That’s especially true now as more users decide to buy computers running Microsoft’s recently released Windows Vista operating system. Apple Inc.’s campaign encouraging users to switch to its platform from Windows has also contributed to PCs piling up in basement corners.

But where should all this old equipment go? And what happens once it is taken away? How can you be sure that your private data aren’t being exposed? And will being a tree hugger turn out to be too costly?

If you’re looking to recycle your old system — monitor, computer tower and printer — you might think the only option is to search for a local drop-off spot. But surprisingly, most big-name computer manufacturers offer their own recycling programs, some of which come right to your door.

Hewlett-Packard says it will have collected and recycled one billion pounds of used products by the end of this year.

Each company has its own methods, which makes the process more confusing for consumers. Some take old computers away, but charge you around $30 for the shipping and handling. Others will reward you for buying one of their systems by offering to remove your old system free. Below, you’ll find some general guidelines for getting your computer out of your house.

Which company does what?

Dell Inc. offers home pickup of any old Dell equipment anytime, free. It will also pick up any brand of computer or printer free with the purchase of a new Dell PC or printer. Details can be found at www.dell.com/recycling.

Hewlett-Packard Co.’s recycling procedures are a bit more complicated. At anytime, the company offers to pick up and recycle your old equipment, regardless of brand, but charges $13 to $34 per product for shipping and handling. You will be compensated for each product with a $30 to $50 coupon to be used at www.hpshopping.com, where you can buy products from H-P. Recycling details for H-P can be found at www.hp.com/recycle.

Lenovo’s ThinkPlus Recycling Service offers prepaid shipping labels for $30 each to be used for sending any manufacturer’s old system, monitor, printer and peripherals to Lenovo for recycling or refurbishment. Lenovo doesn’t offer a home pick-up service. Once received, Lenovo uses a designated center to recycle your materials and sends reusable equipment to Gifts In Kind International, a charity specializing in product philanthropy.

Apple is different still. Like Lenovo, it doesn’t offer home pick-up but will receive all brands so long as you buy a $30 shipping label from the company’s Web site. With the purchase of any new Mac through Apple’s Web site or at one of its retail stores, you’ll receive an email with instructions and shipping codes for up to two prepaid boxes. These can be used for shipping any old equipment, regardless of manufacturer, to Apple for recycling. Details can be found at: http://www.apple.com/environment/recycling/program.

Apple’s retail stores will accept all manufacturers’ rechargeable batteries as part of a program run by the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corp., a nonprofit organization. These stores also accept unwanted iPods for recycling and take 10% off the purchase of a new iPod in exchange for your old one.

What about my data?

When recycling, almost all companies vow to mechanically shred your hard drive. But they also suggest that you take responsibility for your data and delete them to be safe.

Various software programs let you clear out your hard disk on your own. Symantec’s Wipe Info in Norton Utilities and System Works (http://symantec.com) will help on Windows PCs and Macs. Webroot Software Inc.’s Window Washer (http://www.webroot.com) is another option for Windows, and Jiiva Inc.’s SuperScrubber (http://www.jiiva.com) is an alternative for Macs. I haven’t tested these programs, and there are many others that do the same thing.

What happens to my computer?

Generally speaking, after your computer is sent to a recycling plant, it is disassembled and its materials are separated, melted down and reused. H-P, which has been recycling computers since 1987, says it will have collected and recycled one billion pounds of used products by the end of this year. The company uses some materials over again in its own products, such as plastics that are melted down, combined with plastics from recycled water bottles and used to make one of H-P’s scanners.

Recycling alternatives

Plenty of other groups, such as the National Cristina Foundation (http://www.cristina.org) and Share the Technology (http://sharetechnology.org) specialize in distributing reusable computers to people or organizations in need of computers.

For the most part, the best systems for reuse are those that are less than five years old. A good rule of thumb is to donate your computer as soon as possible, so you don’t forget about it before it becomes outdated.

Microsoft specializes in PC refurbishment by partnering with TechSoup, a tech nonprofit, and by labeling groups as Microsoft Authorized Refurbishers. These groups, which are located around the world, receive low-cost software licenses so they can install Windows and Office programs on refurbished computers for distribution to low-income families, nonprofit and educational institutions. In the U.S. alone, over 100,000 licenses have been supplied to 400 such groups. A list of them can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/mar.

With Earth Day coming on April 22nd and “going green” becoming a fashionable proclamation, you’re sure to find more and more options for recycling your computer or sending it away to someone who can refurbish it. One way or another, your old computer can be used for much more than gathering dust in a basement corner.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

• Email MossbergSolution@wsj.com

The race to connect your TV to your computer and the Internet is about to kick into high gear this week when Apple Inc., the company many believe is best positioned to pull off this feat, introduces a slender, wireless set-top box called Apple TV.

This silvery little $299 gadget is designed to play and display on a widescreen family-room TV set all the music, video and photos stored on up to six computers around the house — even if they are far from the TV, and even if they are all Windows PCs rather than Apple’s own Macintosh models. It can also pull a very limited amount of music and video directly off the Internet onto the TV.

The $299 Apple TV device connects wirelessly to home computers and then with a cable to your widescreen TV.

Apple TV is tiny, just about eight inches square and an inch high, far smaller than a typical DVD player or cable or satellite box, even though it packs in a 40-gigabyte hard disk, an Intel processor and a modified version of the Mac operating system. And it has a carefully limited set of functions.

