From January 1993 to December 1995, an estimated 8.4 million workers were displaced from their jobs, including 3.8 million long-term workers who had held their jobs for at least three years, the bureau said. Displaced workers are defined as people 20 years or older who have lost their jobs because their plant or company closed or moved, their positions or shifts were eliminated or there was insufficient work for them to do.

Of those 8.4 million workers, roughly six million had successfully found new work by February, when the survey was conducted. Some 16% of those workers remained unemployed, however, and 13% had stopped looking for new jobs and left the labor force. By comparison, 67% of workers in the bureau’s last worker-displacement survey, which was conducted in February 1994 and included the 1991 recession, were able to find new work, while 21% were unemployed.

In signs that the labor market has rebounded since then and that the effects of downsizing may have slowed, 618,000 fewer workers lost their jobs from 1993 to 1995 than in the 1994 survey, and displacement among long-term workers fell 15%.

"We’ve created about 10 million new jobs. It’s been a strong, strong labor market recovery," said economist Audrey Freedman, president of Audrey Freedman & Associates in New York.

Since 1993, 44% of displaced workers lost their jobs because of plant closings. Roughly 24% said there was insufficient work, while nearly a third said their jobs were eliminated. Over 56% said they didn’t receive advance notice that they were losing their jobs.

Nearly three out of 10 displaced workers came from the manufacturing sector. But downsizing took its toll among white-collar workers as well, said Joseph E. Stiglitz, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

"White-collar workers represent a much larger share of those displaced. The share of manufacturing, while large, continues to decline," he said.

But it remains easier for laid-off managers and other white-collar workers to find new work. Nearly 80% of managers were in new jobs by February, while only 64% of operators, fabricators and laborers had been rehired. In part that reflects the changing nature of the economy, but analysts have noted that it is easier for white-collar workers to find new jobs because of a greater number of outside contacts and a wider range of skills.

One worrisome trend that surfaced in the survey was that more than half of workers took new jobs that paid them less, including nearly a third who accepted a job that paid them 80% or less of what they previously had been earning. "The steady upward wage movement that was our wonderful future has stalled," Ms. Freedman said.

In a separate report Thursday, the Labor Department said initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 6,000 last week to 327,000. The four-week moving average, a closely watched barometer of labor-market trends, rose 1,500 to 314,000. The figures are adjusted for seasonal variations.

The stable prices at the producer level offer a further sign that inflation is under control, analysts said. Bonds were up sharply on the news Friday, with the Treasury Department’s benchmark 30-year issue closing Friday at 100 23/32, up 23/32 point.

"It just doesn’t get much better than this," with declining inflation and strong real growth, said Chris Varvares, a forecaster at Macroeconomic Advisers L.L.C. in St. Louis. The producer price index, which tracks price fluctuations at the producer level, and the consumer price index, its retail-level counterpart that will be released Tuesday, help economists to measure inflation.

The report gives the Federal Reserve yet another reason not to raise interest rates at its Aug. 20 meeting, after data earlier this month indicated average wages and factory orders have fallen recently. Indeed, there were few hints of out-of-control growth in July wholesale prices. Energy prices, which have declined for three months in a row, fell 0.9%, though they were offset by a 0.2% increase in food prices. Automobile prices also fell 0.9%. Excluding the volatile food and energy components, producer prices rose 0.1%.

Not only were prices for finished goods unchanged, but those of intermediate materials that need further processing — such as flour, yarn and lumber — fell 0.3%, excluding food and energy. Similarly, prices for raw materials — like cotton and coal — fell 1.6%. Those drops indicate there is little inflation in the pipeline, analysts said. "If you’re looking at the crude prices, there doesn’t seem to be much pressure there at all," Bureau of Labor Statistics economist Scott Sager said. All figures were seasonally adjusted.

The index’s rise was its fifth in a row, including a 0.3% gain in April and a 0.2% gain in May. Three consecutive increases usually signal that the economy is expanding.

"The economy is on the move again, but the speed of the expansion is uncertain," said Robert Dederick, chief economist at Northern Trust Co. in Chicago.

The index of leading indicators is intended to predict economic activity six to nine months ahead, but many economists say it more accurately reflects current economic conditions. While it is useful for forecasting whether the economy will grow or contract, the index doesn’t indicate the rate at which changes will occur.

For those reasons, analysts said, Monday’s report offered little to resolve their concern about whether the second quarter’s sizzling economic growth will continue in the second half. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned last month that the economy may be growing too quickly, leading to speculation that the Fed will raise interest rates at its monetary-policy meeting Aug. 20.

But reports of rising unemployment and declining wages released Friday strongly suggest that growth in the third quarter will be more moderate, analysts said.

June’s decline partially unraveled the huge 4.2% jump in May orders. That gain was just one piece of economic data in the robustly healthy second quarter that caused financial markets to wonder if the economy was in danger of overheating.

But June’s report helped temper that fear a bit. Treasurys ended modestly higher Thursday, with the bellwether 30-year bond rising nearly 3/8 to yield 7.01%.

More than half of the June decline in orders for durable goods, or big-ticket items such as appliances and automobiles expected to last more than three years, came from a plunge in new aircraft bookings. That was partly offset by a 31.6% increase in defense orders. Stripping out the volatile defense and aircraft sectors, total new orders rose 1.3% in June.

Although the manufacturing sector has shown erratic results month-to-month during the second quarter, overall orders have grown faster than they did a year earlier. "The basic trend is that orders are increasing gradually, with bouncing along the way," said economist Richard Rippe of Prudential Securities.

While new orders fell in June, unfilled orders increased for the second month in a row, suggesting that manufacturing activity will continue to be solid as factories work to keep up with demand, analysts said.

Economist James Annable of First National Bank of Chicago said the report indicates that the economy has finally completed corrections for inventory rebuilding, the General Motors Corp. strike that hobbled auto production and brutal winter weather in the first quarter. "We’re getting a regression back to moderate growth," he said.

Analysts are closely watching for signs of a slowdown. In recent days, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has said policy makers will be monitoring even the smallest changes in the economy to gauge whether growth is easing. Moderation of growth would make it less likely that the Fed would raise interest rates at its meeting next month.

But the government’s durable-goods report tends to be "so erratic" that a June decline in orders alone probably won’t do much to convince the Fed of a slowdown, said David Orr, an economist at First Union Corp. in Charlotte, N.C. The Fed chief "says he needs persuasive evidence. This is not persuasive evidence," Mr. Orr said.

Next week’s economic data will be much more important to the Fed. That’s when the government releases its first estimate of second-quarter growth, the July employment report, and the quarterly cost-wage index.

Separately, the Labor Department said Thursday that first-time unemployment claims dropped by a surprising 45,000 to 322,000 last week. Although some of the decline may be due to auto manufacturers beginning production of 1997 models, the data may suggest an improved employment picture, analysts said.

The four-week moving average of jobless claims, considered to be a better barometer of labor-market health, fell by 8,000 to 352,000 claims.

The Federal Aviation Administration forced the discount airline to cease operations indefinitely June 17. But early this week, about half of ValuJet’s fleet was still parked at airports in Atlanta and Washington, blocking gates and costing ValuJet money. At Atlanta’s Hartsfield International, one out of every eight domestic gates was filled with parked ValuJet planes, increasing congestion even as Atlanta prepares for Olympic-size traffic.

