With wall-to-wall prototypes and plenty of buzz about Bluetooth wireless technology and mobile Web access, Comdex 2000 was unmistakably light on tangible new products for the here and now.

If nothing else, the annual technology extravaganza heralded the arrival of the mobile Internet appliance, an overgrown handheld computer shaped like a writing tablet, equipped with a touchscreen and a wireless connection.

Other noteworthy offerings included a new palmtop computer based on the Linux operating system, a simple software kit to connect older Palm devices to the Internet via cell phone and a powerful portable hard drive that can store 6 gigabytes of digital music, photos or computer data files.

National Semiconductor made perhaps the biggest splash of the show in its debut as consumer-oriented company. The venerable chipmaker, borrowing a page from the ``Intel Inside" handbook, was showing off a ``WebPAD" line of machines based on its Geode GX1 processor made by Honeywell, Samsung and Ericsson.

Large crowds gathered continually at the National Semiconductor pavilion, where they could play with several models and get a glimpse at some further-off prototypes.

The first WebPAD to hit the market, launched a month ago, was Honeywell's $995 WebPAD Internet Appliance, which connects to a base station in the home or office via HomeRF, short-range radio technology that competes with Bluetooth. While the Honeywell version can be used for basic organizing and Web browsing functions, the company envisions it as the central control for various systems such as lighting, entertainment, temperature and security.

National Semiconductor also unveiled a WebPAD designed in conjunction with Metricom that can connect with the Ricochet wireless network which Metricom has launched in several major cities. National Semicoinductor and Metricom are looking for a manufacturer to partner with in producing the device.

Prototype versions of the tablet computer included the MediaScreen from Nokia and the Evita from a small Taiwanese company named InnoLabs.

Elsewhere at the show, there was an entire booth devoted to Bluetooth, the much-hyped short-range wireless technology, but precious few products that will be available any time soon. Almost resembling a tired Las Vegas act, countless companies including Ericsson were demonstrating their wireless Bluetooth headsets for mobile phones.

The story was much the same at most of the exhibits from the heavy hitters in consumer electronics. While the quality of assorted digital audio and video products show continued improvement, most of the ``Gee whiz!" was limited to prototypes that may never get made.

Sony, as usual, stole the show in terms of flashy prototypes, displaying a line of ``Duo" devices based on its Memory Stick storage technology, including a ``Snake" camera and music player that can be strapped around an arm or the head.

Other ``Duo" concepts included a silver dollar-size audio player and a Bluetooth organizer and camera combo. There was also a rainbow of small plastic padlock-shaped containers to store Memory Sticks and hang them by color code on a small wrack or even a necklace.

Elsewhere, a company named Agenda was demonstrating its VR3 handheld computer, which that runs on the open-standard Linux operating system. At present there are only about 20 applications for the organizer, a problem the company hopes to address with its recent launch of a software develop's edition for $179. A market launch is expected by March.

Another nifty gadget was the Digital Wallet from Minds(at)Work, a PDA-shaped storage device with a memory-card slot that's compatible with various digital formats. According to the company, the 6 gigabytes of memory that the $499 device offers is enough to hold 6,000 high-resolution photos or 110 hours of digital audio, 6,000 novels or 10 CD-ROM games.

The new Palm Mobile Internet Kit, cable not included, is priced at $39.95. It is a software package to upgrade older Palm III and Palm V devices, as well as newer versions of those products and the recently introduced Palm m100.

A company named Navigata unveiled a wireless device that works as both a mouse and a trackball to move a cursor around a computer screen. The new prodocut, Navigata VX3, sells for $59.95.

The camera company Olympus was displaying a new version of its Eye-Trek family of video goggles that is designed to work with video game systems such as PlayStation. The FMD-200 Gaming Edition, priced at $549, is designed to provide the visual quality of a 52-inch big-screen TV.

Philips Electronics was displaying computer monitors with a new ``LightFrame" technology that is designed to enhance pictures or video on a computer screen with TV-like qualities.

Chalk up another award for Apple's Power Mac G4 Cube. It has been named Product of the Year by Home Office Computing, the technology and productivity magazine for those who work at home.

