In 1992 the Internet wasn’t available to the general public. There were no iPods or any other portable digital music players. Cellphones were big, bulky and analog, mainly used in cars in the U.S. The first consumer digital cameras had just arrived: crude models that cost $800, worked only in black and white, and held just 32 images.

Microsoft was offering the clumsy Windows 3.1, which seemed to crash if you sneezed, and many people were still using the geeky and limited DOS operating system on their “IBM-compatible” PCs. Apple’s technology was way ahead of Windows, but the company would soon enter a period of management mediocrity and product paralysis. And there were scores of PC makers in the U.S., most of them now defunct. The hottest one was Compaq, today a mere brand name for Hewlett-Packard. Dell was still an upstart.

Personal computers were typically sold without modems, networking ports or stereo sound. They had awful, limited color video, far short of what a cheap TV could produce. Too often their designers assumed PC buyers were techies or hobbyists, willing and able to perform complicated hardware and software upgrades and tweaks.

Then and now my main criteria for judging digital consumer products have been simplicity, ease of use and reliability — a sort of index for the burden on the user. And in 1992 most products failed miserably on that scale. They required far too much attention, knowledge and effort by users when theoretically they were supposed to do just the opposite — namely, to make their lives easier.

By around 2001, when the current major operating systems, Windows XP and Apple’s Mac OS X, made their debuts, personal technology had vastly improved. Many of the rough edges had been sanded off. The Mac had long been “plug and play,” and Windows was much closer to that goal. Both systems were fairly stable. The iPod arrived that year, and digital cameras and cell phones — by then well established and growing sleeker by the year — began a rapid evolution that added features and cut prices.

And by then the World Wide Web had changed everything. It had vastly enriched the experience of computing, adding information, entertainment, communication and commerce on a grand scale. Sure, too few people in America had real broadband or wireless networking by 2001, but the balance was getting better. The burden of use for personal computers and related gadgets was trending lower.

Enter the security crisis, which all but destroyed that welcome momentum. There had been viruses for many years, of course, including some big attacks in the 1990s. But over the past five years, the security problem has morphed into a major hassle for people who own and use Windows computers. Viruses and other malicious software programs are still with us, but now they’ve been joined by new categories of pernicious technologies, especially spyware, adware, and fake email and Web sites designed to steal your privacy, your money and even your identity. Spam has gone from a nuisance to a plague.

And the Internet, for all its numerous benefits, has become an engine for this digital onslaught. In the physical world, it isn’t hard to stay out of bad neighborhoods and avoid the company of crooks. But in cyberspace, it’s harder to read the signs — digital criminals, who range from vandals to organized thieves, mingle invisibly with the public in a world where everyone is easily connected.

Today, warding off the myriad threats online takes more and more time, money and effort than ever before. You have to run multiple security programs, interpret all their warnings and alerts, tell them what to do when they detect suspicious activity, and consistently update them. It’s a real hassle, one that seriously interferes with the productivity, and the pleasure, computers can and should provide.

In fact, the burden of using a Windows computer is higher now than it was in 2001. By contrast, Apple’s Macintosh is easier to use than ever, partly because it has so far remained free from viruses, spyware and adware — except for a few minor cases. After stagnating in the mid-’90s, Apple’s software and hardware are once again markedly superior to those of Windows PCs.

But even Mac users have to contend with spam and must learn to avoid fake Web sites designed to steal sensitive financial information. And users of both platforms must also contend with a welter of restrictions on the use of digital content such as music and videos.

So where are we heading?

I believe that in the future the Internet will become more like the electrical grid, a behind-the-scenes platform to which all manner of gadgets will be directly connected, each taking some power and intelligence from the network to perform its task. While personal computers won’t go away, they won’t be the main way to get online, or even needed as intermediaries by many devices. Whenever you watch TV or make a phone call, you’ll be on the Internet, though you won’t be browsing the Web in the manner you do on a PC. This will open up all sorts of new features and interactivity.

