If the pricey and stylish full-sized Apple iPods are the Lexuses of digital-music players, the new $99 iPod Shuffle is more like the Toyota Echo--a decent performer of the same pedigree that's smaller, cheaper, and a lot less luxurious. The Shuffle did well in our tests, but it isn't for everyone, even if you're in the market for a small digital-music player.

With its random-play ability, the iPod Shuffle offers a very inexpensive and simple way to enjoy music on the go. It is ideal for working out at the gym, for example. But choose it over a full-sized iPod, or a more fully featured flash-memory player, only if you value compactness and low price over features such as an equalizer, an FM tuner, multiple-playlist support, or even a basic display that tells you which song is playing.

Napster takes a radically different approach that essentially says: Why buy a little music when you can rent much more of it instead?

Consider that it costs about $15 for 15 iTunes downloads. But that same $15 would buy a month's worth of unlimited access to Napster's giant music collection. In short, for the cost of a single audio CD, Napster gives you access to thousands.

But unlike iTunes, you can't burn these songs to a CD and they will play only as long as your Napster subscription remains active.

The vision promoted by Napster argues that if you love music, really love music, you're better off leasing it. And there's some pretty compelling logic to support that view.

Figure it this way: Even if you buy a new CD every month, in five years you will still only have a modest collection of 60 CDs. That's hardly enough to satisfy even casual listeners, much less hard-core music lovers.

For that same expenditure, Napster says, you could have one of the biggest music collections in the world. Thousands of titles by hundreds of artists, all just a mouse-click away.

Such a collection would cost tens of thousands of dollars to buy, putting it out of the reach of all but the most dedicated - and richest - music fans. At $15 a month, it's affordable by almost anyone.

The buy-vs.-rent calculation only leans in favor of people who listen to a lot of different music. After all, if you're satisfied hearing the same handful of songs played over and over, month after month, you probably should just buy them and be done with it.

But music fanatics, families with diverse and changing musical tastes, and even people who just want hassle-free variety might decide that renting music beats owning it after all.

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Google summoned financial analysts to its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., yesterday for its first major presentation since its public offering last August. But in four hours of speeches, company executives barely touched on the company's finances.

"They had a formal presentation by their chef but not their chief financial officer," said Mark S. Mahaney, an analyst with American Technology Research. "I have never been to an investor day where the C.F.O. didn't speak."

When Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, introduced the $499 Mac Mini in January, he called it a "bring your own display, keyboard and mouse" machine. Implicit in that characterization is that the Mini is meant to appeal in part to PC owners who may want to give Apple a try, and who already have those peripherals connected to their Windows machines.

The trouble is, if you're going to move your keyboard, mouse and monitor to a Mac, you will no longer be able to use the PC. That may be just fine with Apple, but not for users who don't want to give up their PC. While they may be attracted to the Mac for its easy-to-use software like iPhoto and GarageBand, they may prefer their PC for games or work-related tasks, or they may have one or two PC-only programs that they can't live without.

There is a way to have your Mac and PC, too, without having to devote money or space to an extra keyboard, monitor or mouse. If you network the machines, it's also possible for them to share hard drives, printers and other peripherals.

What you need, besides the two machines, is a K.V.M. switch, a device that permits you to use a single keyboard, monitor and mouse with two or more machines. K.V.M. stands for "keyboard, video and mouse," but some K.V.M. switches also let you control your speakers and microphone. Using a switch not only saves money and desk space but adds to the capabilities of both machines by creating a system whereby the Mac and PC work together. At the risk of offending some Apple enthusiasts, Windows users could think of the Mini as a PC peripheral.

Activision and id Software today confirmed the Xbox version of Doom 3 and the PC expansion, Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil, will ship during the week of April 4, 2005.

The Xbox version of Doom 3 ($49.99) features the full single-player campaign from the PC version, has Xbox Live support, and, yes, contains the anticipated online two-player cooperative campaign. The Doom 3 Limited Collector's Edition ($59.99) includes all that, plus Ultimate Doom and Doom II, each of which are playable in single-player, split-screen co-op, or two- to four-player deathmatch on one Xbox.

The PC expansion, Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil, co-developed by Nerve Software and id Software, starts two years after the end of Doom 3 in a forgotten, remote UAC Mars research facility. While using weapons such as the physics-defying "grabber" and the double-barreled shotgun, players encounter new locations, puzzles and powers (such as the ability to slow time) while confronting new demons, zombies and Hell's deadly Hunters.