Three more jets were parked at Washington Dulles International. The rest have been sent to maintenance facilities in Lake City, Fla., and Macon, Ga., or to temporary storage at South Carolina’s Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport.

"We are continuing to explore our options," said ValuJet spokesman Gregg Kenyon, adding that other airlines have expressed "considerable" interest in buying or leasing ValuJet planes.

Airport parking for cars may seem costly, but it’s small change compared to parking a jet. ValuJet pays $9,500 a month for each gate at Dulles, says Charles Erhard, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority’s manager of finance and administration. ValuJet ended gate leases at three other airports Wednesday.

To cut down on parking bills, the airline always could send its fleet to special airplane parking lots in the Arizona desert. One jet can be stored at a field for as little as $350 a month, says Charles Simmons, vice president for operations at the Evergreen Air Center in Marana, Ariz. Indeed, it would be a homecoming of sorts for some of ValuJet’s planes — the airline kept down its start-up costs by buying older planes that other airlines had placed in long-term desert storage.

But ValuJet said Tuesday it hopes to get the FAA’s blessing to resume flying Aug. 1 with a smaller fleet of four to 15 planes. With over $200 million in cash on hand, ValuJet may be able to take its time deciding whether to sell, lease or store the rest.

Either way, the airports hope ValuJet finds someplace else to park. "We don’t know what their plans are" at Dulles airport, says Jonathan Gaffney, spokesman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. "We could certainly use those gates."

In May, Apple Computer launched a multimillion-dollar marketing tie-in with Tom Cruise’s "Mission: Impossible." It featured Mr. Cruise in its TV and print ads, created a web site for the movie and even cosponsored its premiere.

Apple executives say they are pleased with the public reaction to their "brand-energizing" campaign. But techno-savvy moviegoers are baffled by the short shrift given Apple in the film.

It’s true that Mr. Cruise spends a fair amount of screen time hunched over an Apple PowerBook laptop. Yet neither Apple’s logo nor its familiar Macintosh interface appear on his computer. Mr. Cruise uses a clunky custom interface that requires him to type in commands rather than clicking on an icon. Thus, the Apple connection is lost on most moviegoers.

Worse, during a scene in which Mr. Cruise and his team are planning a break-in at the CIA, their computer expert insists the caper depends on obtaining "Thinking Machines laptops," with nary a mention of Apples. But Thinking Machines Corp. has never made laptops — or anything much smaller than supercomputers.

The mistakes — not to mention the perceived slight to Apple — provoked plenty of buzz on the Internet among Mac fanciers. "I don’t know what Apple was thinking when they agreed to letting this travesty of a movie use their products," griped one. "I think Apple got a raw deal," posted another.

Apple signed up as the movie’s sponsor too late to have any influence over the script. But it hasn’t fared much better since the movie’s release. Not long after announcing the tie-in, Apple had to recall thousands of defective PowerBooks. "The irony of this is that if you were sucked in by the web site and the commercials, you couldn’t even buy [a PowerBook] because there aren’t any in stores," says Geoff Duncan, an editor of the Mac newsletter TidBITS.

Meanwhile, because of design quirks in Apple’s "Mission: Impossible" web site (http://www.missionimpossible.com), some Mac computers have crashed when users visit. "Is an Intel machine required here?" sniped George McClelland of Roanoke, Va., after his Mac went down. "Is this a good ad for Apple?"

The Federal Aviation Administration’s shutdown of ValuJet Airlines — less than six weeks after FAA officials had insisted that the airline was safe — has raised questions about the agency’s ability to ensure the safety of the U.S. airline industry. Those concerns led Tuesday to a major personnel shakeup at the agency, a tightening of inspection rules and a plea by Transportation Secretary Federico Pena for Congress to rewrite the agency’s historic mandate that requires it to promote as well as police the aviation industry.

"There should never be another question about the top priority of the FAA," Mr. Pena said at a news conference called to deflect criticism of the agency. His comments made it seem likely that the fallout from the crash of ValuJet Flight 592 into the Florida Everglades on May 11, killing all 110 people on board, could lead to a radical change in the way the FAA regulates the airline industry.

Mr. Pena and FAA Administrator David Hinson conceded that the agency failed to heed earlier indications of potential safety problems at the upstart, low-fare airline. Mr. Hinson acknowledged that the FAA didn’t adequately gauge ValuJet’s airworthiness, saying, "We bear some responsibilities in this case."

For one thing, Mr. Pena said that the agency didn’t adequately monitor the growing industry trend of having maintenance work done by independent contractors, known as outsourcing. FAA investigations concluded that the practice led to a litany of safety concerns at ValuJet. As a result, Mr. Hinson said the agency would boost its inspections of airlines that use outside contractors to conduct their maintenance operations.

The turmoil at the FAA also led to a high-level personnel shakeup. The agency’s top inspection official, Anthony J. Broderick, long-time FAA associate administrator for regulation and certification, submitted a letter to Mr. Hinson taking early retirement. In his letter, Mr. Broderick said the agency needed to repair its public image and he believed his departure could help accomplish that.

"The events of the past weeks mandate that you make major visible changes to improve the public confidence in the safety of our air transportation system and the quality of FAA oversight of the airlines. My leaving will provide you with the maximum amount of flexibility to make those changes," he wrote.

Mr. Pena’s call to rewrite the FAA’s basic mandate could bring even more changes. Since it was chartered in 1958, the agency, which is part of the Department of Transportation, has had the sometimes contradictory mission of ensuring safety as well as promoting air travel. Over the years, that dual mandate has prompted the FAA to oppose numerous safety recommendations from the National Transportation Safety Board, concluding that the changes would be too costly for airlines and aircraft makers.

Critics say that conflict was illustrated vividly the day after the ValuJet crash when Messrs. Pena and Hinson stood before television cameras and attested to the airline’s safety. Mr. Pena said Tuesday he is urging Congress to change the FAA charter so that it has only one mission: regulating safety.

ValuJet said there was no evidence that maintenance was to blame for the crash. The National Transportation Safety Board suspects that oxygen canisters being carried illegally in the plane’s cargo hold may have caught fire minutes after takeoff from Miami International Airport. But its official report on the cause of the crash won’t be ready for months.

Meanwhile, the FAA appears to have been deeply divided over how tough to be on ValuJet. As late as last Thursday, FAA officials in Atlanta and three key investigators were negotiating with ValuJet chief executive Lewis Jordan to trim the airline’s fleet of aging aircraft so that the carrier could have better control over maintenance. At that point, there was no discussion of a shutdown, according to people involved with the talks.

Over the weekend, however, two officials from the FAA headquarters in Washington flew to Atlanta to review the inspection records. After a series of weekend meetings, the regulatory officials recommended that Mr. Hinson give ValuJet an ultimatum: Shut down voluntarily or be shut down.

At about 1:30 p.m. Monday, Messrs. Hinson and Pena met at the White House with Clinton administration officials, including chief of staff Leon Panetta and senior presidential adviser George Stephanopoulos, who had been sharply critical of their earlier public assurances that ValuJet was safe. A White House official said Clinton political advisers didn’t press the transportation officials to shut down the airline.

But about an hour after that meeting began, FAA officials in Atlanta presented the ultimatum to a stunned Mr. Jordan, according to people familiar with that meeting. ValuJet announced it would temporarily suspend flights but called the FAA’s action "grossly unfair" because it said it had been denied the opportunity to respond to the agency’s concerns.

