KEEPING YOU SMART, SOLVENT, AND SAFE FROM ALIENS

Sure, memory, processing power, and hard-drive capacity are critical decisions for PC buyers. But what ultimately matters is more personal: using the PC to help junior master the three ''R''s, keeping tabs on your finances, and--in lighter moments--deep-sixing aliens. So selecting the right software is no idle task.

Having shelled out big bucks for your PC, you may want to see if you have any disposable income left. Quicken Deluxe 98, $60, the latest update to Intuit Inc.'s personal-finance champ, contains new features that take advantage of the Internet. Besides its superb checkbook and budgeting basics, Quicken users can visit a companion Web site, Quicken.com, for news, stock quotes, and portfolio tracking.

PACKAGE DEALS. Indeed, many of the latest programs exploit the Web and other technologies. With a mouse click, Mindscape Inc.'s $40 Chessmaster 5500, enables players to compete against human opponents via the Net. Edmark Corp.'s $45 Let's Go Read!, for 4- to 6-year-olds, uses IBM speech recognition to ''listen'' when your child reads aloud. (It comes with a mike.)

For starters, you might want to consider Microsoft's Home Essentials 98. The package includes complete versions of Word 97, Money 98, Encarta 98, Works 4.5, and Greetings Workshop. At $109, it's a deal, even if you don't need each program--Word alone would set you back at least that much.

If you've got kids, the best way to justify your PC purchase is to help them do well in school. Several publishers produce first-rate educational titles, ranging in price from $30 to $60, including the Reader Rabbit series from the Learning Co. and the Reading Blaster and Math Blaster series from Davidson & Associates, Inc. Broderbund puts out the excellent Living Books animated stories, and Carmen Sandiego titles. Microsoft's new My Personal Tutor does a terrific job teaching preschoolers math, reading, and ABC's.

Add IBM's solid new CD-ROM version of the World Book to a crowded field of reference works that range from Encarta, to the 1998 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. The latest Encarta deluxe version features a program that helps students organize term papers by typing info onto electronic index cards. A new reference standout is the $199, 30-CD set of The Complete National Geographic, which lets you examine 155,520 pages of photographs, maps, articles, and covers from the magazine.

Perhaps the best news from the fun and games side is that young girls are no longer getting short shrift. Mattel Inc. validated girls' games with last year's hit Barbie Fashion Designer, which let players create wardrobes for the doll. Barbie is back on CD-ROM in several new titles. Now, others are targeting little Suzie, including Rockett's New School from Purple Moon and The American Girls Premiere from Learning Co., based on the popular books and dolls. Unlike programs aimed at their brothers, girls' software skips the blood and guts and features heroines girls can identify with.

If mom and dad ever wrest the PC back from the kids, they, too, can have some fun. Berkeley Systems Inc.'s You Don't Know Jack Volume 3, the irreverent quiz show, features 800 new questions. The graphics are stunning in the five-CD Riven, the sequel to Myst from Red Orb Entertainment and Cyan Inc. Meanwhile, Parroty Interactive, which poked fun at Myst with the Pyst CD-ROM, is taking on The X Files TV series with a new parody called The X Fools. Then there's always Dilbert to remind you why you'd rather avoid the office. DreamWorks Interactive and Cyclops Software's Dilbert's Desktop Games features such diversions as Boss Evaders (toss status reports at pink-slip-wielding boss heads) and a Jargonizer, where ''Software is cool'' becomes ''Program code is perfectly below average temperature.'' So plunge in.

By Edward C. Baig in New York