Yet, in our tests, it worked great, and we can easily recommend it for people who are yearning for a simple way to show on their big TVs all that stuff trapped on their computers. We tried it with various combinations of Windows and Mac computers, with movies, photos, TV shows, video clips and music. And we didn’t even use the fastest wireless network it can handle. It performed flawlessly. However, it won’t work with older TVs unless they can display widescreen-formatted content and accept some newer types of cables.

Like the iPod before it, Apple TV isn’t the first gadget in its category. Several other companies have made set-top boxes or even TV sets and game consoles that could link the TV to the digital content that people have on their computers. But none has found a mass audience for this functionality, mainly because they tend to be hard to set up and confusing to use. Apple is hoping that, just as the iPod trumped earlier, but geekier, rivals, Apple TV can do the same by making a complex task really simple.

Part of the secret of Apple TV is that, like most of Apple’s products, it doesn’t try to do everything and thus become a mess of complexity. It can’t receive or record cable or satellite TV, so it isn’t meant as a replacement for your cable or satellite box, or for a digital video recorder like a TiVo. It can’t play DVDs, so it doesn’t replace your DVD player. Its sole function is to bring to the TV digital content stored on your computer or drawn from the Internet. Like a DVD player, it uses its own separate input on your TV set, and you have to change inputs using your TV remote to use it.

Apple TV isn’t for that small slice of techies who buy a full-blown computer and plug it directly into a TV, or for gamers who prefer to do it all through a game console. And it’s not for people who are content to watch downloaded TV shows and movies directly on a computer screen. Instead, it’s for the much larger group of people who want to keep their home computers where they are and yet enjoy their downloaded media on their widescreen TVs.

Apple TV’s most formidable competitor is the Xbox 360 game console from Microsoft, which, in addition to playing games, can also play back content from Windows computers on a TV. And Xbox 360 can do something Apple TV can’t do, at least not yet, which is to directly purchase and download movies and TV shows from the Internet. But the comparable Xbox costs 50% more than Apple TV, is much larger and stores only half as much material.

We’ve been testing Apple TV for the past 10 days or so, and our verdict is that it’s a beautifully designed, easy-to-use product that should be very attractive to people with widescreen TV sets and lots of music, videos, and photos stored on computers. It has some notable limitations, but we really liked it. It is classic Apple: simple and elegant.

In our tests, Apple TV performed perfectly in Walt’s house over a standard Wi-Fi wireless network with a Pioneer plasma TV and six different computers — three Windows machines from Hewlett-Packard and Dell, and three Apple Macs. Setup was a breeze, the user interface was clean and handsome, and video and audio quality were quite good for anyone but picky audiophiles and videophiles. We never suffered any stuttering, buffering or hesitation while playing audio and video from distant computers.

The Apple TV menu points to content stored on your home computers.

Unlike any of its rivals, Apple TV can play the copy-protected music, TV shows and movies purchased from Apple’s iTunes online store, the most popular legal downloading service by far. (However, it cannot play copy-protected music in Microsoft’s formats, even from Windows computers.) It worked great with laptops and desktops alike, with Windows XP and the new Windows Vista operating system, and with newer Macs powered by Intel processors and an older Mac powered by an IBM-built G5 processor.

Apple TV’s most important limitation is that it can’t stream much video or audio directly from the Internet — yet. The capability to go directly to the Internet, bypassing the computers in your home, is built in, but is initially being used only to fetch feature film trailers and short preview clips of popular songs, TV shows and movies sold on the iTunes store. Apple TV also won’t allow you to buy media directly from the iTunes store. You must first download content from the Internet or iTunes on a computer, and then Apple TV will grab it from the computer and play it on the TV.

In its usual secretive fashion, Apple refuses to say if or when this direct-to-the-Internet capability will be expanded. But we fully expect Apple to add the capability to stream or download a variety of content directly from the Internet, and that this new capability will be available on current Apple TV boxes through software updates.

In our tests, Apple TV is a pleasure to use. Setup was stunningly simple. We just plugged the unit in and hooked it up to the TV with a single cable (not included). The unit found and connected with Walt’s Wi-Fi network almost instantly. To link to each computer, we just typed into iTunes on that computer a five-digit code number the Apple TV put up on the TV screen. This needs to be done only once.

You can select one computer to automatically synchronize with the Apple TV. Any song, TV episode, movie or photo you download or otherwise add to that one computer is automatically replicated on the Apple TV’s internal hard disk for playback on your TV. We tested this synchronization function with both a Mac laptop and a Windows Vista desktop, and it worked perfectly on both.

For instance, we imported 376 photos Katie had taken on a recent trip to France to a Mac laptop that was synchronized with the Apple TV. In short order, all of the photos were on the Apple TV and we watched them on the big plasma screen.

We also bought some TV shows, movies and songs from iTunes on our synchronized laptop, and they were automatically transferred to Apple TV, where we could watch them. It can, however, take hours to synchronize large files like movies over a slow wireless network.

In addition to your single synchronized computer, you can designate up to five other computers as sources for your Apple TV. From these machines, you “stream” the content over your wireless or wired network, instead of actually transferring them, but the music and video shows up on the TV just as if it had been synchronized to the Apple TV’s own hard disk.

All of these functions are controlled through iTunes on your Windows and Mac computers, just as you would control an iPod through iTunes. (The latest version of iTunes is required.)