Even unlikely gadgets will be connected. Your microwave oven, for instance, will use the Internet to quietly download information that will allow it to recognize the bar codes or radio tags on packaged food products and cook them appropriately.

The star of this new world will be the cell phone — or, more accurately, the device formerly known as the cell phone. Already, some high-end phones, like Palm’s Treo, are essentially mini computers, complete with keyboards and expandable memory. They do many of the things for which people formerly required laptops.
These so-called smart phones can surf the Web, and send and receive e-mail and instant messages, at broadband speeds. They can take, display and edit photos and movies; download and play music, videos and TV shows; play ever more sophisticated games; and even view and edit Microsoft Office documents.

I expect these capabilities to be pushed down to phones that cost less. New competitors will enter the business of making phones and the software and services that run on them.

For these smart phones to flourish, however, they will have to get much simpler to use. The burden on the user will have to drop sharply. Complicated user interfaces will have to be replaced with better ones. Reliability must improve. And the stranglehold on innovation now imposed by all-powerful wireless carriers will have to be broken or loosened. Also, the security problems that plague the PC will have to be headed off somehow. Already, the digital criminals are trying to target cell phones.

But I remain optimistic. The digital revolution can’t be stopped, and the next 15 years should see as many exciting developments as the past 15 have.

Music services

The iTunes Store is the digital equivalent of a music shop. You buy individual songs or albums and own them thereafter, with some restrictions on their use. But several other services, such as RealNetworks’ Rhapsody, Napster and Yahoo Music Unlimited, take a different approach. They charge a monthly fee that entitles you to stream or download an unlimited number of songs. In effect, you’re renting these songs, typically for $10 or $15 a month. Some music lovers prefer this system, since it makes it easier to experiment with new artists and genres, and cheaper to fill a portable player, even though the songs can’t be used on an iPod.

Now Microsoft has joined the battle against iTunes with Zune Marketplace, its own online music service that offers both subscription plans and iTunes-style individual song purchases. Music from the Zune Marketplace will work only on Microsoft’s new iPod competitor, the Zune player.

There is another notable online music service: eMusic. It’s a sort of hybrid. You get to download and own tracks, as with iTunes, but you’re charged a monthly fee instead of paying by the song. The upside of eMusic is that its music is in the plain, unprotected MP3 format, meaning it will play on any portable music player including the iPod, and on every music-playing software program on Windows and Macintosh computers. The downside: eMusic offers songs only from independent record labels. It has none of the catalogs of the majors and tends to be nichey, not mainstream.

Music players

Companies like Creative, Samsung and iRiver offer many models that match up well in price and features against the various versions of the iPod. At one time their hardware and software designs were much clumsier than Apple’s, but they have improved a lot. They still trail the iPod in overall elegance. But many have features Apple gadgets lack, such as built-in FM radio, microphones, longer battery life and even transmitters for beaming music through car radios.

These non-iPod players have suffered because they use a Microsoft-developed system called “PlaysForSure” that supposedly allows smooth, iPod-like synchronization between players and Windows PCs. Unfortunately, PlaysForSure often behaves more like “PlaysMaybe,” with sync problems being common.

SanDisk, a company best known for its flash-memory chips, has roared into a distant second behind Apple, with a series of handsome flash-based players under the Sansa brand. These devices, roughly comparable to iPod’s Nano and Shuffle models, mostly use the PlaysForSure system. But recently, SanDisk debuted the Sansa Rhapsody, which uses RealNetworks technology and is tied closely to Real’s Rhapsody subscription service.

Certainly, the biggest news for iPod haters is the introduction of Microsoft’s Zune music player, an iPod competitor with plenty of marketing muscle behind it. The Zune holds 30 gigabytes of music, the same as the smallest full-size iPod, and costs the same $250.

But the Zune abandons PlaysForSure in favor of an Apple-style, tightly controlled, integrated approach. It works exclusively with Zune software, and the only encrypted songs it will play are those bought at Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace.

