hand, and for a company that has developed some of the best human interfaces to digital technology, the input devices are a strange enigma.

The Apple displays are impressive, I started using them with a PC well before I ever thought about buying and using a Mac. The problem again comes down to cost. At $3000 for a top of the line system, adding a pair of Apple displays onto the bottom line is a tough pill to swallow. Luckily, you can use any DVI monitor with the machine, which cuts down the barrier to entry by a little bit.

In the end, Apple has developed a very strong platform. OS X is quite possibly one of the best operating systems of its time and in many ways, is the best for what it does, and Apple's hardware leaves very little to be desired. But as always, the Apple platform is a tough sell to the mainstream for the reasons that I've already outlined. I took a chance and ended up pleasantly surprised. Maybe more PC users would be pleasantly surprised too - the problem is that even as a second machine, a Mac is an expensive proposition.

After three years of being synonymous with "digital music player," Apple's iPod will widen its horizons and gain photo-viewing capabilities within the next 30 to 60 days, highly reliable sources tell Think Secret.

The new iPod, which will sit at the top of Apple's fourth-generation line-up, will pack Toshiba's new 60GB 1.8-inch hard drive, a 2-inch color liquid crystal display, iPhoto synchronization, audio/video-out capabilities, and will sell for $499.

The new iPod's form factor will be identical to the existing 4G iPods, sources report, but will be two millimeters thicker than the current 40GB iPod and marginally heavier.

The 2-inch color screen is identical in size to other iPods, but will sport a higher resolution for photo viewing. However, the new device's real shining feature will be its video-out port, which will enable users to tote their photo galleries with them, ready to be plugged into any television for big-screen viewing.

More and more, blogs are giving sources the power to strike back and making journalists think twice about what they run in a story and how they conduct an interview. Case in point: Billionaire technology entrepreneur Mark Cuban, who also owns the NBA's Dallas Mavericks basketball team, launched a blog last spring and quickly posted an e-mail exchange he had with Dallas Morning News sports columnist Kevin Blackistone.

So should every high-profile technology exec and TV personality have a blog? That remains to be seen. Spinmeisters would worry that the wrong thing could come out without their scrutiny, but Cuban seems to flaunt those conventions, responding directly to my query for an interview within hours instead of days. And as you can tell in the Q&A below, he rarely holds back.

Cuban: "A blog is only valuable if you can be brutally honest. I think that's why tech execs have probably been the leaders so far. It's pretty safe to talk in-depth on technologies."

iPodder is a media aggregator which automatically downloads podcasts to your computer or portable device based on a RSS feed, leaving you 'one-click-away' from latest media feeds. The whole process is done on it's own, so you don't have to select files, search for them or click links to download the media. All you do is specify some feeds and wait to get yourself the podcasts. All you have to do is decide what your going to listen.

Sun's Java Desktop System (JDS) has faced a lot of flack from the Free Software community. People object to Sun's naming scheme and branding, and have cried out in angst about JDS's complex and unattractive end-user licensing agreement. It seems odd that strident objections are being directed at the very best, most complete, and thoroughly integrated GNU/Linux distro on the market. Upon close inspection, the discrepancy is about the different objectives of individual open source developers and enterprise software vendors. And in the end, the high quality of Sun's new desktop system stands firm as a testament to our shared values for open standards and competitive functionality.

While Java is important to JDS, there should be no mistaking that JDS is a complete and thoroughgoing Linux distribution. In fact, JDS is based on Novell's SuSE Linux distro, employs the GNOME user interface, and carries a complete selection of desktop applications. Many, if not most, of JDS's components, too, are open source software.

JDS, a hardened enterprise Linux distro, contrasts dramatically to what we call "popular Linux." The latter is exemplified by Fedora Core 2 (or now, 3), SuSE Linux Desktop (9.x), Slackware, Gentoo, Debian, and others, which have the very latest Linux kernel and the latest versions of open source applications. JDS, being built upon older, more stable components, has faced criticism from open source users who are accustomed to the latest Free Software components and are willing to live with the attendant instability and incompleteness of the application toolset. But such critics are consistently out of touch with enterprise software demands, often unable to see the necessity or the value proposition to large organizations of completeness and integration over currency.