In our tests, streaming worked just as well as playing content from the Apple TV’s own hard disk. Even though Walt’s Wi-Fi network is of the older “G” variety, and the Apple TV can handle newer, faster “N” variety networks, every single movie, TV show and song streamed without interruption from both Windows and Mac computers. That even included older or slower computers. This was an impressive feat.

The only downside of streaming as compared to syncing is that you can’t stream photos. These can appear only through synchronization. Apple plans to enable photo streaming later.

On the TV screen, Apple TV presents a simple, handsome list of content for each computer you choose to view. Media is divided into Movies, TV Shows, Music, Podcasts and Photos. You can change among your various computers using a menu called Sources.

There are some drawbacks to Apple TV. It won’t work with most older TV sets, the square kind that aren’t capable of handling widescreen programming. And it works only with TVs that have the newer types of connectors, such as “component” jacks, and the new HDMI cables being used on most high-definition TVs. It works best with high-definition TVs, and it puts out video in high-definition resolutions. But it will also work with “enhanced definition” widescreen sets.

Also, the tiny, simple Apple remote control can’t control the volume on either Apple TV or your TV set or audio receiver, so you have to keep reaching for the TV or audio receiver remote. And you can’t plug in an extra hard disk to add storage capacity, even though there’s a USB port on the back and the built-in 40-gigabyte drive is too small to hold many TV shows or movies.

But, all in all, Apple TV is a very well-designed product that easily brings the computer and the TV together.

• Email: MossbergSolution@wsj.com

This week, I tested the H-P iPAQ 510 Voice Messenger from Hewlett-Packard, H-P’s first real cellphone and a big name for a diminutive product that is due out in April or May for around $300 to $350. Attempts to add phones to H-P iPAQs in the past usually resulted in clumsy interfaces, giving the feeling of a phone crammed into a data device.

The H-P iPAQ 510 Voice Messenger from Hewlett-Packard.

This new 510, however, comes across as the opposite: a gadget with smart-phone capabilities that is limited by its small size and lack of useful physical features, many of which are included on other smart phones. H-P has tried to compensate by using a built-in voice-recognition system that enables email dictation and reads emails aloud, but this is no substitute for a keyboard. Overall, the product is very disappointing.

Emails you dictate are sent as audio attachments, a technique that doesn’t allow the recipient to print the emails, save them as text, or copy and paste the message contents into other emails or documents. The robotic voice that reads emails you receive is bad. And using voice commands to enable the phone’s functions brings forth separate frustrations.

The iPAQ 510 is smarter than it looks: It runs on the new Windows Mobile 6.0 and can use Wi-Fi to provide a notably fast network connection. However, as if to drive home its phone functionality, the 510 disguises its smart-phone brains under the shell of a cute, stylish, basic cellphone. Its edges and keypad are black and the rest of the phone is gray with a handy 1.3-megapixel camera on the back side.

This gadget’s emphasis on looks comes at a price: It relies solely on its numeric keypad rather than a full physical or virtual keyboard, its relatively small two-inch screen doesn’t have touch capabilities and it doesn’t use a built-in scroll wheel or track ball for fast navigation.

So what’s the point? H-P hopes you’ll forget about this device’s faults when you use its Voice Commander feature to help you speak your way through navigating, composing emails and even listening as emails are read aloud.

But hear this: Even though Voice Commander offers over 20 different commands, it still suffers from the same problems as all voice-operated devices. You can’t use it in a noisy place, tough names (like my last name, for one) are often misheard and voice recognition still takes longer than pressing buttons.

The two email-related voice commands are theoretically the most useful, letting you dictate audio emails into the phone and directing Voice Commander to read emails aloud. But dictated email that you send isn’t converted into text, as one might hope. Instead, it is sent as an attached WAV file, inconveniently forcing your recipient to first open an attachment and then play your email aloud. And like all audio files, this email attachment isn’t as versatile as text, which can be printed, copied, or saved as a separate document.

What’s more, Voice Commander’s email dictation and read-aloud features work only with a Microsoft Exchange email address. So, if you’re using a Google Gmail or Yahoo email account, for example, you’re still stuck using the phone’s numeric keypad to write out messages.

The H-P iPAQ 510 Voice Messenger has a few upsides. It runs on the new and slightly improved version of Microsoft’s mobile software. It can easily hop onto any nearby Wi-Fi network, which worked quickly and efficiently in my tests. And H-P boasts that its battery will last for 6½ hours of talk time, about an hour longer than the closest competitor’s estimate.

But these good qualities are overshadowed by the 510’s poor design. I dozed off while holding my thumb on the “down” directional key to skim through lists of emails — it took much longer than using a BlackBerry scroll wheel or a Palm Treo touch screen. For certain Voice Commander functions, I had to repeat my command twice and then confirm that my command was correctly heard; more than once I gave a command that was entirely misunderstood.

I used many features of the iPAQ 510, focusing on Voice Commander to see if it made a significant difference in the product. Unless you have your phone’s earpiece attached, Voice Commander automatically barks, “Say a command,” through the phone’s speaker. I spoke a command by choosing from the on-screen list of statements, such as, “Call at ,” for which I could say, “Call Katie Boehret at work.” Voice Command repeated my choice, asked me to confirm that it was about to do the right thing, and proceeded.

But a lot of basic cellphones already have a voice dialing feature built in. So I focused especially on creating audio emails, speaking my email into the phone just as one might if recording a voice reminder. When I finished, the system played my voice email back, asked me to confirm that I wanted it sent, and emailed the message.

