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JANUARY 2010
Motorola droid Verizons Best smartphone how to Build Your own Gaming Pc
JANUARY 2010
vol. 29 No. 1
44
CovER SToRY
BEST Of ThE DECADE In this decade-ending blockbuster, we explore the people and technologies that defined the first ten years of the 21st Century. Come see how different 2009 looks from 1999.
PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION JANUARY 2010 Photos: (middle row, far leff and right) Getty Images
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4 CONSUMEr ELECTrONICS Droid phones Apple tV Vizio VF551XVt carMD Plus Quick looks 22 hArDWArE hP Pavilion 6267c-b Apple iMac 27-inch (core 2 Duo) epson PictureMate charm Plus Quick looks 28 bUSINESS hP Proliant Ml330 G6 Server Outright (Sept 2009) hP ProBook 5310m 32 SOfTWArE Microsoft Office 2010 Beta Google chrome OS Panda cloud Antivirus Free edition Plus Quick looks 80 ThE bEST STUff 5
letteRS
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tech NewS
7 frONT SIDE Pc Mags annual technical excellence Award winners; a motorized skateboard; fitness gear for the road.
OPINIONS
2 fIrST WOrD: LANCE ULANOff 38 JOhN C. DvOrAk 40 SASChA SEGAN 42 DAN COSTA
SOlUtIONS
68 bUILD A GAMING PC we show you how to build a solid, midrange gaming box for less than $1,700. 74 SECUrITy Account controls in windows 7. 78 TECh TIPS Sorting contacts in windows Mail, recording voiceovers, and more.
PC Magazine Digital Edition, ISSN 0888-8507, is published monthly at $24.97 for one year. Ziff Davis Media Inc., 28 east 28th Street, New York NY 10016-7940.
nce upon a time, Googles Chrome operating system was an exciting idea that offered far more questions than answers. But now we now know much more about what the company is working on and have even seen the OS in action. Basically, there are some important things you need to know about the Google Chrome operating system. ITs NOT AvAILAbLE yET. So far, Google has launched only the open-source development project. This means developers and third-party partners (including hardware manufacturers) can download, compile, and install the code. Most important, they can change and enhance it. All those changes could pour back into what will become the first shipping product late next year. The rest of us will have to wait until then. EvEry APP IN ChrOME Is A WEb APP. This means there are literally no desktop apps. Google execs reiterated this point by adding, third party apps will work as long as theyre Web applications. This fact could and maybe shouldscare you. All the application CDs you currently have sitting on shelves are useless with the Chrome OS. If
PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION JANUARY 2010
you have a favorite drawing or scrapbooking application, you might as well throw it out if you plan on devoting your life to Chrome. On the other hand, its likely that youve started using more and more cloudbased applications to get work done.
ChrOME Os usEs PArTs Of ThE ChrOME brOWsEr. If you like Googles upstart
browser, you may love the Chrome OS. They look almost exactly the same, though Chrome OS does add a number of important, OSlike features. yOuLL GET EAsy ACCEss TO APPs. A Web browser lets you add shortcuts to Web sites on the toolbar, but it isnt particularly good at giving instant access to applications. Google Chrome OS tries to address this by adding a Tabs feature. These are persistent tabs that keep your favorite Apps a click away.
ChrOME WILL ALWAys bE uP TO DATE.
Microsoft always recommends you turn on Windows Update, but not everyone does. In Chrome, there is no choice. If youre currently running the Chrome browser, this shouldnt surprise you. It always polls for new versions and updates on its own, as well.
What you see now probably doesnt represent what the shipping product will look like in 2010.
ChrOME WILL rEPAIr ITsELf. Google says
its primary goals for the Chrome OS are speed, simplicity, and security. To achieve that last part, the Chrome OS will do something never seen before in a desktop operating system: It will, if it needs to, re-image itself. If the OS detects a malware infection or even just a bad bit, it will get an updated version of the OS from the cloud and reinstall it. Thankfully, this will not blow away your data and settings, because theyre all stored in the cloud. yOur DATA Is IN ThE CLOuD. Chrome OS will not store any of your data locally. As long as youre online, it will constantly cache your data and settings in the cloud. All of that information is, by default, encrypted. There is a benefit here. If your computer is stolen, or even if you want to upgrade, you dont have to back up or migrate a thing. Youll have all your data as soon as you sync up your new computer. The concern, obviously, is what happens when you dont have online accesscross-country flight, anyone? ThErE Is NO hArD DrIvE. Chrome OS will not run on spinning hard drives. Google execs say theyre working with OEMS to create the ultimate reference design for Chrome OS machines. Part of that is flash or Solid State storage. A key benefit is speed. During Googles demonstration of early code, the company showed a machine booting to the log-on screen in 7 seconds and launching an
but if you were planning on converting all your existing systems to the Google Chrome OS, youre out of luck. Google is targeting a very specific kind of computer. In fact, even though Google expressed great love for all the worlds netbooks, the company has concerns about the current crop of small, affordable laptops. Google execs said they want to see netbooks with 100 percent keyboards and larger screens. They said they also want to focus on 802.11n connectivity. Google does believe that its operating system will eventually run on more powerful desktops and laptops, but not in 2010.
ChrOME WILL WOrk OffLINEsOrT Of.
Google has made some vague promises about exposing offline capabilities and supporting some offline storage. The company also talked about the ability to play offline media and games. Theres more, like the fact that whatever you see now probably doesnt represent what the shipping product will look like in 2010, and the fact that Google doesnt seem to have a hardware driver plan. But these are the early days. I expect well learn a dozen or more key points when we finally download and compile the code in PC Labs. I have to say, Im looking forward to it.
FOllOW me On TWiTTer! Catch the chiefs comments on the latest tech developments at twitter.com/Lanceulanoff.
JANUARY 2010 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION
Lance Ulanoff
www.pcmag.com
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Dan Costa art dirECtor Richard J. Demler EditoriaL prodUCtion dirECtor Nicholas Cosmo
EXECUtiVE Editor
Laarni Almendrala Ragaza Sean Carroll (software, security, Internet), Eric Griffith (business, networking), Tony Hoffman (printers, scanners), Matthew Murray (ExtremeTech), Sascha Segan (mobile), Wendy Sheehan Donnell (consumer electronics) sEnior Editors Brian Heater (PCMag.com), Carol Mangis (blogs, community), Erik Rhey (Digital Edition) pC Labs LEad anaLysts Cisco Cheng (laptops), Tim Gideon (consumer electronics), Samara Lynn (business, networking), Michael Muchmore (software), Neil J. Rubenking (security), Joel Santo Domingo (desktops), M. David Stone (printers, scanners) anaLysts Dan Evans (DIY, hardware), PJ Jacobowitz (consumer electronics) inVEntory ControL Coordinator Nicole Graham staff photographEr Scott Schedivy pCmag.Com managEr, onLinE prodUCtion Yun-San Tsai prodUCErs Mark Lamorgese, Whitney A. Reynolds nEws Editor Mark Hachman nEws rEportEr Chloe Albanesius staff Editors Jennifer Bergen (blogs), Gregg Binder (printers, scanners), Zachary Honig (consumer electronics), Errol Pierre-Louis (software, security, Internet) assistant Editor Sean Ludwig (mobile) CommErCE prodUCErs Iman Edwards, Arielle Rochette UtiLity program managEr Tim Smith CrEatiVE dirECtor Chris Phillips prodUCtion artist Guyang Chen ContribUting Editors Helen Bradley, John R. Delaney, Richard V. Dragan, John C. Dvorak, Craig Ellison, Galen Fott, Bill Howard, Don Labriola, Jamie Lendino, Jim Louderback, Bill Machrone, Edward Mendelson, Jan Ozer, Neil Randall, Matthew D. Sarrel, Larry Seltzer
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thE indEpEndEnt gUidE PC Magazine is the Independent Guide to Technology. Our mission is to test and review computer- and Internet-related products and services and report fairly and objectively on the results. Our editors do not invest in firms whose products or services we review, nor do we accept travel tickets or other gifts of value from such firms. Except where noted, PC Magazine reviews are of products and services that are currently available. Our reviews are written without regard to advertising or business relationships with any vendor. how to ContaCt thE Editors We welcome comments from readers. Send your comments to Internet address pcmag@pcmag.com or to PC Magazine, 28 E. 28th St., New York, NY 10016-7940. Please include a daytime telephone number. PC Magazines general number is 212-503-3500. The West Coast Operations number is 415-547-8000. We cannot look up stories from past issues, recommend products, or diagnose problems with your PC by phone. An index of past issues is at www.pcmag.com/previous_issues. For a list of upcoming stories, browse www.pcmag.com. For a full description of who on staff covers what, go to www.pcmag.com/whocoverswhat. If you are dissatisfied with a product advertised in PC Magazine and cannot resolve the problem with the vendor, write (do not call) Anne King, Advertising Department, at the above address. Please include copies of your correspondence with the vendor. pErmissions, rEprints For permission to reuse material in this publication or to use our logo, contact Ziff Davis Medias Executive Director of Rights and Permissions, Olga Gonopolsky, at permissions@pcmag.com, or by phone at 212-503-5438 or by fax at 212-503-5420. Material in this publication may not be reproduced in any form without written permission. For reprints, please contact the YGS Group: telephone, 800-290-5460; fax, 717-399-8900; e-mail, pcmag@theygsgroup.com.
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Feed Feed
Windows 7 Over Snow Leopard In regard to Lance Ulanoffs piece, Windows 7 vs. Mac Snow Leopard: The Great Debate, I have several thoughts. First, 64-bit operating systems are still not widely used, so no point arguing which system does it better. Same goes for Hyper-Threading, which also is not yet widely used. And, yes, there are those big yummy icons on Mac. But boo hoo, the icons on Windows 7 arent as big as ours! What are we, 3 years old, that we need kindergarten jumbo icons? Windows 7s UI is a big improvement on XP and Vistas, and many users are quite happy with its simplicity and user-friendly design. True, Time Machine on Macs is a great program that works really well. Windows Backup is pretty Spartan, but who cares when there are a plethora of free backup programs Windows users can have, versus the few backup programs available for Maccies who dont like using Time Machine? Finally, Apples claim that Microsoft has left XP users behind is idiotic. XP has run its course, its now a legacy OS, and unfortunately, Microsoft simply couldnt make it compatible enough to upgrade smoothly.
