When you're listening to music at the beach with friends, odds are you're using the same device your parents and their friends did when they were young: a battery-powered radio. Maybe it's time for something new: the Internet boom box.

Ever since transistors first made battery-powered portable radios possible, people have taken to toting their music along with them. FM soon overtook AM in popularity; meanwhile radio was augmented by cassette tape and later by CD (both of which are sensitive to blowing sand). People have carried around headphones and stereo tape players since the advent of the Sony Walkman 25 years ago; they've toted portable CD players for nearly 20 years and portable MP3 players for the past 5.

Over the next year, expect to see the Internet boom box arrive as a product category for mid- to high-end music fans. A handful are already out, including products from Linksys and Philips.

At the heart of an Internet boom box is a wireless or wired Ethernet connection, so you can tune in to thousands of Internet radio stations, as well as music-for-hire services such as AOL Radio or Rhapsody. This is great for streaming music in the backyard, but not so good on, say, the beaches of Cape Cod (unless you can place a wireless access point atop the Truro lighthouse).

Maybe your apartment complex could lure new residents with wireless access points for poolside laptop users and music enthusiasts. I'm not saying it's right (in the involved-parent sense) to use your laptop by the pool, but sometimes it's necessary, as when the kids are dying to go swimming but you'll get in trouble at work if you don't keep up with your overflowing e-mail in-box.

There will be times when you can't connect to the Internet for music. The ideal device, therefore, will also have at least an AM/FM radio tuner. (Weather band is nice too; the weather is a lot more important at the beach or on the patio than in the office.) It ought to have a line-in jack to play music from an external MP3 player. It could have a player for MP3/WMA discs as well; such mechanisms don't cost much.

And the device should have decent speakers. The biggest speakers aren't always the best-sounding.