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Techno thieves: Last year, about 208,000 laptop computers were reported stolen, a 40 percent increase from 1994, according to Safeware, an insurance company in Columbus, Ohio. And, with laptop sales booming, experts expect thefts to keep soaring. Page 3

A good read: There is a small but growing number of sites where good, thought-provoking writing is the rule. In the vernacular of the Internet, they are known as "e-zines," short for electronic magazines.Page 3

The Envelope, Please: For everything Oscar, go straight to The Envelope, Please: The Official Interactive Guide to the Academy Awards (http://oscars.guide.com/). It's as glitzy and entertaining as the ceremony itself. All the 1995 nominees (http://oscars.guide.com/nominees/ ) are here, and you can view them by category, picture or number of nominations. Links to Microsoft Cinemania Online bios and film synopses accompany each entry and really liven up these pages.

Well web: Healthwise (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/healthwise/) is the Health Education and Wellness program of Columbia University in New York City. There are tons of articles on health topics, but by far the most popular service is the advice column, "Go Ask Alice," which allows users to send questions in for professional advice. With questions and answers on everything from sexual health to drug abuse, "Go Ask Alice" is already attracting one million hits a month. There are already more than 750 archived messages - equipped with a handy keyword search option. Questions are answered by university specialists, including a nutritionist.

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Cyber-spring: Gardeners from around the globe have scooped out pockets of rich earth, placed seeds of radish, tenderly tapped down the soil and added life-sustaining water. The harvest should be bountiful.Where is this garden? Cyberspace.There is soil, real soil, and there is water, real water, and seeds that germinate into real radishes, real phlox and all sorts of other real plants.The circular plot - about six feet in diameter - is in a lab at Powell Hall on the campus of the University of Southern California, and it is accessible by way of the World Wide Web (http://www.usc.edu/dept/garden). With the help of a robotic arm, cyber-gardeners can plant and care for a bit of green from anywhere in the world. The system allows cyber-gardeners who have accumulated a certain number of site hits - activity on line - to manipulate the industrial robot arm to plant a seed. It also can be instructed to water a particular spot or to show a close-up of an area.

Into the Internet: Like so many other companies, Kinko's Corp. is entering cyberspace. In the next nine months, the company will introduce Internet access, to be used by traveling executives or the small-business and home-office customers who depend on their local Kinko's for part-time use of information technology. Since each Kinko's store already has banks of PCs, Paul Orfalea considers Internet access the obvious next step, as more small-business users are drawn to the global computing network, but don't themselves have - or want to have - the technology to link to it. Some Kinko's stores will be able to help business customers set up home pages on the Internet's World Wide Web. At a handful of test stores in Seattle, Houston and Philadelphia, Kinko's customers - whether or not they already have Internet accounts - can view pages on the World Wide Web, conduct research on the Internet and send and receive graphics over the global network.

Music to our ears: Sure, the name of the song is right on the tip of your tongue - a lot of good that does you. Give up on those decaying brain cells and get Music Central. Microsoft has applied the slick, intelligent treatment developed in its Cinemania CD to a disc that covers popular music from Stephen Foster to White Zombie. The huge database of videos and reviews lets you search by performer, album or song name, while new reviews on the Microsoft Network keep this CD up-to-date. Music Central is available at $45 from Microsoft at [phone].