LETTErS
Yes, this is a shame, but what would you rather do: pay a few hundred to install Win 7 or pay over a thousand to buy a new Mac? Talk about leaving users behind. Truetech Symantec Slipping on Customer Service Thanks to Neil J. Rubenking for stating out loud in his article, Symantec Support Gone Rogue what Ive been finding over the past four months: Symantecs customer assistance currently merits an F grade. It pains me to say that, because I have found the most recent version of Norton Internet Security to be a great program. But unfortunately, the off-shore customer service repsjust dont know that programor the other Symantec programs--well enough to provide helpful assistance. Most recently, a rep couldnt figure out for me how to exclude programs from the NIS scan. I found the solution during a telephone chat session with the rep, and basically taught that rep how to do it. Even Symantecs quality control seems affected. I have received no fewer than three quality control questionnaires following my last chat session with Symantec. It
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JANUARY 2010 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION
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is sad, and a disservice to Symantecs customers. And enough to make one reconsider whether freeware is the better way to go.Rufustel Googles Game Plan After reading Matthew Murrays piece Does Chrome OS Spell the End of Desktop PCs? I think anything other than a Web OS wouldnt be accepted from Google. The company has a plan. The thing about its plans is that they tend to work out. Putting everything ever written on the Web is literally changing the value landscape for computing. Who else is doing that? Its true that with a Google OS netbook you wont
be spending money on hardware and software that just sits there waiting to be called on and then isnt. Fundamentally, however, Google is after the brainshare that will be released when all those millions of PC users are no longer trolling for the next PC killer app or performance boost. To what end? Google has made the Internet more than a method of interconnection. Its now an agora, a marketplace where what is wanted is being defined. The best place to build and define content for this marketplace is in the roughand-tumble of that marketplace, not on your PC, the 21st century equivalent of the mud hut.Cpenoi
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Whats New from the World of Tech
matrix behemoth that made printing affordable). These milestones have long been surpassed, but traces of these innovations are still with us. In our opinion, the list below will leave similar traces 25 years from now. LightPeak We have written a lot about the advantages of fiber-optic cable to provide high-speed data and video to the home, but engineers at Intel are working on bringing those blazing speeds all the way to your PC. As demonstrated at IDF this year, LightPeak transmits data at 10 gigabits per second and has the
JANUARY 2010 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION
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potential to scale to 100 Gbps over the next decade. To put that in perspective, at 10 Gbps you could transfer a full-length Blu-ray movie in less than 30 seconds. LightPeak can support multiple I/O protocols and could be used for everything from simple peripheral access to high-speed data connections. Although still expensive, LightPeak taps the extraordinary capacity of optical communications and could leap-frog more conventional connections in the next few years.
Project Natal We got our first glimpse of Microsofts Project Natal at the 2009 E3 show. Natal isnt a single technology, but rather a collection of them inside a NvIDIAs GEfOrCE 3D vIsION small box that connects to your Xbox and sits below your TV, much like the sensor on a Nintendo Wii.
PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION JANUARY 2010
That box includes an RGB camera, infrared depth sensor, microphone, and processor. With this device in place, Natal can interpret a wide variety of inputs, including gestures, facial recognition, and voice commands. Although camera-enabled entertainment systems date back to the Sony EyeToy, Natal is far more than a toy. It can map the human body with as many as 48 skeletal frame points, a level of detail that offers developers unprecedented flexibility in building everything from sports games to first-person shooters. Natal wont be available until later this year, but game developers are already building applications. Nvidia Geforce 3D Creating a truly threedimensional display has been a goal of the film, television, and PC industry since their inception, but Nvidias GeForce 3D Vision shows
just how close we are. It isnt TouchTec Gloves seamless yet, however. You Anyone who has tried to still need to wear the $200 use an iPod with gloves on stereoscopic glasses, and will appreciate the invenyou also have to use a newer tion of Jerry Leto, founder graphics card and watch on of TouchTec. Although a 120-Hz capable display. capacitive screens are more The active shutter lenses sensitive and responsive synchronize with your disthan resistive touch screens, play so that each eye gets theyre no good when used 60-Hz worth of images. with non-conducting mateOnce you put those pieces in rials, like the cloth of your place, the results are pretty TOUChTEC CAPACITIvE gloves. Leto found a soluimpressive. Best of all, there GLOvEs tion by imbuing fabric with are more than 300 games nanoparticles that let you that support 3D vision right now, including operate an ATM, iPhone, or other touch Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. screen without removing your glove. The gloves come at a hefty price premium now Xerox silver Ink Printable Electronics ($185), but in a few years we will be surThere are a lot of challenges in developing prised when a fabric doesnt work with a printable circuits. One of the most basic is capacitive touch screen. that conductive metals melt at about 1,000 degrees Celsius, and the plastic sheets ideal honda stride Management Assist for holding them melt at around 150 degrees When it to comes to robots, many of us tend C. This year, Xerox cleared that hurdle by to focus on the futuristic and cool (Asimo) developing a silver-based ink that can be or the cute and useless (Pleo), ignoring the printed on plastic, paper, or a range of other fact that robotics will have a meaningful surfaces. Soon we may be able to print elec- impact on our everyday lives. And as Hontronic devices for a much lower cost, open- das Stride Management Assist and Bodying up a huge range of new applications. As weight Support Assist show, that impact is PC Labs printer analyst David Stone puts it: not far off. These prototypes arent designed If you can print the RFID on packaging as to replace the function of standing or walkeasily as printing a bar code, you can replace ing, but could help an individual move more bar codes with RFID tags. This could mean easily or lift heavier objects. The 5.6-pound going through a checkout counter becomes Stride Assist device contains a CPU and batas easy as walking past an RFID reader to tery pack and straps around your waist. Its connected to braces that fasten to your legs register everything in your cart.
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and assist your movement. When PC Mag editor-inchief Lance Ulanoff tested the system he reported, I could see how this [technology] might perform a dual purpose, assisting the infirm and helping the able-bodied become better walkers.
has been available overseas since last year, its U.S. debut was in 2009and it was an impressive one. Without additional spectrum to deploy a truly 4G network, like WiMaxor LTE, T-Mobile is using HSPA+ to wring as much performance out of its existing 3G network. Mobile MPEG surround products managing editor Currently the vast majority Sascha Segan tested HSPA+ of TV broadcasts and Interin Philadelphia, and he says net radio stations use stereo that speeds went wild. audio encoding, because it My little laptop stick gave takes too much bandwidth repeated results up to 3.6 to send true 5.1 surround hONDA sTrIDE AssIsT megabits per second. The sound. Fraunhofer Institechnology is just in Philatutes new audio codex, MPEG Surround, delphia; expect more cities to light up soon. could change that. In fact, the company has demonstrated full 5.1 channel sound WiTricity resonant Magnetic Coupling in as little as 48 kilobits per second. At the Magnetic induction isnt newits what 2009 CES show, PC Labs audio analyst Tim high-end electric toothbrushes use to Gideon said that It was virtually impos- charge up without wires. But those toothsible to hear the difference between MPEG brushes need to be within millimeters to Surround and the original surround-sound power up. The Boston-based firm WiTricrecordings. Not only could MPEG Surround ity can do the same thing over several feet change the way music is heard, but it also and power everything from a light bulb, a represents a boon for streaming TV firms, cell phone, or even a HDTV. The secret to WiTricitys technology is the use of resolike Hulu and Netflix. nant magnetic coupling, which occurs when two objects exchange energy by varying or T-Mobile hsPA+ AT&T and Verizon are in a very public debate oscillating magnetic fields. The end result over who has the biggest 3G network, but is power transferred much more efficiently if you want to test out the fastest 3G net- than wires, and without the environmental work, you need to visit Philadelphia and log hazards of using a disposable battery. on to T-Mobiles HSPA+. Although HSPA+ Dan Costa and PC Mag staff
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GEArLOG Motorized Skateboarding is Not a Crime If youre looking to score some big points with your kids or just find an interesting new way to tear your meniscus, then this gadget is for you. Hammacher Schlemmer is selling a motorized skateboard ($599.95 direct) that can travel at up to 19 miles per hour. The gadget is powered by a 36-volt battery, and its 600-watt motor reaches top speed in only 4 seconds. It even has enough horsepower to propel you uphill. The rider controls acceleration and braking with a wireless trigger remote. The rechargeable battery lasts about 10 miles. The skateboard weighs 40 pounds and can handle riders up to 225 pounds.Troy Dreier GOODCLEANTECh Use the Sun to Know When Its Sunny Oregon Scientific has released the +ECO Solar Weather Station ($99.99 list) for monitoring inside and outside conditions. It comes with a detachable solar panel for powering up the rechargeable battery. The weather station lets you know indoor and outdoor temperature and humidity, as well as shows a graphic of the days forecast. It also includes an alarm with snooze.TD
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can give real-time feedback thanks to the wireless transmitter and receiver. And if you want to work out to your favorite jams without those little earbuds getting in the way, you can always plug your iPod into a portable, battery-powered speaker, such as the [2] iLuv isP100 ($34.99 direct). Along with cable TV and on-demand
movies, many hotel chains (such as Best Western, Marriott, and Embassy Suites) offer game consoles for check-out or as inroom amenities. So why not take along your copy of [3] Wii fit Plus ($99.99 list), or you can try [4] yourself!fitness for the Xbox or PlayStation 2 ($39.99 list). In case you cant get your hands on a game console, you could always commandeer your kids Nintendo DS and load a copy of [5] jillian Michaels fitness Ultimatum 2010 ($19.99
list) for a no-mercy approach. For true gearheads, sometimes it takes serious hardware to get motivated. For example, the [6] Polar fT ($20 list) shows your heart rate and whether youre hitting your target fitness zones. Finally, the [] bodyMedia GoWear fit (armband, display, and 12-month subscription $249.90 direct) will track your calories burned to adjust your workouts to your weight-loss goals. Erik Rhey
JANUARY 2010 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 13
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First
5.9 ounces. The front consists of a bright, rich 3.7-inch LCD capacitive touch screen (which can display the full width of desktop Web pages). Below the huge screen are four light-up, touch-sensitive buttons. The whole effect feels pleasantly expensive, but also rather masculine. Slide the screen to the right to reveal the first real disappointment, the Droids keyboard. The QWERTY keys are a little too small, a bit too flat, and a touch too tight to put this in the first rank of keyboards. Running Android 2.0 (including the Google Experience), the Droid is reliant on the curiosity and tech-savvy of its customers to customize their phones. With that said, Android supports Microsoft Exchange, as well as a more flexible camera app, better software keyboards, better browsing, and multitouch. Motorolas Droid is also the fastest Android phone, with an ARM Cortex-A8 processor. I ran four publicly available Android benchmarks and found that on pure CPU measures, the Droid was about twice as fast as the Samsung Moment, which until now was the fastest Android phone
Product name in rED indicates Editors Choice.