The chain of events prompted a round of criticism of the FAA on Capitol Hill. Republican Sen. Larry Pressler of South Dakota, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, blasted the FAA for its oversight of ValuJet safety, particularly because a string of internal agency documents chronicled problems at the carrier long before the crash.

Jeff Nelligan, a spokesman for the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which oversees the FAA, said it was "absolutely brazen" for Mr. Pena to blame the agency’s problems on its dual mandate. "This is passing the buck," Mr. Nelligan said. "They are scrambling over there and it’s apparent to all."

The FAA admits that its oversight capabilities haven’t kept pace with the explosive growth of new airlines in recent years. Mr. Pena has trumpeted the rise of low-cost carriers, including ValuJet, as a major victory for the Clinton administration and a boon for the flying public. Asked at a briefing about President Clinton’s expressed concern about the quality of the FAA’s safety oversight, White House spokesman Mike McCurry said, "The President wants to make sure we do everything, redouble and recheck everything, that it is absolutely the safest system on Earth."

"We’re hot as fire down here," he drawls. "It’s not the best it’s ever been, but it’s pretty dang close."

Defying predictions, American consumers continue to open their wallets — and fuel economic growth. Economists say businesses let their inventories dwindle early this year and then were surprised by consumers’ resilience. But now, as they rush to restock their shelves, economic growth could pick up in the current quarter — with much of the spending coming from affluent Americans enjoying the dual benefits of rising incomes and gains in mutual-fund investments.

You can see evidence of economic growth in the cars streaming into Mr. Helfman’s dealership from Chrysler Corp.’s Sterling Heights plant, near Detroit. The plant recently added Saturdays to its production schedule "to keep up with demand," says Dick Entenmann, its manager. Even hotter is Chrysler’s minivan plant in nearby Windsor, Ontario, now up to three shifts and turning out 1,450 units a day. "The lights never go out around here," says manager Adrian Vido, though he has to allow half an hour between shifts for workers to get in and out of parking lots.

Chrysler’s growth is leading the industry at the moment; its May sales were up 17% from a year earlier. For the industry as a whole, auto sales by domestic producers rose 7% from May 1995. Chrysler economist Van Bussmann says the industry, long prone to boom-and-bust cycles, will rack up its third year of strong sales this year. "We haven’t had three years of back-to-back steady sales for at least 50 years," he says.

All this activity on Main Street, of course, is making Wall Street nervous. Bond-market experts fear that when the economy gets hot, inflation heats up, too. So, they are watching closely for any hints of excessive strength in the government’s employment report coming out Friday. Strong job growth, they fear, could lead the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in an effort to head off inflation, and fixed-income securities would suffer.

Right now, there is little evidence of strong growth fueling inflation. Materials costs are stable, and businesses say they have little pricing power. "It is becoming increasingly difficult to pass on higher prices," says Nolan Archibald, chief executive of Black & Decker Corp., the Towson, Md., toolmaker. With foreign competition intense, "you just have to absorb any price increases on the raw-material side."

Wage increases remain modest as well. In 26 states, unemployment is below 5% — a level that in the past has pushed wages higher. Yet even in those states, employers seem to find creative ways of hiring enough workers without raising wages. In Minnesota, with a 3.1% unemployment rate, for example, the Minneapolis bus authority cut its drivers’ minimum age to 19 from 21 to fill jobs. The first to be hired, 19-year-old Kari Kuntz, seems a little out of place among the burly men in the drivers’ lounge of the bus garage. She says most passengers don’t ask about her age, though some inquire about her long, purple-tinted hair.

William J. Hudson, chief executive of AMP Inc., a $5.5 billion maker of electronic components with 40 factories in the U.S., says he isn’t having any trouble filling jobs. He is raising wages by a moderate 3.5% this year, "but we are more than making up for that in higher productivity." Meanwhile, his prices are falling an average of 4% a year, largely because of foreign competition.

The Fed isn’t at all likely to raise interest rates at its July 3 meeting despite the bond market’s fears. In interviews, some Fed officials express concern about a first-quarter uptick in wages, but they note that that rise was offset by lower employee benefits. And they see scant other signs of strain in the economy; they note, for instance, few worrisome shortages of materials. One of Chairman Alan Greenspan’s favorite indicators, lead times for parts and materials deliveries, has been little changed for a few months, giving no hint of the bottlenecks that could force up inflation.

"We are in a strong quarter," a fact that will require the central bank to be especially vigilant for inflationary signs, says Fed Governor Janet Yellen. But she adds, "The underlying trend is for balanced growth" and expects the second half to slow a bit from the current pace.

For President Clinton, the economy could hardly be better; in some ways, it is in its best shape in a generation. Although a flare-up in inflation or surge in interest rates could change things quickly, the economy’s current resilience is helping fuel Mr. Clinton’s popularity in the opinion polls. The so-called misery index — the combination of inflation and unemployment that helped sink President Carter’s bid for re-election — is at its lowest level in decades. Inflation has stayed below 3% for more than three years, and unemployment below 6% for nearly two years. However, wage stagnation remains a serious and confounding problem for people who lack a college education.

What could go wrong? For one thing, the economy’s moderate strength isn’t uniform. California is finally emerging from a long slump, which lingered on well after the national recession lifted in 1991. But unemployment there remains at a painful 7.5%, second only to West Virginia’s. New York and New Jersey, too, are lagging behind in economic growth.

There’s also the possibility that inflation will pop up, forcing the Fed to act later this summer. A single strong quarter isn’t likely to cause policy makers to slam on the brakes; nor is it likely that a small rise in rates would sharply slow the economy. But if there are signs of an inflationary spike, the outlook could change.

And the stock market might drop. Economists think one explanation for the strength of housing and auto sales might be the "wealth effect": Households flush with gains on stocks or mutual funds are more likely to buy big-ticket items. But if those gains in wealth evaporate in a sudden slump in the market, it could affect consumer spending in a way that it never has before, says economist Henry Kaufman. A bigger slice of household assets is in the stock market now than before the 1987 crash; so, a plunge could hit consumer sentiment far harder. "There’s no precedent for this," Mr. Kaufman says.

But for now, it’s steady as she goes. "It’s not too hot, and it’s not too cold," Chrysler’s Mr. Bussmann says.

Mr. Bussmann’s favorite consumer-spending barometer is a measure of real disposable income per household — income after taxes and inflation, divided by the number of households. In March, disposable household income was 1.8% above a year earlier. "It’s been running in that range for a couple of years," he says. "Steady, sustained growth — nothing that would lead to a buying binge," but enough to keep people buying plenty of Chryslers.

The consumer’s strength is evident in government statistics that show overall consumer spending soared in the first quarter to a two-year high. Retailing, after suffering during the winter, is picking up, with high-end merchants doing especially well. At Neiman-Marcus Group Inc., for example, $1,000 suits are flying off the racks, says Kelly Patrick, a spokeswoman. Among even bigger-ticket items, luxury-yacht sales are booming: Kadey Krogen Yachts Inc., a Miami maker of boats that start at $350,000, says business is so good that its production is sold out for a year.

Even the limousine business is rolling along. "Compared to last year, our business is booming," says Ari Kazmi, manager of All City Limousine in Burlingame, Calif. But he says competition is fierce, keeping prices down. The wedding season is just getting under way, he says, and he has been booking more bachelor and bachelorette parties this year.

