SO WHADDAYA THINK?

Printers are another example. Fast printers get good reviews. In the real world, however, the difference between a printer that turns out 15 pages a minute and one that turns out 12 pages per minute is insignificant. How much time is saved? And what were you going to do with it? Companies that make laser printers have for many years designed them so the hot drum that solidifies the powdered ink is set to heat up quickly, even though this shortens its life. This is done so that reviewers get fast printing -- more pages per minute -- when they first turn it on, resulting in higher marks in the review. (What, you think those printer companies are stupid? They know how to game the system.)

That's where the user reviews come in. The old Packard Motor Car Co. used to rely heavily on this approach in its advertising slogan: "Ask the man who owns one."

Amazon.com  has a lot of user reviews, but they may not mention all the products you want to look at. The advantage of the Retrevo.com  site is the sheer breadth of the reviews. It has pulled together reviews on 455 digital cameras, for example. Who could possibly review that many cameras? Not one person, certainly.

Products are listed by type and price. It often turns out that a lower-priced product is the same one that was high priced last year, and so the steady erosion of time has worked in your favor. In any event, it's a quick way to let your fingers do the walking for holiday presents.

HOW GREEN ARE YOU?

The answer, according to HYmini.com, may be blowing in the wind. This company makes a wind-powered recharger that works with many cell phones, digital cameras, PDAs, older iPods and other 5-volt rechargeable devices. It's fairly expensive: $50 for the base unit, plus $10 more for accessories you'll almost certainly want, but what price are you going to put on being environmentally correct?

The little kidney-shaped device fits easily in one hand, and a little fan spins in the wind to charge its battery. We figure there's a definite limit on how long someone is willing to stand and hold it up in the air, hoping for a steady breeze, so the accessory pack offers an easier way.

A small case and clamp costing $10 lets you attach the HYmini to a bicycle handlebar or partially opened car window. Clipping along, the fan spins merrily and a recharge takes an hour or less. This provides enough power to run an MP3 player for two hours or a cell phone for 40 minutes. If there's a decent breeze at your local outdoor cafe, you can sit and recharge (the HYmini, we mean} in about the same time.

The company is throwing in a solar panel for $10 on a sale right now. The car mount, bike mount and armband accessories are all back-ordered until 2008.

INTERNUTS

• FSF.org  has free programs for users of the Linux operating system.

  Includes stock market trackers, crossword puzzle generators and many more.

• Switched.com  is a subset of AOL News, and has odd stories. We learned of Best Buy stores faking a shortage of Nintendo Wii game machines by having a clerk walk around with a unit held high overhead and the store's public address system stating this was the last one it had. This was done every half-hour with a new one for sale each time, the reporter noted.

BOOKS

"The Big Book of Windows Hacks" by Preston Gralla; $35 from oreilly.com .

This is definitely a big book, weighing close to 5 pounds, but the tips and tricks float to the top. "Hacks" are not spyware or viruses, but quick ways of doing things that would otherwise be harder and/or cost money. We learned you can speed up your Windows Vista system by plugging one of those flash drives into a USB 2 port. You can use only certain kinds of flash drives, though, and you learn which ones from the book. You can also learn how to turn your PC into a video recorder, or how to control another PC remotely, using the tools already built into Windows XP.

NOTE: Readers can search seven years of columns here at oncomp2.com or the most recent two years at oncomp.com