IT'S TIME TO KILL YOUR VCR

Sony has finally laid to rest their Betamax video tape products as they announced the cessation of manufactured units. But it wasn't its long time competitor VHS that killed Betamax. In fact, the main reason Betamax has hung on so long has been due to its superior video quality over VHS. Most video professionals and broadcast stations continue to use Betamax for that very reason. But the Betamax killer isn't a better tape standard. It's the digital quality of the DVD disk. In fact, Betamax has only been hanging on this long primarily due to the lack of recordable DVD formats, but no longer. Sony, the company that created Betamax has just announced and released their new line of recordable DVD drives that literally blow away the competition. With these drives, you can record perfect digital images and make copies without the loss of quality that is typical with any analog device such as VHS video tape. But what makes them special is that they are the first to support several different DVD recording standards.

Sony's Dual RW drives are the first combination drives to support the DVD+RW, DVD+R, DVD-RW and DVD-R formats. Support of all these formats makes these new drive compatible with the latest and most popular standards and lets you record from any video source such as television programming and video from camcorders directly to the recordable DVD disks. Images on digital DVD are vastly superior to analog tape. And DVD editing is a snap with the ability to jump to any frame instantly. Easy customization via the many popular computer video editing products makes creative programming a snap. The disks created on these drives will play back on virtually any DVD computer drive as well as any standard DVD home entertainment player.

According to Sony, the drives are also the first to support the faster 4X DVD-R recording speed making them the fastest DVD rewritable drives on the market. The models also support 24X CD-R and 10X CD-RW recording (using high-speed CD-RW discs), making them ideal all-in-one recording devices.

Both internal and external models will be manufactured. The Internal DRU-500A DVD/CD rewritable drive will be available in October for an estimated retail price of under $350, and the Sony external DRX-500UL will be available in November for less than $430.

I carry a mouse.

If you carry a notebook but can't stand the built-in trackpad or pointer to move your mouse cursor, why not try a mouse? Mouse too big? Well Microsoft agrees with you and has just introduced the Notebook Optical Mouse. This tiny little silver toned rodent is really cute and easily fits underneath your cupped fingers with room to spare. The glowing red highlights belies its tracking mechanism as it uses Microsoft's optical technology to track the surface rather than the old fashioned mechanical ball.