The Gmail Notifier is a downloadable Windows application that alerts you when you have new Gmail messages. It displays an icon in your system tray to let you know if you have unread Gmail messages, and shows you their subjects, senders and snippets, all without your having to open a web browser.

The Notifier is in beta. Before you download it, we encourage you to review the system requirements and privacy information.

To use the Gmail Notifier, you need Windows 2000, Windows XP, or a more recent version of Windows.

GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension [for Windows] that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google GMail account, allowing you to use GMail as a storage medium.

GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google GMail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your GMail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag'n'drop files to.

Ever since Google started to offer users a GMail e-mail account, which includes storage space of a 1000 megabytes, you have had plenty of storage space but not a lot to fill it up with. With GMail Drive you can easily copy files to your GMail account and retrieve them again.

Controversial radio host Howard Stern, who built his career in good part by pushing raunchy content, signed a five-year, $500 million deal to leap from conventional airwaves to satellite radio -- a potentially huge boost for the nascent, and unregulated, medium.

Mr. Stern, an iconic radio figure and one of the nation's most popular radio hosts, plans a 2006 defection to tiny Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. after his contract with Viacom Inc.'s Infinity Broadcasting ends in 15 months.

His show, currently heard by more than 10 million listeners in 45 markets, will shift from free over-the-air broadcasts to the Sirius service, through which users pay a monthly fee for broadcasts delivered by satellite.

The company is betting that Mr. Stern, who is hugely popular with technology-friendly males between the ages of 18 and 49, will generate both new subscribers and advertisers, elevating its status and carrying satellite from the fringe to the mainstream. Sirius said it will recoup its costs if Mr. Stern generates an additional one million subscribers -- or nearly twice its current subscriber base of 600,000.

It's time for a change. I'm ready to rent, not own. After years collecting hundreds of vinyl LPs, CDs, and DVDs—and a couple hundred hours ripping, reripping, transferring, and backing up—I'm not sure it's worth the hassle. Not when you can tithe Apple, CinemaNow, Microsoft, and Napster a few dollars every month and have all the entertainment you want.

For someone who's always thought it better to own a house than rent a condo, to buy a car outright than make lease payments for the rest of your life, this is a big change. Maybe you should think about it too. The cost of ownership includes the cost of the CD and DVD discs, replacements for the ones you break or lose, plus the time frittered away dealing with lookups, listings, backups, and transcoding.

The more CDs and DVDs you own, the more you realize how much entertainment you're missing. That's reinforced if you have 120 channels of Sirius or XM Satellite Radio in your car, a Napster or Rhapsody music stream at home, or even the digital music channels on cable and satellite TV. For $10 a month, you can have all the music you want at moderate fidelity (few of us stop to listen to music critically). And for another $5 a month, you can stream as much of it as you want to a portable music player. If you buy 100 CDs, you'll spend $1,500. The same investment applied to renting your tunes could carry you and your music player through the next decade. And you wouldn't be stuck with a physical copy of Brother Sun, Sister Moon unto eternity.

Don't toss your DVD player just yet. But do give serious thought to whether you should rent or own your music in the future. The wave of technology arriving this fall with the next generation of Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition PCs and linked digital media hubs, called Media Center Extenders (if they're Media Center-specific), will make rental even more tempting.

Although I have some quibbles with the details, the iMac offers outstanding performance at a fair price. Still, lovely as the iMac is, I think Apple may be blowing an opportunity to expand its market.

Some functionality seems to have been lost in the interest of aesthetics. The previous generation of iMacs allowed almost unlimited adjustment of both horizontal and vertical screen angle and a considerable range of height. The new models offer effortless vertical tilt, but only up to 30 degrees. Horizontal movement is accomplished by swiveling the entire unit, which has a slippery plastic pad on the bottom of the aluminum foot. There is no height adjustment at all, a serious blow to good ergonomics.

Price is another concern. The cheapest iMac, the 17-in. with a 1.6 gigahertz G5 processor, doesn't sound too bad at $1,299. But Apple prices all of the iMacs with a bare minimum of 256 megabytes of memory, which will hobble performance. Bringing that to 512 MB adds $75; moving to a gigabyte, which you'll want for Garage Band or any serious photo or video editing, adds $225. Throw in the wireless options, and the base iMac is up to a hefty $1,702, while the 20-in. version goes well over $2,000. By contrast, you can get a Dell (DELL ) Dimension 4600 with a 3.2 GHz Pentium 4, a gigabyte of memory, and a 17-in. flat panel display for $1,164. Elegance is expensive.