The mag today announced their selection of the 100 best home office products, services, and sites of 2000 at an award ceremony at the Comdex trade show in Las Vegas. This year marks the third in a row that Home Office Computing has selected a top 100 list based on value, performance, ease of use, innovation, and suitability for home offices.

Winners are divided into a series of categories, and receive a gold, silver or bronze ranking. Each year, Home Office Computing also selects a "Product of the Year."

Apple's 15-inch, flat panel Cinema Display (which is usually overshadowed by its 22-inch cousin) also picked up an award. The US $999 display won a silver award for in the LCD monitor division.

For more information about Home Office Computing and the award winners go to the magazine's Web site.

Earlier this month Popular Science gave Apple's Power Mac G4 Cube a " Grand Award" in its "Best of What's New 2000" awards. The Cube was also awarded a Design & Engineering Awards 2001 by Popular Mechanics magazine. It was the only computer to win one of the awards.

Hoping to ease the dot-com name crunch, an Internet oversight board Thursday created seven new Web address suffixes, including .biz, .name and .info.

The decision by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers capped a half-decade of discussion about how to relieve demand for addresses ending in .com. With some 20 million .com names registered worldwide, easy-to-remember addresses have been all but used up.

The new suffixes, or Internet domain names, are the first major additions since the system was developed in the 1980s. The new suffixes could be in use by the middle of next year.

ICANN approved .info for general use, .biz for businesses, .name for individuals, .pro for professionals, .museum for museums, .coop for business cooperatives and .aero for the aviation industry.

More new suffixes are expected, ICANN chairwoman Esther Dyson said.

There are already ``regional" suffixes familiar to most computer users, such as .edu and .gov, which are for educational institutions and government agencies. But .com, .net and .org currently are the only suffixes designated as available to anyone worldwide - and all are getting crowded.

The new suffixes are similar to adding area codes to the national phone system to accommodate growth.

They could make more simple addresses available and Web sites easier to find. A computer user, for example, could someday type ama.health to reach the American Medical Association Web site instead of www.ama-assn.org. The current name is so long because ama.org belongs to the American Marketing Association.

The new suffixes could also begin a new Internet land rush, with speculators and trademark holders competing to claim the best names first. ICANN must now negotiate contracts with companies or groups that made the winning proposals.

New suffixes have been under consideration since the mid-1990s, but there were disputes over how many and which ones. ICANN was designated by the Commerce Department in 1998 as the overseer of online addresses.

For this week's meeting, companies proposing new suffixes paid $50,000 for the chance to become record keepers for the new names. As registry operators, they would be able to charge a few dollars per name registered, an amount that could add up to millions of dollars for the most popular suffixes.

In all, there were 47 applications for new suffixes.

Board members rejected .kids for children and .health for prescreened health information. They also dismissed .tel for telephone numbers, .geo for Web addresses based on location and .web over concerns that it has already been unofficially registered.

Intel Corp. will announce its fastest-ever Celeron microprocessors that are slated for personal computers costing less than $1,000 and cited research claiming that it has 94 percent of the U.S. retail market for cheap desktop PCs.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel is introducing two Celeron chips, one running at 766 megahertz and the other at 733 megahertz. Both use Intel's 0.18 micron manufacturing process, which allows the company to fit more transistors onto a single chip and to get more of them out of a single silicon wafer.

According to a research firm Intel hired, 94 percent of the computers sold that cost less than $1,000 each use the Intel Celeron process, said NPD Intelect.

Intel's chief rival, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., since the introduction of its speedy Athlon processor, has been successfully competing against the chip giant for more than a year now, by focusing on the performance of its chips. AMD currently has the fastest chip on the market.

In the past, AMD has sought to win against Intel by selling chips that offered nearly comparable performance but at a substantial discount to Intel's, in the range of 25 percent.

AMD, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., now has its own low-cost chip out, called the Duron, which is gaining in popularity among PC makers. Nine of the top 10 PC makers use AMD chips in its computers, with the sole exception of Dell Computer Corp.

The 766 Mhz chip costs $170 each in lots of 1,000 while the 733 Mhz chip costs $112 each in lots of 1,000. In 2000, Intel introduced eight Celeron chips for desktop PCs.

