The Queen has arrived! The video library of movies and TV shows is growing nicely over in the iTunes Store -- all in good time for summer and the start of vacation and maximum slacking season. I've purchased quite a few things from the Store, including most of this season's Veronica Mars. Even though the prices are reasonable, I've also been spending a lot of time on a site where the movies and music are even cheaper.

They're free, in fact.

The Internet Archive has been around for more than a decade, but since I got my video iPod, I find I've been visiting it way more often than I used to. The site -- a non-profit organization based in San Francisco -- collects all sorts of digitized audio, video and text for scholars, historians or anybody who wants to look. And being digital, you can even download some of the works.

For iPod enthusiasts, the fact that you can get lots of music in MP3 format or video in the MPEG-4 means you can take it with you (if the file has been bestowed with a "Download" link, that is). Granted, much of the content is older and in the public domain, but if you have any interest in film, music, or cultural history, it's easy to blow most of the afternoon roaming the virtual halls of the Internet archive. The usage rights vary and not everything is downloadable, but the site explains what you can do with each work you find.

It started with a little bit of flat-screen TV envy. Every time I visited someone's home and gawked at their shiny new plasma or LCD TV, my living room setup felt a little 20th century: I had a 28-inch, old school TV with a backside as big as a fridge, and a stereo whose most modern feature was its two (count 'em!) cassette tape players. I did have a TiVo, but that only increased my feeling that I should be doing a better job of being a modern electronic citizen. Here's what my setup looked like:

You don't even want to know what was happening behind the console. So began my year-long quest to join the flat screen masses. I coughed up $26 for a one-year online subscription to Consumer Reports, whose overview of HDTV and all the various TV options was pretty useful. I also started visiting tons of TV showrooms in New York City: the Sony home entertainment complex, Samsung's similar version in the Time Warner Center, J&R, and on and on and on.

So, the next version of Mac OS X, (10.5, or Leopard, for those following Apple's Big Cat Scorecard) won't be arriving in June after all, according to a statement Apple released on its Web site yesterday. Because the company had to pull programmers off the OS X team to help muscle the iPhone to its June release date, Leopard won't prowl until October. Oh, well.

While part of me is bummed about not having a shiny new operating system to play around with this summer, that also means I won't have to spend those inevitable hours trying to get all my gadgets, hardware and software to work with it. Operating system upgrades can cause all sorts of upheaval, with hardware drivers and certain programs not working the same way in the new system as they did on the old. Windows Vista early adopters with iPods got to experience this first-hand when a problem between iTunes and Vista reared its ugly head right after Vista's January release. Luckily, most of the major problems were resolved with the release of iTunes 7.1.1, but there are still a few lingering issues; Apple describes them here, Vista adventurers.

So Leopard is put off until fall. While I'm half disappointed and half relieved, I think there's one thing Mac users probably won't have to worry about when they upgrade: since Apple is calling the software shots, iTunes and Leopard (at least) will get along just fine.

Despite the number of chargers I haul around, it hadn't really occurred to me just how reliant I am on portable power until three of my most-used gadgets recently started to show that inevitable sign of lithium-based battery age: the inability to hold a charge for very long. The mobile phone and laptop are both due for upgrades this year (hel-LO, iPhone!), but I must admit I'm getting sentimental about the charge-challenged iPod.

It's not like this is my only iPod, either, or even the newest. Since we tend to update iPod: The Missing Manual at least once a year in an attempt to keep it fresh, tasty and timely, I have more than a few Pods around the house, all purchased for book-research purposes. No, the iPod in question here is an old 40-gigabyte iPod Photo model that I bought in the fall of 2004. It was the first iPod with a color screen and one of the last models to come with a huge amount of accessories (like a dock, AV cable, AC adapter, USB and FireWire cables) right in the box. Man, those where the days....

In addition to the office-job commute, This Old Pod has come along with me to London, Paris, Pensacola, Philadelphia, and Gettysburg (and holds photos from all of the above, plus iLingo's French lessons and a couple years worth of Samuel Pepys' diaries I got from Project Gutenberg). I use my video iPod and the sporty Nano when the need arises, but I fell into a habit of using iPod Photo as my daily walkabout companion. It hasn't died yet, but its battery life is noticeably shorter between trips to the wall charger.

I'm sure there are more than a few folks out there reading this who may be in a similar situation, and probably with their one-and-only iPod. So, what to do? I figure if I want to keep using my faithful gadget, I have two options: replace the battery or plant the Pod permanently in a set of speakers that keep it powered while it plays.