The price most Internet enthusiasts pay for introducing friends and family to the Net is that they have to respond to an impossibly wide range of technical questions from those encountering modems, DNS settings, e-mail clients, and browsers for the first time. With the Compaq iPAQ Home Internet Appliance IA-1, ($199 list, after $400 mail-in rebate and a three-year commitment to MSN at $21.95 per month), Compaq has created a device so simple to install and use that you can widely recommend it without needing an unlisted home phone number.

The unit comes in two components: a battery-powered infrared keyboard, and a CPU module with a 56-Kbps modem, a mono speaker, and a 10.1-inch DSTN flat panel color display fixed at 800- by 600-dpi resolution with 16-bit color. Driven by an AMD K6-2 processor with 32MB of SDRAM and 16MB of flash memory, the iPAQ runs Microsoft Windows CE and Internet Explorer 4.01 with Internet connection and services provided by MSN, along with auto-update capabilities for new code releases.

About 9 inches deep, the CPU module can easily fit on a kitchen counter, and the unit comes equipped with a hinged screen that allows for easy adjustment to any viewing angle. Three lights indicate on/off, connection status, and whether you have e-mail waiting (just like an answering machine). The unit has four USB connectors in the back for a printer, a mouse, and other peripherals; there's also a stereo speaker connector and telephone jacks. The iPAQ is compatible only with the Epson Stylus Color 740 printer, according to the company, but we had no problems setting the iPAQ up with an Epson Stylus Color 900.

The laptop-size keyboard has a good feel but lacks a delete button. A push pad on the bottom provides mouse functions; dedicated keys for Home, E-Mail, and MSN Messenger sit atop the keyboard, along with hot keys to other MSN services. On the right are keys for navigating the Web.

Installation could not be easier. When purchasing the iPAQ, you provide your phone number to the reseller and sign up for MSN. A poster-size guide helps you insert the power cord and telephone cable and is supplemented by a tutorial on the unit itself.

At the close of the tutorial, the iPAQ dials an 800 number, connects to a computer that recognizes your home number, logs you on, and lets you choose a password. Then the iPAQ inserts the proper local phone numbers, logs off, and reconnects locally.

MSN Companion is the front end to E-Mail, Messenger, and general browsing. At the bottom of the screen is a dedicated navigation bar with links to these services and a line for inserting a search phrase or URL. Your home page contains some MSN content but is dominated by links to mail, Favorites (you can configure up to 30), other MSN sites such as Expedia and Money, and local lookups such as news, weather, entertainment, movies, and television listings.

The E-mail client is simple and functional, but Companion provides only one e-mail account, a surprising feature gap compared with the six provided by WebTV. The client shares a simple address book with Messenger and provides folders for new, old, sent, and discarded messages, with no configurable storage folders. You can view a wide variety of attachments, including most image formats and ASF, MPEG, WAV, and WMA files. Messenger conversations are limited to text chat, with no audio capabilities.

All browsing occurs within one window, so new users can't get lost among multiple open windows. The unit supports cookies, and the iPAQ's 128-bit security enabled us to access banking and investment sites without difficulty. Though CSS/DHTML/Java capabilities are limited to 4.01 levels, most sites deliver lessened functionality rather than none. For example, on Microsoft Investor, we couldn't use plus and minus keys to hide or show stocks in our portfolio accounts.

As with most Internet appliances, multimedia support is limited. Using Microsoft Windows Media Technologies, the iPAQ can handle most common image and multimedia formats, including MP3, but VRML, QuickTime, and all RealNetwork formats are incompatible.

Compared with DSL and T1 scores, load times were dismal. But for e-mail, news reading, shopping, and general searching, the unit was very usable, with hot keys providing fast access to most necessary pages.

True, experienced users will find MSN Companion a touch claustrophobic and certainly overly Microsoft-centric, and they will decry the lack of networkability or DSL/cable connectivity, which should be available in future versions. By design and marketing intent, however, the iPAQ is clearly not for users who browse daily on loaded Pentium III powerhouses at T1 speeds. Rather, the iPAQ is for people who have postponed their Internet debuts until the cost of such a device and the time spent learning how to use it have been reduced to appliance-like levels. By accomplishing both objectives, Compaq and Microsoft have created a device that may open the Internet to an entirely new class of consumers.