Free: It's the magic word for an ever-expanding wealth of downloadable software and online services. Free doesn't necessarily mean good, however, and hunting for freebies can mean sifting through a lot of junk.

That's where we come in. We surfed, clicked, and installed to find sparkling free gems capable of planning your time, keeping you in touch, and tuning and securing your PC, not to mention glitzing up your desktop, helping you stay productive, and entertaining you with music, videos, photos, and games. We paid special attention to programs and services you may not have heard of before.

We also singled out two free offerings - one download and one online service --as the best of the bunch.....

Seven long years. Hard to believe that it's been that long since OS X first graced our Macs, but we've come a long way. Five major versions of OS X have come and gone in that time, and we've seen it develop from a fledgling operating system to one of the most robust and attractive platforms in the world. All that at just the tender age of seven: OS X is totally the Mozart of the operating system world.

Where were you when the Macintosh got to you? When was that moment when you knew without a doubt Macintosh was for you?

I had been a DOS/Windows user since childhood. I used whatever my parents had, and those were PCs. My parents weren't much for upgrading often it seems, and to my knowledge, we've had three PCs here. The first that I used was a 386 with DOS, the next one was a PII with Windows 98 (see? I told you, upgrade they don't), and the third that they still have is a PIII with Windows XP.

It was when they upgraded to the PIII that I got the PII. I messed about with Windows 98 for a while and soon tired of it, well, being Windows and destroying my work. So I installed the only other option I had, Linux. I used and became proficient in that for a year or two before deciding that if I were going into computer tech in my future, I should have experience with the three major platforms out there. That meant I needed to get myself a Macintosh.

When I finally decided to get one, a good friend of mine had just upgraded from an aging Power Mac G4 to a G5, and he sold me his G4. It came only with a copy of OS 9. Keep in mind that this was around when OS X 10.3 came out. Once I set it up and installed OS 9, I was hooked. It was just so wow. "Wow" pretty much sums up my first experience.

It's time for our completely random annual series of "Stupid Pismo Tricks". For those of you who own Pismos, this is familiar ground. To the rest of you, please be patient, and I will try to explain the esoteric foibles of this old Mac.

All Pismo owners know about the PowerBook weight-saving device. This is a hollow piece of plastic that fits into one of the Pismo drive bays to reduce the weight of the laptop. It is a pretty useless device to me, as I always have both bays filled with batteries or the DVD drive.

Or is it?

Steve Jobs is using Apple Software Update to slip his Safari browser onto Windows machines. And Mozilla CEO John Lilly is peeved.

Presumably, Lilly is peeved because Safari browsers on Windows machines would eat into the market share of Mozilla's very own Firefox browser. But Lilly says he's peeved for different reasons. He says he's peeved because Steve Jobs' little Software Update trick undermines the security of the entire internet.

"What Apple is doing now with their Apple Software Update on Windows is wrong," Lilly writes on his personal blog. "It undermines the trust relationship great companies have with their customers, and that's bad - not just for Apple, but for the security of the whole Web."

Apple's decision to offer its own Safari Web browser as a software update for its popular iTunes music service and QuickTime video software could hit rival Mozilla's Firefox browser hard.

That's the word from solution providers reacting to Apple's controversial decision to tightly tie its music and video software for the first time with its Safari Web browser. The move comes with the first version of the five-year-old Safari Macintosh browser released for the more dominant Windows market. That Macintosh version, released on March 18, apparently triggered Apple to offer Safari as software update for iTunes and QuickTime.

"This could be a fairly substantial blow to Mozilla's Firefox," said Tyler Dikman, CEO of Cooltronics, a Tampa, Fla. solution provider, reacting to Apple's decision to push Safari version 3.1 for Windows XP/Vista and Mac OS X to users as an update....

Apple's new Time Capsule is one of only two devices we know of that incorporate both a wireless router and a hard drive into the same product. In its niche, then, the Time Capsule is the most advanced product on the market. Mac owners should consider this product if they're in need of a router upgrade, but Windows PC owners and anyone who demands fast wireless performance should look elsewhere.

Apple pushes Safari to you when you update iTunes. Mozilla CEO John Lilly blasted the move. Meanwhile, there's enough hubbub to last a few weeks over these dueling point of views. But what this spat really comes down to is Google and the fees it pays to be the lead search dog within browsers.

Fujitsu plans to begin selling in late June a new range of high-performance hard-disk drives for laptop PCs that offer more storage space than current models.

The "MHZ2 BJ" series of drives have disks that spin at 7,200rpm (revolutions per minute)....

If you find that the MacBook Air lacks connectors, John Maushammer has tried to discover those that Apple did not wire in the MacBook Air, and they are numerous. The Macbook Air Chipset is indeed capable of handling many more devices than those available to us. Of special interest would be USB ports and even a SATA port.

He has already successfully located and tested 3 USB ports.

My MacBook Air with 64 GB SSD arrived last week. After pondering its form and dead silent operation, I've decided to use it full time. This hasn't been an easy decision--the Air has a lot going against it for someone like me.

My home directory is 112.59 GB. That's bigger than the Air's SSD or HD options.

I'm a chronic multi-tasker. I have a lot of apps open and many of them are disk, CPU and GPU intensive.

I travel frequently, but not so often my 15" MacBook Pro is cumbersome. I am not a road warrior...

So, I've ordered a Mac Pro to use at my desk at work and a 24" iMac to use for managing family media at home. The Air will be my travel/meetings/presentations computer.

Axiotron aims to fill some of the gaps in Apple's lineup with the ModBook, a 13-inch MacBook reworked into a slate-style tablet PC. It's a clever bit of engineering, taking the guts of a MacBook and removing the lid, omitting the keyboard and trackpad, replacing the display with a Wacom-enabled LCD and digitizer, and adding a scratch-resistant magnesium shell to the top.

While Apple may be pushing Safari on Windows, the company has historically ignored Linux users. Fortunately, thanks to WINE, which allows you to run Windows applications without installing Windows, it's not too difficult to get Safari running in Linux.

Last year, AppleInsider claimed inside sources foretelling the forthcoming discontinuation of the Mac Mini. This year, they are claiming that not only is it going to stay around, but that it is going to get a big bump in specs, including 45-nanometer 2.1 Ghz Intel processors and Intel XMA X3100 graphics controllers. So, not only has the Mac mini not been discontinued, it looks to have a long life ahead of it.

Many people have done some very creative things with the Mac minis, and while I don't have any sales numbers from Apple, it is possible that all these creative minds have helped Apple decide to keep this machine on. After all, we know what happens when you see that prominent Apple logo on the top of the Mac mini.

X-bit labs, who last month replaced Mac OS X with Vista on a MacBook Pro and concluded that "The MacBook Pro is better in almost every objective and subjective parameter, including design and the status of the brand," is at it again. This time, however, X-bit has replaced OS X with Vista on a MacBook Air and gave the svelte computer a thorough workout. After kicking the tires and driving around the block a few times, it had a lot of good things to say.

I suppose Mozilla CEO John Lilly had a point when he said that Apple's stealth Safari install process for Windows was "wrong." After all, Safari isn't just being pushed to folks who had previously installed Apple's browser, but to anyone who had previously installed iTunes or just QuickTime.

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