The bestfares.com site is cluttered, but this Arlington-based outfit has an awful lot it wants to tell you about airfares, hotel rooms, and rental cars, as well as cruise deals, senior discounts, and little-known mileage-reward programs. In the Airline Internet Specials section I found out I could be warming up in Phoenix or chilling in Chicago for round-trip fares of $119 and $139, respectively, from Austin. I browsed the most cut-rate fares in Snooze You Lose. And in News You Can Lose, a compendium of travel-related trivia, I learned I could buy a Boeing business jet from the 1999 Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog for $35.3 million and never have to worry about airfares again.

KUDOS Links galore to weather reports, ski conditions, travel-scam alerts, and the like.

GRIPES There's no such thing as a free launch; to get off the ground—to access any areas of the site—you have to subscribe to Best Fares magazine for $59.90 a year.

The Southwest Airlines site, southwest.com, is much like the Dallas-based airline itself: efficient and fun and open to everyone. You don't need to register or even have a password to book ticketless travel, and when you book, you receive double frequent-flier credits. (You have to become a Rapid Rewards member to qualify, but it's free to sign up.) Check out package deals in Thrilling Thursday or read about Internet-only discounts in Internet Specials; subscribe to an e-mail service to be notified of late-breaking specials.

KUDOS Loads with a tailwind; fares pop up fast.

GRIPES Generates feelings of envy and misery. I can hardly take sitting at home when I see a special last-minute $178 round-trip fair from Austin to Seattle.

geopassage.com hopes to take advantage of the billions of dollars in revenue expected to be generated by online tour and cruise bookings over the next couple of years—but it isn't just about the money. Owner Arti Srivastava, who operated a Seattle-based company specializing in journeys to India and Nepal before moving to Austin, has infused the site with her wanderlust. You can choose from prepackaged tours of thirteen countries, like sixteen days in the heart of Italy, or use the extensive profiles of cities, hotels, and tourist attractions to customize a tour of your own.

KUDOS Oh, the photographs. . . . After days in front of my droning computer, the natural beauty of the lake region of Argentina was particularly alluring to me.

GRIPES Why so few countries?

travelocity.com is the fourth-largest e-commerce site in the nation based on sales ($301 million in the first half of 1999) and number of users (8 million). It's not a position from which the FortWorth-based company is likely to slip, considering its five-year deal to be the exclusive reservations engine for America Online; its access to 95 percent of all airline seats, 42,000 hotels, 50 car rental companies, and 70,000 travel packages; and most important, the high-quality service it provides. Fare Sales and News not only retrieves the lowest airfares between your chosen airports, it also automatically searches for cheaper fares using nearby airports and even posts the driving distances between original airports and the alternatives. And you can track an airline's rate changes with Fare Watcher E-mail: You select up to five city pairs and receive e-mail updates alerting you to drops in price.

KUDOS Airplane seat maps allow you to choose something other than the most undesirable seat onboard.

GRIPES Destination information needs to be updated. For instance: Austin's population is no longer 500,000, and U.S. 183 is no longer under construction.