Consumers are snapping up outdoor products, despite bad weather in much of the country. Black & Decker’s Mr. Archibald reports strong sales for every product category in his outdoor division, led by the Hedge Hog, a cordless hedge trimmer. Cordless lawn mowers, which, at $350 or more, cost far more than conventional models, are roaring, he adds.

In manufacturing, a slow first quarter is giving way to hopes of a stronger year ahead. AMP’s Mr. Hudson says the economy "isn’t exactly ebullient, but it’s not sick." His company, which makes parts for scores of industries ranging from computers to cars, is budgeting for a stronger second half now that inventories, which were too big last year, are down and demand has steadied.

The rise in interest rates over the past three months may slow parts of the economy later this year, of course. But right now, housing sales are still showing unexpected strength. In the latest report, for April, new-home sales shot up 28% from the slow pace a year earlier. But many in the business say the second half will slow, reflecting higher mortgage rates, which now stand at 8.3%.

The slowing trend is clear in northern Montgomery County, Md., outside Washington. Its rolling hills are full of new homes for sale, mostly priced above $250,000. Rob Bolton, a salesman for Virginia-based Ryan Homes Inc., recalls that in some weeks earlier this year he would have one customer in the office and three more waiting to talk to him in the model home nearby. Now, things are starting to slow.

"Sales are pretty steady, but they are way down from February, March and April," he says. "It’s been a pretty successful year so far, but the amount of traffic I see up here is really directly affected by higher interest rates." Indeed, some large builders are beginning to talk about slippage in building contracts and even some outright cancellations.

Moreover, many Americans, in spite of the favorable macroeconomic trends, still feel discouraged by the stagnation of wages that affects many less-educated workers, and by continued corporate layoffs. "In the face of all this seemingly good news, a sense persists that something is fundamentally wrong," Mr. Greenspan said Wednesday at an economic conference on Cape Cod, Mass. "I refer to the pervasiveness of job insecurity in the context of an economic recovery that has been running for more than five years, inflation that has been contained, and a layoff rate that is historically quite low."

The Fed chairman also suggested Wednesday that this insecurity is rooted in a "rare, perhaps once-in-a-century event — a structural technological advance." The rapid changes in technology, he said, have created a world in which ideas and education are now the dominant element in creating economic value. This, in turn, can be threatening to people unready or unwilling to embrace it. "A new world is emerging," he said.

Factory orders fell slightly because reduced demand for aircraft and defense goods offset moderate gains in other sectors, the Commerce Department reported. The April decline followed a revised 1.7% increase in March, previously reported as a 1.5% gain.

Analysts had predicted a greater decline in April after the Commerce Department announced last week that durable-goods orders, such as for major appliances and automobiles, fell 1.9% in April. But orders for nondurable goods rose 2% for the month, offsetting that result.

The downturn in durable-goods orders mostly reflects erratic month-to-month demand for civilian aircraft. Although auto sales rebounded in April following the General Motors Corp. auto-parts strike, overall orders for transportation goods dropped 12.8% after a 14.6% increase in March.

Excluding that sector, new orders for other items rose 1.9% in April. Those gains indicate a slowly rebounding manufacturing sector, said Robert Dederick, chief economist at Northern Trust Co. "The manufacturing sector has been the drag on the economy," he said. "That stage is really behind us."

Factory inventories were unchanged, and unfilled orders fell 0.2%. The completion of several months of inventory correction indicates continued short-term growth, analysts said.

"This picture is very, very consistent with an economy that was depressed by an inventory adjustment and is working its way out of it," said James Annable, the chief economist at First National Bank of Chicago. "But it will continue to be hampered into the second half of the year."

The industrial sector will continue to produce erratic results but is experiencing a general pickup in activity, said Richard D. Rippe, senior vice president and chief economist at Prudential Securities.

"Business is gradually improving," he said. "It’s not a picture of sharp or robust growth."

Microsoft Windows 95, possibly the most heavily promoted computer product ever, officially went on sale throughout the Triangle at midnight.

The newest version of Microsoft’s highly successful operating system should make personal computers easier to set up and use. Windows 95 will include better audio and video capabilities, and offer easy access to the Internet through the Microsoft Network, the company’s new online service.

Seven to nine million copies are expected to be sold this week alone, according to market research firm Dataquest Inc. Another 20 million copies should be sold by the end of the year.

And those figures may be dwarfed next year. Concerned about possible bugs in the system, many users are expected to wait for a later version of Windows 95 before plunking down $90 for a copy. Also, sellers of computer systems and hardware are expected to see a sales spurt as users realize they need new, or at least upgraded, systems to run the new program.

But Microsoft isn’t leaving things to chance. It is spending $200 million on the launch, which has riveted the world’s attention. The purchase of the first copy — by a student in Auckland, New Zealand, seventeen hours before copies went on sale in the United States — drew extensive news coverage. More than 70,000 people are expected to attend launch events in 43 cities today. Microsoft paid a reported $4 million to license the rights to the Rolling Stones song "Start Me Up" for Windows 95 commercials.

Windows 95, like all operating systems, is the software that determines how files are stored and different programs interact. The Microsoft empire was built on MS-DOS, the operating system that became the industry standard when IBM selected it in 1981 for its first personal computer. The two partners went their separate ways in 1985 when Microsoft introduced the original version of Windows, while IBM bet on an operating system known as OS/2 as a successor to DOS.

Windows found a following, but sales of OS/2 have languished. Nearly 80 percent of the world’s personal computers now run Microsoft operating software.

OS/2 may not be the only casualty. For many months, Windows 95 was known to the computer world only by its code name, "Chicago." But it might have better been named "William Tell," for Windows 95 could be an Apple-killer.

Windows 95 is supposed to make your PC more like a Macintosh. And some industry experts predict it may put the Macintosh out of business. With new features like longer file names and "plug-and-play" technology, a PC for the first time approaches the ease of use that made Macintoshes famous — but at a far lower cost.

Retailers such as Egghead Software in Cary started selling the software as soon as their clocks struck — or, in this digital age, beeped — midnight.

Tim Brown, an automation specialist at the Wake County Public Safety department, has paid $10 at Babbages in Cary Towne Center to reserve his copy.

"I’ll probably go pick it up in the afternoon," he said. "When people ask me whether it’s worth it, at least I’ll have some firsthand experience."

Egghead opened at 11 p.m. Wednesday to give customers a chance to browse. Then at midnight, copies went on sale. With Microsoft’s estimated installation time of 45 to 60 minutes, Triangle computer users could have had the software up and running by 1 a.m.

"We’ve had midnight madness events before and had very good turnout," Egghead manager Joe Mauk said Wednesday. "I really expect the store will be bursting at the seams. There may even be a line to get in."

More than 500 people have reserved copies so far, Mauk said. He had his full staff of 14 on hand until a 2 a.m. close. He plans to reopen the store at 7 this morning and stay on the job until 10 p.m.

As part of the launch, Microsoft will throw an invitation-only bash today featuring an hour long satellite address by CEO Bill Gates that will be seen by several hundred Triangle business executives and software developers at the Raleigh Civic and Convention Center.

"For all the hype we’ve heard, this is a good chance to actually see it," said Doug Haynes, a spokesman for Centura Bank in Rocky Mount, which will demonstrate online banking services that it plans to offer with Microsoft.

Other publicity stunts are a little more … … well, innovative.

Passengers flying from RDU to London should be sure to keep close to their airplane’s windows. Microsoft has painted fields in England with the Windows 95 logo so that they are visible from the air.

