Story With the Biggest Impact: Unlinking your telephone number from your carrier roils the cell phone industry, and you can switch your land-line number to your cell phone if you choose. Now a phone number is increasingly like a name -- it goes with you all the time.

Runner-up: The gaping holes in Microsoft security, as exposed by viruses and worms such as Bugbear and Klez.

Best User News: The emergence of open-source alternatives to major Windows and Mac programs. The Firebird browser is the place to start (www.mozilla.org), but Thunderbird is a fine e-mail program that is emerging from the same project, and OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org) is gaining strength as a solid alternative to Microsoft's office suite.

Best Music Service: Apple's iTunes showed that people are indeed willing to pay for music if the price is reasonable. With 25 million songs sold and a catalog topping 400,000, the iTunes Music Store is available to both Mac and Windows users, spurring sales of Apple's iPod. ITunes may just put an end to Microsoft's dream of making its Windows Media Audio format the industry standard.

Most Significant Web Site: The Federal Trade Commission's Do Not Call Registry (www.donotcall.gov) is a lifeboat for a nation drowning in an ocean of telemarketing. Has any site been greeted with such anticipation, not to mention relief?

Most Unexpected Development: I dismissed camera phones as a pointless fad last year, only to see them become the fastest-growing consumer electronic device of all time. As sales triple in 2004, Finnish handset-maker Nokia is about to emerge as the world's largest camera company.

Best Mobile Entry: Intel's Centrino chip adds wireless capabilities to average laptops, more and more of which are being shipped with the technology inside. Pairing Pentium processors with short-range wireless -- Wi-Fi -- means you can have your coffee and keep computing, whether you're in your kitchen, an airport or a local cafe. Wireless business networks are also booming, and future Centrino releases will ensure that home users get used to cutting the cord.

Best Add-on Program: The Google tool bar is simply indispensable for Internet Explorer users, offering instant availability to the Web's best search engine as well as a pop-up blocker that makes surfing enjoyable again (toolbar.google.com). The program helps you create complicated search strategies with point-and-shoot ease. Keep a copy of Tara Calishain's "Google Hacks" (O'Reilly, $24.95) nearby; it's the best computer book of the year.

Most Confusing Situation: With Red Hat focused on corporations, end users are being shuffled to Fedora (fedora.redhat.com), but it's buggier than Red Hat 9. France's Mandrake goes in and out of bankruptcy while Germany's Suse has been bought by Novell. Meanwhile, SCO is claiming it owns key parts of the Linux code. The future of Linux in business continues to brighten, but end users remain wary.

Best Desktop Computer: Apple's Power Mac G5 is a powerhouse, boosted by a 64-bit PowerPC processor designed by IBM and capable of running twin processors in a ravishing 2-GHz model. Video editors and serious photographers have never had so much power to play with, backed by the solid, secure OS X operating system. With Firewire for quick data transfer and up to 8 GB of RAM, the G5 redefines the whole category of multimedia PCs.