Derb, we don’t watch a lot of TV in our

house, and we use our 10 year old Sharp set mostly for DVD viewing. The

thing is enormous, though, compared to all these swanky slim TVs, and we’d

really rather be able to reclaim that corner of the room for the beautimous

leather club chair and ottoman Daddy’s gonna buy if “Crunchy Cons” sells

decently. Not long ago we put our old Windows laptop to sleep and reverted

to the One True Faith, purchasing as its replacement an iMac G5 with the 20-inch screen. What a fantastic

machine. It’s 2.2 inches thick, which contains the entire computer. Because

it’s so light and easy to move around, Julie and I have discovered that it

serves as a portable DVD player we can put in the living room or the bedroom

to watch movies on disc. What’s more, if you buy the wireless Airport

gewgaw, you can turn it into the fambly CD player, broadcasting music either

direct from CD or stored on the hard drive anywhere in the house. For just

over $300, I can buy the Airport thingy, and a good pair of wireless

speakers, and my new iMac will have rendered obsolete my clunky old stereo

system — and even better, all the great radio stations broadcasting over

the net, I can listen to them anywhere in the house, for free.

We’ll have to keep the old TV for now, because I can’t get cable news and

the few programs we do watch over the computer. Yet.