Welcome to the holidays at Manes.com, where we cater to all your online shopping needs! Before visiting our product pages, please take a few moments to familiarize yourself with our policies:

Delivery times: Every product we sell comes with a "usually ships by" estimate. Sure, we know when the stuff you want is out of stock, but if we told you that first, you'd probably visit some inferior vendor.

Shipping charges: We believe in fully disclosing every penny you'll pay for shipping and handling. But we won't distract you with those numbers until after you've given us every last bit of your personal info and credit history.

Special offers: We often have unadvertised bonus perks like frequent-flier miles. All you need to take advantage of them is a code you can usually find in some obscure portion of one of our partners' Web sites. Good luck!

Free newsletters: We know you're busy, so we automatically sign you up for our three chatty newsletters. You'll get them every single week, along with lots of valuable offers from our premium partners. Want to remove yourself from our list? You can follow the link from our home page to "special FAQ"--just as soon as we get around to repairing it. To get your name off of our partners' lists, you'll just have to wing it.

Customer service: If you can't find an answer to a question on our Web site, just send an e-mail to our service department. You'll have a prompt answer from our robotic response facility within the week!

Of course, the real test of any online store is the quality of its products. Here's the kind of exclusive merchandise we offer:

Speed Boot: Tired of waiting for your PC to boot up? This utility shaves a full second off your start time! Comes with bonus Shut Down Improver and Sleep Mode Reanimator. Performance not guaranteed on notebooks or desktops.

Beamster: "Sharing" music via Napster getting to be a drag? Move on to swiping TVs, CD players, and pickup trucks over the Web! Beamster disassembles molecules from afar, transfers them across the Net, then reassembles them at your end of the pipe. Minimum 128MB of RAM and Star Trek computer required.

Wireless Web Magnifier: Tired of squinting at Web pages on your Web-enabled phone? This 19-inch (diagonal) pocket magnifier will make that teensy screen seem almost as big as the one you have on your desk!

Trylon and Perisphere: Jealous of Apple's G4 Cube? Now PC users get a cool design all their own that's an exact replica of the pyramidal and spherical signature buildings of the 1939 New York World's Fair. Comes in seven translucent colors, including "Bakelite" and "Depression Glass," complete with unique triangular screen.

RetrOS: Sick of discovering your "hot" new machine doesn't seem any faster than your last one? This revival of good old DOS jettisons the graphical user interface, multitasking, and hundreds of thousands of lines of bloated code in exchange for a command-line prompt and blazing speed! Fully integrated text-only browser eliminates those pesky banner ads.

Video Filler: Frustrated by jerky, blocky Internet video? This astounding software boasts a special cache that lets you see all the frames and pixels you missed the first time around--and only those frames. Works with audio, too!

CrashLog: Several programs let you bill clients for hourly fees, but what happens when your machine crashes? This application's amazing self-recovery technology tells you how much time you've spent idling while your PC is down! Logs both application and system crashes.

Conferencer: Frustrated by the way hardware companies blame your PC's technical glitches on the software and software companies blame the hardware? Now you can connect hardware and software support reps for free using our Internet telephony software and let them duke it out without spending a dime!

You'll find hundreds more great products like these at Manes.com, with the kind of customer service you've come to expect. Order before December 15, and we guarantee we'll tell you that your order "usually ships before Christmas." The very best of holidays to you and your delivery person!

PC World Contributing Editor Stephen Manes is a cohost of Digital Duo, a series appearing on public television stations nationwide.