Voice Commander will also read emails and SMS text messages out loud. By opening Voice Commander and saying, “Read email” or “Read SMS,” unread emails or text messages were read aloud by a robotic female voice that was lifeless, barely understandable in some cases, and nowhere near as warm as the voice I heard last week in an Audi’s car GPS system. I responded to emails by dictating audio replies; you can’t use Voice Commander to dictate SMS messages.

I also used Voice Commander to find contacts, start applications, open a window for composing a new text email or listen to new appointments on my phone’s calendar.

The H-P iPAQ 510 Voice Messenger offers a way to use the phone for Internet calling, but the setup for this is so complicated that it requires help from your geeky cousin or an IT department.

All in all, this new venture from H-P is littered with shortcomings, mostly due to an emphasis on beauty over brains. The iPAQ 510 is powerful and fast, especially when using a nearby Wi-Fi network. But if you can’t easily navigate and must rely on a lackluster voice-recognition system, these features are dead in the water. H-P has nowhere to go but up from here.

• MossbergSolution@wsj.com

Great songs, like chocolate-covered strawberries, can be sampled once and adored immediately. This is good news for online digital-music stores, where anyone with an Internet connection and a buck can log on from a computer and download a new favorite tune seconds after hearing it.

Now, XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. is making this audio gratification even more instant. Last month, it introduced the first portable combination XM radio/MP3 player, the $400 Pioneer Inno XM2go. Anyone with this device who likes a song playing on XM can simply press a button and record the entire song onto the player. No computer is required, but you do need an XM subscription, which costs $13 a month.

The $399.99 Pioneer Inno XM2go combines portable satellite radio with a digital music player, but watch out for reception problems.

These recorded songs can’t be transferred to PCs or other players. But they can be bookmarked for purchasing online at Napster’s music store the next time the Inno is plugged into a Windows computer. This purchased version of the song can be used on computers and other devices (but not the Apple Computer Inc. iPod).

The new XM device, made by Pioneer Corp.’s Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc., uses flash memory rather than a hard disk, and can store 50 hours of recorded XM Satellite Radio, plus about 8 hours or 150 digital songs copied from a computer. One half of the player is reserved for XM recordings, while the other half is reserved for MP3 or WMA music files. You can switch between the two modes by pressing a button.

The Inno is at the center of a lawsuit filed yesterday by members of the Recording Industry Association of America, who are challenging the legality of the device’s recording feature.

This week, we tested the portable Inno all around town. We liked the device itself, and enjoyed listening to various satellite radio stations on the go. But we were deeply disappointed with its radio reception, which failed in too many places. And we really didn’t like working with the Napster software when we synched the player with our PC. It was a hassle.

Our verdict: adding live satellite radio and the ability to record it onto a device is a good idea, and may appeal strongly to satellite radio lovers willing to pay $13 a month to subscribe. But, for people who just like music, the radio and recording features didn’t seem like reason enough for us to want to buy the Inno over, say, an iPod — especially given the downsides we encountered.

We liked the overall feel of the Inno, and it wasn’t too tough to get the hang of its buttons and functions. It measures 3.7 inches by 2.2 inches by 0.6 inches — just slightly smaller, overall, than a full-size iPod and a little bit thicker — and its 4.5-ounce weight makes it a tad lighter than a 30-gigabyte iPod. A 1.7-inch color screen on the front doesn’t take up the entire surface, and compared to an iPod’s 2.5-inch color screen, its size was more like the one on the tiny iPod Nano, a 1.5-incher.

The back and front sides of the Inno are decorated in cool gun-metal gray. Shiny black edges give it a modern feel, while its stubby antenna resembles that of a smart phone, but thicker and perfectly cylindrical. This antenna is the device’s only means of receiving radio. That’s a breakthrough, since satellite radio usually requires a large separate antenna or a car antenna. Unfortunately, we found the Inno’s little antenna was too weak.

It’s hard to overstate the reception problems that plague the Inno. We lost reception while driving through a short tunnel, walking through a row home and wandering through our office, away from the window. Even in an office with an entire wall of windows, we had to sit right next to the glass to get XM Satellite Radio reception.

Walking around downtown Washington, just a few blocks from the White House and a few miles from XM’s headquarters, the Inno constantly dropped the XM signal, even though Washington, by law, has no office buildings taller than about 12 stories. Walking just a few feet into a Starbucks killed the signal altogether. When we sat down on a bench in a small park, the reception got much better, but still wasn’t perfect. For a device that’s primarily a radio, this is a killer flaw. Of course, you can listen to the Inno’s stash of recorded music during these signal dropouts, but, when the failures are as frequent as ours were, this need to keep switching modes turns a supposedly pleasurable experience into a huge annoyance.

Optional headphones with an antenna disguised in the headpiece can be purchased for an additional $40, and these added slightly better reception, but not much.

A well-designed button on the right side of the Inno powers it on or off when pushed downward, and puts the device on hold when pushed up. Volume controls are just below this button, also on the device’s side. Three buttons line the bottom edge of the color screen — Mode, Play/Pause and Display — and four directional arrows surround an XM select button below these three.

We checked out XM’s 20 categories of music, over 170 stations altogether, by pressing the right arrow button. We paused in the Decades category to listen to “Sunshine Superman” by Donovan on the ’60s station before skipping to Hits where Daniel Powter’s catchy new pop song “Bad Day” was playing on the “Top 20 on 20″ station.

