(FORTUNE Small Business) – SOFTWARE

Chumbo.com

Selling most major off-the-shelf software in a stunningly organized site, it's no wonder that Chumbo has outlasted many of its flashier e-tailing brethren. Prices aren't rock-bottom, but those few extra dollars buy you shopping ease as well as business-friendly features like being able to purchase multiuser software licenses. www.chumbo.com

WIRELESS

Handango

Your escort through the long-hyped wireless frontier that's finally materializing, Handango has the hardware, software, and accessories to do business on your PDA. Granted, most of the hardware for sale is priced at full retail, but check out its large software selection covering the most useful and reputable programs available and the bundled software suites geared towards certain specific industries (i.e. medicine, consulting, sales). www.handango.com

TECH SUPPORT

PCSupport.com

Basic as bread, PCSupport.com doesn't perform any miracles until your PC's warranty has expired. Then it can be a godsend--for hardware, software, or network questions--through its 24-hour tech support (via instant messenger; response time on e-mail is four hours). It took two minutes to get an account, and within five, a customer service agent had figured out why the monitor on an ancient Micron laptop wasn't lighting up. $150 covers one year of service. Don't want to pay a dime? The site's free services include e-mailed virus warnings, software updates (also e-mailed), and scheduled disk maintenance. www.pcsupport.com

Symantec AntiVirus Research Center

Your marketing guy just sent you a note telling you he loves you. That's sweet, but before opening it, better make sure it's not a virus that'll cripple your e-mail system. Symantec's antivirus center clearly identifies the latest threats, gives advice on how to avoid their damage, and lets you download the latest fixes if you use a Norton antivirus product. Be sure to check out its index of hoaxes, so you won't annoy your colleagues with such discredited chestnuts as the Good Times virus and the $800-from-Microsoft chain letter. www.sarc.com

VIRTUAL OFFICE

eFax.com

Wasn't e-mail supposed to kill the fax? Sadly, it hasn't happened. EFax, a service that lets you send and receive faxes via e-mail, is one step in the right direction. Documents can be magnified (or reduced) upon receipt, doing away with hard-to-read fax copies. It's free to get faxes; $9.95 a month to send them. Extra charges apply to send international faxes or if you want your own 800 fax number or a number in your area code. www.efax.com

Simulring

Before automatic telephone switching, AT&T feared that each person would have to have her own operator (see above). Simulring revives that spirit with its service (starting at $9.95 a month, available now in New York, Dallas, and on the West Coast) that rings you simultaneously at your work, cell, home, or any other number you choose next time you're expecting that make-or-break call. Missed calls go to your chosen voice mail. Signing up gets you a Simulring number that you give to would-be callers, so you can control who has such 24-7 access (sorry, Mom). www.simulring.com

WebEx.com

A meeting of the minds doesn't have to be a face-to-face meeting. With options including video and teleconferencing, application and Web sharing, a whiteboard, live chat, and remote desktop control, WebEx gives you everything but the coffee and danish. Subscriptions run $100 to $200 per user per month, pay-per-use meetings are 35 cents per minute, but if there are only four of you, it's free for an hour. www.webex.com

Excite

Turn your desktop into your up-to-the-minute window to the world with Excite's home page. It offers an endless selection of news, services, and links, customizable however you choose. Although Excite does not have a small business section like My Yahoo, we found its general business coverage more helpful because it is constantly updated and from a wider variety of news sources, including venerable publications such as The Washington Post. www.excite.com

WEB HOSTING

HostCompare.com

Most host information sites range from terrible to ... really terrible. Hostcompare.com is a labyrinthine portal to nearly every one of these bad sites. But ignore all that and go right to its Websites & Articles page, with links to useful guides to picking a host from About.com and others. www.hostcompare.com/websitesarticles.htm

Hostsearch.com

It's no big trick to find a Web host. Finding a good one, though, is more of a challenge. Hostsearch.com helps filter out the noise, letting you search by all the relevant criteria, including platform, disk space, price, and the need for advanced features like streaming video. If you prefer to keep your host within strangling distance, you can also search by state. Pick up to five for a side-by-side comparison that, thankfully, includes how long free trial periods and money-back guarantees will last. www.hostsearch.com

