What better way to start the year than with instant savings of $200 when you purchase an iMac DV+ or iMac DV Special Edition?

That’s right, you can purchase an Indigo, Ruby, or Sage iMac DV+ for just $1099 or a Graphite or Snow iMac DV Special Edition for just $1299.

In fact, if you purchase a Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 648C color inkjet printer at the same time, you can receive up to $100 via mail-in rebate programs from Apple and Hewlett-Packard that run until February 4.

“I think Desktop Movies have the potential to completely transform higher education.”

A bold statement? Perhaps. But Baruch College Economics professor Jeffrey Weiss has experience to back up his claim.

With the help of a colleague, he recently started using an iMac DV and iMovie to produce edited films of his lectures. Now students can concentrate on classroom discussions instead of dividing their attention between active participation and taking notes.

Already he’s had eight students email him before an exam to say that they appreciated the ability to review Desktop Movies of his lectures, and Weiss believes the retention levels of the those students “may be higher than that of their pencil-wielding colleagues.”

When Apple CEO Steve Jobs completed his Macworld keynote address, the crowd in attendance made a beeline for the show floor. No surprise: there were loads of new Mac products to be seen.

Hardware products—from digital media the size of a quarter to some cool MP3 players to use with iTunes to wireless printing solutions from Epson and Hewlett-Packard—were certainly in evidence, but it was software—particularly applications built for Mac OS X—that dazzled attendees.

Judging by the frenetic activity in the Apple Games Theater at the recent Macworld Expo and by the long list of releases scheduled for the coming year, 2001 promises to be a veritable gaming odyssey for those of us who game on the Mac.

Couldn’t make the trip to the show? Not to worry, we hit the road for you and brought back lots of exciting news—and even a video—about “Master of Orion III,” “Oni,” “Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2,” “Myst III: Exile,” “Summoner,” “Myth III: the Wolf Age,” “Escape from Monkey Island,” and many more gaming titles arriving on the Mac this year.

By the way, did we mention that you could win a million dollars just by solving the final riddle in one of the newest Mac games, “Treasure Hunt 2001: The Mask of Nefer”?

You won’t find this one on cable or satellite; “Entertainment” is an all-new channel in Sherlock. Introduced during Macworld, the Entertainment channel is the home of four sites where you’ll find a wealth of entertaining news, info, gossip, and multimedia. Currently, E! Online, Rolling Stone, NBCi.com, and the encyclopedic Internet Movie Database populate the Entertainment channel, and we expect to add more entertainment-related search sites soon.

What’s that? You don’t see the new channel when you open Sherlock?

Searchers using Mac OS 9.1—which was also introduced during Macworld and is available for download—will automatically see two rows of channels when they start Sherlock. Those of you using an earlier version of the Mac OS or Mac OS X Public Beta may have to pull down the channel drawer to expose a second row. Go ahead. Open that drawer and prepare to be entertained.

Want to talk to friends, family, and colleagues anywhere in the world without running up your phone bill? Then catch epicware’s Fire, an instant messenging application for Mac OS X.

It doesn’t matter if the people you want to contact are using AOL’s Instant Messenger, ICQ, or Yahoo! Pager, Fire allows you to talk to anyone using those services, and epicware plans to add more services soon.

Fire also has plenty of functionality built in, including the ability to send text in different styles and to send fellow messengers an Away Message when you’re offline and someone tries to contact you.

Need a new gaming thrill for your iMac or iBook? Then get your kicks in Aspyr Media’s Sim Theme Park, where you not only get to build the attractions but ride them, too.

In Theme Park, as in other titles in the Sim series, the plan is to assume complete control. First you design your park — planning all the minutiae, from employee salaries to admission prices — then you open for business and try to attract (and keep) as many happy customers as you can.

If you want to get really involved in the action, you can walk around the park in a first-person perspective and view it the way your customers do. You can get on the rides and try them out. And, as business improves, you can even design custom rides, which you can trade online with other players.