Four thousand boxes of Cracker Jacks will be given away with Windows 95 prizes inside in Chicago. The mayor of Fort Worth, Texas, will "officially upgrade" the city to Windows 95 in a ceremony today. Microsoft will pay for the entire press run of the Times of London — which will contain a Windows advertisement on the front page — and will give it away free, the first time in the newspaper’s history.

In New York, the Empire State Building will be lit in Microsoft colors this evening. In Toronto, the city’s tallest building, the CN Tower, will boast a 300-foot high Windows 95 banner. In Poland, journalists will be taken down in submarines to show them what it’s like to live "in a world without Windows."

The launch has become so much of an international event that Quebec Premier Jacques Parizeau issued a statement protesting delays in a special French Canadian version.

"We want to be there for the revolution," an aide told Bloomberg Business News. "And we want to be able to do it in our own language."

Until a few weeks ago, however, it wasn’t certain that the revolution would happen.

Microsoft first announced that the software would ship last year. As the company repeatedly pushed back the launch date, analysts began to wonder publicly whether the product was "vaporware," or software that is announced — usually to deter a competitor — but never reaches the market. An oft-repeated joke was that by the time it was ready, Windows 95 would have to be renamed Windows 96.

Then the Department of Justice threatened to intervene to stop distribution. Regulators were concerned that Microsoft had an unfair advantage in the online service market by making its online access available through Windows 95. The Microsoft Network is expected to draw 9 million users, almost triple the subscribers of CompuServe, the largest online service.

But the feds decided to not delay the rollout, and it came off on schedule. Although the anticipated reception has made Microsoft executives happy, it likely will make computer hardware manufacturers even happier.

To take advantage of the features, users will need more muscular computers than most of them now possess.

At least 39 percent of PC users will have to upgrade their computers to run Windows 95, according to a recent survey, and another 22 percent have barely enough power to enjoy its full benefits.

Virtually the only institution unimpressed with the hoopla was Wall Street. Microsoft stock closed at $97.875, down $1.438, in Nasdaq trading Wednesday.

Keep people in stitches. Laugh all the way to the bank.

No, she’s not a comedienne. She’s a seamstress. Evans owns Sew Well Learning Center & Manufacturing, a North Raleigh company that teaches people how to sew.

"Sewing is like typing," Evans said. "If you can type, you can get a job anywhere. If you can sew, you can always make money. People always need alterations."

So a year ago, she left her job working with mentally handicapped patients to try her hand at teaching sewing full time.

Evans rented office space on Wake Forest Road, bought a van, stockpiled sewing machines and purchased bolts and bolts of fabric.

By word of mouth and some innovative publicity, she signed up 33 students at $400 apiece for her 60-hour course. After a year of teaching classes six days a week, she’s finally starting to turn a profit.

Evans began by persuading fabric stores to display her brochures. In return, she refers her students to the stores.

"I keep people sewing and they keep people coming to my classes," she said.

She built up a mailing list from people who had seen her ads and called for sewing advice. She used her 14-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter to model her clothes at events.

"My kids are a very intricate part of this business," she said, laughing. "The pay’s cheap - an ice cream cone, a soda."

It’s no coincidence that her children are involved.

As a single mother, she’s found that sewing is one of the few ways for women to make a living while staying at home with their children. She’s working on a proposal for social service agencies to train mothers on welfare and put them into jobs sewing. So far, all her students have been women, usually 25 to 40 years old, many with children.

Evans says she customizes each class, so students learn what they want to learn. She takes students on field trips to wool mills and shows them how to buy fabric.

"I teach them how to make sewing cost-effective," Evans said.

She also teaches them how to make sewing profitable.

Evans uses the course’s graduates to do contract sewing for Triangle businesses.

"There aren’t that many manufacturers here. It’s a good industry to get into," she said. "I don’t think anyone is really filling that need for church groups and small organizations."

Because the students work out of their homes, she has lower costs. She has no minimum order and promises that no job is too small- Sew Well has made everything from day care workers’ smocks and nurses uniforms to doll dresses.

In part to gain her customers’ confidence, she makes just about everything she wears.

"Your business card is what you sew. Your advertisement is what you wear," she said.

With her business only a year old and already covering its expenses, she expects her manufacturing revenue to grow as more students complete her course.

She’s even thinking about expanding into other cities in a few years.

"I have visions of Sew Wells all over, not just in Raleigh," she said. "I feel fast growth.

He doesn’t have to worry about what his co-workers might think. Since July, he’s worked by himself, in an office above his garage.

When Jones agreed to leave his job at a Raleigh law firm to join a Columbia, S.C., company as vice president for business development, he insisted that he be allowed to remain in the Triangle.

"I didn’t want to move to Columbia," Jones says. "I can make an argument that, with the type of work I do, I’m more productive here than in an office with the distractions."

So he added a few phone lines to his garage and joined the burgeoning ranks of telecommuters, people who use technology to work from home or away from their traditional offices.

For employees, telecommuting offers the chance to bypass rush-hour traffic, to spend time with their families and to work at their own pace without managers hovering over them.

For employers, telecommuting cuts down on office overhead and costly corporate real estate.

Some 9.1 million employees worked at home during business hours for at least one day per month last year, up from 7.6 million the year before, according to FIND/SVP, an Ithaca, N.Y., research firm.

Work-at-home arrangements aren’t for everyone, employers and workplace consultants warn. An employee, of course, has to maintain a good supply of self-discipline. And for employers, telecommuting loses its appeal as a productivity booster if managers don’t trust home-workers or refuse to offer the necessary support to make it work.

Although the Triangle does not have the same traffic pressures inspiring telecommuting as cities like Los Angeles, it is slowly taking hold here nonetheless.

Some big employers such as IBM Corp. are giving increasing numbers of employees the chance to work at home. Computer retailers say their fastest-growing segment is the "soho," or small office/home office market. And even phone companies and office furniture retailers are beginning to capitalize on the trend.

Within a few months, GTE South, which has run local advertisements encouraging people to telecommute, will offer new service options for telecommuters, including connectivity, consulting and support. The local phone provider serves Durham and Research Triangle Park.

"GTE is trying to put together a complete package for working at home," says David Bryant, senior network engineer.

As part of the package, GTE will promote high-speed, high-capacity phone lines called ISDN, for integrated services digital network. One ISDN line can support two phone lines, making it ideal for home workers who want one line for voice and one line for a fax machine or modem. Prices range from $50 to $75 month, with a surcharge for data usage.

Triangle office supply stores say they are seeing more orders for home office equipment. Those computers, printers, and fax machines require furniture.

"We have more and more people coming in here saying they are working at home," says Angie Lebitz, showroom manager for Alfred Williams and Co., a Raleigh office supplier. "That’s been happening for at least the past year. We’ve noticed a significant increase."

A typical home office configuration might cost between $2,500 and $3,000, Lebitz said.

But employees who work at home don’t have to bear the full cost of a home office. Some Triangle companies are starting to pick up portions of the tab.

IBM Corp.’s Research Triangle Park operation now pays for phone lines for nearly half of its employees who do some sort of work at home, spokesman Jay Cadmus says.

For employees like Gary Brown, the company sometimes supplies computers, too.

Brown, who provides on-line customer support, has worked out of his home in Cary off and on for 10 years and full time since October.