Internet names in Asian languages ending in the coveted ``.com" were criticized on Monday at a meeting of the Internet's governing board for being technically premature and encouraging a new wave of cyber-squatting.

VeriSign Inc.'s Global Registry Services, which oversees all Internet addresses such as ``.net" and ``.org" except those ending in country codes, last week began accepting registrations using Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters.

Proponents say that VeriSign's system will speed the take-up of the Web outside the English-literate world.

For instance, in China, many popular Web sites are named after significant number combinations. One of China's most popular Web sites is an eBay-type auction site called 8848.net -- 8848 is a play on the height of Mount Everest in meters and the lucky number eight, which sounds like prosperity in Chinese.

Web addresses were generally limited to the 26 letters of the English alphabet, 10 numerals and a hyphen. With VeriSign's system, the multi-lingual addresses are still half in English, using the final ``.com" or ``.gov" suffix.

Companies that specialize in selling Web domain names reported strong initial demand for Asian language Web site names last week. Register.com, a US-based company, said it had received thousands of applications, both from Asia and from the United States.

But some attendees at the annual meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said introducing Asian-language domain names now could prove disruptive to an increasingly-overburdened domain name system, as well as being confusing for users. That could lead to misdirected e-mail, disappearing Web sites, and more.

``Too many technologies are confusing. It could cause a big mess," said Qian Hualin, deputy director of the China Network Information Center (CNNIC), the semi-governmental group which oversees Web addresses in China ending in ``.cn."

CNNIC has also launched a similar service letting people register Web sites in Chinese language. This service, as well as similar moves by Korea's Internet administrator, in effect offer a competing system that allows the whole address, including the suffix, to be written using no English.

The Chinese government, along with the Internet Society, a U.S.-based non-profit group, criticized the introduction of VeriSign's multilingual service.

The Internet Society put out a strongly worded statement, calling VeriSign's current testing ``premature under the technical standards of the Internet" and asking it to delay its launch until its engineering group works out compatibility standards.

That's a charge that security software maker VeriSign, which entered the Web domain business when it bought Network Solutions earlier this year for $20 billion, disputes.

The Internet Society's ``concerns are not warranted," said Brian O'Shaughnessy, a spokesman for VeriSign.

He acknowledged that VeriSign's technical infrastructure allowing domain names to be translated back and forth between English and other languages was still buggy, but said the system would be glitch-free by its expected launch by year end.

``We don't want to hurt the Net in any way," he said. ``No e-mails will get lost."

What's at stake are millions -- if not billions -- in dollars of revenue from the increasingly-lucrative business of signing up Web sites. For instance, sales of domain names and related services made up an estimated half of VeriSign's $173.1 million in revenue in its third quarter ended September 30.

Besides Web addresses that end in country codes, such as ".uk" for the United Kingdom, there are currently seven top-level domain names. But ICANN's board of directors this week will rule on the addition of a number of new Web domains. Proposed ones include .kids, .geo, .xxx and others.

Critics say those possible new domain names, along with the just-introduced multilingual domain names, highlights VeriSign and ICANN's inadequate policies to prevent cybersquatters -- people who buy up Web site names in the hopes of auctioning them off later for high prices.

``First come and first serve is the wrong way to approach it," said Naseem Javed, an expert on corporate trademarks and branding. Creating new foreign language domain names will "multiply the problem."

A software trade group that conducted an online anti-piracy sting sued 13 Americans Monday, alleging they sold bootleg software worth tens of thousands of dollars on Internet auction sites.

The Business Software Alliance, which represents software companies like Microsoft Corp., Macromedia Inc. and Adobe Systems Inc., conducted the worldwide sting operation to fend off pirates and educate consumers. CD-ROM recorders and high-speed Internet connections have made it easy for bootleggers to peddle illegally copied software quickly and cheaply.

``Many of the people who once sold pirated software programs at flea markets have now moved to Internet auction sites in the hopes of reaching online consumers," said Bob Kruger, vice president of enforcement at the BSA. ``In the great majority of cases, what you see is not what you get, and what you get is illegal."