HEAD-TO-HEAD
PrOs Best screen weve ever seen. Excellent Web browser. Very fast and powerful. Great battery life. First Google Maps Navigation device. CONs Not a great voice phone. Physical keyboard is mediocre. No easy way to sync with PCs. CLICK HErE FOr MOrE
available. The Droid was faster on memory and file system tests, too. However, the fast processor also made it more frustrating when programs (such as the camera app) would occasionally freeze or crash. Also, the Droid is not the greatest voice phone, with calls sounding acceptable but somewhat muffled and compressed. But it did get an amazing 7 hours, 7 minutes of talk time, one of the longest results weve ever seen for a Verizon phone. Although our current Verizon smartphone EC, the HTC Imagio, beats the Droid on
voice quality, music syncing, and handling Exchange calendars, the Droid is Verizons future (with the Android platform superior to the staid Windows Mobile), and thus also earns an Editors Choice. HTC Droid Eris (Verizon Wireless) Want a Verizon Droid, but, you know, with less Droid? The HTC Droid Eris is Verizons slightly watered-down Droid: slimmer, lighter and less powerful, but still a good smartphone. The Eris is a 4.4- by 2.1- by 0.5-inch (HWD)
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PrOs Polished interface. Good call quality. Has multitouch pinch-to-zoom. Supports all Android apps. CONs Poor camera. Poor video playback. Slower and lower resolution than the Motorola Droid. CLICK HErE FOr MOrE
soft-touch black slab that weighs 4.2 ounces. The front of the phone is dominated by a 3.2-inch capacitive touch screen; below it, youll find a trackball for navigation and a range of physical buttons, including pick-up and hang-up buttons. Theres no physical keyboard. Instead, you rely on two very good virtual keyboards. The Droid Eris might share a name and 12,000 applications with the Motorola Droid, but as soon as you turn it on, you know its different. Whereas the Motorola phone runs Android 2.0, the Droid Eris runs Version 1.5 with HTCs Sense
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extensions. HTC brings a lot of Android 2.0s advances to version 1.5 of the OS, but they do things a little bit differently. The Droid Eris has seven home screen panels, with some great widgets, such as a big clock, e-mail, and Twitter viewers (more robust than the Motorola Droid). The Droid Eris actually feels as if it has a slightly more finished interface than does the Motorola Droid, because HTC designs better icons and widgets than Google does. But while its faster than the Sprint HTC Hero because of firmware fixes, its still much slower on various benchmarks because its 528 MHz ARM11 processor doesnt match up to the CortexA8 in the Motorola Droid. I was happy with the Eriss stability, though. It didnt crash while I was testing it, and apps stayed up to date, even if the interface was occasionally a little sluggish. Also, the Eris is a better voice phone than the Motorola Droid, but its video playback was largely inferior. Even though the Eris costs $100 less than the Motorola Droid, Motorola wins with its bigger screen, better multimedia abilities, and most important, its much faster processor. Simply put, the Eris is a good device, but the Motorola Droid is a great one.Sascha Segan
Apple TV Apple TV
$229 direct
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Apple TV
or the second time since its introduction in 2007, the Apple TV has undergone a software-only facelift. The latest 3.0 update includes a snazzy redesign of the user interface and some fun new features, like Internet Radio. The basic concept remains unchanged: It plays iTunes and iPhoto content on your HDTV, including standard- and high-definition movies and TV shows. You can stream wired or wirelessly from your PCs iTunes library or download content directly from iTunes to the 160GB hard drive. Add to this integrated YouTube, Flickr, and MobileMe support, and Apple TV is a compelling purchase. With the 3.0 update, the hardware has remained unchanged. The slick 1.1-by-7.7by-7.7-inch (HWD) silver box is mostly unadorned. Since everything is transferred to the device over your network, theres no slot for DVDs or CDs. A note to the owners
PROs Basically, an iPod for your HDTV. Easyto-use, efficient, attractive interface. Streams iTunes content from up to six computers. Gives you the ability to rent and purchase content from the sofa without a computer. Integrates YouTube, Flickr, and Internet Radio. CONs Requires a widescreen HDTV. No access to App Store (yet). Bundled bare-bones remote could be improved.
of older televisions: Apple TV only works with widescreen, flat-panel HDTVs. The best parts of this update are the overall redesign of the menus and the inclusion of Internet Radio. From the main screen to the Settings sub-menus, the new interface is a breeze to navigate with the remote. Video looks fantastic for the most part, especially when you opt to view HD, rather than standard-definition video. The latest improvements are welcome additions for current Apple TV owners. And for those who might be considering this media extender, the inclusion of Internet Radio and ability to work with iTunes 9s features give you more bang for your buck.Tim Gideon
>>CLICK HERE FOR MORE
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Vizio VF551XVT
Vizio VF551XVT
$2,199 direct
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PROs Very attractive price for a large-screen, LED-backlit LCD HDTV. 240-MHz technology reduces motion blur. Accurate colors. Robust port selection. Low power consumption. CONs Uninspired design. Narrow viewing-angle performance. Some noticeable artifacts in 1080p content.
change in backlighting can be distracting. Other advanced settings include Color Temperature and Smooth Motion, which uses 240-MHz technology to combat blurring and other motion errors. The VF551XVT turned in an average contrast ratio of 1173:1. Colors were accurate and flesh tones were natural looking after some tweaking. My biggest gripe was that during scenes with very light or white backgrounds, there were noticeable artifacts in the lighter fields. The VF551XVT has its flaws, but it offers plenty of ports and cutting-edge technology at a very aggressive pricewithout boosting your electric bill.John Delaney
>>CLICK HERE FOR MORE
CarMD
CarMD
$98.99 direct
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PROs Simple to use. Pulls up engine code information, estimated repair costs, service bulletins, and safety recalls. Works with all 1996and-newer cars and trucks. Bundled software compatible with PCs and Macs. CONs Doesnt actually clear engine codes. Requires $20-per-year fee for unlimited reports. Technical service bulletins cost extra.
tus window with three tabs: My Summary, My Diagnosis, and Staying Healthy. When I tested with an older Volkswagen Golf, it caught many issues but missed a mass airflow sensor we intentionally disconnected. Overall, my biggest annoyances with CarMD are that you cant clear the codes after a reading (your dealer or mechanic must do it) and youre limited to three cars and six reports per month. Also, the company charges a restocking fee if you return the device. In the end, CarMD was fun, but it is too expensive and limited for the average consumer.Jamie Lendino
>>CLICK HERE FOR MORE
JANUARY 2010 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 19
SMARTPHONES
GPS
PROJECTORS
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Excellent form factor Razor-sharp screen Wi-Fi calling Good keyboard Solid call quality
Excellent keys Elegant design Easy to use Good voice quality Affordable
Big 5-inch screen Responsive interface Fast boot-up and lock-in Accurate directions Easy POI searches
Extremely portable at 4.4 ounces Connects to both computers and video devices
PROS
CONS
Browser still needs help Not a big jump up from earlier models
Low brightness limits useful image size Volume is far too low to be useful No audio output
BOTTOM LINE
If you prefer your smartphones to be evolutionary, not revolutionary, the Bold 9700 is the one for you.
The PhoneEasy 410gsm is an excellent, affordable option for older folks and technophobes who want a simple voice phone.
The XXL 540-S isnt the flashiest device on the market, but it offers a large screen and comprehensive routing at a reasonable price. Automobile GPS; 5-inch touch screen; turn-by-turn; 3D view; 3.5 by 5.2 by 0.9 inches (HWD); 8.9 ounces.
Small and light, the PK102 can show video but is best for displaying business presentations and photos.
SPECS
T-Mobile; 2.4-inch, 360-by480 screen; 3.2MP camera; Bluetooth; 4.3 by 2.4 by 0.5 inches (HWD); 4.3 ounces.
2.0-inch, 176-by-220 color screen; Bluetooth; 3.8 by 2 by 0.7 inches (HWD); 3.8 ounces.
DLP engine; 3:2 aspect ratio; 2000:1 contrast ratio; 11 ANSI lumens brightness; 0.7 by 2 by 4.2 inches (HWD); 4.4 ounces.
DIGITAL CAMERAS
MEDIA EXTENDERS
GAMES
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More compact than a D-SLR Fast focusing speeds Extremely sharp images HD video capture Built-in flash Noisy images at ISO 1600 and higher No optical viewfinder No optical image stabilization with 20mm lens
Color display Easy to operate Streams Internet radio Incorporates apps like Facebook and Amazon
Simple interface Diverse song catalog Effectively teaches the basics of DJing
Sexy design Good image quality Intuitive user interface Simple network configuration
Set-up can be a hassle Wi-Fi signal can be easily lost Weak sound quality Remote not included
Pricey UI is very sluggish Limited video playback support Networking software does not support Macs Despite a slow interface and some less-than-useful applications, the DreamScreen 100 does a nice job of displaying photos and videos.
The most promising Micro Four Thirds camera yet, DMC-GF1 offers a D-SLR experience in a body not much bigger than a superzoom. Micro Four Thirds camera; 12.1MP; 4,000 by 3,000 maximum resolution; 3-inch LCD; HD video capture; 2.8 by 4.7 by 1.4 inches (HWD); 12.2 ounces.
The Squeezebox line of streaming devices keeps getting better, but the Squeezebox Radio is not the strongest here.
Though it can be difficult to truly master the skills of turntablism, once you get the hang of it, DJ Hero can be addictive.
Internet radio playback; 802.11g Wi-Fi; Ethernet; AAC, AIFF, Apple Lossless, FLAC, MP3, OGG, WAV, WMA file support; 5.1 by 8.7 by 5.0 inches (HWD).
Turntable included.
10.2-inch screen; CompactFlash, Memory Stick Pro, xD-Picture Card, and Secure Digital High Capacity memory supported.
Visit pcmag.com for the full reviews of these and other consumer electronics products.
HP Pavilion p6267c-b
drive with LightScribe-labeling capabilities. In typical HP fashion, unfortunately, this system is burdened with bloatware. On our benchmarks, the p6267c-b managed to edge past the Dell Inspiron 545 (our budget desktop EC) on most tests. Its PCMark Vantage score of 6,500 was almost 2,000 points higher than the 545 (4,529) and was 32 percent faster than the Lenovo IdeaCentre K220 (4,922). It finished our Windows Media Encoder test in 41 seconds, which was only 1 second faster than the Dell
sPECs 2.5-GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 processor; 8GB SDRAM; 750GB hard drive; ATI Radeon HD 4350 graphics; dual-layer DVDRW drive; 25-inch widescreen LCD; Windows 7 Home Premium.
HP Pavilion p6267c-b
$999.99 list
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PrOs Good performance on productivity apps. Spacious hard drive. Comes with 25-inch LCD monitor. Lots of memory. CONs Lacks a Blu-ray drive. So-so graphics performance. Bloatware.
545 and 5 seconds faster than the Lenovo K220. Although the p6267c-b comes with an ATI Radeon HD 4350 discrete graphics card, it managed a paltry 16.5 frames per second (fps) on our Crysis 3D test, proving it is by no means meant for serious gaming.
PErfOrMANCE TEsTs
L High scores are best. M Low scores are best. Bold type denotes first place.
So even with the bloatware, the p6267c-b delivers more bang for your buck, especially for workers with multimedia tasks, thus earning our Editors Choice for value desktops.John Delaney
>>CLICk HErE fOr MOrE
PcMark Vantage* L
3DMark Vantage* L
cineBencH r10 L
PHotosHoPc s4
M min:sec
Product name in RED indicates editors choice. n/anot applicable: the product could not complete the test, or the test was not compatible. * test was run at the default resolution of 1,24 by 768.