The new Dell 30 GB Digital Jukebox MP3 Player promises the ease of use and value of the original DJ with an enhanced form factor and capacity options. Weighing just 6.5 Oz, the Dell DJ 30 delivers high-quality, hard-drive based audio. The second-generation Digital Jukebox with 30 GB capacity lets you carry up to 15,000 songs at any given time and offers up to 12 hours of battery life to play them.

In addition to supporting the WMA audio format, the multifunctional music player plays high-fidelity MP3 audio files, and also provides a way to back up critical data from your PC. It features a 1.92-inch blue back-lit liquid crystal display, three-way scroll barrel navigation and an USB 2.0 interface for PC synchronization and alternative battery charging.

Dell Dock Included. Dock makes charging and syncing easy and convenient. The device includes earphones, Music Match Jukebox version 9 Software for music library management and a 1-Year Advanced Exchange Service.

This paper is an attempt by a long time Lisa user to clarify the significance of the Apple Lisa personal computer for the computing industry. The audience of this paper is anyone who has an interest in innovative computing technology and wants to learn a little about Apple Computer's brief foray into this area via the Lisa computer.

This paper hopes to show why the Lisa was significant in its time and how some of what was called "Lisa Technology" is slowly migrating to other computer systems, mainly the Apple Macintosh computer series.

The author has never worked for Apple and as such is not privy to any insider secrets about this machine. All facts contained herein were obtained from Apple's cornucopia of Lisa literature, Apple's Macintosh literature, discussions with other Lisa owners, and my personal involvement with and close observations of both machines since 1984.

This paper is loosely based upon the excellent article "The Legacy of the Lisa" as written by Mr. Larry Tesler, one of the Lisa's main designers and currently a key technologist at Apple Computer.

PD's new PD-1000 portable jukebox comes with a 1 inch 1.5GB hard drive which can store 375 songs, never before has such a compact player has this much capacity. It has fast USB 2.0 for quick transfer of songs and 13.5 hours continuous playback time.

Features:

• 1.5GB 1 inch Hard Drive
  
• about 375 songs (in 128kbps)
  
• Dimension: 45x100x19.5mm
  
• USB2.0 mass storage device for external computer hook up
  
• LCD size: 28 x 28 mm Pixel 128x128
  
• Playback of MP3 and WMA
  
• MP3 encoding from Line- in/ Mic (Optional)
  
• Recording with auto-silent detection
  
• Support dot-matrix LCD display with backlight.
  
• LCD display showing track information, play mode parameters and status, search information
  
• 4 mins anti-shock buffer
  
• Multiple play modes
  
• Multiple sound effects (with adjustable equalizer)
  
• 13.5 hours of playtime with Lithium Ion battery
  
• USB charging
  
• Support multiple folders
  
• Support ID3 tags
  
• Built-in music library for ease of navigation (browse by artist, genre, playlist etc.)
  
• Program playlist
  
• Voice recording

While the music subscription approach has grown in recent years, far more music fans have opted to buy songs by the track, a business model popularized by Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store and its hugely successful iPod portable player.

But the release late last year of new copy-protection software from Microsoft may begin to change that. The software frees subscribers to move their rented tracks from their personal computers to certain portable music players.

The system works by essentially putting a timer on the tracks loaded on the player. Every time the user connects the player to the PC and the music service, the player automatically checks whether the user's subscription is still in effect. Songs stop playing if the subscription has lapsed. If the user doesn't regularly sync up the player with the service, the songs go dead as well.

''This is potentially the first serious challenge that the iPod is going to face,'' said Phil Leigh, president of Tampa-based Inside Digital Media. ``What these devices are going to be able to do is attack iPod where it's weak.''

Several online music purveyors see portability as selling point that can lure consumers to their subscription services.

Forrester Research projects music subscription revenues will more than double this year to $240 million.

Apple's new Mac mini certainly doesn't break any new ground in technology; it's basically just the same guts from a last-generation Mac portable, sans the screen, keyboard and cursor controller. From a technical point of view, the mini is pretty minimal. The basic configuration of a single 1.25-gigahertz G4 chip, 256 megabytes of system memory, a CD-R/W and DVD-ROM combo drive, and a 40-gigabyte hard drive would be considered ho-hum, if not slug-like, if one of the Windows-based box-makers had come up with the idea. In fact, one can easily find entry-level Windows-based PCs that offer faster processors, more memory, greater storage—plus a display, keyboard and mouse—for less money.

