Tinny sound mars iPod WiFi setup

My friend Jane lives in one of those Milton homes that, while pretty enough from the outside, also manages to surprise you with its 100-year-old finish carpentry, giant fireplaces, and high ceilings.

But I'm particularly jealous of Jane's stereo system, which reaches every point of the house, through speakers mounted in the corners of most rooms. It is a feat that no doubt cost several hundred dollars and meant running wires behind all of the walls.

Fortunately for the rest of us, an iPod system from Eos Wireless (www.eoswireless.com) offers a different approach to home stereo, one that requires no chopping, splicing, or splitting of cables. It will set you back only a couple of hundred bucks.

The downside, I'm afraid, is that you get what you pay for. Tinny sound (from small speakers, housed in plastic and offering little bass) and interference marked my experience with an Eos system last week.

Eos's "core system," at about $250, includes an iPod base station and a wireless "satellite" speaker get-up, which you can hang (conveniently enough) from an electrical wall outlet. You can connect up to four wireless Eos speakers to the main unit.

Given that the air in my home already crackles with all manner of electromagnetic radiation - a police scanner, cordless phones, a WiFi router, and a microwave oven are all troublesome sources - I'm quick to forgive a bit of interference. I am just too busy to be bothered, trying to isolate this or that source of the problem.

Still, I remain hopeful for Eos's newest wireless system, Converge, which will support the iPod Touch and iPhone and connect your PC music library to your (presumably) better-quality speakers, via a USB dongle. Prices for Converge, due out this spring, will start at about $90.

Finally, we Yanks get a crack at the kind of mobile phone (gorgeous, clever and feature-filled) usually reserved for Japanese and Korean consumers.

In terms of its beauty and usefulness, T-Mobile's latest camera phone, the 3G Samsung Memoir, ranks among my favorites from any US wireless service provider this year. That's because the Memoir has a monster, 8-megapixel camera, which probably makes it better than the digital camera you already own.

The Memoir also has a high-resolution touch screen for productive folks, and it comes with a 1GB SD card for storing pictures, short videos, and some music.

Perhaps the Memoir's best feature is its appearance. With its prominent lens and flash, textured grip, and a bump that suggests it's packing real film, the Memoir resembles one of the vintage cameras my wife, Lisa, has scattered about our house.

The Memoir's business side is clean and simple. Apart from its touch screen, you will find just two phone buttons and a menu button along one side of the screen.

But the Memoir has a couple of strikes against it. First, the camera phone costs $250, and that is with a two-year contract with T-Mobile. And since the Memoir does not come with WiFi, you will feel compelled to sign up for data services, to ensure access to your e-mail, instant messaging, and the Web.