PROs Continues design dominance. Wireless keyboard. Wireless Magic Mouse. Mini DisplayPort input. Better screen resolution than a 1080p HDTV. EPEAT Gold and Energy Star 5.0. COns Card reader is SD-only. No eSATA. Requires third-party adapter for HDMI or DVI input. No Blu-ray option.
Energy Star 5.0 ratings, as well as company recycling programs and energy efficiency. This system performed well, though its not significantly faster than the previous iMac (Nvidia GT130). This model scored a good 1:57 on the Photoshop CS4 test and proved to be fast at 3D and day-to-day tasks, with high marks on PCMark Vantage and 3DMark Vantage. Basically, this iMac is a class-defining product, with a huge screen, beautiful design, and serious power. Joel Santo Domingo
>>CLICK HERE FOR MORE
sPECs 3.06-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E7600 processor, 4GB SDRAM; 1TB SATA hard drive; 256MB ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics card, dual-layer DVDRW drive, integrated 27-inch widescreen monitor, Mac OS X 10.6.
PROs Fast. Low price per photo. High-quality 4-by-6-inch output. Long-lived photos. CONs Cant print from USB memory keys. Relatively big and heavy.
The Charms speed printing a 4-by-6inch photo averaged 41 seconds, considerably faster than most of its competition (at 1 minute or more). Although not pro photo lab quality, the Charms output is better than youd get from your local drugstore. And the cost per glossy photo comes out to a very reasonable 25.3 cents. This combination of fast speed, low cost per page, and high-quality prints puts the Charm way out in front of its competition, and earns it a spot as Editors Choice. M. David Stone
>>CLICK HERE FOR MORE
JANUARY 2010 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 25
DESKTOPS
LAPTOPS
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PROS
All-in-one touchscreen PC VESA mount and wall mount adapters included VGA in and out eSATA port
Affordable Gorgeous 18.4-inch widescreen 1080p resolution Very good gaming scores Blu-Ray included Ugly on the outside Small battery
Blu-ray player in an $800 system Big, wide display Unique design Comfortable keyboard and touchpad Mediocre battery life Display falls short of 1080p resolution Lid and screen are a bit too flexible Low-resolution Webcam With its unique design and Blu-ray player, the VFNNW270F/S is an affordable entertainment laptop that pulls double duty as a workhorse machine. 2.2-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 processor; 4GB SDRAM; 320GB hard drive; 15.5-inch display; Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics; 5.6 pounds; 6-cell battery; Windows 7 Home Premium.
No touch screen Smaller hard drive and memory than rival Cant run 3D benchmarks at standard settings
Touch sensitivity is finicky Only 60-day subscription to Norton Internet Security Pricey for a nettop Lots of bloatware The touch-sensitive AE2010 is a decent system, but Windows Vista and lots of bloatware bring its scores down.
CONS
BOTTOM LINE
Asus carries its netbook success into this attractive, dual-core nettop all-in-one, but its not enough to usurp our current nettop EC.
The AS8940-6865 has the performance and feature goods, delivered to you at an affordable price.
1.6-GHz Intel Core Atom 330 processor; 2GB SDRAM; 320GB SATA hard drive; nVidia ION graphics; DVDRW drive; 20-inch widescreen; Windows 7 Home Premium.
1.5-GHz AMD Athlon X2 3250e processor; 4GB SDRAM; 320GB SATA hard drive; ATI Radeon HD 3200 integrated graphics; 20inch widescreen; Windows Vista Home Premium.
1.6-GHz Intel Core i7720QM processor; 4GB SDRAM; 500GB hard drive; nVidia GeForce GTS 250M graphics; 18.4-inch display; 9.1 pounds; 66-Wh battery; Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.
SPECS
NETBOOKS
SCANNERS
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Huge 17.3-inch display Thin and light for desktop replacement Pleasing design Respectable battery life Spacious hard drive Display falls short of 1080p No HDMI port or Blu-ray support No 802.11n Wi-Fi Graphics limits performance A basic, low-cost desktop replacement, the 1750 pairs a huge display with mainstream components for bigscreen bargain hunters.
Attractive design Lightweight Comfortable keyboard Just over 7 hours of battery life
High-quality scans Fully automatic mode for easy scanning Scans both 35mm and medium-format film
Mouse buttons are awkward Thicker than most netbooks Battery bulges from the back of the system The 110-1134CLs attractive design and spruced-up feature set is now bundled with a longer running sixcell battery.
Overpriced Slow-spinning hard drive Crippling performance scores No easy way to upgrade memory Although its the most luxurious netbook to date, the Booklet 3G is tough to recommend given its bloated price and lackluster performance. 1.6-GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor; 1GB SDRAM; 120GB hard drive; Intel GMA 500 graphics; 10.1-inch display; 2.7 pounds 57-Wh battery; Windows 7 Home Premium (32-bit).
The Epson Perfection V600 Photo offers high-quality scans for prints and both 35mm and medium-format film, plus an exceptionally easy-to-use scan utility. Flatbed scanner; 6,400-pixel maximum optical resolution; USB connection; reflective and transparency scanning; 4.6 by 11 by 19 (HWD); 9.0 pounds.
2.2-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 processor; 4GB SDRAM; 500GB hard drive; 17.3-inch display; Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics; 6.7 pounds; 6-cell battery; Windows 7 Home Premium.
1.6-GHz Intel Atom N270 processor; 1GB SDRAM; 160GB hard drive; 10.1inch display; Intel GMA 950 graphics; 2.7 pounds; 6-cell battery; Windows 7 Starter Edition.
Visit pcmag.com for the full reviews of these and scores of other hardware products.
HP ProLiant ML330 G6
card in the ML330 can connect up to eight SAS (serial-attached SCSI) ports with a maximum of 12 drives. The card supports RAID 0, 1, 5, and optional 6. Management-software installation is straightforward. The Smart Array Configuration utility does what you would expect, creating logical drives and managing the controller card. If you have to troubleshoot the card or the drives, the diagnostic reporting provides lots of information on both the drives and controller. The other major utility is HP Insight Diagnostics, which is Web based. Insight is comparable to the System feature in the Windows Control Panel, except that you can compare different server configurations and even view the logical drives. The System Management tool, which is similar to the Insight tool, takes management one step further by providing visibility of all Web enabled HP system tools. The ML330 scored 5,430 with Geekbench 2.1 64-bit, a benchmark for measuring processor and memory performance. It scored 10,975 on Cinebench with the mul-
sPECs 2.13-GHz Intel Xeon E5506 processor; 8GB SDRAM; three 250GB SATA hard drives; DVD drive; two Gigabit Ethernet ports; four USB 2.0 ports; legacy VGA and PS/2 ports.
HP ProLiant ML330 G6
$2,624 direct
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PrOs Lots of room for expansion in case. Performance is excellent. Runs cool and quiet. CONs Case is a little big if space is tight.
tiple CPUs (cores) turned on. According to desktop analyst Joel Santo Domingo, that test was on a par with quad-core processor systemsa very good score. In a nutshell, the ML330 is a great generalpurpose server that fits nicely in a smalloffice network environment. Whether you
are running the latest Exchange 2010, some other database intensive server app, or just need a dedicated Web server, the ML330 can be adapted to any solution. No matter what the setup, I highly recommend it. Mario Morejon
>>CLICk HErE fOr MOrE
JANUARY 2010 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 29
PROS Clean, simple interface. Excellent integration with related services. Estimates Federal taxes due. Downloads credit card transactions. Cant beat the price of free. COnS No state tax tracking. No export to tax prep solutions. No electronic tax payments.
utright does three things, for free, within an extraordinarily clean, understandable interface: It tracks income and expenses, creates reports, and uses that data to give you an estimate of what you might owe in taxes. Though you can enter some data manually, Outright is Web-based, so theres no software to install. Also, it imports data from FreshBooks (invoices), Shoeboxed (receipts and business card management), and oDesk (paytracking for remote contractors). Setup of Outright is as simple as clicking the Settings link and following the instructions for integrating external data. Outright will download current information on a set schedule. The site has added a crucial element: the ability to download transactions
from your business credit card, as well as from PayPal, Expensify, and eBay. Basically, your information lands in one of two places: your income register or your expense register. Click on the Income tab to see whats been brought in, and the Expenses tab displays downloaded expensesand you can add your own. The Taxes page calculates the tax impact of your income and expenses. I havent run into another financial application that handles accounting like Outright does, with this level of skill, usability, and elegance. Its still young, and still lacking in some capabilities. But its innovation, security, and simplicity make Outright a good choice for the self-employed and very small businesses.Kathy Yakal
>>CLICK HERE FOR MORE
HP ProBook 5310m
PROs Luxuriously thin. Very lightweight. Amazing typing and navigating experience. Great battery life on a 41-Wh battery. Inexpensive. HP Quick tools are nice add-ons. Environmentally friendly. COns 8-cell battery isnt available yet.
The 5310ms 2.2-GHz Core 2 Duo processor emphasizes both speed and energy efficiency. This system achieved impressive performance scores, with video encoding and Cinebench R10 scores easily beating out the ThinkPad X301. And on MobileMark 2007 tests, it lasted a respectable 5 hours 18 minutes. The 5310m also earned our GreenTech Approved seal for EPEAT Gold, Energy Star 5.0, and RoHS certifications, among other factors. In short, the 5310m is for business professionals who are always thinking and moving forward.Cisco Cheng
>>CLICK HERE FOR MORE
sPECs 2.2-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SP9300 processor; 2GB DDR2 SDRAM; 320GB hard drive; Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics; 13.1-inch widescreen; Broadcom AGN Wi-Fi; 3.8 pounds; 41-Wh battery; Windows 7 Pro (32-bit).
JANUARY 2010 PC MAGAZInE DIGItAL EDItIOn 31
application. A nifty animated splash screen reduces the boredom of waiting for the app to start, and, even in beta, Office 2010 feels slightly snappier than Office 2007. When you launch an application, the first thing you notice is that the blindingly blue-toned background that the previous Office version used by default has been replaced by a restful gray-toned background. The ribbon is less distracting to look at because Microsoft ditched the boxes that used to surround many icons and groups of icons. The traditional File menu tab has also been restored, with a Backstage view where you can access file-management options, including export to PDF and privacy options to remove metadata and revisions before saving a file.
