Apple Inc. introduced a refreshed line of Macintosh desktop computers Tuesday that the company touted as more affordable, even though price tags for all but one model top $1,000.

The rollout, which many analysts expected to come this year, included a price cut to the low end of the iMac line of desktops with built-in monitors. A version with a 20-inch screen starts at $1,199, $300 less than the previous generation. The 24-inch model starts at $1,499.

Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) unveiled a long-rumored update to the Mac Mini, a petite computer sold without a monitor, keyboard or mouse. The company's cheapest computer, at $599, was updated with a faster graphics processor and the ability to run more than one monitor at a time. In a press release, Apple also promoted the Mini's energy efficiency and said it draws less than 13 watts of power when idle, or about one-tenth the power of a typical machine.

The company also overhauled its professional-grade work horse, the Mac Pro, with a quad-core processor from Intel Corp. (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ), while cutting its price by $300 to $2,499. An eight-core version starts at $3,299.

Apple has long focused on selling higher-end computers to consumers willing to pay extra for beautiful design. To date, Apple has made few concessions to the global economic crisis that's crimping consumer spending, and strong sales overseas during the holiday quarter helped offset a slower shopping season in the United States.

Apple's Mac line, which also includes laptops, fared better than the overall PC market in the last three months of 2008.

But Apple's moderate price changes don't seem to reflect the growing severity of the downturn, which could make 2009 the worst year on record for computer sales, according to estimates out Monday from research group Gartner Inc. (nyse: IT - news - people )

And so far, Apple has stayed away from the one fast-growing PC category, netbooks, or cheap, low-powered notebooks that have been a hit with recession-bitten consumers. Those machines start well below $300.

A would-be challenger to Google Inc. said Tuesday it is suing the Internet search leader for alleged abuses that include illegally rigging its prices to thwart potential competitive threats.

In a 38-page page complaint, TradeComet.com LLC accused Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) of manipulating its system for setting ad rates to make it too expensive for a specialty search engine called SourceTool to promote itself within Google's vast online marketing network.

In a press release, TradeComet said it filed its antitrust lawsuit in a New York federal court.

Google said it hadn't reviewed the allegations as of late Tuesday, but the Mountain View-based company reiterated its belief that there are plenty of other online advertising options, including networks run by rivals Yahoo Inc. (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) and Microsoft Corp. (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people )

"As we have consistently made clear, the advertising market in which Google operates is highly competitive, and advertisers have a huge range of choices," Google said in a statement.

TradeComet's lawsuit is the latest legal action to allege Google has used its widening market power to create a monopoly that enables it to bully rivals or squeeze out Web sites that it doesn't like.

Google processes nearly two-thirds of the Internet search requests in the United States and sells an even larger chunk of the text-based ad links that appear alongside search results and other content on millions of Web pages served up each day.

Oregon's largest dairy will test a new generation of technology that captures methane from cow manure -- tapping an underused energy source and lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

NW Natural and Bonneville Environmental Foundation are building the $1 million methane digester at Threemile Canyon Farms in Boardman.

Methane digesters are not new, but Bill Eddie of the foundation said the model developed by J-U-B Engineers of Boise, Idaho, costs much less and can be used on small farms as well as big ones.

That means small farms wouldn't have the expense of trucking heavy manure to a central facility. Instead, they could have their own digesters and pipe excess gas to a collection spot.

Unlike older digesters that rely on concrete and steel to build the manure holding basin, the new design contours the earth and lines the basin with plastic. The covered basin is filled with old tires, which serve as a matrix for bacteria that break down the manure, allowing the methane to be drawn off for use as fuel.

The utility and the environmental group get half the capital costs back as state energy tax credits spread over five years. NW Natural can sell carbon offsets to its 6,300 Smart Energy customers, who make up about 1 percent of its customer base. The dairy can substitute the methane for propane to heat water that is used to clean milking parlors.

Agriculture accounts for about a third of the methane released into the atmosphere in the U.S. Other sources include landfills, coal mining, and oil and gas refineries. It is considered the No. 2 greenhouse gas contributing to global warming, after carbon dioxide.

Oregon is one of the seven western states and four Canadian provinces that have signed the Western Climate Initiative to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the region by 15 percent by 2020.

The Threemile Canyon equipment is scheduled to go on line in March.

"It's a risky project," said Eddie. "Every piece of the revenue stream is going to be important."

Farm manager Marty Myers said the digester fits the dairy's existing manure handling operation and easily be expanded if the test works out. The methane could ultimately power the refrigeration units that cool milk.

Threemile Canyon Farms employs 300 people full time and 400 seasonally. The farm milks 16,000 cows on a farm covering 93,000 acres. Until now, the manure has been held in a lagoon and sprayed on the farm's 37,000 acres of farmland growing feed for the cows.

The digester will handle the manure from 1,200 cows, each producing an estimated 120 pounds of manure a day -- for a total of about 144,000 pounds a day.