WebHostingTalk

Battle-scarred Web hosting veterans fill Internet chat rooms, telling tales of slow connection speeds, unreachable tech support, and the most dreaded evil--downed servers. Happily, many of these tales of digital woe end with a white knight, a hassle-free Web host who actually delivers on its promises. While we don't recommend basing your decision on someone named "BizWhiz55" without a strong customer consensus, WebHostingTalk is the place to gather those opinions and ask questions. Posts are frequent and current from well-informed people, but be prepared to sniff out the healthy number of posts from hosting company execs. www.webhostingtalk.com

TECH INTELLIGENCE

Conferenza

Judging by the name, Conferenza sounds like a contagious infection spread by geeks mingling at an endless series of tech events. In truth, Conferenza is the cure for the conference circuit. With its in-depth, witty, and honest roundups of just about every tech gathering held each month, you don't have to go, but you don't miss anything. The site even lets you track the conference appearances of individual speakers just in case you have a Grateful Dead-like obsession for a specific consultant. Sign up for the free e-mail newsletter for details on upcoming events. Download the site's Palm version for when you're at one of these shindigs. www.conferenza.com

CyberAtlas

Who's surfing the Websites in your industry sector? Are there enough Webby constituents in Bali to market your online services to? Find answers to all your statistical, big-picture questions at CyberAtlas, a market intelligence site that--it's true--isn't boring. Reports galore, divided into demographic, market, or "most recent" categories, can be found on almost any topic, and many are free for the printing. You can also receive the site's newsletter in your inbox, but better to use CyberAtlas as a bookmark because not everything will be of interest. www.cyberatlas.com

NEWSLETTERS

Release 1.0

Release 1.0 is a bit of an egghead and ahead of the curve. Subscribing to it is like hiring your own visionary. For example, in January 1995, Release 1.0 deconstructed what it took to do e-commerce, three to four years before it hit most radar screens. Published by tech doyenne Esther Dyson, each monthly issue tackles one topic in depth, profiling all of the emerging players in the field. The writing's clear enough for anyone with a passing familiarity with technology. If its $795 price tag for an annual subscription (single issues are $80 apiece) looks steep, just think what a personal guru would cost. release1.edventure.com

Davenetics

It's 4 p.m. and you hear loud chortles coming from cubicles down the hall. It could be the afternoon sillies, or it could be Dave Pell's clever e-mail newsletter with his trenchant take on the day's tech news. Pell, a seed-stage investor in San Francisco, scours the Web for all the news that's fit to link to and sends out a free dispatch each weekday. Pell's a pun-dit as well as a linkster, adding analysis and headlines such as "The Carrot and the Shtick" to his snapshot of what's the buzz. www.davenetics.com

BOOKSTORE

Bookpool.com

More hacker's cookbook than Martha Stewart, Bookpool boasts every tech book you can imagine, with heavy numbers of heavy programming manuals, management texts, and trade books. Search or browse subjects as specific as desktop applications and hardware, and enjoy the large discounts of up to 44%--significantly cheaper than what these books go for at Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com. Don't expect much guidance on what to buy: Reader reviews are rare, and the site's Top 10 list is its only rating system. www.bookpool.com

BROADBAND

DSL Reports

Getting a fast Net connection is called DSL Hell for a reason, but at least DSLreports.com will smooth out part of the frustrating journey. Type in your phone number and address to see if your home or office prequalifies for DSL, and view all of the potentially available speed and pricing plans. Drill down for more information about each service offering, user reviews, as well as tips and recommendations. www.dslreports.com

GLOSSARY

whatis.com

Overheard from the IT lunch table: Did the feds really deploy Carnivore on that Debian system? Are the apps more apt to be "gnu" or "OLE?" Whoa. Every time someone drops a new acronym on you, head to Whatis.com, the Web-term encyclopedia. Search for any technology term--from "hacker" to "http"--either alphabetically or by category (software, applications, etc.). A full definition is listed, usually backed up by a primary source (a major dictionary), and links to more information. Wanna go further? Check out the daily tech headlines at the site, so you can incorporate your new vocabulary into the day's water cooler talk. www.whatis.com

Reported by Cora Daniels, David Lidsky, Maggie Overfelt, and Julie Sloane