I Get Mail!

By JOSHUA QUITTNER

I am doomed to live among the Monimals. As readers of this column know too well, Monimals are furry, decorative computer-monitor covers. With one, you can gussy up your screen so it looks like a cow, for instance. Or a moose. Whatever. I can't ignore the wretched things. The No. 1 question among Personal Technology readers? "Where can I get one?" The blurb we ran about Monimals some months ago gave its website www.monimals.com as the sole point of contact. Tragically, the site doesn't tell you where to buy one in the U.S. And, until recently, I couldn't answer your questions. Then, a month ago, kismet. I was at a sushi bar in the middle of the desert (Las Vegas) listening with approval as the Brit on the stool next to me browbeat the chef: "It tastes like a black plastic bag," he whined, pointing to his tuna roll. "I can't eat the bahhhg-tasting thing!" Figuring he was a fellow critic, I struck up a conversation. The man turned out to be Joe McAllister--CEO of Monimals Trading Co. Ltd. of London! "Where can you buy those damn things?" I asked. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship that has at last allowed me to answer the biggest question of our TIME: You can find Monimals at the Electronic Boutique chain. Or call 1-800-948-6777 to order direct.

When I started writing this column last summer, I assumed I'd get more questions about stuff like Monimals than, say, the vagaries of 3-D accelerators. And, frankly, it's a relief: Millions of people are buying computers for the first time, and the advice they seek tends to be on the practical (if not whimsical) side. There are a lot of beginners out there. For instance, every week I point people to our website, timedigital.com for more information about the column's topic. Invariably, I get e-mail from readers saying something like: "I tried to look up timedigital.com but I got thousands of hits. Which one is your page?" Aha! I snort. Here's a person who is still confused about the difference between a browser and a search engine! (Don't be ashamed. I have an editor who is also befuddled on this point.) Think of a browser as the 3-D glasses your computer needs to "see" things on the Web. When you launch the program and type in an address, you can visit Web pages on the Net. And the most popular places people visit are search engines; they archive the hundreds of millions of pages that make up the World Wide Web. Yahoo, Excite, InfoSeek, Lycos and Hotbot are examples of search engines. The confusion probably stems from the fact that Netscape's and Microsoft's browsers (the Coke and Pepsi of the browser market) take you to their own home pages--which have search engines--when you start them. You can change that start page by going to the browser menu's "Internet options" on a PC or "Preferences" on a Mac.

Finally, I admit that I get a fair number of questions about 3-D accelerators. These devices help your PC display three-dimensional graphics. But unless you play the latest and greatest games on your PC, you really don't need one. You can spend many hundreds of dollars, which I wouldn't recommend for anyone but graphic artists. I've tried most of them and can't see a difference, frankly. So my advice to gamers is to spend as little as possible. Now, the choice between a cow and a moose Monimal, though, is something we can discuss.

If you have reasonable--and maybe even unreasonable--questions for Josh Quittner, he can be reached at jquit@well.com