What he may lose in office camaraderie, he says, he makes up for in productivity. "I’m relaxed, I’ve got music going," Brown says. "There’s no office chit-chat, no telephone ringing, no background noise. It allows you to write more politely.

Or it could be a treacherous and deadly landscape, swallowing up trailblazers and setting in motion costly financial flops.

Welcome to the world of cyberbusiness.

It’s easy to get caught up in the hype of the Internet as companies in the Triangle rush to go on-line. But, so far, success stories are few and far between as companies tentatively explore the intricacies of Internet commerce.

In fact, many companies have found they are more likely to use the Internet to save money rather than to make money.

"I don’t know of many nontechnology companies that are doing much revenue through the Internet in the area right now," said Cliff Allen, who advises companies on their on-line efforts as president of the Allen Marketing Group in Raleigh.

In the extraordinarily brief commercial life of the Internet, the people who have made money are Internet access providers, World Wide Web page designers and the cottage industry of consultants and speakers.

That’s about to change.

As the Internet moves from the playground of scientists and hackers to a robust business community, this could be the year that real fortunes are made and lost on the Internet.

"More and more people are going to be sitting in their living rooms browsing the Net," said Sarah Gray Lamm, manager of the Home Team Properties Inc., a Chapel Hill real estate company that launched a Web site with property listings last month.

Like most aspects of Internet commerce, market research is an emerging field, and no figures are available for measuring Triangle business activity on the Internet. But total sales on the Internet worldwide from September through July were $118 million, according to a survey of more than 650 Web sites by ActivMedia, Inc., a Peterborough, N.H., research firm. That figure is expected to skyrocket for the next few years.

"There is a novelty feature to ordering flowers or nontechnology merchandise over the Net," Allen said. "But there’s also no competition."

If the Internet has been a rough-and-tumble world so far, a semblance of order is about to arrive, in the form of big business.

Visa and MasterCard have teamed up to develop secure transaction software to prevent hackers from picking off credit card numbers. Several banks are exploring creating cyberbanking divisions. Wall Street has started to pour capital into technology companies.

With these developments comes a new critical mass of users. All the major commercial on-line services have pledged to offer full access to the Web by the end of the year. The newest online service, the much-touted Microsoft Network, could add another 9 million users to the Internet’s estimated population of 30 million users worldwide.

While electronic mail addresses pop up routinely on business cards from Research Triangle Park, more nontechnology companies in the Triangle are now considering establishing a presence online.

"It’s those merchants that are trying to decide whether they need to be up or not," Allen said.

Those Triangle companies that have ventured on-line have found a variety of ways to integrate the Internet into traditional business strategies. And some of them have learned something that Internet business evangelists don’t share very often: Most companies on the Internet aren’t trying to make money - they’re trying to cut costs.

Web sites can save staff and processing time, mailing and printing costs, and even long-distance phone bills, especially for calls overseas.

For instance, American Airlines, which launched its site May 18, has placed flight schedules on-line and plans to allow frequent fliers to check account information by the end of the year.

Initially, the airline hopes to speed up the reservation process at its five reservation centers, including its 1,400-employee operation in Cary.

"The concept is really to reduce the cost of business as much as possible," said Joe Crawley, the site’s webmaster.

Far more important are American’s plans to offer electronic booking of flights early next year.

In an industry where commissions to travel agents are the third-highest cost after labor and fuel, electronic booking could increase the number of tickets issued directly by the airlines, now just 20 percent. One day electronic booking could supplant reservation centers and travel agencies entirely.

Not to be outdone, a number of travel agencies have taken to the Web as well. PCTravel, a service of Raleigh’s American Travel Corp., has perhaps the most sophisticated system. Consumers can search for the cheapest flight and can reserve and buy tickets. PCTravel expects to do $2 million worth of bookings per month for this year, said David Lea, American Travel vice president for marketing.

But a major problem for PCTravel and other Triangle companies that sell goods and services on-line has been the continuing concern over the security of information transmitted over the Internet.

Technological advances in security have been unable to dispel a public distrust fueled, in large part, by the February arrest of hacker Kevin Mitnick in a North Raleigh apartment on charges of stealing 20,000 credit card numbers from the nation’s largest Internet access provider. PCTravel, the Durham Bulls and a number of Triangle businesses have turned to a new cyberbanking unit of First Union Corp. in Charlotte for help.

First Union is providing help for on-line transactions such as credit card verification and transaction security. The company also plans to tackle business-to-business transactions and soon will announce new cash management software that will enable corporate customers to check account information over the Internet.

"We want to be where our customers are," said Tom Kitrick, First Union vice president for strategic planning and Internet marketing. "What’s driving this industry is, how can businesses use the Internet to make their transactions easier?"

Another industry being driven by the Internet is marketing.

The Internet is a marketer’s dream tool. Precise files on individual users can be kept easily. The demographics are to die for. Web users are well off, with an average income of $69,000, and highly educated, with nearly 35 percent having completed college and almost 32 percent more earning an advanced degree, according to a University of Michigan-Georgia Tech study.

At WRAL-FM 101.5, a promotion to give away tickets to the movie "The Net" demonstrated just how powerful a marketing tool the Internet could be.

Listeners were asked to go to its Web site, leave a mailing address, and to fill out an optional survey. The station mentioned the offer on the air just three times in 30 hours.

"We were going to leave it up for a week, figuring we would get 20 responses," said Ned Attayek, an announcer who designed and maintains the page. "We put it up at Monday lunch and by Tuesday suppertime, the tickets were gone."

The station gave away 211 tickets and collected valuable demographic data in the process. And WRAL did it all without devoting staff time or hiring a marketing company to conduct the research.

"We were amazed. We’re trying to figure out how to make some money off this page," Attayek said. "It’s obvious that it’s an incredible marketing and promotion research tool."

It’s also an incredible tool for entrepreneurs like Gary Storr and two co-workers who launched a Web service called America’s Help Wanted to assist companies in their recruiting efforts a month ago. They expect to charge companies to post job openings and to buy resumes of qualified candidates from a searchable database.

"We’re hopeful that we’ll be able to get to a point where we can support this on a full-time basis," Storr said.

Venture capitalists are quite interested in the activities of Storr and entrepreneurs like him.

Internet start-ups received $47 million in venture capital financing in the first quarter of this year, $5 million more than all of 1994, according to a study by Venture One, a San Francisco research company.

Venture capital investments in Internet-related companies are growing about three times as fast as biotech investments did in the late 1980s, said Venture One spokeswoman Caren Cadile.

But before entrepreneurs or established businesses order business cards to go with a new Web site, they should take the time to do some old-fashioned research by spending some time on-line, posting messages and answering questions, Allen cautioned.

"When you get an e-mail asking for your catalog, you’ve found a market. When you get e-mail asking for your Web site, then it’s time to get a Web site," Allen said. "It’s the simplest market research you can do."

The packaging of the buoyant water toy says it’s from Tennessee, but the Funnoodle is really made right here in the Triangle.

So are Nerf arrows, parts of Seeley mattresses, and even the protective padding at those playgrounds McDonald’s provides for french fry-fueled youngsters.

"Those are applications that many consumers in the Triangle use and don’t know that it’s made here," said Marc Noel, the president of Nomaco Inc., a low-profile, privately held company that makes thermoplastic foam products.

With 460 employees and annual revenue approaching $55 million, Nomaco has quietly carved out a specialty niche as a leader in the "foam profile" industry.

