Your Technology

By Anita Hamilton

BARBIE PLAYS NANCY DREW

Until now, the biggest adventure that Mattel Media's popular line of Barbie CD-ROMS offered girls was a chance to discover a new hairdo for their plastic princess. Mattel's latest offering, Detective Barbie ($35), promises something different: players must solve a kidnapping and recover the missing loot. Set in a colorful carnival setting, Detective Barbie is fun to play and almost seems daring--until the girls learn that Barbie's real quest is to find Ken. Nothing new there.

PAGE ME IN PARIS

If the $3,000 price tag on the new lightweight satellite phones made by Kyocera and Motorola seems a bit high, globetrotters on tight budgets might consider Iridium's $500 Go Anywhere pager instead. When Iridium's 66-satellite network becomes operational--which is supposed to happen next month--the little pager will receive messages anywhere in the world. Usage fees aren't set, but could be $50 to $100 a month.

TABLET COMPUTING

When it comes to notebook PCs, thin usually means expensive. But a new line of sub-$1,000, 3-lb. notebooks running the Windows CE operating system is both svelte and affordable. Hewlett-Packard's Jornada, Sharp's Mobilon Pro and Vadem's Clio feature built-in modems, word-processing and spreadsheet programs, and offer up to 12 hours of battery life. The screens on the Mobilon Pro and Clio rotate on a hinge and can lie flat, tablet-style. But none have a floppy drive, making file transfers a bit awkward.

--By Anita Hamilton