There are other annoyances with the Mac mini, too. The mini is a bitch to upgrade, even more so than its ancestor, the quickly discontinued Mac Cube. Apple ought to include a putty knife in the box, because you'll need one to crack into the case if you ever decide to upgrade the memory or add a wireless access card on your own.

The $499 price point looks good in the advertisements, but it's not realistic. The 256MB of RAM is simply inadequate to run all the Mac's software efficiently. At the very least it's a $574 computer. I consider the upgrade to 512MB to be essential, and apparently so does Apple, based on the 512MB reviewer's machine it sent out.

But wait: There are three exceptional and very important things about the Mac mini that render those gripes less significant: design, price, and software.

The Mac mini is a Trojan horse. No, not the virus kind that turns your unprotected Windows PC into a porn- and spam-spewing zombie, but rather a sneaky way for Apple to get its secret weapon—creative software—in front of all those Windows users who are fed up with the other kind of Trojans—the worms, viruses and other scumware that feed on the Microsoft Windows operating system like vampires and leeches.

For an investment of less than $600, Windows users can see for themselves what all the Mac fanatics have been raving about all these years. No system crashes? No viruses? No network configuration nightmares? Being curious at $574 is a lot more attractive than being curious at $1,500, which for a long time was the opening ante for exploring the Mac mystique.

Getting from point A to point B just got a lot easier. Google Maps shows you where you want to go — and tells you what you'll find when you get there.

Maps are great for getting around, but online maps could be a lot better. So Google decided to make dynamic, interactive maps that are draggable — no clicking and waiting for graphics to reload each time you want to view the adjacent parts of a map. Want to be able to type in the name of a region or neighborhood and see any part of it as easily as with a regular street map? Now you can with Google Maps.

Since these maps are draggable, you can use your mouse or the directional arrows to pan left, right, up and down to see areas that are hidden offscreen. You can also use the slider to zoom in and zoom out.

It's like having a huge map you can scroll around in.

For those Red Sox fans who might think there is nothing else to live for now that they have the long-awaited world championship, here is a unique opportunity for 2005: Becoming the first market to string together consecutive titles in the Super Bowl, World Series, Super Bowl and World Series.

Even before the New England Patriots' victory over the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday in Super Bowl XXXIX, the Boston market had achieved the seventh occurrence of a World Series and Super Bowl champion happening consecutively.

The Patriots' latest championship means that this is the third time in history that one market has won a pattern of Super Bowl-World Series-Super Bowl, joining Pittsburgh from 1979-80 and the Bay Area from 1989-90.

What does it all mean? It means being able to say much later that it was one of the best years of your life if you were a sports fan in that market.

The Mozilla Foundation has released the first version of Sunbird, a standalone calendar application, and you can download it here.

Sunbird 0.2 has various features including the ability to create scheduled events, and to see an overview of events on a particular day, week or month. The calendar can be shared by publishing it to a webDAV-capable server, such as the one provided by the Apache module mod_dav.

WebDAV is a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol that allows users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote Web servers.

David McGuinness pointed out that Sunbird is a relatively new software that is not aimed at enterprise users at present.

"Sunbird is still in the early stages of development and is certainly experimental software," said McGuinness. "Nonetheless Sunbird is a promising application for those already using Thunderbird or Firefox."

Although Sunbird is a standalone calendar project, the Mozilla Foundation has started a project to integrate it with Thunderbird. The project, code-named Lightning, is scheduled for its first general-user release in the middle of 2005, according to the Mozilla Web site.

[The New England Patriots] were already a dynasty.

Now we can confirm these Patriots as the greatest team in NFL history:

Best. Team. Ever.

Why? It's the "Era," stupid. "2-in-3" qualified as a dynasty; "3-in-4" is the most impressive run in NFL history. Come on: In this age?! Witness:

60s Packers? Lombardi had it easy. Jim Haslett could have won titles with those 1960s Packers teams.

70s Steelers? Noll, too: Any team with nearly a dozen Hall of Famers should win multiple titles.

80s 49ers?Walsh had better players, and in an era before free agency and before smarter copycat opposing coaches shredded "hip" offenses.

90s Cowboys? Put it this way: Even Barry Switzer won a ring with Jimmy Johnson's team.

That leaves these Pats. Most brutally competitive conditions. Weakest roster. Toughest scrutiny. Translation: Most impressive.

The Pats sweep the arguments: Who, What, When, Why, How?