Up
Picture-editing options available in most Office apps include a new remove background feature, as well as blurs and pastels. And theres an easy-to-use Insert Screenshot selection. A welcome new feature in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint lets you recover a document you closed without saving. As far as specific apps go, Word improvements include new typographic features that support graphic refinements and the new Navigation Pane, which automatically displays the sections of a document as a vertical stack of boxes. Excel innovations are Sparklines, which display in a tiny graphic image the data in a range of cells anywhere else in a worksheet and Slicer, a Pivot Table feature that displays a summary view of a Pivot Table in a chart that looks like the stack of section headings in Words new Navigation Pane. PowerPoints big new feature takes advantage of todays powerful computers by embedding impressive video-editing features directly into slides. And Outlook finally gets the Ribbon interface throughout, as well as the same clearer, less-boxy look thats improved the rest of the suite. My overall judgment on the beta version is that its terrific but not essential for anyone already running Office 2007. If youre still using Office 2003, however, I strongly recommend you upgrade to Office 2010 when it becomes available. In the meantime, try downloading the beta of Office 2010 and give it a try.Edward Mendelson
>>CLICk HErE fOr MOrE
JANUARY 2010 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 33
Google Chrome OS
Google Chrome
Free Not rated PROS Simplified interface. Automatically updates. Apps and docs live in the cloud. Support for working offline via Google Gears. CONS Can run only on specific hardware. Repeatedly crashed test systems. Needs further refinement.
testing, the OS froze regularlyafter about every five operations, requiring a restart. At this point, Chrome OS feels like a top browser layer stuck onto a minimalist Linux layer. Although this system will surely change, it still offers tantalizing hints at what Google considers the future of computing.Michael Muchmore
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PROs Free. Small download. Fast install. No updates needed. Extremely effective at keeping malware out of a clean system. Detected all malware samples on infested test systems. Attractive user interface. COns Cant function properly without Internet connection. Failed to remove huge amounts of malware traces from threats it detected.
suspicious rather than deleting them outright. Cloud AntiViruss score of 9.7 points in this test puts it in a tie for first place with Spyware Doctor. It also scored a perfect 10 on the rootkit and scareware tests. I noticed, however, that this app is much better at detecting malware than at actually cleaning it up. Still, its a good, lightweight tool even when measured against the for-pay AV apps. Basically, its the best free antivirus software available, thus earning an Editors Choice.Neil J. Rubenking
>>CLICK HERE FOR MORE
JANUARY 2010 PC MAGAZInE DIGItAL EDItIOn 35
SECURITY
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Top-notch malware cleanup Excellent protection against new malware infestation Browser Defender identifies bad sites Blocked leak tests and exploits Accurate spam filter Phishing protection less effective than IE alone Spam filter significantly slows e-mail downloading Slows boot process
PROS
Free Small download Fast install Fast scan for malware Includes toolbar and security tools
Finds and protects vulnerable personal data Can save search results for analysis Includes privacy clean-up tools
Needs no real installation or configuration Malware-detection database resides in the cloud Scored well in malware removal tests
CONS
Poor malware removal left many executables Poor malware blocking By default, installation changes your homepage and search provider
No support for Windows Live Mail Cant scan Outlook OST files or Exchange folders
No real-time malware protection No active tech support Cleanup left many file and Registry traces
BOTTOM LINE
The impressive Spyware Doctor is at the heart of PC Tool; not every component measures up but overall the suite is worth a look.
IObit Security 360 installs and scans quickly but just doesnt do the job of removing malware or preventing malware installation.
Identity Finder scours your PC for unprotected personal information and encrypts, redacts, or securely deletes it.
HouseCalls cloud-based malware detection is great for a second opinion but shouldnt be your only security.
Not rated Free Powerful malware, rootkit removal Good malware blocking Spiffy new interface
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Slightly slower than Omnipage Some difficult documents require manual processing No barcode-triggered processing
Interface is over-complicated Settings that should be defaults need to be turned on in option dialogs
No spell-checking or proofreading inside the program Limited options to correct layout errors
avast! offers very good malware protection at no cost. Its especially good at malware removal and rootkit removal tests.
Not perfect, but overall the most powerful and reliable OCR, with more features and better ease of use than any rival.
Powerful and accurate OCR, but not the best when you need to fine-tune its output.
Decent automated OCR that stands out mostly for its built-in indexing feature.
Visit pcmag.com for the full reviews of these and scores of other software products.
jOhN C. DvOrAk
selves in the background. Nothing can get too bigsuch as a subscription service because Google and Microsoft will simply subscribe and take action immediately. As it now stands there is a long enough lag time between the implementation of an SEO trick and the countermeasure for a company or individual to get a lot of attention and make extra money. The result is kind of an arms race in the world of search. The problem, as I see it, is the horrid results of certain searches ruining the enduser experience. Try and find the best cell phone deal on the Internet. Do it by using a search engine. Every hit is some commercial site trying to sell you something. Almost every time you ask for certain advice the pages get clogged with things for sale. What if I dont want to buy anything and just want to find out about something or know the facts? Impossible. The results hardly ever link to a PC Magazine comparative review or any objective analysis. Just faux reviews and fake objectivity leading you to some product for sale.
Try and find the best cell phone deal on the Internet using a search engine. Every hit is some commercial site trying to sell you something.
All sorts of tricks are used too. My favorite is the site that pretends to review the top three, four or five products. Its usually designed to sell one of the products; well call it product B. The reviews tend to show that only two of the products in category A and B are actually any good. C and D are just terrible. Seems objective so far, no? So the reviewer then goes into great detail and the differences between A and B are dissected. They are both close in quality and usefulness. But wait, A is way too expensive and B despite all its minor flaws is so much the better deal that you should buy B. Click here to buy B. Before we are done with the Internet this is the only sort of site that will exist. And, oh, by the way, product B is a piece of crap, okay? People who just have a few trusted sources that they can count on (such as PC Magazine) are better off using those than doing blind searches when it comes to comparative analysis. But I can assure you that most people will use Google, Bing or Yahoo before anything else. You can tell how well or poorly the search engine countermeasures are doing when you search for something, and you click on a link and the link leads to another search engine with the same term auto-entry in its search engine. This trick kills me. You are looking for something innocuous such as hub cap and the result you get is one of those parker pages that is a faux search engine with a bunch of ads somehow related to hub caps and often a Google Adsense ad. How can this even happen? My advice to Web site managers, when you see this sort of result, is to contact THAT site and hire the consultant doing SEO for it. This sort of thing is no accident. Theres a sudden preoccupation with SEO. Perhaps its only an epidemic in Silicon Valley, but you cant even do a blog post without everyone being worried about the SEO implicatons. No, use a different word! Misspelling helps get attention! Im not sure where this is all headed, but its kind of like the Open Source movement. It relies on a large and vague group of mavens, and that group just keeps growing. I can assure you there are more people thinking about SEO than there are people at Google thinking about how to stop them. Its like Open Source coders far outnumbering Microsoft coders. Now every person who has ever put up a Web site is reading more and more about SEO. So just wait, and get ready for an outand-out plague on the Net.
DvOrak LIvE On ThE WEb Johns Internet TV show airs every Wednesday at 3:30 ET on CrankyGeeks.com. You can download back episodes whenever you like.
JANUARY 2010 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 39
SASCHA SEGAN
Subsidized phones help more people get cool phones, but theyre evil in the way no-money-down mortgages are evil. Most people dont think about what theyre really paying, or what theyre really overpaying. As with mortgages, mobile carriers charge more than a phone is really worth and drag it out over two years. But research generally shows that American consumers react to up-front prices, no matter how deeply theyll be in the red down the road. T-Mobile, My Heroes T-Mobile became my hero a few weeks ago, when it introduced the first plans that let you strip out the phone subsidy. Up until now, you could never see a subsidized and unsubsidized price on the same carrier. But guess what, its almost always cheaper to pay for your phone up front. Lets say you want a Nokia 5310 for free. The subsidized plan charges $10 more per month than the unsubsidized plan over 24 months. Yes, thats right. You just paid $240 to get a $140 phone for free.
As with mortgages, carriers charge more than a phone is worth and drag it out over two years.
Aside from gouging people, subsidies distort the market in other ways. Because people are afraid to break their contracts, they cant jump ship to other carriers. This is good news for the carriers, who hate churn, but its bad news for competition. Fistfuls of Dollars Americans cant think ahead. Forget subsidies, they dont even react to cheaper monthly fees. All they care about is that lying device price tag. If anybody cared about long-term prices, Sprint and T-Mobile would both be doing much better. The iPhone 3GS and the HTC Hero on Sprint both look like they cost around $200. But over two years, with an unlimited talk plan, the iPhone costs $1,200 more. Yeah, sure, the iPhone is great, but is it $1,200 better than a Sprint phone? Really? Do you want an iPhone, or an HTC Hero and a 50-inch plasma TV? If people actually wanted to save fistfuls of money, they would be jumping over to TMobiles Even More Plus plans. In response, the other carriers would introduce their own subsidy-free plans, and then wed all have more money to spend on smartphone apps. But this will never happen. T-Mobiles brilliant plan will fail, because the only price tag anyone reacts to is the misleading free! next to a phone. There is a tiny glimmer of hope. Last year, New York City started requiring fast food restaurants to post calorie counts. The 15 percent of people who decided to use the information ordered less calorie-laden food. So better information helps about 15 percent of people. Could that be enough? Just Tell the Truth, Carriers A truth-in-billing law would definitely help. Im not the only person who thinks so. Consumer advocates have been begging the FCC for this kind of regulation for years. When were buying our phones, lets see online how much of our monthly fee goes to handset subsidies. While were at it, lets also see the correct monthly fees on carrier Web sites, including all of those mysterious taxes that only appear after you actually complete the purchase. And heck, since Im asking for the world, lets make the carriers post all of their plans on one page, so we can actually compare them. This isnt interfering with the market. This isnt price control. This isnt forbidding carriers from charging anything they want. Its just asking them to explain themselves. Im older and more cynical than I used to be; I know that Americans will ignore useful information and take the free phone, which costs them more in the end. But if they know what theyre getting, at least theyre making the choice with their eyes open.
STAY PHONE-SMART Keep up with the latest on smartphones by reading Saschas column at go.pcmag.com/segan.
JANUARY 2010 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 41
DAN COSTA
e-mail. Now most of us can honestly say we missed that message. Personally, I get 300 to 400 e-mails a day, (I send about 30). Can you blame me if I missed one, especially if it is from an address I have never seen before? Conflicted Over E-Mail Now, I should probably admit that I have mixed feelings about e-mail. My biggest problem with e-mail is that people just send too much of the stuff. Its sometimes a result of misdirected manners: I cant resist typing Thanks and hitting Send. But most of the e-mail I receive is just uselesspress releases, random story pitches, line edits on a story, obscure newsletters I never signed up for, office joke threads (okay, I have chimed in on some of those). Honestly, keeping a heavy finger on the Delete key can resolve a lot of these annoyances and keep your inbox free. Lets not forget that at its core, e-mail is a form of mail. Mail used to take three to four business days, now it takes three to four seconds. Too many people measure their impor-
We can no longer read all the e-mail we create. Technology can help.
tance based on how many e-mails they read, and their self-worth on how many e-mails they send. We have hit the tipping point: We can no longer read all the e-mail we create. Technology can help. The New Tech Dialect The Wall Street Journal is right (gulp, did I just type that?). We are creating a new communication vocabulary, an evolving newmedia vernacular. Instant messaging is used for real-time cube-to-cube messages. If it is just office gossip, and Im busy, I can ignore it. Texting is a great way to communicate point-to-point, and I can respond instantly or hours later. Best of all, you have to know my number to reach me, and I dont spread it around. Social networks like Twitter and Facebook are great for broadcast communications, and, when I have time, more direct conversations. Calling all of my old friends every week is impossible, but a few minutes here and there on Facebook, and we can keep in touch. I think there is a phone in my office as well, but I am pretty sure it just makes outbound calls. The Future of E-Mail I am currently testing a host of software tools designed to help you manage your e-mail. Xobni works with Outlook to provide context to all of your e-mail communications. When someone sends me an e-mail, Xobni shows me his or her most recent e-mails, social network profiles, any attachments they have sent me, and most important, a headshot pulled from Linked In. Just seeing the face of the individuals I am e-mailing is a wonder. I am also looking at Gwabbit, a small app that sucks up the signature information at the bottom of emails and drops it into a Contact file. I am still testing it, but so far its amazing. Then there is Google Wave, Googles attempt to combine e-mail, IM, search, collaboration software, photo management, and about a dozen other applications. Despite seeing and participating in lots of demos, Google Wave is a technology that you have to use to understand. It is like trying to explain Facebook to someone who has never logged on. We are just starting to use Wave at the office, so I will report back when I understand this technology better. Given my job, I am a huge fan of technological solutions, but fixing e-mail is going to require some serious behavioral modification. We need to rethink how we use e-mail. It isnt a real-time communication tool, and shouldnt be used as one. It may seem like we can send and receive an infinite supply of e-mail, but we cant. Sending a lot of email doesnt make you more productivein fact, it makes everyone else less productive. Choose your e-mails carefully, for your own productivity and sanity. And for mine, too.