As for design, the Zune is bigger and somewhat clunkier than the iPod. But it has three things the iPod lacks: a bigger screen, an FM radio and built-in wireless capability. The latter can be used to send songs to nearby Zune players, where they can be played three times before expiring.

But as slick as it is, Apple’s latest baby isn’t the only path to portable digital video available to consumers. Others got there first. All, including the new iPod, suffer from a dearth of legal downloadable content, but that has begun to change as Hollywood and the television networks seem willing, suddenly, to sell individual episodes of television series.

Here’s a quick guide to some leading portable video devices.

Old reliables: All the new video gadgets should be measured against portable DVD players and laptops with DVD drives. The portable players combine relatively large screens with thin, light designs and low prices. The laptops are larger and pricier, but their advantage is that many people carry them anyway for other purposes. And both have a vast library of cheap content to draw from: DVDs. The downside is that you have to lug along a selection of disks.

Portable media centers: These are gadgets that are smaller than a laptop, but larger than an iPod. They use Microsoft software that mimics the nice user interface in its Media Center version of Windows. Leading examples are the Samsung Yepp PMC and the Creative Zen PMC, both of which cost $500, which is more than even the priciest video iPod. They have larger screens than the iPod, but smaller storage capacity. Little legally downloadable content is available for the PMCs, but users can transfer to them TV programs they have recorded on high-end Media Center PCs.

Sony: The new PSP, or PlayStation Portable, from Sony, has a large, bright screen that does a great job showing videos, even though it is primarily a game machine. This slick, black $250 gadget is handsome, but unlike the iPod, it’s too large to carry in a pocket. Also, getting video into the PSP is clumsy and expensive, mainly because it lacks either a hard disk or a standard DVD drive. You have to buy movies on special, small copy-protected disks. And if you want to transfer videos from a computer, you have to buy a high-capacity memory stick.

Archos: This small company has been a pioneer in handheld video and makes several models, in a wide variety of sizes and capacities, that cost from $500 to $800. In general, Archos buyers have been early-adopter techies and videophiles willing to do what it took to collect video clips and move them onto the Archos gadgets. But the company is now going mainstream, through a deal with EchoStar, the satellite TV firm. EchoStar will sell three Archos models, rebranded as PocketDISH players, that can copy and play back TV shows recorded by EchoStar set-top boxes with digital video recorders inside. The PocketDISH players range from $300 to $600.

iRiver: The Korean maker of portable music players has just introduced a tiny video player, smaller but thicker than the video iPod, called the U10. It’s a handsome gadget with a clever user interface: You select functions by pushing on the edges of the screen. But it has a meager storage capacity, only a gigabyte, in a top-of-the-line model that costs $250, just $50 less than a video iPod with a larger screen and 30 times the storage.

Apple: The video iPod, which Apple calls simply the iPod, comes in two models: a $299 version with 30 gigabytes of storage and a $399 model with 60 gigabytes. Like all iPods, it is beautiful, easy to use, and it’s thinner and lighter than the prior generation. Short videos look great on its screen. Apple is selling episodes of two hit TV shows, Desperate Housewives and Lost, for $1.99 each. Again, content for all these gadgets is sparse today. But as the availability of legal video downloads grows, so will the rationale for buying a portable video player.

The daunting security problems that have plagued Windows have also prompted many of its users to take a serious look at the Mac. This trend has been further reinforced by the “iPod halo effect,” in which Windows users who own and love Apple’s iPod music players are willing to consider the company’s other products. As a result, Mac sales, while still relatively small, have been growing much faster than overall personal computer sales.

Are you among the PC majority considering a switch to the Mac? Then you probably have some important questions.

How do Macs compare in quality with Windows PCs?

I believe that, at the moment, Apple makes the best computers, and the best operating system, for mainstream consumers doing typical tasks — e-mail, Web surfing, office — productivity functions such as word processing and presentations, photo organizing and editing, playing and collecting music, and editing home video.