At its plants in Zebulon and Youngsville, Nomaco melts plastic pellets, mixes in additives and coloring, and forces the concoction through a shaping device called an extruder.

What emerges are foam gardening pads, stadium cushion seats, hair curlers, race car roll-cage pads, pipe insulation, tree wraps and packing materials.

And, of course, the Funnoodle.

For those of you without young, aquatic-minded kids, the Funnoodle is a foam cylinder six feet in length and three inches in diameter that can support up to 200 pounds in water.

Typically selling for $2.99, the Funnoodle is the top-ranked non-video toy this summer, according to the NPD Group, a Port Washington, N.Y., market-research firm. And toy stores across the country are having trouble keeping it in stock.

"It’s one of those items that just took off," said Pam Kelly, a buyer for Toys ‘R’ Us. "It’s kind of like the pet rock thing. It’s a phenomenon."

But for all the hoopla surrounding the Funnoodle, none of it has filtered down to Nomaco.

In large part, that’s by choice. Nomaco’s name never appears on its products.

The company made a strategic decision in 1987 to stop selling products directly to the public. Instead, it concentrates on its technological advantages. So it signed alliances with companies like toy maker Kid Power in Brentwood, Tenn., to market and distribute products that Nomaco makes.

"When you’re so diversified, you cannot, or we cannot, distribute directly," Noel said. "That’s why our name does not appear on the product."

Unlike many distribution agreements, there’s also a fair amount of collaboration on product development between Nomaco and its partners.

"For a manufacturer, they are very market-oriented," Kid Power President Jamie O’Rourke said.

So far, the strategy seems to be working.

When Nomaco was wooed away from Ansonia, Conn., six years ago, the company started its North Carolina operations with 30 employees in Zebulon.

Since then, it has built its Youngsville plant and now employs 350 people in the Triangle. The company has another 110 employees and two plants in an Atlanta-based decorative products division.

Nomaco’s foam sells so fast that the inventory of its 85,000-square-foot warehouse in Zebulon turns over every two weeks.

And there aren’t many competitors on the horizon.

"We find ourselves more and more in a specialty niche," Noel said.

When Kid Power approached Nomaco about manufacturing the Funnoodle, the company had first researched the different foam producers.

"In North America, there are only 10 companies that could make one of them or a number of them," O’Rourke said. "But, in my opinion, Nomaco is the only one that could make them in the volume we needed."

Still, Kid Power originally split the order between Nomaco and Toronto-based Industrial Thermo Polymer Ltd.

But once production started, the company changed its mind.

"The difference between them was night and day," O’Rourke said. "We put all our eggs in Nomaco’s basket."

Not that Noel expected any less.

"Extrusion is our forte," he said.

A coalition of long-distance telephone carriers has sent the popular board game to every member of Congress and to newspaper editors across the country in a last-minute lobbying effort.

Much more than Monopoly money is at stake. The long-distance carriers are trying to keep federal telecommunications reform legislation from passing "Go."

The reform bill had cleared the U.S. House Commerce Committee May 25 by a 38-5 vote, with the long-distance companies’ whole-hearted support. Then on July 13, they learned that House leaders slipped in a provision that would simplify the entrance of the seven regional Bell operating companies, commonly known as the Baby Bells, into the long-distance market.

Although President Clinton said Tuesday he would veto the legislation in its current form, a vote could come as early as today.

So the nation’s roughly 500 long-distance carriers scrambled to strike back.

The three largest carriers, AT&T, MCI, and Sprint, each organized employee rallies around the country last week.

Last week, AT&T, which had been running advertisements in favor of the legislation, sent 3,000 employees to Washington on chartered buses and trains for a rally against the bill. It was the first political rally in the company’s 119-year history.

MCI organized a second round of rallies in Raleigh and eight other cities Tuesday. About 45 of MCI’s 1,000 Triangle employees braved the blistering midday heat to gather outside the office of Republican Rep. Fred Heineman in North Raleigh.

Heineman, who was targeted because he has not announced support for either side, probably will make up his mind today, spokeswoman Kay M. Ryon said.

"These bills are evolving, even as we speak," she said.

The legislation will provide substantive change to the regulatory framework that is still based on the 1934 Communications Act. The bill would deregulate much of the cable and phone industries.

For the Baby Bells, the bill represents a chance to enter the long-distance market while lowering costs and prices for consumers, BellSouth spokesman John Schneidawind said.

The bill also would allow long-distance carriers to enter the local phone market. The Baby Bells contend that the bill is fair because the long-distance companies can pick and choose the customers they serve while the Baby Bells are required to serve entire regions.

But it takes much longer to be able to compete locally than in long distance, said MCI senior policy adviser Liz Hogan.

Hence, the legislation’s label as the "Monopoly bill." And the mailing of the Monopoly board game.

The Baby Bells think it’s funny, but have no plans to respond in kind.

"Here it is. I want it," the 3-year-old girl announced in delight.

"Maybe we’ll get it when it is closer to your birthday," her father said.

"But I want it now!" insisted Sarah, who will turn 4 on Friday, the same day that "Pocahontas," Walt Disney’s latest animated movie, opens nationwide.

Like Sarah, children across the Triangle have discovered the Pocahontas merchandise that has been flowing into stores since the beginning of this month. Like David Chappell, weary parents have discovered how hard it is to withstand movie studios’ big-budget marketing campaigns as their children clamor for the Next Big Thing.

This summer, parents will have a particularly difficult time as Disney’s "Pocahontas" and Warner Bros.’ "Batman Forever" compete for their children’s hearts, minds and purchasing power.

The studios have thrown the full brunt of their marketing muscle behind the movies. Both are hawking merchandise through their in-house stores. Warner Bros. signed up McDonald’s for a "Batman Forever" promotion; Disney has a similar arrangement with Burger King.

While Batman merchandise is targeted primarily at boys and Pocahontas at girls, the two are competing for shelf and display space at toy stores, book stores, department stores and music stores.

In connection with "Batman Forever," which opened June 16, toy companies are selling five different lines of Batman action figures. For those of you keeping score at home, there’s "Batman Forever," "Batman" the animated series, "Batman Returns," "Legends of Batman" and "Mask of the Phantasm" from the animated movie.

From the new "Batman Forever" line alone, there’s "Manta Ray Batman," "Night Hunter Batman," "Transforming Bruce Wayne Batman," and… well, you get the idea. You can also buy the Batmobile, the Batcopter, the Batcycle and the Batplane. As always, kids are encouraged to collect them all.

The action figures start at $5.99; figures with vehicles at $14.99.

But while Batman may be forever, Pocahontas is a girl’s best friend.

If you thought your child’s craving for "Lion King" paraphernalia was bad, brace yourself. You haven’t seen anything yet. Here’s a small sample of what’s already in stores:

Pocahontas storybooks, songbooks, coloring books, coffee table books. Posters for kids to color and posters that have already been colored. Rubber stamp kits, sand art kits, stationary kits. Dresses, jackets, bracelets, backpacks. Necklaces, nightgowns, mugs and moccasins. The items range in price from a few dollars to $28.

The priciest Pocahontas item is a $248 pigskin leather jacket for adults at The Disney Store. But the hottest-selling is the $16.99 "Sun Colors Pocahontas" doll, which some stores say they have had trouble keeping in stock.