TALK BAcK To DAn E-mail your thoughts to dan_costa@pcmag.com.
JANUARY 2010 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 43
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1. Google
Is Google psychic or what? From the very beginning, the search engine has generated uncannily accurate results to search queries. It does so by using a storied (and secret) algorithm. Weve had our eye on Google for some time now. In fact, in November 1999 we awarded the fledgling company a Technical Excellence Award. Ever since, Google has been a phenomenon unmatched. The scrappy search engine attracted a loyal following of Internet users who found they could quickly find exactly the information they wanted. It became the worlds largest search engine on July 11, 2000, with 1 billion items in its index. (Today, Google declines to disclose the size of its index, only saying over the past year, we increased our index by billions of documents.) The remarkable achievement of Google is that it has become our brain. These days, when we want information about a movie time, metric conversion, a historical tidbit, the solution to a software problem, the best price on just about any product, or an exact address, we simply Google it. More than 1 billion searches are performed on Google every day, and it is the most visited site on the Web, according to Alexa. Ten years ago, Google was only a search engine. Today the Google conglomerate includes e-mail, photo-sharing, video, office productivity software, a shopping site, mapping service, a blogging platform, and a Web browser, among others. In short, Google is where we gofor just about everything.
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2. Apple iPhone
Talk about disruptive technology. The Apple iPhone has forever transformed our expectations of a cell phone. This 4.8-ounce wonder lets us make phone calls (arguably its weakest feature), browse Web sites, dispatch e-mail, watch and shoot video, take photos, and play games. Thousands of people camped out to be among the first to own the device when it hit stores on June 29, 2007. Subsequent releasesthe iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS were slightly less frenzied, but the device itself just keeps getting better. Its bright multitouch screen, snap-simple interface, unmatched media player, and ample storage for data like contacts and calendars make it equally fun and essential. With the iPhone, Apple designers once again proved that a slick design and an intuitive interface are just as important as useful technology. Its capabilities expanded exponentially on July 11, 2008, when Apple opened an App Store that enables users to download thirdparty software that make the device the worlds most capable pocket computer. The App Store now contains more than 100,000 applications available for download, and competitors are scrambling to stock their own software stores. The Apple iPhone is arguably the most successful attempt at convergence in tech product history. Its no wonder Apple has already sold more than 30 million iPhones.
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3. Apple iPod
If youre like many of us, you remember the first time you held an iPod in your hand and marveled that this beautifully designed MP3 player could store 1,000 songs. The iPod, which debuted Oct. 23, 2001, was no one-hit wonder. The original 5GB device gave way to the Mini, the Shuffle, the Nano, the Touch, and the Classic, whose 160GB hard drive can store an astounding 40,000 tunes. The first iPod was a marvel of minimalist industrial design. Its scroll wheel redefined usability for handheld digital audio devices, with an interface that enables you to easily manage a library of thousands of tracks. Over the decade, the iPod became much more than an audio device, adding a color
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LCD and the ability to store calendars, contacts, photos, podcasts, videos, and games. Apples iTunes store enabled us to download and organize content, and became a pioneering business model. And the iPod itself created its own ecosystem of cases, headphones, in-car adapters, and speaker docks that supplanted home stereos. Airlines and hotels began to tout their iPod connection options, and the auto industry started including auxiliary jacks on factoryinstalled radios. The iPod has transformed the way we buy, listen to, and share music. The device makes it possible to carry your entire collection of music in your pocket, buy new tunes on the fly, and play them in any number of ways.
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4. Facebook
While Facebook was prefaced by Friendster and MySpace, neither attained the towering influence of Facebook. Today, the site counts some 350 million active users and accounts for 25 percent of page views in the United States. Facebook, which went live February 2004, is now the second most-visited Web site in the worldand theres plenty to do when you get there. Members share personal trivia, likes and dislikes, videos, virtual gifts, and links to news stories. Facebook is the Webs largest photo-sharing site, with more than 2.5 billion photos uploaded each month. Businesses and organizations now connect with customers and members via Fan pages. Facebook has become the digital equivalent of living in a small town, where everyone knows your business. It is not uncommon to learn that a friends baby was born, that an acquaintance was promoted (or downsized), or that your sister is stuck in a blizzard. Facebook has ushered in a new era in which privacy is out and ambient awareness is in. Facebooks meteoric rise hasnt been without controversy. Members have rebelled at the Beacon advertising program, site redesigns, privacy issues, and tolerance of offensive groups like holocaust deniers, to name a few. Nonetheless, Facebook membership is increasing at a clip that could soon make it larger than Google.
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5. Wi-Fi
In 2000 Americans started unplugging from broadband modemsit was an unwired revolution, enabling us to work from home, from the road, on the train, and even at 35,000 feet. Wi-Fi also made the Internet an anytime, anywhere source of information and entertainment. Wi-Fi is a marketing term coined by the Wi-Fi Alliance for the IEEE 802.11 specification. The first spec that made wireless networking popular was 802.11b; 11a, 11g, and 11n followed. Before the specs, wireless devices were not interoperableand therefore useless for the average home user. The Alliance tests products to make sure they place nicely together. As marketing initiatives go, Wi-Fi has been enormously influential. Today, 40 percent of U.S. homes have a wireless network,
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according to Nielsen. And Wi-Fi is not limited to home or office use: Today it blankets coffee shops, airports, hotels, public parks, universities, and some airplanes. Besides liberating us from the RJ45 cord, (and helping laptop sales overtake those of desktops), Wi-Fi enabled a burgeoning ecosystem of devices to con-
nect and communicate on the home network. We use Wi-Fi to stream digital video and audio around our homes, send documents to a printer, connect to digital cameras for photo transfers, play videogames with far-flung combatants, and speed Web browsing on smart phones. And without Wi-Fi, todays blockbuster computer, the netbook, would be virtually useless.
cess
everything from online stores like Amazon. com, social networking, VoiP phone calls, videoconferencing, and (admit it) porn. The transformative power of broadband extends beyond the home, however. The adoption of broadband coincided with the confluence of two momentous forces: the globalization of business and advancements in corporate IT networking. And that ushered in a new era of e-commerce, changing the way businesses operate. The speed at which these forces upended the global economy was breathless, and the overall impact has been profound. Never before has a single technology more dramatically changed the global economy and the way that we live. All at the speed of broadband.
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7.
TiVo
users soon were buzzing about its nowlegendary ease of use, its ability to suggest programming based on viewing preferences, and its intuitive programming interface. Word spread, and by January 2007 TiVo reported an impressive 4.4 million subscribers. Today TiVo is not quite the force it once was. Cable companies have sliced into the companys market share by integrating TiVo-like DVR capabilities into their set-top cable boxes. Nonetheless, the popularity of TiVo is unabated, at least in the generic sense. Today more than 38 million U.S. households have a DVR, most of which are provided by cable operators. So if youre one of the millions of TV fans who cant imagine a world without TV program time-shifting, thank TiVo.
In essence, TiVo televised the digital revolutionmuch to the horror of Hollywood. Not since the debut of videocassette recorders has a home-entertainment device caused such boot-shaking fear among broadcasting bigwigsor delight among the videoviewing classes. In 2003, FCC Chairman Michael Powell hailed the TiVo as Gods machine. Its easy to understand the enthusiasm. TiVo took control away from the broadcasters and gave it to the viewers. You didnt have to be at home on Thursday night to see Friends: You just set it to record all episodes, and watch them when you wanted. No time for commercials? Skip them! And if you miss the punchline while tuned into live TV, simply rewind. The first TiVo shipped in March 1999, and
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8.
GPS
available in a wide choice of vocal styles, from Snoop Dogg to a more staid EveryLady elevator voice. In recent years weve seen GPS navigation gaining traction in smart phones like the iPhone by using downloadable apps. Cellular carriers offer a turn-by-turn GPS navigational service for roughly $10 a month. GPS is not limited to driving instructions. We are now seeing more people use geotagging to add precise latitude and longitude information to photos, videos, and maps. We can now plot vacation photos on a map and even use the latitude and longitude data to locate and identify that outof-the-way French restaurant we hope to return to. Thats the beauty of GPS: It not only tells us where were going, but where weve been.
Chances are, you may have first encountered a GPS navigational system in a Hertz rental car. The company started installing its pioneering NeverLost system in rental cars in 1997. At the time, GPS guidance was quite costly. Worse, the global positioning satellites, which are owned by the U.S. government, were intentionally degraded for civilian use. In 2000, the government allowed civilian use of the military GPS signal, and pinpoint accuracy and turn-by-turn directions became a reality. Today, about 31 percent of adults in North America use a mobile navigation system, according to Forrester Research. The in-car devices deliver turn-by-turn driving instructions that are automatically recalculated when you miss a turn. Spoken directions are
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9.
Windows XP
consumer-oriented operating system produced by Microsoft to be built on the Windows NT kernel and architecture. But it also included Windows 98s aptitude for running games and legacy hardware. The DOS coding that had been visible in preceding Microsoft operating systems was gone, and the Blue Screen of Death was, for the most part, vanquished. Windows XP also added new networking capabilities (including support for wireless networking), features for mobile workers, an Internet firewall, and a Web cookie controller. We also liked the debut of Windows Media Player and automatic support for digital cameras. With Windows XP, Microsoft targeted some of the features that would define the coming decade. Rarely does Redmond presage the future so accurately.
