Michael Gowan, Scott Spanbauer

With a single attachment, you can turn your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch into a video player that mimics an Apple TV ( Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice ), Roku player ( Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice ), and other video players. And it even rivals those dedicated devices for quality.

Through a video adapter and the appropriate cables, your iOS device can output video to an HDTV (or other external display such as a monitor or projector). Download the right apps, and you've got yourself a video player that works equally well in the living room or hotel room.

Affordable flat-screen HDTVs are everywhere these days, but many models omit an important part of the viewing experience: good sound. The slim bezels on the bottom or sides of HDTVs leave little room for quality speakers to properly (and loudly) reproduce the audio from TV shows and DVD or Blu-ray videos.

You could set up a full home theater audio system with a receiver and 5.1-or-better speakers to overcome this problem. But that may be overkill for your situation--or maybe you don't have the room or just don't want all those unsightly cables cluttering your TV room.

HDMI has become the way to connect your home theater devices to your HDTV. It's easy to see why: High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) handles video and multi-channel audio in a single cable. To get HD quality otherwise, you need an analog component video cable--which has separate connectors for red, green, and blue--as well as a digital audio cable. HDMI equals less cable clutter.

You'll now find HDMI ports on cable boxes and DVRs, Blu-ray players, game consoles, Apple TVs and other streaming media boxes, many point-and-shoot and DSLR cameras, and more. However, as the number of components in your home theater grows--you might have even picked up a few more over the holidays--you'll run into a problem. Namely, you have more HDMI-enabled products than HDMI inputs on your HDTV. Many HDTVs, especially older ones, come with just one or two HDMI inputs.

Note: This review addresses v11.5 of the software.

Back when Internet Explorer was languishing without a major update, a few enterprising developers figured out how to build a tabbed interface and other missing amenties around IE's basic web-page engine. One of those products, Avant Browser, was a boon to IE 6 users, adding much-needed tabbed browsing and newsfeed support.

Time was the only way you could access Netflix's Watch Instantly feature was on a Windows PC. Now you only need to watch on a computer (Intel Macs included) if you want to. There are now many different ways to enjoy streaming Netflix content where you really want to see it--on your TV.

Each of the options has different strengths--including cost, video quality, and convenience. There's one big difference among all these: The user interface is different from device to device, so the elegant view you see on Apple TV won't be the same one you find on a internet-connected DVD player, for example.

Note: This review covers v1.1 of the software.

Back in the day, an Internet suite called Netscape Communicator ruled the Web with its handily integrated browser, e-mail, and HTML authoring tools.

Microsoft's flagship product is feature-rich, friendly, expensive, and it doesn't run natively under Linux. Though Microsoft doesn't sell a Linux version of Office, most Linux distributions come with a variety of free office suites, and individual productivity applications including KOffice's KWrite word processor and Gnumeric spreadsheet. But nothing comes closer to matching Microsoft's suite than OpenOffice.org 2.3, which includes the Write wordprocessor, Calc spreadsheet, Impress presentation software, Base database designer, Draw vector-graphics program, and Math formula editor. All can import and export files in native Microsoft office formats, or be configured to use them by default. Windows and Mac OS X versions also available.

Note: This link takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the correct version of the software.

Microsoft's quick-and-easy desktop publisher meets its open-source match in Scribus, which makes it easy to design newsletters, brochures, and presentation slides from scratch, or using included templates. In addition to the usual grid, hyphenation, and typography tools, Scribus lets you export your document as a PDF file, making it a good stand-in for Adobe Acrobat, too. Scribus can't import your existing Quark or InDesign projects, however.

Note: This link takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

There's a whole world of savings out there if you look hard enough. Here are some ways your Mac and the Internet can help.

1. Consider online savings accounts

When you get right down to it, small businesses face the same everyday essentials as any working stuff--get paid and pay bills.

Accounting software has long been available to try to make these daily duties as painless as possible. Mac-based businesses have several options--both as native applications and Web-based options--that bring varying abilities to the party. While the list below certainly isn't meant to be comprehensive, it gives you a pretty good idea of what your options are, if you're on the lookout for Mac-based accounting and business management offerings.

When you get right down to it, small businesses face the same everyday essentials as any working stuff--get paid and pay bills.

Accounting software has long been available to try to make these daily duties as painless as possible. Mac-based businesses have several options--both as native applications and Web-based options--that bring varying abilities to the party. While the list below certainly isn't meant to be comprehensive, it gives you a pretty good idea of what your options are, if you're on the lookout for Mac-based accounting and business management offerings.

Stacks of bills, reading group schedules, after school events for kids, meetings, soccer games. Your life is being ruined by clutter, both physical and mental. Well, that may be overstating things. But we all could use more organization in our lives. Luckily, your Mac is a great tool in the battle to organize your life.

"People are running into more clutter than ever with schedules, bills and a table full of paperwork. The clutter can take over!" says Peter Walsh, an organization expert featured on Oprah and TLC's Clean Sweep, and author of several books on getting clutter under control. Walsh has teamed up with Microsoft to produce a series of videos about how you can use your Mac to create a digital organization hub. Walsh's videos on macbu.com focus on three topics: Family, finance, and health. While the focus on using Microsoft Office for Mac products, the tips should be applicable to many office suites.