To record “Bad Day” onto our Inno, we pressed the XM button, chose Record and Record Song. A red “REC” icon appeared at the top of the screen, and went away when the song ended. In one case, we were listening to a station when a new song that we wanted to record started before we could press the right buttons. Thanks to the magic of satellite radio, recording automatically started at the song’s beginning, rather than halfway through.

If you’d like, you can schedule times for your Inno to start and stop recording, and these can be set to record on the current day, every day or on a specified date.

When listening to Elton John’s “Something About the Way You Look Tonight” on a romantic music station appropriately named “The Heart,” we opted to Bookmark the song so that it was set aside in a special category of songs for buying when we connected our Inno to our PC. An option called TuneSelect can be chosen while a song or artist is playing; from then on, a message will flash across your screen whenever that artist or song plays anywhere on XM, so you can tune in.

Before synching our Inno with our computer, we used an included CD to load XM + Napster software onto our Dell PC and typed in a special promotional code given to us by Napster for testing.

The Napster software program is confusing, to say the least. Napster offers three types of accounts: Napster Lite, music-store usage with no monthly fee that allows online listening and purchasing of songs à la carte; Napster Membership, a $9.95-a-month program allowing unlimited music downloads onto the PC — but not for transferring to a player; and Napster To Go, a $14.95 monthly membership that allows unlimited music downloading and transferring to a device.

If that doesn’t confuse you, add the fact that because Napster offers music rentals rather than just buying of songs — like iTunes — it considers purchased tracks to be different than downloaded tracks. Overall, your purchased tracks or previously owned tracks (in MP3 or WMA file format) can be transferred to the XM2go. Downloaded (not purchased) tracks can’t be transferred to the XM2go, but they can be transferred to special, more advanced devices with what’s known in techie land as DRM 10 compliance. XM plans to introduce devices with this technology in the future.

The Inno connects to a PC using a standard USB cable, but it must be simultaneously lying in its special sideways dock, which also powers the device. When the Inno is turned sideways in its cradle, its screen automatically rotates, as do its directional arrows. This cradle also has plugs for an additional included antenna and a line out, for using the Inno with a stereo system.

In Napster’s software program, our Inno was identified, as were the songs that we had recorded and bookmarked. Songs recorded from XM can’t be exported from the player, due to copyright laws. Most of the songs we had bookmarked, including Elton John’s tune, had a Download icon next to their track titles.

But instead of seeing a Buy icon next to our bookmarked tunes, we could only purchase songs by right-clicking on tracks and choosing Buy Track since our account type was designed for streaming music rather than buying it. This type of navigational confusion was abundant in the program, and users would easily and understandably be befuddled by what account type they had and what was or wasn’t included in it.

We dragged and dropped songs onto our Inno player without a problem, and they showed up in the MP3 section of the player when we started it up again. We even created playlists, right on the Inno, combining music recorded from XM stations and our own MP3s. Switching between the live XM stations and our MP3s and WMAs was easily done with the Mode button. XM estimates that the Inno’s battery will last for 15 hours in playback mode and five and a half hours in Live XM Mode.

When it’s all said and done, XM’s Inno is fun to use on the go, as long as you’re not underground or in room without windows. But its spotty reception, confusing software and monthly fee make the Inno a no-go, except for hard-core XM fans.

• Email: MossbergSolution@wsj.com

When someone whips out a video camera at a school play or family reunion, two thoughts probably run through your head. One: I really should get a video camera for moments just like this. Two: Who am I kidding? I have no clue how to use a video camera or what to do with the digital video files.

For all their popularity, video cameras are a pain to use, especially on the spur of the moment. Most require a supply of tapes, and the discipline to have expensive, charged batteries at the ready. For casual users, video cameras are also intimidating, filled with buttons and controls whose purpose isn’t always obvious.

Not only that, but it’s a challenge figuring out how to transfer your videos to a computer, for editing and sharing with others. And the price tags on most camcorders, ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars, don’t help.

But what if somebody invented a dead-simple, point-and-shoot video camera — the video equivalent of a point-and-shoot digital still camera? What if it had only a few simple buttons; didn’t require tapes; used standard AA batteries; and cost under $150? And what if it had the built-in ability to easily transfer your videos to a computer, and an easy way to convert them into a DVD?

Well, a small company has invented just such a video camera, and we’ve been testing it. It’s a radical new design, unlike any other video camera we’ve tested, and has the potential to expand the video-camera market to people who, until now, have been reluctant to use one, or to use one very often. Not only that, but this simple, low-priced new design is due to spread by the end of this year, because it has been licensed to several big-name camera makers, who plan their own versions.

The Point & Shoot Video Camcorder by Pure Digital Technologies; $129.99

Over the past few weeks, we’ve enjoyed trying out the new $130 Pure Digital Point & Shoot Video Camcorder by Pure Digital Technologies Inc. This device, which came out Monday and is being sold at Target stores, aims to be stunningly simple to use and works with a built-in software program that makes it easy for you to email condensed footage or save videos to your computer.

Our verdict: The Point & Shoot lived up to its billing. It was a no-brainer to use and produce video clips that, while not as good as those from a high-end camcorder, were good enough to preserve family memories. This camera has some limitations, but they were more than canceled out by its simplicity and its readiness for spur-of-the-moment shooting. Both we, and our families, were very satisfied with the results.

