Lapping the competition:
I was glad to see you reviewing some handheld computers ("No Desk Required," July 31). I think that this is the most interesting area of computers right now. I had read a number of good things about the Psion Series 5 palmtop, especially its keyboard. Eventually, however, I bought a Windows CE-based Philips Velo I, with 12 megabytes of memory and a built-in 19,900-bps modem, for $449 (against $499 for the Psion). I agree with your reviewer that, although the Psion keys look like you can touch-type, it's really not feasible to do so.

Overall, I am very happy with my Velo for trips, although I still prefer a desktop computer for daily use. (The Velo I also has a big brother, the Velo 500, which costs $150 more and comes with four more megs of memory, but since I use my palmtop mainly for word processing, even one megabyte is a lot of text.) Finally, I have a computer that I can easily carry around.

–Bruce R. Doe, Springfield

As someone who travels often, I consider any laptop over 5A pounds unluggable. In shopping around, I never even look twice at a computer that weighs 7 pounds, as most of those in your article do. I recently searched for a new computer and found a few at 6 pounds – still too heavy – and eventually settled on a new Sony model. Mine, the Vaio 731C, weighs 5 pounds and is a very good machine – at a price of $1,800. I highly recommend that you include it in any update of the article.

–Carolyn McCommon, Arlington

A recent copy of the MacWarehouse catalogue lists an older PowerBook 1400c (166 MHz, 16 megs of RAM and a 2-gigabyte hard drive) for $1,499. That would have been worth listing next to the IBM ThinkPad 310ED, since Macs are easier and more fun to use.

–Sam Kutler, Annapolis

We left discontinued models such as that PowerBook out of the review, as we do with all our hardware reviews. Since the article ran, Apple has cut the prices of its current PowerBook G3 series of laptops (the cheapest model now runs for $1,999), but bargain-hunting shoppers with PowerBook envy will have to wait until next year for Apple's upcoming consumer entry, which is said to combine a low price with iMac-esque looks.

The battle of the removable media continues:
In your article on Imation's SuperDisk drive ("A Disk That's No Flop," July 31), Dan Pacheco made one misstatement and several questionable judgmental calls to put the SuperDisk in a favorable light, while disparaging the Iomega Zip drive.

Mr. Pacheco glosses over the speed difference between the two drives. He leaves the impression that the two drives are fairly close in performance when, in fact, depending on what factors you consider, the Zip drive can run up to 5 times as fast as the SuperDisk. The cost of the two drives is approximately the same. The cost of the media is approximately the same. The size, weight, and durability of the media are approximately the same. But the Zip drive is considerably faster, and the installed base of Zip users is many times greater than the SuperDisk's.

–Frank Stewart, Alexandria

Too hot for Hotmail:
In your article, "Mail Bonding," it would seem that you are unaware of the fact that many owners of e-mail applications that can automatically screen incoming mail use that feature to filter out anything sent from @hotmail.com. Out of the blue, I started to get mail from people at Hotmail addresses advertising pornographic video films, so I put Hotmail on my filter list, along with the e-mailers of get-rich-quick schemes and quack medical remedies.

–Bob Gerard, Bethesda

Good point. This glut of junk e-mail, or "spam," is, unfortunately, not unique to Hotmail (Hotmail has actually been pretty aggressive in suing people who use its service to send out bulk e-mail). Just about every free e-mail service gets misused in this way; we've gotten such messages from, among many others, Hotmail, Juno, Yahoo and USA.Net addresses. Note that in some cases, spammers simply use a phony return address on Hotmail or another free-mail service – which will cause people complaining about the junk e-mail to get only a "no such user" message in response – but send their garbage from a separate Internet provider.

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