March - 2000 - issue > Cover

SONY VIAO
Look out for the next generation of MP3 players. This is the most hyped equipment reaching the shelves of high tech stores. First is the Sony Vaio music clip. (sony.com). It has the most original design and ships with a built-in 64 MB flash card. It stores up to 80 minutes of CD-quality or two hours of FM quality audio. Its silver color could be mistaken for a pen because of its small dynamic size. You have volume options as well as EQ choices.

Diamond Multimedia's RIO 500

Diamond Multimedia' s RIO 500 comes with onboard memory that can stretch to 96 MB through flash cards. The digital audio player comes with all usual features. It plays MP3 16-20 KBPS and VBR. It also comes with MPEG 2.5. Also Audible.com support is coming soon. There are awesome Digital sound effect features such as repeat one track or all tracks, A-B loop or random. It comes with customizable EQ base and treble. You can select music, audio book or playlist data. There is also automatic book marking features for listening to spoken audio.

Philip's Electronics Rush

You can't miss this digital audio player. The shiny steal device is on the market with a 32 MB SmartMedia card for storing one hour of CD digital audio. It contains reasonable sound. It also has book mark features, display and delete options. Yet another small gizmo easily put in your pocket during a hot summer day in the mountains.

D' Music Portable

MP3/Audio CD Player

It can play regular CDs and read MP3's stored on CD-ROM. Other special features are anti-shock, repeat and auto search options. It has an anti-shock absorber for ten seconds. There are five EQ modes. (Flat, Pop, Classic, Jazz and Ex-Bass) There are stereo head phones and line out put. Also an optional remote control with a built in charger. It is impossible for these batteries to run out or be confronted with power failure.

Sharps' DV-L7OU

It weighs less than two pounds. The DV-L from Sharp is the lightest DVD player in its category. It has a 16:9 wide format LCD screen, Dolby channels and surround sound. This is perfect for addicted movie watchers. The gizmo can be taken anywhere without any hassle. It includes a graphical interface for special viewing options like subtitles and commentary. It has head phones with Jack and volume control. It includes LCD Audio/Video input for connection of external sources. It has a remote control.

A Boon for Privacy Lovers

Web Incognito allows you to wear a mask, so to speak, as you go site crawling. The Privada software hides your e-mail address, among other things, and does this without automatically blocking the cookies. Which means you can still access most of the content on most of the sites. At $5 per month, it is a pretty good bargain for acquiring the ability to go where you want, and not be flooded with spam.

Web Incognito wins high marks for ease of use. It is pretty easy to set it up. Just go to Privada's web site (http://www.privada.net/) and install the PrivadaProxy. The software includes Web Incognito for surfing and Messaging Incognito for email.

Whenever you open your browser, it encrypts your private information such as IP address, OS, and so on, before it lets you to surf. By way of abundant caution, it then takes you to other web sites through Privada's servers. A user, of course, has to configure the browser preferences to surf from Privada's servers.

Soup-to-Nuts Solution

Symantec's Norton SystemWorks 2000 is a complete suite of utilities, all you will ever need to maintain your PC. It has every conceivable utility you'll need to keep your system, hard drives, and peripherals free of viruses or errors. The main improvement here is the integration of all utilities into one. So you don't need to run different utilities one by one.

The suite consists of Norton Utilities, CleanSweep, CrashGuard and Web Services. The SystemWorks Professional Edition adds Norton 2000 (Y2K utility) and Norton Ghost, an industrial-strength backup tool, for an additional $40.

SystemWorks 2000 is designed to give McAfee a run for its money.