www.apple.com/ipod/start

Now the PC is in on the action. Windows 7 includes more support for multitouch applications, making some basic touch commands work even on programs that weren’t designed for it. You’ll see more laptops and “all-in-one” desktops — computers that stash all the technology in the case behind the screen — with multitouch screens. HP, Dell and others have designed software intended to make it easy to flip through photos and music or browse the Web with a fingertip instead of a mouse.

Apple, for its part, has multitouch trackpads for laptops and a multitouch mouse but says it isn’t interested in making a touch-screen Mac. Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook calls it “a gimmick.”

Personal computers are changing — and not just because of the recent launch of Windows 7. Visit an electronics store and you might also find laptops are missing a familiar component. You could experiment with new ways of controlling some computers. And you’ll see portable PCs slimming down.

Even with all the attention lavished on Apple’s iPhone and Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle this year, your PC likely is still the center of your digital universe. Here’s a look at what the season’s computer trends mean for you.

• We’re over drives.

But already the line between phones and PCs is blurring: PC makers are teaming with mobile carriers to sell netbooks that cost as little as $99 as long as the buyer subscribes to a wireless data service. A new buzzword, “smartbooks,” is emerging to describe a device that runs a smart-phone operating system such as Google Inc.’s Android but on bigger hardware that is more like a PC than a phone.

To get you to carry their laptops to the corner coffee shop, PC companies are treating their wares as fashion accessories, not just tools. You’ll see more colors and patterns, more design-conscious shapes and upscale materials.

Computers have come with “optical drives,” slots for CDs or DVDs, for years. They’ve been useful for installing new software, watching movies or transferring music libraries into digital form. But one of the biggest lessons from the craze for “netbooks” — inexpensive little laptops designed mainly for browsing the Web — is that people were so excited about the small, easy-to-carry size that they didn’t miss having a CD or DVD drive.

Apple Inc. got rid of an optical drive two years ago when it introduced the first sliver-thin MacBook Air. That wasn’t seen as a trendsetting step at the time because the computer, which cost $1,800 then, wasn’t meant for mainstream consumption. But netbooks, which start at $250 on BestBuy.com, surely are made for everyone. The wee laptops’ popularity is proof that people are finding it easy enough to download software, movies and music to portable computers, especially with the widespread availability of Wi-Fi and cellular Internet service. And plenty of services let you store files over the Internet, eliminating the need to burn backups to discs.

Taking out the optical drive doesn’t significantly lower prices. Doing so does let PC makers design much thinner laptops. Companies including Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. have pulled DVD drives out of mid-range to more expensive computers, such as HP’s Pavilion dm3z, which starts at $550, all the way up to the $1,700-and-up HP Envy and Dell’s $1,500-and-up Adamo.

You just might want to think twice if you’re hooked on transferring CDs into MP3s — or if you spend a lot of time watching DVDs on airplanes and don’t want to squint at your iPod screen or get a separate portable video player.

• Good enough is plenty.

It might sound impressive when a PC sales pitch mentions multicore processors, state-of-the-art graphics chips, 4 or 6 or 8 gigabytes of memory and hard drives with a terabyte — 1,000 gigabytes — of storage. But another thing netbooks showed is that with a few exceptions — such as professional video editing, and maybe hard-core video-game playing — having lots of PC power is overkill.

There’s very little software that can take advantage of these powerful computers, says technology analyst Rob Enderle. That means there’s no “killer app,” the program that’s so cool or so useful it persuades everyday PC users to trade up.

While the microprocessors that act as the brains inside netbooks are less powerful than even those found in inexpensive full-sized laptops, they are sufficient for most Web browsing, e-mailing and word processing. And these computers are getting bigger hard drives, which you need for storing digital photos, music and video. Overall, they’re good enough that to people replacing 3- and 4-year-old PCs, netbooks feel downright fast.

Go for more power only if you watch high-definition TV and films, or edit HD home movies. Those tasks would require beefier machines.

• Everything’s getting carried away.

People want Internet access all the time, and PC makers are betting “smart” phones — even the iPhone — aren’t big or ergonomic enough for anything more complex or time-consuming than a quick e-mail reply.

“Thin and light is sort of the new black,” says Forrester Research analyst Paul Jackson.

The next frontier: cutting the cord for longer stretches. New chips that require less energy are emerging, and advances in battery technology are expected in the coming years to extend the time people can sit in the airport watching YouTube.

• Hands-on has its place.

In 2007, the iPhone made “multitouch” mainstream. Unlike ATM screens, which recognize one finger pushing on one spot at a time, the iPhone’s screen responds to pinching and swiping gestures made with multiple fingers. Microsoft Corp.’s coffee-table-sized Surface computer, designed for hotel lobbies and shops and also released in 2007, responds to similar gestures and can be operated by several people at once.

Apple does not officially break down results by country. In its most recent quarter, Apple stores generated $1.9 billion in revenue worldwide, the highest level ever.