The average selling price of a desktop PC is below $750, and few go for more than $1,000. But Apple's only sub-$1,000 computers are two dated eMacs, bulbous all-in-ones with 17-in. CRT displays.

With any real improvement in Windows at least two years away, I think Apple could shake the industry by offering, for $700 or less, a PC-like Mac box for which consumers would provide their own displays.

It's perfectly clear what point Ballmer is making, and it's about users, not about iPods. It also seemed to me obvious, at the time, that Ballmer was joking.

Piper Jaffray said that based on a survey of high-school students, the iPod from Apple Computer is dominating mindshare and market share. Piper Jaffray said that of all students surveyed, 16% currently owned iPods and 24% planned to buy an iPod within the next year. The research firm said that out of the items teens wanted the most for the holidays, iPod ranked fourth on the wish list, behind clothes, money, and a car. Piper Jaffray said, "it is important to note that iPod was not an answer option--it had to be written in as a response." Piper Jaffray rates Apple at "outperform" with a price target of $40.

Last week, Apple barred webmaster Robert Morgan from using the Macs at his local Apple Store as a performance test lab -- right after Morgan published tests results for the iMac G5 that contradict Apple's claims for the machine.

Conducted on a display iMac at the Fashion Valley store in San Diego, the tests' results implied the machine is only moderately faster than its predecessor, the Luxo-lamp iMac G4.

But according to Apple, the iMac G5 is three times faster than the previous model.

Morgan's results sparked a minor storm of controversy on the web. His results were widely linked on Mac websites and hotly debated on forums.

"The new iMac G5 is a wonderful machine. I'm just concerned that the advantage over the previous model has been overstated," Morgan said.

And then last week, he received an e-mail from the local Apple Store containing the line, "I have some bad news." The note said the store would no longer be available for equipment testing. Morgan said the ban came from Apple HQ in a "policy memo." Apple confirmed that Morgan is no longer allowed to test store machines, but strongly denied the ban is related to Morgan's iMac G5 test results.

The main problem with Internet Explorer is its own success. It is used on more than 90 percent of all computers, which has made it and its codes, especially a feature called ActiveX, irresistible targets for virus writers. Microsoft's Outlook has the same problem, for the same reason. Two months ago, Microsoft released an extensive security upgrade called Service Pack 2, which contains many other improvements, is free and is definitely worth installing on any computer running WindowsXP. But it does not apply to older versions of Windows or the versions of IE they include.

There are many other browsers, including the popular Opera. Two I use every day are Firefox, from Mozilla, and iRider, from Wymea Bay, a small start-up in San Luis Obispo, Calif.

Firefox is an open-source program - noncopyrighted and free from www.mozilla.org - created by a nonprofit foundation descended from Microsoft's old rival, Netscape. The browser doesn't look much different from IE, but it has many operational improvements - the most noticeable being better built-in protection against pop-up ads, and a tabbed browsing system that lets you easily keep several Web pages open at once.

IRider (www.irider.com), which costs $29, looks nothing like any other browser. It displays graphic thumbnails of all open pages down the side of the screen, making it easy to jump to the one you want, and it has many other unique ergonomic touches. When you open a page, for example, it can automatically begin opening all linked pages in the background, so they come up quickly if you select them. IRider takes some getting used to, but it has real advantages - and an excellent tutorial. I also keep using IE, meanwhile, because parts of the Internet are coded to accept nothing else. The handy Google toolbar, for example, works only with IE.

A private rocket ship shot into space this morning and won a coveted $10 million aviation prize for its creators.

SpaceShipOne, the sleek combination of rocket and glider designed by Burt Rutan and financed by the billionaire Paul G. Allen, reached a record altitude of 368,000 feet, or 69.7 miles, blasting past the 337,600-foot altitude reached by the same ship last week.