Of all the major computer makers, Apple is the most focused on consumers and small businesses. Most make the bulk of their money, and take most of their cues, from the information-technology departments of large corporations.

Apple’s iMac G5 consumer desktop is, in my opinion, the single best home computer on the market. Its PowerBook laptops are among the top portables.

Do Macs run Windows and Windows software?

No: Out of the box, Macintosh computers run only Apple’s own operating system, called OS X, and software written by Apple and other companies that is designed to run on OS X.

You can rig a Mac to run Windows and Windows programs by installing a special, $250 Microsoft program called Virtual PC, which creates a virtual Windows computer inside the Mac. But I don’t recommend this for frequent use, because the faux Windows computer it creates is relatively slow and is susceptible to the same viruses and spyware as a real Windows machine.

How does Mac software compare with Windows?

The Mac’s OS X operating system, the latest version of which is called Tiger, is far better than Microsoft’s aging Windows XP and already boasts many of the key features Microsoft plans to include in its 2006 version of Windows, called Vista. And the Mac comes with an excellent suite of free software that’s generally superior to comparable Windows programs that cost extra.

Out of the box, the Mac has better photo, music, video and DVD — creation software than any Windows computer I’ve seen. It has a better free email program and Web browser than Windows does, a better free word processor and much better search capabilities.

About the only software a typical consumer would have to buy for a new Mac is the Mac edition of Microsoft Office. It includes versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint that are very similar to their Windows counterparts, and a program called Entourage that is different from Microsoft Outlook but performs the same functions.

Are Macs more secure than Windows PCs?

Yes. Since the OS X operating system came out in 2001, there has never been a report of a successful virus for it — that is, a virus that has infected numerous computers, and spread from computer to computer, outside of a lab. And there is little or no known spyware for the Mac. By contrast, there are tens of thousands of viruses for Windows and untold numbers of spyware programs. Just as regular Windows programs can’t run natively on a Mac, none of these malicious Windows-specific programs can run on a Mac either.

The Mac isn’t invulnerable, but it has better built-in security than Windows, and such a small market share that virus and spyware writers haven’t targeted it yet. As a result, most Mac users have been able to dispense with running the morass of security software that Windows users must employ.

Are Mac files compatible with Windows files?

Yes. Unlike older models, the current Macs have been specifically designed for compatibility with Windows PCs. The Mac OS and software can handle, without translation or conversion, all of the common types of files you use on a Windows PC. You can copy to a Mac all your pictures, MP3 music files, text files and Adobe PDF files, and they will open right up in Mac programs. There are also free Mac versions of the Real Player and Windows Media Player, and of Adobe Reader.

Microsoft Word files also can be opened, edited and created in Apple’s free, built-in text editor. And if you buy Microsoft Office for the Mac, all Office files, including Word files, Excel files and PowerPoint files, can be opened, edited and created on the Mac. Office files created on the Mac can be opened and edited in Windows Office, and vice versa.

Some specialized files created by particular programs, like database files or financial files, won’t be usable. For instance, the Mac version of Quicken is quite different from the Windows version and uses a different file format.

For occasional use of these programs, you can install Virtual PC.

In addition, nearly all keyboards, mice, monitors and printers made for Windows computers can be used with a Mac, if they connect via the industry-standard USB or FireWire ports. Macs can also share networks with Windows PCs and even look into the hard disks of Windows computers, and vice versa.

Is there anyone who shouldn’t consider a Mac?

Yes. Serious game players should stick with Windows PCs, which are much better game platforms and can run many more game titles. People who use specialized software or custom corporate software for which there isn’t a Mac equivalent should stick with Windows. While the Mac has rich offerings in mainstream software categories, it has only a fraction of the niche software and specialized business software that Windows does.

Also, you should stick with Windows if your home computer choices are dictated by your company’s IT department and the IT department is ignorant of or hostile to the Mac, as so many are. Although modern Macs are designed to access corporate Windows networks, and many do, if your IT department won’t help you with the transition, it’s not worth the headache to switch to the Mac.