Once technology is ready to remove impurities, NW Natural expects to use digester methane in its pipelines, said spokesman Bill Edmonds. Methane is the main component of natural gas.

Stephanie Page, renewable energy specialist for the Oregon Department of Agriculture, said methane digesters are coming into increasing use in Oregon. Two are working on diary waste in Tillamook and Salem, and others are in municipal waste. A fruit processing company outside Corvallis is developing one.

Samantha Power, who resigned as senior foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama, is back on his team

Samantha Power, the Harvard professor who was forced to resign from Barack Obama's presidential campaign last spring after calling Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton "a monster," is now advising the president-elect on transition matters relating to the State Department -- which Clinton is slated to head.

Power is listed on Obama's transition Web site as part of the team reviewing national security agencies. Her duties, according to the site, will be to "ensure that senior appointees have the information necessary to complete the confirmation process, lead their departments, and begin implementing signature policy initiatives immediately after they are sworn in."

In short, she is part of a team that is likely to work directly with Clinton, a potentially awkward situation for the two women. Obama is expected to officially announce Clinton as his choice for secretary of state after the Thanksgiving holiday.

Transition officials declined to comment. A spokesman for Clinton did not respond to an e-mail sent yesterday evening. Power has been on the list of review team officials since mid-November; the Associated Press first called attention to her presence on the list yesterday.

But people close to the transition suggested too much was made of Power's comment at the time, and said that she has made moves to bury the hatchet with Clinton and that the senator accepted those efforts.

If so, that could pave the way for Power to reemerge as a key adviser for the new president after being barred for months from appearing on television as a foreign policy surrogate for Obama.

Power, who is close to Obama, resigned March 7 after being quoted in the Scotsman newspaper saying that Clinton "is a monster" and that "she is stooping to anything. . . . The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive."

The same day the comments were published, Power was forced to resign. In a statement at the time, she said she made "inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor, and purpose of the Obama campaign."

Then locked in a tight battle with Obama for the Democratic nomination, Clinton responded with a statement urging donors to contribute to show that "there is a price" for the kind of attack politics that Power's comment represented.

After leaving the campaign, Power remained active in the public debate. In an Aug. 13 article in the New York Review of Books, she argued that Obama had an opportunity this year to reverse the decades-long advantage that the Republican Party had with voters on national security and foreign policy issues.

"Although few have focused on this, the Democratic Party today is also in a strong position to show that it will be more reliable in keeping Americans safe during the twenty-first century," she wrote. "If the party succeeds in doing this, it will not only wake up the United States and the world from a long eight-year nightmare; it will also lay to rest the enduring myth that strong and wrong is preferable to smart and right."

Power was at one time considered a contender for a top post in an Obama administration. But her name has not surfaced recently, and she is not listed as a lead official on the State Department review team.

Obama officials have said the review teams will review agency policies, budgets and structures with an eye toward recommending to the new secretaries what is working and what is not.

Marching bands are tuning instruments and cheerleaders are readying pompoms in anticipation of getting selected to stroll on Pennsylvania Avenue in President-elect Barack Obama's inaugural parade.

Just one hiccup.

If hopes are realized and they get the nod, they've got an even bigger challenge: finding a place to stay within marching -- or driving -- distance to the city.

Band directors, trying to make contingency arrangements, are facing the same struggle as other would-be visitors, with demand high to get near what could be the biggest inaugural celebration in the country's history. It's one thing to find a hotel room for your family or a couch to crash on. It's another to find a block of rooms for a group that may number 200 or more. Plus the drums, tubas and the like.

"The furthest we've ever put a group is Rockville," said Justin Shuler, owner of Group Travel Network, which arranges trips for marching bands and student groups. "Now we're looking at southern Virginia and Pennsylvania. . . . It's impossible to find rooms. It has never been this difficult."

Hotels, he said, are so busy that they don't have to be flexible about a marching band's traveling plans.

The Presidential Inaugural Committee, the group in charge of pulling together the parade and other festivities, is working with city officials to identify alternative accommodations, such as high school gyms and churches that might be suitable for overnight stays.

"Part of our commitment to holding the most open and accessible inaugural activities in history is working closely with officials in the District and surrounding jurisdictions to find creative solutions to the challenge of housing as many of the parade participants who need it," said Josh Earnest, the inaugural committee's director of communications.

Such assistance would be welcomed by parade hopefuls. The District's hotels are just about booked up, along with an additional 70,000 or so hotel rooms in what is known as greater Washington. Houses and condos are getting scooped up on Craigslist.

For the past few weeks, the Lowndes High School marching band, from Valdosta, Ga., has been trying to reserve lodging in hotels around Washington just in case.

The closest they could get? Williamsburg, a 150-mile, 2 1/2 -hour trek to Pennsylvania Avenue on a good day.

"We'll probably leave Williamsburg at 3 or 4 a.m. We're just anticipating the traffic to be horrendous that day," said Charles E. Todd, the school's director of bands.