The camera’s internal memory, which replaces old-fashioned tape, can hold 30 minutes of footage, whether continuous or broken up into smaller segments. And its software for viewing and sharing videos on a computer is embedded right in the camera, along with a USB connector. So no cables, or installation CDs, are needed.

You can also take the camcorder to stores like Rite Aid or CVS, where for about $10 they’ll copy the footage off of the camcorder and make a DVD, complete with menus, that’s playable on most DVD players and computers.

We put the Point & Shoot through its paces at two religious occasions — family celebrations of Easter and Passover — and at a near-religious occasion: the Boston Red Sox 2006 home opener at historic Fenway Park. We also used it to record highlights from a surprise 30th anniversary party.

The biggest competitor for the Point & Shoot may not be costly, complex camcorders, but cheaper digital still cameras that also can shoot video. But, on these cameras, the video files suck up a lot of storage space and battery capacity that might otherwise be devoted to photos. And though these files can be copied onto a computer rather easily, most people don’t know how to do anything more with the footage. Pure Digital’s software walks users through emailing and saving video, eliminating the guesswork.

The Point & Shoot Video Camcorder is white and measures the same size as a disposable drugstore camera, but is designed to be held vertically. Its back side includes Play, Delete, Power, and Record buttons, as well as a 1.4-inch color viewing screen and four directional buttons (arrows pointing up, down, left and right). In our tests, we used the small screen to play back footage instantly after recording, which was a real treat for everyone who watched the videos.

Up to 98 clips can be captured in the Point & Shoot’s 30-minute recording period. After turning the camera on with the Power button, we only had to press the red Record button to start taping. In the top left corner of the screen, numbers flashed showing how much time had elapsed. The up and down arrows work as zoom buttons for the camera’s slight 2x digital zoom, and pressing record again stopped filming, ending a segment.

Two AA batteries come included in the camcorder, and the company estimates these will last for about 140-160 minutes.

The Point & Shoot might produce shaky footage for users who have an unsteady hand, as it doesn’t have an optical viewfinder or eyepiece. Another downside that we noticed is the microphone. Though it’s positioned on the front side of the camcorder, it sometimes struggled to pick up softer sounds. But it did work.

The lens is very basic, and limited. For instance, at Fenway Park, from our position halfway up in the stands, videos of players on the field were fuzzy. But Pure Digital has licensed the guts of the camera to some prominent electronics brands, including RCA, which plan a range of models with better lenses, greater memory and other features.

After taking videos on various trips, we returned to the office and plugged our Point & Shoot Video Camcorders into Windows and Mac computers. A small, hidden USB plug pops out from the side of the camcorder, eliminating the need for cables. On our Dell Windows PC, Pure Digital’s software automatically appeared when we attached the camcorder.

The first screen that we saw was labeled Browse All Videos, and it showed four tiny snapshots of the beginning scenes of the first four videos on our camcorder. You can also sort videos by date before viewing them. Below each video, the date and duration of the clip were listed, as well as options for watching the clip in a small format right on that screen, or in a larger format on a different screen.

To the left, four options were listed: Save Videos, Email Videos, Delete Videos and Make Movie. The software was as straightforward as the camera itself; we only had to select a video and choose the correct command on the left before executing it. After we saved six clips of Katie’s family celebrating Easter together in Boston, they were automatically copied to a folder on our desktop labeled “Point & Shoot Videos,” and were organized within this folder according to the date they were saved. The Make Movie option instructed us to select clips, and then press Make Movie — combining those clips into one continuous video.

When we selected a video clip and chose Email Videos, the Pure Digital software program gave us two options: create a smaller video file and attach it to an email in our default program, or create a smaller video file to store in our Point & Shoot Videos folder for emailing later with any email program. Most people wouldn’t know the first thing about making a video file smaller, so this program truly is helpful.

This process is clumsier on a Mac, because you have to install the software first — it doesn’t run automatically from the camera. Also, saving the files on the Mac for use in other software required converting them to another format or running a special program. The company pledges to fix these Mac issues later in the year.

We also took one of our camcorders to a CVS drugstore near our office, and an hour and $13 later, we got it back with a DVD of its footage. Since Pure Digital also makes other products, including a one-time-use digital camera and a one-time-use camcorder, we had to make sure the CVS employee knew we wanted our camera back with the DVD.

The DVD played on a cheap DVD player attached to a TV at the office, as well as on both Windows and Mac computers, without a problem. The DVD comes with the Pure Digital software on it so if it’s given to someone else, he or she would be able to email or save the video files.

An included cable can connect your camcorder to any nearby television, playing back footage right away on a larger screen.

Surely, you could spend a lot more money for a camcorder with better features, such as improved zoom and focusing capabilities. But when it comes right down to it, the Pure Digital Point & Shoot Video Camcorder’s quality is remarkable for how small and simple the device is. If you’re looking for a basic video camcorder that you can throw in a purse or briefcase for any occasion, this device is perfect. The camcorder and its built-in software program make sense to normal users.

• Email: MossbergSolution@wsj.com

When Apple Computer launched its video iPod last month, the hype was so great that another important Apple product announcement was lost in the shuffle. The company also released that day a new, improved, and yet cheaper, version of the already excellent iMac G5, its flagship consumer desktop computer.

At the same time, Apple Computer also introduced a new software program called Front Row — embedded in the improved iMac — that, like Microsoft’s Windows Media Center, allows users to play music and to view photos, videos and DVDs from across a room, using an included remote control.