Ten years ago, when Apple was stagnant and its products troubled, I recommended that consumers shun the Mac. If Apple’s quality and innovation slip, I might revert to that position. But for now, the Mac is the best computer, with the best operating system and the fewest security problems, for average consumers.

There are three main reasons for the success of iTunes. First, it is tightly tied to the iPod, Apple’s wildly popular portable music player. The only legal downloads of major record label songs that the iPod can play are those sold by iTunes. Second, it is well-designed, works identically on the Macintosh and Windows PCs, and is easy to use. Third, its restrictions on the use of downloads are comparatively liberal: You can copy each purchased song to up to five computers and to an unlimited number of iPods and burned CDs.

For these reasons, nobody else has been able to gain any traction in the legal market by copying Apple’s model, and that includes companies as formidable as Microsoft, Sony and Wal-Mart.

So Apple’s music competitors are trying something else: a whole different model for distributing music legally. Led by the reincarnated (legal) version of Napster, by RealNetwork’s Rhapsody service and by Yahoo’s new music service, these companies are hoping to win by renting music to consumers rather than selling it to them.

In the download model championed by Apple, the music service functions like a physical record store. You choose a track, pay 99 cents, and you own it. As long as you abide by the restrictions, which are designed to thwart mass copying by pirates, the song will play anywhere you want to hear it forever, with no further payments required.

However, those 99-cent downloads can mount up fast. If you tried to fill up even the lowest-capacity full-size iPod-which holds 5,000 songs-with tracks purchased from iTunes, it would cost you nearly $5,000. (Granted, most people start with music they already own when loading a new iPod.)

By contrast, the rental services work on a subscription model. You pay, in most cases, $180 a year, or $15 a month, for the right to download as many songs as you want for use on computers and portable players. And the newest rental contender, Yahoo, has slashed those fees to $60 a year, the equivalent of just $5 a month. That means you could fill up a 5,000-song portable player for just $60 a year.

This rental model has attracted a solid audience, but it is nowhere near as popular as iTunes — not even close. That may be because the rental model is far more complicated and restrictive than iTunes, and has several big downsides.

The biggest problem with renting is that if you stop paying your subscription, even for one month, all the songs you’ve ever downloaded — going back years — will become inert and unplayable. Rental song files are rigged with computer code that requires a monthly digital confirmation the renter is continuing to pay. Without that, the song files die.

An iTunes user could pay $500 to acquire 500 individual songs (buying whole albums is somewhat cheaper) over two years, and those songs are always hers and will always play. By contrast, a Yahoo user might download 500 rental songs over two years for just $120 in subscription fees, but the songs will become unplayable unless she pays hundreds or thousands more in subscription fees over many years, even if the fees rise.

Also, the rules for rental songs are more restrictive than for owned downloads such as Apple offers. At Yahoo, for example, you can store each song on only three computers, versus Apple’s five. And you can install each song on only two portable devices, versus an unlimited number at Apple.

Oh, and you can’t burn rental songs to a CD. To get a nonexpiring, CD-burnable, iTunes-type song from a rental service, you have to pony up 79 cents a track over and above your monthly or annual subscription fee.

Furthermore, rental services are far more complicated than iTunes to operate. At the Apple service, every song is a 99-cent download you can own, but at rental services, there are different kinds of songs. Some can be both rented and purchased (for that extra 79 cents each); others can be either rented or bought outright, but not both. Some songs can only be “streamed” — that is, they can be played directly from the Internet, but not downloaded, even on a rental basis. And some can be rented, but not streamed. You get the picture.

Not only do the rental services feature different kinds of songs, but they feature different kinds of customers, with different privileges depending on how much they pay per month or per year. Some rental plans allow you only to stream songs. Others let you download, but only to store the songs on computers, not portable players. The costliest plans — $15 a month at most services, $5 at Yahoo — allow you to stream, download and store the music on both computers and portable players.