That feat earned Mojave Aerospace Ventures, the company formed by Mr. Rutan and Mr. Allen, the Ansari X Prize, a space competition modeled on the great contests of the early days of aviation. Members of the rocket team and organizers of the prize jubilantly predicted that the flight, made on the 47th anniversary of the first Sputnik launching, would mark the dawn of a new age of commercial human space flight.

"Ladies and gentleman, today we make history," said Peter Diamandis, the organizer of the X Prize. Mr. Diamandis called Mr. Rutan "a furry mammal among the dinosaurs of the aerospace industry."

Nearly doubling the industry's current handheld storage maximum, palmOne, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLMO) today introduced the Tungsten(TM) T5 handheld with 256MB of flash memory.(1) The Tungsten T5 gives productivity-minded mobile professionals the ability to carry more data and applications than ever before on a handheld, for an estimated U.S. street price of $399.

Nearly doubling the industry's current handheld storage maximum, palmOne, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLMO) today introduced the Tungsten(TM) T5 handheld with 256MB of flash memory.(1) The Tungsten T5 gives productivity-minded mobile professionals the ability to carry more data and applications than ever before on a handheld, for an estimated U.S. street price of $399.

256MB of storage
Incredible memory capacity lets you can carry more and do more. Spreadsheets. Songs. Photos. The works. Add even more memory and applications via the expansion card slot, which supports SD, SDIO, and MultiMediaCard formats.

The handheld that doesn't forget
With flash memory, the information on your handheld is protected, even when you're on the go and don't have time to recharge.

Extra large display
The stunning 320x480 color display lets you view documents, photos and spreadsheets in landscape or portrait mode. Over 65,000 colors bring your photos and videos to life.

Transfer files and folders quickly and easily
With the new File Transfer application, you can actually drag-and-drop files and folders from your desktop to your handheld and back again. It couldn't be easier to transfer the files you need from home or your office and access them on the go.

Work on your files anywhere
Use your handheld as a USB drive. When you're away from your own desktop, just turn on Drive Mode, plug the Tungsten T5 handheld into another computer and access your work.

Carry the files you use every day
Edit and create Word and Excel compatible documents and view your PowerPoint files with Documents To Go software. View PDFs with Adobe Reader after a simple conversion step.

MP3s, photos, and video clips3 in your pocket
Let your Tungsten T5 handheld become your MP3 player, and carry your tunes with you. Create a digital media album and take your photos and video clips with you, too. It's easy to transfer music files and photos from your desktop to your handheld.

Find the information you need, fast
Use the new Favorites view and Files application to quickly access your most important information. Your favorites are within easy reach right when you turn on your handheld.

All the power you need
The Intel 416 MHz XScale processor gives you all the power you need to run demanding business and multimedia applications.

Connect with Bluetooth-enabled devices
With built-in Bluetooth wireless technology, it's easier than ever to sync with your desktop computer. Plus, you can use a compatible Bluetooth-enabled phone as your modem to send and receive email, browse the web, and send text messages.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said at a press briefing in London on Sunday that consumer take-up of digital technology in the home is at a 'tipping point', which could lead to a dramatic increase in sales for converged devices that integrate video, audio and computer technology.

The industry has talked up the idea that computers will finally move from the home office to the living room for many years, but Ballmer said he thinks this theory may be about to become a market reality.

"There is no way that you can get there with Apple. The critical mass has to come from the PC, or a next-generation video device," he said.

There's a new browser from the makers of Mozilla, called Firefox, that's getting lots of attention--and not just from the geeky set. The Mozilla Foundation open source project, which is funded by Time Warner, IBM and Sun Microsystems, launched Firefox version 0.9 on June 15. Firefox 1.0 is due out by early November.

"For the first time in a while, we're seeing real momentum behind a browser other than IE," says Steve O'Grady, an analyst at enterprise software outfit Redmonk, based in Bath, Me. "Consumers are starting to use Firefox, and that has developers considering both platforms when they're building Web sites."

Internet users began switching in earnest during the summer after several security problems emerged with IE, which of course is built into Microsoft's ubiquitous Windows operating system. Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) issued a patch for Windows XP, that platform's most recent iteration, but users complain that IE hasn't truly been updated since 2001. Anyone using Windows 98 or Windows 2000 who wants the most secure system has to upgrade to XP and download the patch, called Service Pack 2.