Now and then in True, I'll recommend a web site or a product that I really like. They are not paid placements -- I'm a consumer too, and I tend to research things so I get the "best" product for the money. Or maybe I'll run across a particularly useful web site that I like and talk about it. In any case, if I truly like a product, I'll often talk about it. (A listing of many past advertisers is on its own page if you're looking for those.)

Invariably when that happens, for weeks (and sometimes months), I'll get notes from readers saying "What was that site you talked about? I need it now." So I thought I'd list the most popular, most useful ones here. This page won't have my full write-ups about why I thought the product or site was great; it's not meant as a review page, but more as a reminder to help readers find what I talked about earlier. As always, offsite links open in a new window. Some links are to my Amazon affiliate site, but they're never for random products -- unless specifically noted, I have bought all of such products myself. --RC

• Audio. The best MP3 player (and by "best" I mean combination of size, features and price) I've ever seen: the iRiver 799. It was recommended to me by a friend who has a radio show (read: he knows audio!) For ripping my 300 CDs to MP3 files I used CDex. Some say Exact Audio Copy does better at getting high-quality audio, but I found it much harder to use than CDex.

• Books. I have very high standards for True, including the best grammar and punctuation I can do without hiring an editor. Lynn Truss agrees, and has "zero tolerance" for improper punctuation: her book Eats, Shoots and Leaves is essentially how I would have written a grammar book: with so much attitude that it became a New York Times best-seller. I used to covet Gary Larson's The Complete Far Side -- all the Far Side comics in two hard-cover volumes in a slip case -- until a friend told me about the three-volume slip-covered set of The Complete Calvin and Hobbes for about the same price! I bought it instead: it's all of the 3,160 C&H strips printed on 1,440 pages of high-quality paper, making the prints better than they've ever been in any newspaper. Last, there's my own book The True Stella Awards -- my take on weird-but-true lawsuits and what we as a society can do about the abuse of our civil court system. (More Info)

  I'm also looking carefully at the new portable book reader released by Amazon, Kindle -- including whether I can deliver the Premium edition of True to the device, which would eliminate delivery problems. The biggest unanswered question: does this $400 device work outside the U.S.?

• Computers. I no longer buy Dell due to my Dell Hell situation. (If you buy from Dell, be sure to read the lessons learned from my trials.) If you want to comment on that story, there's an abbreviated version of it on my Cranky Customer site, which allows comments.

• Gifts. I wanted a tiny digital camera, but as a former commercial photographer I wanted one that took really good photos. I found one that I was not only willing to carry (it really is tiny, but has a huge display screen!), but also took terrific photos. It's the Fuji Finepix Z1, which has since been upgraded to the even-more-capable Finepix Z5. I like giving flowers; we usually have an arrangement of fresh flowers in the house. When I want to send some, I use Flowers Fast, which is run by a friend of mine. Use the promo code TRUE to get a 10 percent discount extended to This is True's readers.

• Network. What do I use for my home network? For stuff like this, I like to go with industry-standard, robust, field-proven hardware. That would be the Linksys router with built-in WiFi. When I previously used satellite Internet access, the router conflicted with the satellite modem so I had to use a simpler "switch"; I chose this one from D-Link, which has a generous eight ports, and I still use it now to give me more ports on the router. (As far as satellite Internet, I definitely consider it a last resort if there's no other broadband option. I chose Starband, but I don't recommend anyone use satellite if they don't have to. I was able to get rid of mine after a year, since a local ISP put in terrestrial wireless, which is much faster than satellite. And it let me switch back to my Linksys router, too....)

• Software. I absolutely despise MS Word, so I write using Corel WordPerfect (though lately they seem to take as long as Microsoft to fix the bugs they introduce in new versions). Text editing and web pages are created with an excellent shareware editor called TextPad, which puts NotePad and WordPad to absolute shame. I use a customized version of Eudora for e-mail. I'm currently looking for a new data base since Filemaker Pro is now way behind the times. Due to security issues I gave up on MS Internet Explorer; I now favor Firefox -- which is much better now than it was when it first came out. (When I refer to my software with friends, I use different names for them all -- except TextPad: MessedWord, WordImperfect, Ewwdora, Filebreaker, Internet Exploder, etc. Like many, I have a love-hate relationship with my software....)

  Security: You absolutely must use good passwords online: a simple word just won't do, especially for anything financial -- there's just too much to lose. I use RoboForm to secure my passwords. I don't even know what any of my online passwords are, but RoboForm does. I only have to remember one password: RoboForm's. It does the rest.

Miscellaneous....

• Before I went on my China trip, I researched travel insurance. I wasn't concerned with "interruption", since losing the cost of the tickets wouldn't bankrupt me. But emergency medical evacuation might: it can easily cost more than $100,000 to evacuate a sick person from a foreign country and get them home. I looked at several options and went with Airmed because it not only covered me when I'm 150+ miles from home, but also if I'm at a hospital near home and the doctor wants to transfer me someplace better.

• My weather station is a Davis Vantage Pro2 -- wireless version. (The wireless is a few bucks more, but save yourself the trouble of trying to run wires from your roof into your house!) More info on my setup.

• In my now-defunct publication Randy's Random (which came back as a web site, Jumbo Joke), I talked about wanting a GPS receiver. I'm still getting notes from people asking what I decided to get. Answer: the Garmin eTrex Legend, an amazingly small unit that runs on AA batteries and has a U.S. highway map built in -- plus some RAM so you can load in more detailed maps of specific areas. But I recently traded it in on the new color version. It has a much better battery life and display, but weirdly the maps aren't quite as detailed! Two steps forward, one step back....

• My musician brother told me to not ask questions, just buy this. I did and was blown away. Animusic was created by a musician who has training in computer animation. He wondered what it would look like to create fantasy instruments that played his music by themselves. The result is awesome. Animusic Volume 2 is finally out, and its take on "Pictures at an Exhibition" is worth the cost of the disk by itself. But if you can only afford one, get Volume 1.

• My friend Leo runs a site called "Ask Leo", which provides answers from a real computer geek for the tough questions you have about your computer. Windows is a particular specialty. Leo is the guy who I go to when I get stuck with a perplexing problem. He has an extensive archive of articles that answer the most-common questions. It's well worth going there and searching if you have a perplexing problem.

• Another friend is master home-builder Tim Carter, who writes a home-improvement column, Ask the Builder. He has helped with a couple of sticky problems around my house; he really knows what he's talking about.

• I mention my wife from time to time, and people ask what she does. For her Day Job, she's one of the leading Bed & Breakfast consultants in the country, teaching people how to open and operate B&B Inns -- dramatically increasing the likelihood of doing so successfully and profitably. Her services include seminars (both in person and online), e-books, and one-on-one consulting. She is "The B and B Lady" and also has a new site about the "green hospitality" business: how being ecological can also be economical -- ECOnomically Sound -- as well as a data base for consumers who wish to find "green" lodging, Best Green Hotels.

If I forgot to include something here that you remember from True, please do let me know.