Like last February, when I tagged the "2-in-3" Pats as a "dynasty" and was mocked as an Instant Historian (until today), I have no doubt that everyone will some day come around to this biggest of SUPERlatives.

Try it on: Best. Team. Ever.

With their 24-21 win over the Eagles, the Patriots have become the NFL's team of the decade, after beating Carolina last year and St. Louis after the 2001 season.

New England is the second team to win three Super Bowls in four seasons (Dallas won in 1992, 1993 and 1995).

New England (34-4) set an NFL record for wins in a two-season span, surpassing Denver, which went 33-6 in 1997-98.

New England tied Green Bay of the 1960s for the longest playoff winning streak in NFL history (nine). The Packers won nine straight from 1961 to '67.

New England coach Bill Belichick improved to 10-1 (.909) in the postseason, moving ahead of Vince Lombardi (9-1, .900).

They're a dynasty. A special one. "I have such a special feeling for this team," Belichick said afterward. "I can't think of three tougher teams than [the Colts, the Steelers and the Eagles]. It was a tough year, but our players stood up to the competition ... They beat all comers."

Think back about just how irrelevant Apple seemed even two years ago. Its share of the personal-computing market had shrunk inexorably throughout the 1990s to a tiny 2%.

Microsoft's stake in Apple is now worth well over $1 billion.

[In] a 1998 meeting, Jobs asked Adobe Systems executives to develop a Mac version of their consumer video-editing program changed his mind. "They said flat-out no," Jobs recalls. "We were shocked, because they had been a big supporter in the early days of the Mac. But we said, 'Okay, if nobody wants to help us, we're just going to have to do this ourselves.' "

Today Apple gets people hooked with free online updates and then, every year or so, offers to sell them a full overhaul loaded with new features—and more and more users are willing to pay. OS X has already gone through four versions, named Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, and Panther. It's a tactic that Microsoft and other software makers have tried with much less success—Windows users in particular have grown leery of the chronic computer crashes and conflicts between programs that its upgrades cause. Apple engineered ways to minimize such problems.

Apple's computer hardware business ... still accounts for 60% of annual sales

Jobs ... estimates that this year Apple will generate $1 billion in revenue from selling applications and updates, plus other software-related revenue generated by the iTunes Music Store and its .Mac online subscription service, which has 600,000 members. That's almost double last year's take.

Owning a 62% market share of the online music market, for instance, augurs serious sales growth. Even though that market is still in its infancy—downloads accounted for less than 2% of U.S. music sales in 2004—the iPod platform, for example, kicked in revenues of $1.4 billion in Apple's first fiscal quarter, nearly as much as it did in the previous four quarters combined. Merrill Lynch analyst Steve Milunovich predicts that the iPod business alone will hit $6.2 billion in fiscal 2006, roughly as big as all of Apple when Jobs took over.

(Of course, the iPod's growth will eventually flatten as the devices lose their fad status. Yet the gadgets are so useful that it's easy to imagine them becoming as ubiquitous as the Walkman—of which Sony has sold 340 million.)

When you look at the brief history of OS X...

... you begin to realize what a remarkable accomplishment it has been for Apple—not only to build it but also to migrate millions of users to something so radically different with relatively little pain, and to improve it so dramatically and with such regularity that it has turned the endless nuisance of software support into a profit machine.

Most tantalizing of all is scuttlebutt that three of the biggest PC makers are wooing Jobs to let them license OS X and adapt it to computers built around standard Intel chips.

Apple's core strength is to bring very high technology to mere mortals in a way that surprises and delights them and that they can figure out how to use. Software is the key to that. In fact, software is the user experience.

"Apple's innovation and creativity have been unleashed in a way that they haven't been in 20 years. Look at the results. This isn't a company about 5% market share; this is a company that is capable of competing with world-class competitors and achieving market shares of 65%, 70%, and even 90%."

Steve Jobs, the silver-tongued king of Apple Computer, is explaining how the world's opinion of his company has risen with the triumph of the iPod.

No longer is Apple's business limited to computers—though it did sell more than a million Macs last quarter for the first time in four years. Today the company's ever-expanding products encompass multimedia applications for creative professionals and consumers, the thriving .Mac (pronounced dot-mac) Internet subscription service, and a popular line of easy-to-use wireless networking gizmos to link computers and stereos and other devices in the home and office. And, of course, the iPod. The company has even become a player in retail with its 100 Apple Stores: chic glass and anodized aluminum temples that fuse fashion, technology, and reverence for personal creativity into something Jobs likes to call the "Apple user experience."