The sting is a new angle to the group's efforts, which had targeted Web sites and chat channels. Just last month, the Federal Trade Commission listed auction scams among its top 10 ``dot-con" ploys for consumers to avoid.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, was brought after the Washington-based BSA paid about $1,600 over several months for software that sells in stores for more than $50,000. The defendants face damages of up to $150,000 for each program they sold.

In most cases, the software was shown in online advertisements in a boxed package, but arrived as a single CD-ROM with the program name and its serial number written in marker on one side of the disk.

In one instance, an auction offered full versions of 21 expensive, advanced Web design and graphics programs. The programs that arrived were jammed onto two CD-ROMs clearly made by a home CD-ROM recorder.

Some of the packages also contained advertisements to buy more pirated software. Although programs such as the new Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system and Adobe's Photoshop graphics program both cost hundreds of dollars, none of the advertised CD-ROMs were advertised for over $60.

By punishing the defendants, the BSA hopes that the effort will show consumers how they can be taken online. While the programs are cheap, Kruger warns that consumers won't get product support or upgrade offers, and the CD-ROMs are likely to contain viruses.

``In some cases, you can make the case that the consumer is as much of a victim as the publisher," Kruger said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The BSA has several tips for consumers to be more aware of how to spot pirated software. Among them are to watch out for products labeled as ``academic" or ``backup" versions, programs that don't contain manuals or other documentation, and software titles from different publishers on a single disk.

The trade group also warns that if the price is too good to be true, it probably is.

The most egregious example the BSA found in its sting was a pirated copy of Adobe FontFolio, a collection of printing typefaces. It retails for about $8,000 but was auctioned for only $50.

The group says the business software industry loses about $13 billion to piracy annually.

``People think that it's just open season on software publishers," Kruger said, ``and they've been given no cause to think differently."

Auction companies such as Yahoo! and eBay are aware that pirated software is sold on their sites, but cannot always tell from the auction description if the software is illegal. Though they stop questionable auctions that they find, there can be too many to deal with.

``We're trying to maintain a very open and well-lit marketplace, and the reality is that the great majority of people who buy and sell on eBay follow the rules," said Kevin Pursglove, spokesman for the online auction company. ``But there are some people who won't follow the rules, and will try to avoid them no matter how many times we tell them."

Software publishers share that overwhelmed feeling.

``You almost feel like you're navigating a boat that keeps springing another leak," Kruger said. ``It's a constant challenge to stay ahead of technologies."

MP3.com agreed Tuesday to pay $53.4 million to end its copyright infringement suit with Seagram's Universal Music Group in a deal approved by a federal judge just minutes before a scheduled trial to assess damages in the case.

The accord means that MP3.com has mended fences with all five of the major record labels over its My.MP3.com music storage locker service. Although the company may still be required to work out claims by some smaller labels, any future payouts are expected to be minor compared with the litigation resolved to date.

Under the consent judgment, MP3.com gets a license to deliver the entire Universal Music Group catalog over its My.MP3.com service. In addition to the cash award, Universal will receive warrants to buy an undisclosed number of shares in MP3.com at a valuation above the current market price. Although precise figures were not released, MP3.com chief executive Michael Robertson said Universal will own less than 20 percent of the company if it chooses to exercise all of the warrants.

The judgment "really moves us forward and gets us out of the courtroom and back into the delivery of music," Robertson said.

He added that all of the company's payments to date related to legal problems from My.MP3.com amount to less than $170 million--the amount of cash MP3.com had set in reserve to handle copyright claims.

Tuesday's accord lifts an enormous cloud that had been hanging over MP3.com.

The company has pushed to create legal business models for selling music online and is known primarily for creating a place where unknown artists can showcase their music on the Web. But it stumbled into a legal quagmire when it created My.MP3.com, a database of some 80,000 songs that could be tapped over the Internet by customers who proved they had purchased the same music on a CD.

Unlike rival music locker services such as Myplay.com, MP3.com did not require customers to copy their own CDs but provided a ready-made database of songs. It also did not secure licensing deals with record companies before launching the service.

All five of the major labels--Universal, Sony Music Group, Bertelsmann's BMG Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI Recorded Music--filed suit when the service was launched, charging massive copyright violations.