The new iMac G5 includes an entire computer, with the processor, in a flat-panel monitor.

We’ve been testing this new iMac, and our verdict is that it’s the gold standard of desktop PCs. To put it simply: No desktop offered by Dell or Hewlett-Packard or Sony or Gateway can match the new iMac G5’s combination of power, elegance, simplicity, ease of use, built-in software, stability and security. From setup to performing the most intense tasks, it’s a pleasure to use. And, contrary to common misconceptions, this Mac is competitively priced, when compared with comparably equipped midrange Windows PCs; and it handles all common Windows files, as well as the Internet and email, with aplomb.

As for Front Row, we liked it as well. Though it does less than Microsoft’s very nicely designed Media Center version of Windows, Front Row is cleaner and simpler, with a much easier remote control. It could use some improvements, but, even in this first version, it enhances an already-terrific computer.

The combination of the new, improved hardware, plus Front Row, makes the iMac G5 the best consumer desktop you can buy this holiday season, period. For mainstream consumers doing typical tasks — Web surfing, email, office productivity, photos, music, home videos, etc. — it’s the finest desktop PC on the market, at any price. Hard-core game players, stock-market day traders, serious video producers and some other niche users should look for other computers. But, for most people, the new iMac G5 is the best choice.

At first glance, the new iMac G5 looks very similar to the model it replaced. Like its forerunner, it packs an entire computer, including the very fast and powerful G5 processor, into a slender, striking, white flat-panel monitor. The guts of the computer are entirely contained behind this gorgeous, vivid 17- or 20-inch screen. People viewing the machine for the first time often mistake it for merely a monitor.

But the new model has a slightly faster processor and is even thinner and lighter than its predecessor. And it now has a high-quality built-in camera for videoconferencing and taking snapshots, formerly a $150 external option. Plus, it includes the remote control and Front Row.

Yet the top-of-the-line model, with a 20-inch screen, is now $1,699, down $100 from its predecessor. The 17-inch model is still $1,299, despite the added features.

About the only hardware feature we wish the iMac included is a set of slots for the flash memory cards used by digital cameras and other portable devices. Many Windows models now include such slots, but iMac owners will have to buy an external card reader.

The new model is 15% sleeker and 10% lighter than before. While the older iMac’s shape was flat across its white rear panel, this one tapers off at the edges to give it a slightly thinner, more elegant, look. The power button, and the USB, FireWire, Ethernet and other ports, are still on the rear, though they’ve been rearranged.

Unlike most desktops, the iMac G5 comes with built-in Wi-Fi wireless networking, so you can use it far away from a wired Internet connection. It also includes Bluetooth wireless networking; a DVD and CD burner; 512 megabytes of memory; and Apple’s new two-button mouse. The 20-inch model has a 250-gigabyte hard disk and a processor that runs at 2.1 gigahertz. The 17-inch model has a 160-gigabyte hard disk and a processor that runs at 1.9 gigahertz.

Like all Macs, the new iMac comes with Apple’s excellent Tiger operating system, which hasn’t yet attracted any successful viruses and has no reported spyware. Tiger already includes the key features Microsoft is promising for its next version of Windows, due in about a year. These include an integrated desktop search, parental controls and tougher security. And it comes with Apple’s iLife suite of first-rate multimedia programs for managing and creating music, photos, videos and DVDs — better than any similar software for Windows.

Apple’s Front Row software program is embedded in the new iMac, which is 15% thinner than the earlier model.

The small, thin remote magnetically clings to the right edge of the computer, almost hidden from view. This remote has just six buttons, and the layout is similar to that of an iPod shuffle portable music player — including a circular ring that doesn’t scroll like that of a regular iPod. On this circle are Seek and Volume buttons, and its center is reserved for a Play/Pause button. A lone button labeled Menu is positioned below this ring.

Front Row uses the same concept introduced by Microsoft’s Windows Media Center Edition three years ago — simplifying the system’s display with huge icons and large type to make your computer’s media usable from across a room. Media Center is one of Microsoft’s better programs, and it has been well-received by many users. Unlike Front Row, it can also play live TV from a PC with an included TV tuner and can record TV shows like a TiVo does.

Apple says it deliberately decided to leave out the TV function, which it doesn’t believe many people want on a computer. In fact, many Windows Media Center models are now sold without the TV function.

After loading songs, videos and photos onto our new iMac, we sat a little ways back from the desk, aimed our remote at the Apple logo beneath our screen (where the infrared remote receiver is hidden) and started fooling around with Front Row. Pressing the remote’s Menu button instantly sends your desktop view off into the distance, replacing that with Front Row’s home screen, a black background and four giant icons clearly labeled Videos, Music, Photos and DVD. The remote’s Seek buttons rotate the icons around the circle in either direction until the icon representing your program is in the lower, center part of the screen.

The remote also functions when you don’t have Front Row open to adjust volume and skip through songs or various photo albums.

We started with Music, selecting it with the center Play/Pause button and using Seek buttons to scroll through a menu like that seen on an iPod’s home menu — Now Playing, Shuffle Songs, Playlists and so on. The Menu button worked as with iPod, sending us back one screen each time we pressed it.

Once a song was selected, its title, artist and album were displayed on the right, and a large image of the song’s album art took up the left half of our iMac screen. A giant progress bar took up the lower edge of the screen.

We backed out of Music and into Videos, where we chose from a list of Movie Trailers, Movies, Music Videos, TV Shows and Video Podcasts.

