(FORTUNE Magazine) – Double Duty

It started as the Radio Corp. of America, so it makes sense that RCA has added a digital FM radio tuner to its second-generation Lyra digital audio player. The 64MB CompactFlash card that accompanies the Lyra2 Digital Audio Player holds an hour of music. When that's over, just flip to one of 15 preset FM stations. Or, when there's nothing good on the car radio, use the Lyra2's car kit to listen to MP3, RealAudio G2, or Windows Media tunes through the car speakers. The player's backlit display and jog-dial are easy to navigate, the brushed-aluminum case is sturdy, and headphones and a remote control are included. And the Lyra2 connects via USB to both Windows or Macintosh computers. The downside? Extra "skip free" 64MB cards cost more than $100 each.

Waisting Away

This clever little device clips to your waistband and tracks every step you take, whether you're puttering around the yard or running in a marathon. At the end of the day, resting in its cradle and attached to a phone line, the SportBrain Personal Fitness Manager automatically dials a central computer (via a local call) and reports your activity to a database. Then you log on to SportBrain's password-protected Website to see how you did against your own fitness goals--or, if you're competitive, how you compare with others in your age or weight groups. A counter displays how many cheeseburgers you've burned off, and you can win prizes--such as a $100 coupon for fancy running shoes if you average 20,000 steps per day for three weeks. Fat chance.

Pocket Changer

Captain Kangaroo could fill his pockets with all the digital audio players on the market these days, but he'd go broke buying the expensive memory cards most of them use. A 32MB Compact Flash, Smart Media, or Memory Stick card, good for a half hour of digital music, costs $60 to $100. The batteries of a typical MP3 player last ten hours, but you'll go nuts listening to the same 30 minutes of music over and over. Iomega's solution is to put a mechanical PocketZip drive in its HipZip player, which connects via USB to Windows or Macintosh computers. Each 40MB PocketZip disk costs $10 to $15 and holds 40 minutes of tunes. Caveats: Sound quality is good but not great, and the moving parts in HipZip's drive may make it more vulnerable to breakage than the typical chip-driven MP3 player.