"I’m carrying similar stuff to what I did for ‘Lion King,’ " said Katherine Glascock, the manager of Toy Terminal in Raleigh. "If that’s any forecast, the Pocahontas mugs, stamps and stuffed animals will be real popular."

Their popularity will be no accident. Friday’s opening is the culmination of Disney’s carefully crafted marketing campaign.

Two weekends ago, Disney held a free "Pocahontas" premiere for 100,000 people in New York City’s Central Park. The company has also dispatched Pocahontas animators and an interactive exhibit on a 24-city tour. Disney Stores crank out songs from the soundtrack several times an hour. In addition, every copy of the "Lion King" video included a "Pocahontas" preview.

"Everybody in the world probably has the ‘Lion King’ video," said John Lamiell, a self-described Disney-ite from Sacramento visiting the Triangle. Yes, he owns one of the 26 million copies of the "Lion King" sold so far.

Since last year Disney has aggressively licensed rights to produce Pocahontas merchandise. Burger King alone will distribute 55 million Pocahontas figurines. Stores of all kinds have set up Pocahontas displays, all hoping for a piece of the Disney marketing magic.

"I think it’s great that kids have this to look forward to," David Chappell said. "What I don’t appreciate is how a lot of stores put these advertising displays out in the open, at kid level."

Analysts say Disney could make between $700 million and $900 million in profits from the movie.

Disney has done its marketing so well that other toy companies are seeking to cash in on the Pocahontas craze too.

There’s "Li’l Indian Princess," a palm-sized doll. Or the larger "Native American Doll." Or the "Native American Princess Play Wear Dress and Fun Set," which includes barrette, bracelet and shoulder pouch.

Even Mattel, one of the largest producers of Pocahontas toys, is cross marketing. Prominently displayed in some Triangle stores is its "Native American Barbie." For a mere $149.99, you can purchase a version of the doll that’s almost as tall as your child.

At least that’s an easy one for a parent to say no to. Birthday parties are much harder. Just ask David Chappell whether Sarah will have a Pocahontas birthday party. He pauses and then smiles.

"Probably," he admitted.

You can’t call him at Esquire magazine, though. He doesn’t work there and never has, according to the company. Try some of his other 17 e-mail addresses, including "hertz.com" and "trump.com," and you’ll get the same result. He doesn’t work for those companies either, spokesmen said.

But Cashel does own the words they might want to use in their cyberspace addresses.

Cashel — a Kalorama resident who works at the government-funded Eurasia Foundation here — declined to be interviewed for this article. He is among a growing number of people and companies that have registered hundreds of Internet addresses mimicking some of corporate America’s most fiercely guarded trademarks.

Only with an address can a company send and receive e-mail on "the Net." Just as street signs provide directions to buildings, Internet addresses direct information to the right individual. If your name is Mike and you work at XYZ Corp., your Internet address might be mike@xyz.com. Unless, of course, somebody else had already registered @xyz.com. Then you would have to be mike@elsewhere.com.

The unique addresses are handed out on a first-come, first-served basis by an administrative body called InterNIC. Anyone can register any address for free. The only restrictions are Internet naming guidelines, which limit the number of characters and require that a descriptive suffix be included. All business addresses, for instance, must include the suffix ".com," short for "commercial."

The rush by Cashel and others to register potentially valuable names may cost businesses millions. As more companies venture on-line, they may find their name of choice already has been registered by a speculator, a competitor, an employee or even a company in a different industry with a similar name. At stake is corporate identity in the information age.

Companies whose potential names have been registered by others will have three choices: Pick another name, buy the rights to the original one or sue.

"There are big corporate names being registered, and it appears that it is individuals and not companies who are responsible," said Mike Walsh, the president of Internet Info, a Falls Church market research firm that tracks corporate use of the Net.

Already, 17,000 ".com" names have been registered, and that number may swell to 50,000 a year from now, Walsh said.

A search of InterNIC’s public registry of names reveals several Fortune 500 companies whose names or products have been registered by someone else. Besides Cashel’s names, already taken are "coke.com," "startrek.com," "nasdaq.com," "cosmo.com" and "windows.com." Some companies have reserved scores of addresses that might be valuable someday, such as "pizza.com," "sex.com," "god.com" and "money.com."

Spokesmen for Hertz Corp., the Nasdaq stock market, Viacom Inc., Coca-Cola Co. and other companies and organizations contacted said they were unaware that the names had been registered. Several said the companies would investigate possible legal action to claim the names.

Like many legal issues in cyberspace, there is no clear precedent on whether traditional trademark law protection extends to Internet addresses.

"Addresses are problematic. The trademarks statute forbids the registration of geographic addresses, but computer addresses may not fall within those limitations," said Lynne Beresford, the trademark legal administrator at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

"It’s very much like getting a vanity plate," said Jonathan Groves, manager of information services at the Internet Co., a Cambridge, Mass., Internet provider that registered the Nasdaq and Windows addresses for clients.

Several intellectual property and trademark lawyers said that companies whose names are taken may have pretty strong cases.

"Trademark rights are based upon use. If you make any other use of a name that could confuse the public, that’s trademark infringement," said John Hornick, an attorney who specializes in such matters.

"If you take an Internet address, you’re saying, ‘I’m going to take someone else’s name and register it,’ " he said. "You can certainly argue that might confuse the public, and could probably sue and win."

Merely registering a company’s name could prompt legal action, said Bruce Teller, outside counsel for the International Trademark Association. While not trademark infringement, registering a name could be considered trademark dilution because the commercial value in a name is diminished, he said.

Two cases are in the courts. In one, the MTV cable channel is suing Adam Curry, a former MTV host, over his use of the address "mtv.com." Curry originally offered to set up the address for MTV, but the network declined.

With MTV’s knowledge, Curry registered the name for himself and helped the network incorporate it into MTV programming. Only after Curry tried to stage an on-air resignation in April did MTV file suit to claim the name.

While the matter is in litigation, Curry has agreed to direct to another site users who try to address mtv.com.

Lawyers said the case probably will focus on MTV’s initial decision not to register the name, and not on trademark issues.

In the other case, the Princeton Review test preparation company registered the address "kaplan.com" in reference to its largest competitor, the Stanley H. Kaplan Educational Center. Although Princeton Review President John Katzman says the registration was a joke, the company activated the address with on-line advertisements for Princeton Review.

Kaplan, which is a unit of The Washington Post Co., filed suit. Kaplan President Jonathan Glayer said the company has since registered "about 20" variations on the Kaplan name and its products. The two companies have agreed to arbitration later in the year; in the meantime, Princeton Review has deactivated kaplan.com.

Princeton Review’s "joke" was certainly an expensive one. Katzman estimates his legal bills will run between $ 10,000 and $ 20,000.

Undeterred, he says he may have another joke in store for Kaplan. He’s considering registering the address "kraplan.com" and promoting it instead.

To avoid ending up in Kaplan’s position, companies can take preventive measures. Katzman himself urges, "Everybody should go out and register their company’s domain name right now."

Other suggestions from lawyers include trademarking an un-stylized company logo — because Internet addresses are plain text, a company’s stylized logo may not be admissible in an infringement case — and collecting evidence that a similar name causes public confusion. Misdelivered e-mail might be one way of documentation, attorney Hornick said.

Most of all, companies should not count on Internet providers to protect a name when someone else tries to register it — because most won’t.

"We can’t act as an arbiter," Internet Co. President Robert Raisch explains. "We would be placed in a position of qualifying every domain name for every country around the world."