The best CD ROM drive is (or was?) the $1,120 NEC Multispin 4X Pro, but you may be just as happy with the $249 Mirror CD-ROM Drive. Two other drives (of two dozen tested) were ranked above Mirror: the $549 DEC RRD44-DA and the $575 Legacy CD-ROM 2X. A new $549-$649 quad-speed line from Plexor was not tested. [National Software Testing Laboratories. BW, 9/22/94, p. 14.]

More than 650K Mayo Clinic Family Health Book CD ROMs have sold in the past two years. The Clinic is now developing online products, including access to its 1,200 doctors. [WSJ, 10/17/94, B1. EDUPAGE.] (It's a good ROM, with detail similar to a home encyclopedia. Rather slow, and some of the pictures need an indication of scale. Like most CD ROMs, it's more exciting for its potential than for its reality. A thick book would do as well, but that won't be true of the next generation.)

40% of survey respondents don't use their CD ROM players, and 54% do not plan to buy additional software. [Dataquest. WSJ, 8/4/94, B6. EDUPAGE.]

Americans spent 70 times as much on gambling last year as on movies. [BLP, 9/15/94, p. 16. EDUPAGE.] (Maybe they'd buy home lottery machines instead of CD ROM players. :-)

I saw a suggestion in TV Guide that an amusement park for adult men could offer $20 practice time on bulldozers and other heavy machinery. What man could resist? It might be a good application for virtual reality, but there's a thrill in really moving earth around. For those who crave real exercise, I'm thinking of franchising "sand castle lots" at exercise parlors and drinking establishments. You get a shovel, surf recordings, and all the wet sand you care to dig. Competitions every Friday, with spray hoses to attack rivals' sand castles after 9pm. :-) [Wet T-shirt events optional.]