SURFING the net using a palmtop computer is pretty smart but Gadget lovers have long wished for a single piece of equipment that would do away with all those annoying cables.

In America, PDA owners can choose the lovely palm computing platform with a wireless link to the Internet. Unfortunately, due to differences between UK and US wireless technology it's not available over here.

Until now the best compromise was the Nokia 9000 Series which managed to combine a phone and a PDA in fairly manageable form. Sadly, even the latest 9110 Nokia looks like a chunky old mobile if you're not using its clamshell keyboard and no gadget lover wants to be seen with yesterday's technology.

Thankfully, there is an answer - Wireless Application Protocol phones are a new generation of future phones that come with all the equipment you need to surf right out of the box.

WAP phones have a special microbrowser installed that understands and displays web pages specially written for it. You can't download everything from the web onto your new mobile straightaway but, as WAP phones become more popular, so the number of sites devoted to them will grow.

But the growth figures have made painful reading for phone manufacturers. People just haven't bought into the technology as fast as everyone thought. Part of the problem must be the tiny screen and lack of a decent keyboard. There's another, more serious drawback, too. Current mobile phone technology limits download speeds to around one fifth the speed of your desktop PC. That makes downloading serious amounts of info a very slow business indeed.

WAP gets around this problem to a large extent by ditching the images and sound that take so long to download. This cuts access times considerably but also reduces the multimedia experience users of the Net have grown accustomed to.

There are also a boatload of competing technologies just around the corner promising better and faster access.

So why bother? You can read and respond to your e-mail without returning to your office or home PC. WAP phones allow you to compose your own messages and send them wirelessly (provided, that is, your account includes a data transmission service, something very few "pay as you go" packages do at the moment).

You also get real-time access to news and sport, travel timetables and shopping on-line. With the right account you can even pay the household bills.

And while manufacturers are desperate to sign us up to WAP technology, these phones are also ridiculously cheap. Even a pay as you go version can be had for less than £100.

Games players who bought the last word in consoles have been without a decent shoot 'em up for too long.

Now Acclaim has answered calls on the Sega Dreamcast. The result is a truly amazing title called Fur Fighters (£34.99).

Coded by Bizarre Creations, the team who produced the seminal Formula One title for PlayStation, Fur Fighters is an eclectic mix of Nintendo-style cutesy platform adventure and a hard edged blood 'n' thunder adventure.

Although the control system takes some getting used to (your thumb pad only makes a character look around; movement means pressing buttons), it's a great game packed with in-jokes, fiendish puzzles and good graphics.

You control six characters, a cat, a dog, a kangaroo, a penguin, a dragon and a firefox (don't ask!) each with their own unique skills. They have to rescue their babies who have been kidnapped by an ugly-looking cat called General Viggo.

Fur Fighters is guaranteed to keep you playing for weeks.

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