There is such a CD-ROM. It's called Street Atlas USA 3.0 and it comes from Delorme (Freeport, ME 207-865-4171). It costs $45. I can't say enough positive things about this incredible tool. See for yourself at www.delorme.com.

The CD-ROM shows you every street in the country. I checked the address of my weekend shanty on a teeny tiny dirt road. There it was. Then my son and I checked the surrounding area and found a nearby state park, to which we promptly bicycled. It was gorgeous. Thank you, Delorme, for a great weekend and a great product.

-- Harry Newton

Number Nine's Display Card Offers Great Value

When you look at Web pages, movies and two-dimensional drawings on your monitor with Number Nine's (Lexington, MA 617-674-0009) Imagine 128 Series 2e graphics accelerator board, you want one -- and at $400, you can afford one.

To see how easy it was to install, we replaced the standard card in one of our PCs with the 2e. It was a cinch. When we turned on the computer and started surfing the Web, it brought new life to even the most boring sites. (Unfortunately, it couldn't do anything about the most boring content!)

The board's virtual desktop feature lets you make your screen twice as wide as your 14" monitor. You see only the left or right half of the screen at any given moment, but you can put twice the graphics on one screen and scroll back and forth.

To see how the 2e handled images, we scanned a color photo and a check into the machine. Both were so sharp that we could see the faint wavy lines on the check, the overlapping endorsements and even a fingerprint smudge. Every graphic detail made the trip from the paper to the screen.

If you like watching movies on your monitor, this card is for you. You don't see pixelated blocks -- you see real, watchable images. Three-dimensional models look great. They rotate and spin quickly. The board does have one flaw -- it doesn't do image cleanup tasks like deskewing and despeckling.

The Imagine 128 2e uses a 128-bit memory bus. This makes it fast. The Imagine 128 Series 2e has 4 megs of DRAM and runs on Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows NT, OS/2 and Unix.

-- Penny Lunt

Artist Graphics Supes Up Imaging Controllers

Memory for PCs continues to plunge. Buy what you need now and you'll save when you buy more later. Artist Graphics (St Paul, MN 612-631-7800), well-known manufacturer of imaging hardware, brings the same benefit to image display controllers.

Two new display controllers come with memory that you can upgrade as your need for performance grows. Numerous configuration options let you mix and match for the color depth, resolution and refresh rates you need -- now and in the future.

The NetVision 2200i ($400) is designed for ad hoc and occasional imaging. It comes with 2 megabytes of video random access memory, or VRAM.

The card produces sharp images and text at 1600 x 1280 resolution @ 80Hz refresh rates with 256 colors. With the memory upgrade module, the 2200i displays an even greater variety of colors.

For production imaging, the 2500i ($500) offers you 1600 x 1280 resolution @ 85Hz refresh rates. If you choose to purchase the two-megabyte memory upgrade module, you can get even greater resolutions. These can run as high as 1800 x 1440.

Both of the cards come with a five-year warranty and toll-free support.

This is a great product strategy that keeps costs down without locking you into yesterday's technology.

-- Mark Young