The company settled its differences with the other four major record labels for undisclosed amounts and with the National Music Publishers' Association, leaving Universal as the sole holdout.

As the case proceeded, Universal scored several key wins.

MP3.com was first held liable for infringing Universal's copyrights and then ordered to pay $25,000 for each violation. Universal had claimed as many as 10,000 counts, potentially putting MP3.com on the hook for some $250 million. MP3.com had put the total around 4,700 CDs, leaving the company open to as much as $118 million in damages.

A Cambodian immigrant fired for refusing to make electronic parts at home for less than the minimum wage has settled an unfair labor practices suit with a Silicon Valley company.

Financial terms of the settlement were sealed, but attorneys said Monday it was the first suit challenging the electronics industry's widespread practice of paying below minimum wage to employees working from home.

The use of immigrants to make electronic parts at home has been widespread in Silicon Valley since the early 1980s. At least a dozen local contract manufacturers, ranging from small companies to multibillion-dollar giants, have been involved in so-called piecework arrangements by which workers are paid for each item assembled, rather than by the hour.

The contract companies often are hired by major computer companies to produce parts for larger components.

Those parts sometimes are made or assembled at home, on kitchen tables or in garage workshops. The mostly immigrant labor force sometimes is paid as little as a penny per component, sometimes barely earning minimum wage, and gets no overtime for work that can be hazardous.

The settled suit involved Kamsan Mao, 33, who alleged his former employer, Top Line Electronics in San Jose, forced him to work from home at night and on weekends after his daily eight-hour shifts.

Mao alleged he was paid less than minimum wage, sometimes as little as $5 for three hours of labor, as he built and repaired power supplies that went into computers eventually sold to computer giants Compaq Computer and Dell Computer, who were not named in the suit.

The practice is not illegal, but the pay rate must mesh with minimum wage and overtime laws.

In addition, Mao said he was exposed to noxious fumes from chemical cleansers and the smoke of soldering irons.

``As with sweatshops in the garment industry, the electronics assembly industry depends upon the work of hundreds of low-wage, immigrant workers," said Hina Shah, an attorney for the Asian Law Caucus. ``This settlement should send a clear message to the industry that workers like Mr. Mao will not suffer in silence."

While Mao's plight is similar to other immigrant high-tech workers, other workers feared reprisal if they sued, said Mao's attorney, Doris Ng, of Equal Rights Advocates.

Ng said that many employers in the electronics assembly industry are taking advantage of low-wage workers, banking on the assumption that they will not complain. Other immigrant employees working under similar conditions at Top Line declined to join the suit, she said.

``None of them were interested in pursuing a complaint. A lot of workers were fearful of complaining against their employer and some of them are happy to get work and are desperate to make ends meet in San Jose," Ng said.

As part of the agreement, announced Monday, Top Line has agreed to stop at-home work for its employees. Carolyn Knox, the company's attorney on the case, was not immediately available for comment.

Mao was not available for comment, but last year said the case was important to him and ``to all the other people who worked like I did or who are still working like that but not getting paid what they should."

The suit followed Mao's 1998 layoff after complaining he did not want to work from home.

A vast glut of obsolete computer equipment was all but inevitable in an era in which a common cliche is that your new computer is outdated by the time you get it home. Now IBM Corp., one of the world's biggest computer makers, hopes to provide relief to a problem some environmentalists see as one of the biggest solid waste issues to emerge in decades.

Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM on Tuesday kicked off a program aimed specifically at individual consumers and small business owners, two sizable groups of computer users that up to now have struggled to find ways to rid themselves of unwanted computer hardware.

A recent study by the National Safety Council's Environmental Health Center estimated that 20.6 million personal computers became obsolete in the U.S. in 1998, but only 11 percent, or 2.3 million of those PCs, were recycled. Moreover, the NSC estimates that 315 million additional computers will become outdated by 2004.

For years, most of the unwanted personal computer equipment in this country has gathered dust in attics and garages. On a larger scale, the industry's solution has been to ship much of the unwanted and environmentally dangerous parts to China, where weak environmental laws allow for a cheap but hazardous method of disposal.