“The main source of money for Apple and similar players are starting to come mainly from the online world than actually from the stores,” said Saverio Romeo, an analyst with consultants Frost & Sullivan.

He cited Apple’s recent announcement of over 2 billion downloads from its online application store. “It’s a promising revenue stream, considering that it’s just one year old.”

Computer giant Apple Inc will open its first French store beneath the Louvre museum on Saturday just two weeks after Microsoft opened a theme cafe to promote its Windows 7 software.background, with consumer spending in France still volatile and supported by government measures such as the car scrappage scheme.

But spending on must-have gadgets such as the Apple iPhone has proven robust. France Telecom has sold 1.3 million iPhones between November 2007 and September 2009, while new entrants SFR and Bouygues Telecom have sold around 200,000 iPhones since France Telecom lost exclusivity in spring.

“We are highly confident in the French consumer,” Apple’s head of retail, Ron Johnson, told Reuters at an event in Paris to launch the store.

MICROSOFT CHALLENGE

When asked whether Apple felt any pressure from Microsoft’s Windows 7 Cafe, which opened its doors on October 22, Johnson replied: “I think our store competes very well.”

The Microsoft cafe, on Rue Sebastopol, does not actually sell any Microsoft products. It sells drinks and food and offers the chance to try out Microsoft’s new Windows system, available ready bundled with new PCs or via upgrade.

A spokeswoman for Microsoft said the cafe would be open until the end of the year, with the possibility of keeping it open an extra few months into 2010.

Although Microsoft had a head start promoting its new Windows operating system in France, Apple has placed its first store in a prized position in the bowels of the Louvre museum’s “Carrousel” shopping center.

Both companies have large operations in France, according to Paul Jackson, an analyst with Forrester Research, but he said Apple in particular was looking to burnish its premium image with its new Paris site.

“It’s more to do with the feeling of association with premium shopping than necessarily the market itself,” said Jackson. He said France as a technology market tended to lag behind Britain and Germany, which already have Apple stores.

Apple’s French expansion will take place against an uncertain economic

Analysts say Apple may not suffer much from Microsoft’s buzz, largely because iconic gadgets such as the iPod and iPhone have a “cool factor” that Microsoft software lacks.

“Microsoft has been lumbered with this image of being a global giant which keeps getting things wrong,” said Robert Gregory, an analyst at research firm Planet Retail.

Apple launched its chain of retail stores in 2001 and now runs 273 stores around the world.

Microsoft recently followed suit and opened its first retail outlet in Arizona, with a second planned for California. It is Microsoft’s second attempt at the retail business after a brief experiment with Sony Corp in San Francisco’s Metreon center a decade ago.

Analysts say these branded retail outlets are more marketing tools than growing sources of profit.

Planet Retail’s Gregory said Apple’s British operations, including its London store on Regent Street, made a loss in 2008 and might just break even this year, according to data from Companies House.

Lynch, the president of the women’s college, is no technophobe. Her doctorate research focused on “digital natives,” teenagers who grew up with “the Internet as a part of their operating assumption in the world.” She knows most of her students consider their cell phones a social necessity. The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has found that 82 percent of 16- and 17-year-olds own cell phones. Ninety-four percent of teens spend time online.

But Lynch fears all that time spent in the 21st century’s town square leaves few opportunities for clutter-free thought. She wants the students to also pursue the more elusive state of mind that comes with silence.
By the late 1960s, vespers had become more spiritual than religious, no longer mandatory and held only once a week. By the 1980s the program was gone.

The new vespers program is voluntary, at least for now. Lynch hopes to have the services twice a month, to reinforce the school’s mission of teaching young women to be self-reliant.

“You will need to be able to sit, to be quiet, to be alone with yourself, to have those moments of self-reflection,” she said.

Several other schools are encouraging technology-free introspection. Amherst College in Massachusetts hosted a “Day of Mindfulness” this year, featuring yoga and meditation and a lecture on information technology and the contemplative mind entitled “No Time to Think.”

“Students welcome it,” said Amherst physics professor Arthur Zajonc, director of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. “It’s a complement to the very hurried world of gadgets they normally live in.”

Dianne Lynch wanted to give the students of Stephens College a break from the constant digital communication that pervades their generation. So she asked them to put their phones and computers away and revive the 176-year-old school’s dormant tradition of vespers services.

On a bitterly cold December night, with the start of final exams just hours away, about 75 of Stephens’ 766 undergraduates grudgingly piled their cell phones into collection baskets and filed into the school’s candlelit chapel, where they did little but sit, silently. For an hour, not an iPod ear bud could be seen. There were no fingers flying on tiny computer keyboards, no chats with unseen intimates.

Alexis Dornseif, a senior from suburban St. Louis majoring in fashion marketing and management, said she needed time away from her busy life.

“Sometimes it’s really overwhelming,” she said. “It’s good to have time to think, to not worry about what’s going on tomorrow.”