By ROBERTSON BARRETT, DANIEL EISENBERG AND MICHAEL KRANTZ

BILL VS. MARC

NETSCAPE ESCALATED ITS BATTLE WITH Microsoft for the soul (and wallet) of the Internet last week by quietly offering Web surfers a preview of a superbrowser, code-named Atlas. The program is designed to compete with Microsoft's Explorer, which Net users have labeled slow and short on appealing features. Though downloading Atlas was rough going (more than an hour on a 14.4 modem), patient users were treated to a program stuffed with new applications, part of Netscape's plan to outdazzle and outperform Microsoft. Below, a look inside Atlas, available at www.netscape.com

Cool Talk Atlas includes an Internet phone that lets users make calls from their PCs. The technology, which digitizes voices and then sends the resulting bits over the Net, aims to make Atlas more essential than Windows.

Netscape Live 3D The Net is spawning new 3-D applications loaded with complex virtual-reality graphics. Netscape and Microsoft endorse different VR standards, but Atlas' easy-to-use 3-D interface may bring gamemakers into Netscape's camp.

Netscape Navigator Atlas may become Navigator 3.0 late this summer. If history is any guide, this first "alpha" release will be followed by six or seven "betas," each more stable and sophisticated than the last.

System Info Atlas may be gigantic (it's a quarter of the size of Windows 95), but it has been engineered to run faster. Test drives last week were speedy but also very crash prone--par for most alpha tests. HYPEMETER Silicon Valley's "search engine" companies are about to become the latest winners in the giddy Wall Street sweepstakes known as the high-tech I.P.O. Granted, companies like Yahoo and Excite, which use typed-in key words to guide users through the Web's sprawl, perform an important editorial service. But with minuscule profits and an uncertain future, market valuations hovering at 300 times revenue (for Lycos, which went public last week) strike some analysts as decidedly "optimistic." That's not slowing down the train, though. Yahoo, which had a million-dollar profit last year, is due to go public this month. Valuation: possibly half a billion.

MODEM MONTESSORI

EVERYTHING THAT THE WORLD WIDE Web knows, it sometimes seems, it learned in kindergarten.com In the past few weeks, the Net has erupted in a cacophony of jeers, jabs and complaints as online services attacked one another like kids in a sandbox. HotWired, the electronic sister publication of Wired magazine, has been ceaselessly twitting other successful sites--such as Time Warner's Pathfinder and the computer guide c|net--for offenses real and imagined. Last week the whining became too much for Suck, a trendy online journal, which posted a spirited complaint about HotWired's "constant needling" and noted that rival bashing swapped places only with "back patting" on HotWired's Web pages. Look for a return volley on HotWired this week. In another online mud fight, ESPNET SportsZone unleashed a filtering program designed to keep employees of rival SportsLine USA out of its site (which is open to everyone else on the planet). Maybe it's time for a nap.

DESTINATION UNKNOWN

THE FUTURE OF THE COUCH POTATO IS looking brighter--and more interactive. Crashed-out boob-tube watchers who hate to get up and use a computer will soon be able to channel- and Net-surf on the same screen. This week Gateway 2000, the PC direct marketer, will introduce the long-promised big-screen PC. The $4,000 Destination consists of a PC with a 31-in. monitor, a wireless keyboard and access to television signals and the Internet. Mix in a high-speed modem and a friendly interface that helps byte phobiacs navigate the Net, and you'd have interactive television. Not a reality yet, but no longer a mere fantasy. (1-800-846-2000) --By Robertson Barrett, Daniel Eisenberg and Michael Krantz