Another huge downside of the rental services is that the songs they rent — and even the ones they sell outright for the extra 79 cents — cannot be played on the world’s best and most popular portable player: Apple’s iPod. That’s because the rental-service songs are encoded in a format owned by Microsoft, Apple’s rival, and Microsoft software is required to play them on a portable player. Apple won’t build the necessary Microsoft compatibility into the iPod.

So rental users are stuck with inferior portable players that don’t sell well and thus don’t attract the huge number of accessories available for the iPod. Apple estimates the iPod has about a 75 percent share of the total U.S. portable player market, with the next-highest brand at just 5 percent. There are over 500 accessories sold for the iPod, such as customized car mounts and leather cases, and just a few for other players.

Given all that, why would anyone use a rental service? Well, the rental model is better for people interested in sampling a wide range of music without a large out-of-pocket expense. That might make it attractive to curious but cash-poor students, for example. The rental services also have many more “community” features than iTunes does, features that allow friends and families to share music recommendations, see what others are listening to and discuss music. So they may be better for people who view music as a social activity.

But for most people, it’s no contest: Right now iTunes and the iPod are the better choice in digital music.

Back in 2001, the iPod was the first widely sold product to use one of these little hard disks. With a diameter of just under 2 inches, it’s smaller than the hard drives used in most laptops, yet it can hold up to 60 gigabytes of data, or around 15,000 songs. The midsize iPod Mini uses an even smaller version, albeit with decreased capacity. It’s just an inch in diameter but holds up to 6 gigabytes of data, enough for around 1,500 songs. (The lowend iPod Shuffle doesn’t use a hard disk, and it holds relatively few songs in its memory chips.)

But now these little hard disks are migrating to other devices — including cellphones and personal digital assistants — made by other companies, giving these gadgets some of the iPod’s magical combination of diminutive size and expansive capacity. And since these devices can play music, along with the various other functions they perform, they could soon become a challenge to the iPod.

For example, two big cell phone makers, Samsung and Nokia, have designed music-playing phones with small internal hard disks that hold a few gigabytes of data. Samsung’s hard-disk model is sold so far only in Korea, but could make it to the U.S. by the end of this year. Nokia’s will be rolled out late this year, probably first in Europe.

By late 2006, I expect Americans to have numerous choices in hard-disk cell phones.

The first PDA with a hard disk to be offered in the U.S. came out in May. It’s the $499 PalmOne Life-Drive. PalmOne sells the LifeDrive — with its large color screen and 4GB hard disk — as a portable way to store and view or play back music, videos, photos and office documents. It also features the usual Palm calendar, contact and notes functions, and with its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless networking, it can surf the Web and send and receive e-mail.

The LifeDrive is bulky — much larger and heavier than an iPod Mini with the same size hard disk. And it isn’t a great music player — it has touch-screen play, pause, fast forward and reverse rather than proper buttons, and it doesn’t come with headphones. But it could be the start of a trend for PDAs, since it should be possible to wedge a similar hard disk into a smaller device.

More likely, the bigger threat to the iPod will come from iPod-enabled cell phones. People have to carry their phones anyway, and some already offer music-control buttons and headphones. So if your phone can hold thousands of songs, why carry around a second, separate music player?

Of course, phonemakers still have to prove they can design music-playing phones that are as simple, elegant and cool as iPods. But that could happen.

Little hard disks could also revolutionize digital cameras, allowing photographers to store thousands of shots without lugging around a laptop, although I know of no camera to date that has a hard disk.

Another trend: Small hard disks will likely shrink even more. Already, there’s a company making one with a diameter smaller than an inch. But mini hard drives may also face a challenger of their own — high-capacity memory chips. The chips have tended to be costlier per unit of storage than the disks, but over time they could get competitive. Prices are dropping fast, and chipmakers are working on memory cards, like the one in your digital camera, that are capable of storing over 10 gigabytes.

For now, though, keep your eye on the little hard disk that powers the iPod. It may be powering lots of gadgets soon.