We first reviewed Microsofts Windows XP in September 2001. We praised its fusion of Windows 98s software and hardware support with the security of Windows NT. In fact, we proclaimed it Microsofts latestand dare we say greatestoperating system to date. What a prescient declaration that was. Nine years later, Windows XP is, by a long shot, still the most popular operating system in the world. XP commands roughly 62 percent of market share, while newcomer Windows 7 claims about 7 percent market share. Old XP is the operating system typically loaded on netbooks, the newest computer category. And in what has to be an industry first, Microsoft offered a downgrade to XP for certain buyers of its disastrous Vista OS. What made XP so great? It was the first
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10.
Apple iMac
display was mounted on an adjustable arm above an ovoid base that housed the motherboard, processor, optical drive, hard drive, and other interior components. In future iterations, Apple would add much-copied innovations like a built-in Webcam, a slotloading DVD drive, integrated Wi-Fi, and wireless keyboards and mice. Each new model has been a wonder of better, cleaner design. Typically, the front panel lacks speakers, control buttons, or ports. Instead, all the ports are lined up vertically on the back panel. Other PC makers have tried to replicate the iMac, but none has come close. The iMac still represents the perfect fusion of style and performance, at an affordable price.
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When Steve Jobs took the stage to introduce the first iMac on May 6, 1998, he promised it would combine the excitement of the Internet with the simplicity of the Macintosh. He might have just called it an insanely great all-in-one computer. The marriage of monitor and CPU box has been attempted time and time again, but it has never been carried off with the panache of the iMac. In the last decade, Apple has unveiled a string of all-in-one iMacs with LCD screens that have been eminently functional, elegantly designed, and increasingly affordable. The earliest iMac with an LCD screen, the G4, followed a bold new design: Its 15-inch
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Steve Jobs
Co-founder and CEO, Apple
He loomed over the first decade of the 21st century like no other man. At 54, Steve Jobs and his accomplishments are legendary. The Apple co-founder is known for an exacting attention to detail and a keen knack for predicting a trendnot to mention a fixation on elegant design. He is widely considered the archetypal tech visionary of our time. Skeptical? Consider these breakthroughs of the past 10 years: the Apple retail store (2001), the iPod (2003), the Apple iTunes Store (2003), the iPhone (2007), and the Apple App Store (2008). Apple churned out a line of stunning laptops (the MacBook Air) and desktops (iMacs) throughout the decade, but Jobs was intensely focused on expanding the companys reach. Accordingly, Jobs reached into the consumer electronics market to grab market share for new types of devices. In doing so, he used his formidable business acumen and persuasive negotiating skills to transform the way that the music, video, and cellular phone industries do business. Jobs fully understood computers had moved beyond Excel spreadsheets. Home users were creating audio playlists and burning CDs, editing photos, and watching video. His achievement is that he was able to bridge the home computer with a line of consumer electronics that entertain, connect, and engage.
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Sergey Brin and Larry Page have led Google through an expansion in scope and influence so profound, it would seem preposterous were it not well documented. In 1998, the duo began working on an Internet search engine based on the notion that relevant results come from context. They registered the domain Google in 1997, and entered a period of fevered growth. By the year 2000, Google already had indexed 1 billion URLs, making it the worlds largest search engine. It retains that title today. Although it no longer reveals the size of its index, it is the worlds most visited site, fielding 1 billion search requests every day. Brin and Page put Google on the path to profitability with the 2003 launch of AdSense, a content-targeted advertising service. The ensuing influx of revenue has enabled Brin and Page to embark on a dizzying spree of acquisitions and product development. Today Google touches just about every aspect of our digital lives. We go to Google for news, free public-domain books, navigational mapping, sharing photos, productivity applications, and more. Google has developed its own Web browser, runs a platform for cloudbased data and application hosting, and is building its own operating system. Whats next for Brin and Page? Whatever it is, based on their extraordinary history, we bet theyll get it done.
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Mark Zuckerberg
Co-founder and CEO, Facebook
In 1984, Bill Gates landed his first cover of Time magazine, the Macintosh computer debuted, and Dell Computer was founded in an Austin dorm room. Oh, and Mark Zuckerberg was born in New York. Today, at 25, Zuckerberg is the billionaire sultan of sharing. His Facebook social-networking site is the place where 350 millionand countingfriends log in to swap personal information, photos, videos, and games. To say that Zuckerberg is an early achiever is an understatement. He mastered computer programming at an early age, hatched the prototype for Facebook in his Harvard dorm room, and is now the CEO of a private company with an estimated market value of $6.5 billion to $9.5 billion. As CEO, he sets the overall direction and product strategy for Facebook. One of the most notable actions of the past decade was opening the Facebook API to third-party developers. That decision unleashed a torrent of applications that encouraged members to spend more time at the site taking quizzes and playing games, and to stay connected using mobile devices. Facebooks on-site messaging and chat became two more powerful incentives to stay logged on. Zuckerberg says he is focused only on building membership and wants to make Facebook the place where the entire world connects. Hes well on his way to that, but how will Facebook profit from its astounding user base? Zuckerberg isnt telling. He has, however, gathered a clutch of seasoned executives to help him guide the company into the new decade and, when the time is right, create a business plan.
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Bill Gates
Co-founder and Chairman, Microsoft
Bill Gates has been a titan of technology since the early days of the personal computer. Yet, even in retirement from Microsoft, he continues to wield tremendous influence on technology. Gates, who remains a non-executive chairman of Microsoft, left the company in June 2008 to run the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the worlds largest philanthropy. Although his imprint on day-to-day decisions gradually waned over the past decade, his final years at Microsoft yielded some notable achievements. Under his leadership, Microsoft focused on next-generation technology like cloud computing, which can help corporations efficiently manage data and applications by moving them to outsourced service providers. In 2007 Microsoft unveiled the Surface platform, a product Gates says will advance the natural user interface. And under his stewardship, the Windows Live and Microsoft Office Live platforms were developed in 2005, perhaps a bit late. For much of the past decade, however, Gates has focused on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, whose goal is to eradicate preventable diseases that imperil people in developing countries. The foundation harnesses the power of science and technology to research and halt diseases. Gates says he is optimistic that his foundation will help find the cure for some of the most common fatal diseases. Gates will forever be known as the Man Who Built Microsoft. But in the coming decades he aims to use the financial influence acquired as the founder of Microsoft to help save lives and end fatal diseases.
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Craig Newmark
Founder, Craigslist.org
You probably wouldnt recognize Craig Newmark if you passed him on the street. But you know his eponymous list and what you can get there: Anything you want. Newmark, founder and chairman of Craigslist.org, is a self-professed nerd. Like his site, he is unassuming and simple, an everyman who just happens to run the eleventh most popular venture on the Web. Hes also the man who almost singlehandedly changed the landscape for traditional classified advertising. Craigslist is a centralized network of online communities that offer mostly free ads for products, services, and jobs. It is a behemoth that spans the globe, serving roughly 700 cities in 70 countries. Despite the scope and revenue potential of Craigslist, Newmark has refused to sell out. (The company did sell a 25 percent stake to eBay in 2004, but that transaction is now in litigation.) Newmark often says the real mission of Craigslist is to help people help one another, not to make a fast buck. To that end, most ads are free. The site charges only for select ads (jobs in certain cities, some apartment ads, and adult services) that generate estimated revenues of $100 million a year. The organization is amazingly lean, with a staff of 30 or so employees headquartered in a house in San Francisco. It all sounds so nonchalant and laid-back. Yet Craigslist would not have attained its globe-spanning stature without clever strategy and marketing. Thats the mark of Newmark, an uncommonly humane man in a digital world.
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Solutions
BuILD IT
Want a gaming PC that you can use now and soup up later? We give you the ultimate midrange gaming system. By Dan Evans
the system evenly? Did I want to splurge on a fast processor or on multiple graphics? I ended up cutting a few corners to keep the cost down, but the components I chose produced a solid system that can easily be upgraded in the future. The bulk of my $1,700 budget went to the 2.93-GHz Intel Core i7-870 processor. I plan to push this system pretty hard, and with overclocking the 870 can reach 3.60 GHz. Also, because this is going to run Windows 7, the Hyper-Threading functionality that the Core i7 chip contains becomes especially important. Windows XP and Vista had problems scheduling multiple threads and sometimes multiple threads would be routed to the same core, causing performance prob-
78 TiPS Find new ways to sort e-mail contacts, learn new iPhone tricks, and much more
COMPONENTs Processor 2.93-GHz Intel Core i7-870, $560 street Motherboard Gigabyte P55-uD6, $249.99 direct Graphics Card Asus EAH5850, $259.99 direct Memory Two 2GB CsX Diablo DDR3 RAM modules, $150 street Hard Drive 1.5TB seagate Barracuda 7200.11, $120 street Power supply Antec TruePower 650, $139.99 direct Optical Drive Lite-On iHAs422, $35 street Case Thermaltake Element G, $129.99 list Cooler Thermaltake spinQ CPu, $70 street
lems. These problems have been worked out in Windows 7, so this quad-core should perform like an octo-core. I paired this chip with a Gigabyte P55-UD6 motherboard because such a board is made for the kind of high-voltage work Im going to put this system through. There is a quick-
boot button on the motherboard itself for quickly rebooting as I try to find the perfect settings. It also has a 24-phase VRM (voltage regulator module) design that ensures a smoother power transfer and keeps the heat down. This system also has 12 SATA ports10 onboard and 2 externalso there
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sOLuTIONs BuILD-IT
Open the side of the case. Set the case on its side on a flat surface.
2
is a lot of room for internal expansion down the road. The center of any gaming PC is the GPU. I went with the brand new Asus EAH5850 card, AMDs new Radeon 5800 series of GPUs. This card supports Direct X 11 and is stocked with 1GB of DDR5 video memory. What I really like about this card is the Voltage Tweaking, which allows you to play around with voltage on your GPU just like you would on the CPU. You can adjust the GPU voltage from 1.088V to 1.4V and that should boost your GPU clock speed from 725 MHz to 1,050 MHz. It also jacks up your memory clock speed from 4,000 MHz to 5,200 MHz. I went with a familiar case that Id used
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before, the Thermaltake Element G because of its design and spacious interior, but I decided that if I am going to overclock this gaming rig, I need a heavy-duty cooler. The Thermaltake Spin Q CPU, a stylish aluminum barrel-shaped unit with blue running lights, will also work with several different socket types if I choose to upgrade my motherboard later. For memory, I went with a couple of 2GB RAM sticks from CSX. I would have liked to have used the companys triple channel RAM; unfortunately, there are no triple-channel DD3 boards with this chipset. The memory comes with cooling fins on top, which will help, because I am only aircooling this unit. Having laid all of this out, I should add
Its time to install the CPU. First, release the socket lever by moving it slightly sideways, then raise it to a 90degree angle. Line up the chip and bring the lever down to lock it back into place. Make sure that the CPU is held securely, but dont force the chip into place.
Place a dollop of thermal paste on top of the chip. The compound conducts heat well and increases cooling efficiency by filling in the small spaces between the CPU and the surface of the heat sink.
Install the cooler on top of the CPU and clip it onto the motherboard.