Steve doesn't talk about the next gotta-have-it gizmo or ultracool ad campaign or trendsetting industrial design. None of those, he says, is Apple's core strength or primary competitive advantage. Instead he's going to talk about software—the central strand that runs through all of Apple's success.

Steve being Steve, he's doing this partly because he's selling something. This spring, Apple will unveil Tiger, an update of its OS X operating system that, at $129 a pop, will generate hundreds of millions of dollars of high-profit sales.

The New England Patriots staked their claim as the latest NFL dynasty, winning their third Super Bowl in four years with a 24-21 victory over the Eagles tonight in Super Bowl XXXIX.

Safety Rodney Harrison, singled out by Philadelphia receiver Freddie Mitchell in the days before the game, sealed the championship for the Patriots when he intercepted a Donovan McNabb pass with 8 seconds to play at Alltel Stadium.

Harrison had two interceptions and a sack in the game. Turns out he had something for the Eagles. Mitchell had one catch for 11 yards.

McNabb threw three interceptions and let a lot of time run off the clock when the Eagles were trying to rally late. He finished the game 30-of-51 for 357 yards and three touchdowns, but couldn't keep up with the Patriots.

Patriots quarterback Tom Brady ... was 23-of-33 for 236 yards and two touchdowns. He is now 9-0 in the postseason, an NFL record. The Patriots' nine straight wins also equalled the all-time record set by the Green Bay Packers.

New England receiver Deion Branch tied a Super Bowl record by making 11 receptions, for 133 yards. He was named Super Bowl Most Valuable Player

The New England Patriots have won three out of the last four world championships and are easily the most dominant team of this century with their 24-21 win over the Eagles. Super Bowl XXXIX is in the books.

With MVP Deion Branch tying a Super Bowl record for receptions with 11, Brady efficiently running the offense and Rodney Harrison sparking a smothering defense, the Patriots won their ninth successive postseason game. That ties the record of Vince Lombardi's Packers of the 1960s, and there's hardly any better company a team can keep.

The difference once again was an Adam Vinatieri field goal, this one a 22-yarder with 8:40 to go. New England won its other two Super Bowls by the margin of Vinatieri's kicks.

Some dynasties are pretty, some are perfect. The New England Patriots never worry about style points.

The Patriots won their third Super Bowl in four years with a dominant second half Sunday, wearing down the Philadelphia Eagles 24-21.

It wasn't overpowering, and at times it was downright ugly. But it was more than enough to match the Dallas Cowboys' run of the 1990s and certify the Patriots of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady as the NFL's latest dynasty.

You Save: $279.95. The elegant iriver H10 5GB plays up to 150 hours of digital music. It also features a vivid color display for simple navigation and viewing of your digital photos, a rechargeable battery and a digital FM tuner.

iriver H10 Player Specs:

- 5GB of internal storage
- Color display
- Displays digital photos
- Built-in FM tuner and FM recorder
- Rechargeable, removable battery lasts up to 12 hrs
- Slim, lightweight design
- Voice recorder
- Ultra-fast USB 2.0 transfer
- Supports MP3, WMA, and JPEG files

Included Accessories:

- iRiver earphones
- Carrying case with belt clip
- USB 2.0 interface cable
- Installation CD
- AC adapter

Score: 9/10. What’s the catch? There isn’t one really. The player works well with both Mac and PCs (thanks to the drag and drop) and the size means its still small enough to tuck out of the way.

A great player. Easy to use, great sound quality, easy to navigate, 5gb of storage, on the fly playlisting, photo viewing, slideshow, color screen, great styling. Both power users and everyday consumers will enjoy using it's many features. It stacks up very well against the competition and if viewed side by side should come out on top.

The initial reaction to Wednesday's Wired News story about the popularity of iPods at Microsoft was fast and furious. Microsoft's fans -- both of them -- came out [with] guns blazing.

The reaction from these two was so furious, it reminded me of defensive, paranoid Mac fans.

A lot of e-mail reaction was the same, but that's not unusual...

... You only hear from people who are purple with rage.

I'd forgotten, but Thurrott and I have some background. Last year, I countered one of his stories about HP and the iPod, which earned him some criticism from third parties like John Gruber: "Unlike Thurrott, Wired News reporter Leander Kahney actually spoke to someone at HP."