While Slim Devices works on this point, it ought to address a few other issues. The Squeezebox crashed a few times, requiring a forced reboot. Its bright, two-line LED display is impossible to miss but difficult to read, with characters maybe half the size of those on a DVD player's readout. And the way to view the artist and album of a song, instead of just its title, is less than obvious (pressing the "Now Playing" button won't do the trick).

I had no such problem with Apple's AirPort Express -- it includes neither a status display nor a remote control. I had thought those omissions would negate the utility of this tiny gadget, but after a week of living with it I've changed my mind.

The beauty of the AirPort Express -- $129, plus a $39 bundle of analog and digital audio cables -- is its slick integration with Apple's iTunes software. Installing this device can be tricky: Its setup software works only on Mac OS X 10.3, Win 2000 or Win XP, and XP users may need to download a semi-obscure Microsoft WiFi software update. But once it's on your WiFi network, there's no other program to run; just select your AirPort Express from a drop-down menu in the iTunes window to send your songs to the stereo.

You can do this with your computer's MP3 and AAC files -- including purchases from the iTunes Music Store -- and even those on other computers at home, if you employ iTunes' music-sharing feature to broadcast their collections across your network. The AirPort Express also plays MP3 Web-radio streams. And its fast 802.11g WiFi receiver never dropped a connection, even when I tried to jam the wireless network with massive file downloads.

(Without the audio-cable bundle, the AirPort Express can serve as a tiny WiFi access point or extend the range of Apple's AirPort Extreme WiFi routers.)

But, alas, there is that no-remote-control thing: Unless you have a deep set of playlists or Web-radio picks, or you don't mind leaving a laptop in the living room full time, you'll get a lot of exercise running over to the computer each time you cue up a different set of songs.

Apple says it's aware of this; Greg Joswiak, the company's vice president of hardware product marketing, even went so far as to note that the AirPort Express's USB port would be a convenient way to add this missing capability.

Knowing how obvious this feature is, and how relatively simple it should be to implement, it doesn't seem like any real risk to buy an AirPort Express now. But it may be a real pain -- this device has been on sale for only a week, but it has already sold out through much of next month.

Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro at rob@twp.com.