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sOLuTIONs BuILD-IT
Insert the RAM. The memory slots you use (youll see several) will depend on your memory configuration, so consult the manual before you install the sticks. The RAM modules are designed so that you cant put them in backwardif one isnt going in, dont force it.
that there are several ways you could build a PC similar to this one for less money. First, you can downgrade the processor from the i7-870 to the i7-860 and save a couple hundred dollars. You could also go with the Asus EAH5750 and save another hundred dollars, but you wouldnt get the voltage tweak and that is a 128-bit card. But its
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still a Direct X 11 card and will run all the latest games. Memory is another area where you could save an additional hundred dollars; instead of the CSX modules you could use lower-priced memory from Corsair or Kingston. Both companies sell 4GB kits for about $80. Finally, you can always find a cheap lower-capacity hard drive.
Remove the front panel of the case and take out the temporary faceplates.
10
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Slide your optical drive into the front of the case. Find the 20-pin power socket on the motherboard, and plug in the matching powersupply connector. Do the same with the power plug that mates with the fourpin socket near the CPU. Connect all of the leads from the external USB ports, indicator lights, the status display, and audio jacks to their appropriate motherboard partners. Do the same with the leads from the internal drives. Your hardware assembly work is done. Now load Windows 7 and get to worker, play.
solutions sECuRitY
pens at the low-privilege Standard level. Before a nasty virus (or a useful application) can do something potentially dangerous like writing to the Windows folder, it has to get permission. UAC pop-ups in Vista are especially shocking because of whats called secure desktop mode. The screen blanks out briefly, then everything except the UAC pop-up goes dim. Anything else you were doing is out of reach until you respond to the pop-up. This prevents sneaky programs from meddling with the UAC dialog, but it can be an unpleasant shock. Less frightening but equally annoying is
QuERY PRoMPt If either of the top two notification levels is active, changing to a different level will trigger a UAC query asking permission to make the change.
the I just told you! scenario. You launch a program and UAC immediately asks if you want to run this program. Doh! Of course you do! Users can really get steamed about this, even Administrator users who merely have to click Yes. Imagine the frustration of a Standard user who must type an Administrator password or (more likely) go track down a supervisor to enter the password. One time in a thousand this precaution might prevent a malicious program from launching, assuming (and its a big assumption) that the user was alert enough to choose No. The other 999 times its just a pain. In the Engineering Windows 7 blog, Microsofts engineers trot out the notion that requiring a UAC confirmation for every sensitive action is good, because it forces malware or poorly written software to show itself and get your approval before it can potentially harm the system. That same rationale gave us old-style (and now obsolete) personal firewalls that deluged us with incomprehensible pop-up queriesugh! In fact, Microsofts designers admit that UAC cant really keep out malware, because users dont know enough to correctly respond to its prompts. Most users just click Yes and allow the program to do what it was going to anyhow. Microsofts own figures show that users click Yes about 90 percent of the time. Thats usually the correct answer, but Joe User cant distinguish a scary UAC prompt about a perfectly valid program from a scary UAC prompt about a malware attack.
VistA Vs. Win 7 User Account Control prompts in Windows 7 (above) offer a slightly more detailed description than the corresponding prompts in Vista (top).
Big ideas In the Windows 9 blog, Microsoft Engineers congratulate themselves on the fact that UAC has made program developers leery of techniques that unnecessarily require Administrator privilege. (Thanks, guys, but couldnt you have found a way to whip developers into line without torturing users?) Eventually, though, they fess up to UACs problems. For example, their research shows that Windows itself accounts for about 40 percent of all UAC prompts. No, really! A Windows component tries to do something important and UAC stops it until you give the okay. They say we can expect fewer prompts from Windows components in Windows 7. Their goals for improvement with Windows 7 were to:
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solutions sECuRitY
notiFY ME AnD WAit In Windows 7 users can adjust the level of UAC popups. Notify is the wrong word; at the top level it will ask permission for every system change and halt other activity while awaiting a response, just like Vista.
Reduce unnecessary and redundant UAC queries Make customers confident that theyre in control Make UAC prompts more informative Offer better and more obvious control over UAC The beta showed some progress toward these goals and the Release Candidate even more. UAC in the final Windows 7 is significantly less irksome than that of Vista. Clearer Choices Where a Vista UAC prompt announces Windows needs your permission to continue, Windows 7 may ask, Do you want to allow the following program to make changes to this computer? or Youll need to provide administrator permission to rename this folder. Microsoft says focus
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groups showed these modified messages are easier to understand. Vista users had the option to shut down UAC; Windows 7 offers alternatives short of total shutdown. By tweaking a simple slider, users can select from four different notification levels. From the most to the least restrictive, they are: lEVEl 4. Always notify me when programs try to install software or make changes to my computer and when I make changes to Windows settings. lEVEl 3. Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer. Dont notify me when I make changes to Windows settings. lEVEl 2. Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer (do not dim my desktop). Dont notify me when I make changes to Windows settings. lEVEl 1. Never notify me when programs try to install software or make changes to my computer or when I make changes to Windows settings. Level 3 is the default. At this level, program-initiated system changes trigger UAC prompts, but configuration changes made by the user do not. Crank it up to level 4, and even user-initiated changes can trigger UAC, as in Vista. Level 2 is the same as level 3, except that it doesnt dim the desktop. That makes it less shocking, but without the benefit of the secure desktop theres a faint possibility that malware could finagle its way into the process and interfere with UAC. I used to think that level 1 meant UAC is off,
tuRninG uAC oFF Setting UAC to the lowest level actually turns it off. A reboot is required to make this change, and of course Windows suggests that you leave UAC turned on.
but the Help clarifies that it only turns off the pop-ups. For Administrator users, all programsgood and badcan make system changes without hindrance. For Standard users, any action that would have triggered a UAC pop-up will just fail silently. Ouch! A Microsoft user study revealed that users who got more than one UAC prompt during a Windows session were a lot more likely to report the prompts as irritating. (I could have told them that.) They also found no measurable difference in malware defense between levels 3 and 4. Thats why they chose the less-strict level 3 as the default, and thats why you should leave it set to the default. Resisting Key stuffing Earlier this year, security experts reported that the UAC settings dialog in Windows 7 beta was vulnerable to attack. If the UAC level was set to anything but the maximum, a user-mode program could turn it entirely off by key stuffingsending simulated
keystrokes to the UAC control dialog. Security Watch blogger Larry Seltzer points out that this attack only works if youre running in Administrator mode. UAC is supposed to encourage everyone to run as a Standard user. Seltzer goes on to note that the same sort of attack could do a lot more damage if applied to other Control Panel applets. Microsoft didnt ignore the problem, but fixed it by forcing the UAC dialog to run as a high-integrity process which, they say, prevents all the mechanics around SendKeys and the like from working. It seems to be true; the UAC settings dialog completely ignored a small program I wrote to send fake keystrokes and mouse clicks. Id still be happier if any attempt to lower the protection level would always trigger a UAC pop-up with the desktop dimmedthat would be hard to break. My uAC Wish list UAC in Windows 7 is improved, but still somewhat annoying. I dont think it should ever ask whether to allow elevated privileges for a known, valid program, and certainly never for a Windows component. Many security vendors use whitelist databases identifying millions of known good programs; surely Microsoft has the resources to do the same. If its not a known program, UAC could examine all of its behaviors, not just the fact that it needs elevated privilege, and make a considered decision to allow or block it. Dont foist that responsibility off on the user! Now that would be a classy version of UAC. n
JANUARY 2010 PC MAGAZinE DiGitAl EDition 77
SOLuTIONS
Tips
Useful tidbits from PCMag editorial staff, Labs analysts, and readers
WINDOWS MAIL
Sort Contacts By Last Name Reader Bill Pratt was perplexed when he imported his e-mail contact list from XP to Vista. Windows Mail insisted on listing his contacts in alphabetical order by the first letter of first names rather than last names, as it was with XP. Frustrating, for sure. In theory you should be able to do LAST NAME fIrST You can sort your Windows Mail it this way: Right-click one of the col- contacts by last name instead of first name by doubleumn headers to see a list of available clicking each and then clicking OK. columns. Choose Last name from the list, thereby adding a last name column. give you the option to sort by last name. Sort on that column. But when I tried that in Neil J. Rubenking my own setup, similar to Bills, I got nothing in the last-name column for most entries. APPLE IPHONE And pursuing Microsoft advice on the topic Scan Documents with your iPhone invariably seemed to end with Use Win- The iPhone is no Canon Mark III, but its pretty sweet for taking pictures of your dows Live Mail instead. I finally figured out what happened: Con- friends or some cool scenery. Trouble is, its tacts that Ive added in Windows Mail show lack of a focus control makes it impossible to a last name in that column. Contacts that get clear close-up shots. Which is a shame have been imported but not changed since considering there are services like Evernote do not. By going down the list double-click- and scanR that let you use the camera on ing each contact and immediately click- your mobile phone as a scanner, even coning OK I can get the last names to appear. verting images into text or sending images Carrying out this one-time tedious task will as faxes.
78 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION JANUARY 2010
What to do? Just put a magnifying glass or one of those credit-card-size magnifying sheets in front of the lens when taking closeup pictures. The improvement in the quality and clarity of your image will be stunning. Logan Kugler Keep a Photoblog on your iPhone The iPhone has everything you need to keep a visual diary online. Many blogging platforms, such as Blogger, allow you to e-mail photos directly to the site. In fact, you can create a moblog on the fly by e-mailing go@blogger.com from your phone (theyll e-mail you back with log-in details so you can edit your blog later on, when youre at a computer). Posterous is another service that will let you set up a blog directly from your phonee-mail post@posterous.com to set up a new blog or to add an existing one. If you already have a blog and it doesnt accept posts by e-mail directly, you can email images to your Flickr account and use the Share This link to post to most blogging platforms. Just set up a post-by-e-mail address at flickr.com/account/uploadbyemail and add the address to your iPhones address book.LK
AuDIO
record Voiceovers with your Microphone Reader James Murphy writes that he cant get his microphone to record any voiceover sounds. He uses Windows Vista Home Premium, has plenty of memory, and uses
both Pinnacle Studio Version 12 and the Windows Movie Maker program. He uses mics that have come with older computers (little white plastic ones). He has plugged them into both the front and rear jacks, and all drivers are indicated as current. Getting a microphone to work properly is one of the more annoying chores with any Windows PC. While many PCs now have jack recognitionthat is, when you plug a device into the audio jack, the PC can figure out what was plugged inthats still not a common feature. What often happens is that the sound hardware defaults to line-level input, which may not be good enough to work with the low-cost microphones youre using. On top of that, some systems offer separate line-level input and microphone portsbut default to a single input port. So you need to bring up your sound hardwares control panel and switch to microphone input. If you still dont get sound, check to see if the microphone boost, which adds a 20-dB boost to the incoming microphone signal, is enabled. Standalone USB microphones arent always a solution, as they have their own problems, particularly if they need to work alongside an analog sound card. What might work better is a USB headset (microphone plus headphones). Use that to record the voiceover, then unplug and work with your built-in sound hardware once the voice files have been recorded.Loyd Case
JANUARY 2010 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 79
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