The Photos section is similar to Videos. It shows a list of iPhoto content; in our case, it listed Library, Last Roll, Last 12 Months and the three albums that we had stored in Apple’s photo-organizing software. Whenever one of these listed items was highlighted, the photos from that album or section were displayed in a mini slideshow on the right. Selecting the section started a full-screen slideshow.

DVD use is simple with the remote; we used its Seek buttons once again to navigate around menus in the movie “Shrek” without a problem.

We liked the remote’s simplicity, but we wish Apple had included a Power button, and made it work like a scroll-wheel iPod. And Front Row itself lacks many of the functions of the iPod and iTunes software, like the ability to rate songs, to show only a song’s album art or lyrics, or to accompany the music with a colorful visualization.

We liked the iMac’s built-in iSight video camera and a smart little built-in application called Photo Booth that takes your picture with as many as 16 different contortions and can keep you entertained for a while.

All in all, we can heartily recommend the iMac G5.

• Email: MossbergSolution@wsj.com

But earlier this month when one of H-P’s competitors, Dell Computer, introduced a laser printer for just $99 — the least expensive on the market — my assistant Katie Boehret and I started to recall the pluses of laser printing, and we wanted to test it. Instead of watching yet another document inching bit by bit out of an inkjet printer, we were eager to see a laser-printed page with crisp, well-defined text, spill out into the output tray in one sudden moment.

Alright, maybe it isn’t all that exciting. Still, there is something satisfying about using a laser printer for out-of-office, personal printing of items like letters, reports and the like that don’t require color but do benefit from laser quality. After some testing, Katie and I found the Dell 1100 to be just as the company said it was: a straightforward, monochrome laser printer. It was easy to set up, compact enough to take up minimal space on a desk and worked well, producing good-looking documents instantly recognizable as coming from a laser.

This new laser printer is inexpensive enough to be paired in a home office with a color inkjet, which you could use for printing Web pages or digital photos. It also might work as the sole printer for some users who don’t mind not printing in color.

We tested the Dell 1100 laser printer alongside a comparably priced, middle-of-the-road inkjet printer: the $90 H-P Deskjet 5740. We didn’t directly compare these two printers so much as we allowed each to remind us what the other did or didn’t have.

Physically, the Dell laser looked like a mini version of any average laser printer that you might find in an office; its footprint measures roughly 14 inches wide and 12 deep. The H-P looked like most inkjets — wider (about 18 inches) than it is deep (eight inches) so that its cartridges can slide from side to side as it prints. Both have just a few buttons, including those for power and print canceling.

We followed simple instructions to set up the Dell 1100 in just a few minutes, including attaching it to a computer using a USB cable, plugging in the power cord and inserting its included toner cartridge. The 1100 comes with a starter cartridge that is supposed to last for 1,000 pages. Additional cartridges sell for $65 and Dell says they yield 2,000 pages each, for a cost of 3.25 cents a page. That is a lower per-page cost than many inkjets boast.

We printed multiple-page documents, a cartoon and a single-page document in Microsoft Word using the Dell 1100. It was nice not to hear the ink cartridges moving side to side, like on most inkjet printers. Instead, the documents just slid out of the printer’s top when completed. The printer took about 10 seconds to churn out our single-page document.

The printed type produced on the laser looked more delicate and finely chiseled than that on the inkjet, and appeared slightly lighter in color. We opened up printer settings on our computer and adjusted the darkness of the print to “dark” from “normal,” but the print still looked the same.

The cartoon image that we printed on the 1100 showed various shades of gray, which looked fine. If you weren’t too concerned about color, these grayscale photos and images might suffice.

The Dell’s paper tray holds 150 pieces of paper, and the printer isn’t capable of automatically printing on both sides of one sheet. You can manually feed sheets in for duplex printing, but that takes extra time and effort. The 1100’s “duty cycle” — the maximum recommended usage before a product’s life expectancy would be affected — is 5,000 pages a month.

The H-P 5740 also was easy to set up, but instead of installing one large cartridge, as with the Dell, we snapped two included cartridges into place — one color and one black. The company estimates that these starter cartridges will last for a combined total of 710 pages.

Extra cartridges can be purchased after your starters run out. The two highest-yielding cartridges cost about $65 combined, and H-P says they produce 1,250 pages, for a per-page cost of 5.2 cents, about 60% higher than the Dell.

We printed the same documents on our H-P as we did on the Dell and found that the lettering in each Word document looked thicker and less well-defined on the inkjet than on the Dell laser. The inkjet text was darker and bolder than was the Dell’s laser text.

According to the specs, the H-P will print faster — 18 pages a minute in color and 23 in black and white compared with the Dell’s 15 pages a minute in black and white. In our single-page test, we found that the Dell 1100 worked faster than the H-P 5740.

The inkjet took about 17 seconds compared with 10 seconds on the laser. We printed a three-page document on each device with similar results: The Dell printed three pages in roughly 15 seconds while the H-P took 30. The inkjet also took longer to start each print-out, and it was a little louder than the Dell was.

The H-P holds 50 fewer sheets than the Dell in its tray and has a slightly less-impressive duty cycle — it can only produce 3,000 pages a month, or 2,000 less than the Dell.

If a majority of your print-outs are text documents with a few icons or images here and there, you probably will like the monochrome Dell 1100. For the price, it is worth a try.

With reporting by Katherine Boehret

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com