SMARTER HDTVSHOPPING SecretsFrom the Pros

www.pcmag.com April 11, 2006

UTILITY SUPERGUIDE

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© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, the Windows logo, Windows Server System, and “Your potential. Our passion.” are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

HP recommends Windows® XP Professional.

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All offers available from HP Direct and participating resellers. Prices shown are HP Direct prices, are subject to change and do not include applicable state and local sales tax or shipping to recipient’s destination. Reseller prices may vary. Photography may not accuratelyrepresent exact configurations priced. Associated values represent HP published list price. 1. Lease products are available through Hewlett-Packard Financial Services Company (HPFSC) or one of its affiliates to qualified commercial customers in the U.S. and are subject tocredit approval and execution of standard HPFSC documentation. Offer valid on all transactions greater than $349 through 4/30/06. Other fees and restrictions may apply; please visit www.hp.com/go/HPfinancialservices. HPFSC reserves the right to change or cancel thisprogram at any time without notice. 2. Instant savings and mail-in-rebate offers are valid through 4/30/06 on qualifying HP Compaq nc6140 and nx6110 notebooks, HP Compaq dc7600 Desktops, HP ProLiant ml110 G3 Servers, HP Compaq tc4200 Tablet PCs, HP ColorLaserJet 2600n Printers and HP xw4300 Workstations from HP Direct and participating HP resellers. 3. Timing based on Powersave start. 4. Intel’s numbering is not a measurement of higher performance. 6. Wireless access point is required and is not included. WirelessInternet use requires separately purchased Internet service contract. Availability of public wireless access points limited. 7. For hard drives, GB=Billion bytes. Actual available capacity is less. 9. 24X DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive data transfer rates may vary as follows: for recordingto CD-R media, for writing to CD-RW media, for reading CD media, max transfer rate may be up to 3600 Kbps; for reading DVD media, may be up to 10,800 Kbps. Actual transfer rates may vary depending on media quality. 10. 24X Max CD-ROM Drive data transfer rates upto 3600 Kbps. 11. 48X, 32X CD-RW Drive data transfer rates may vary as follows: for recording to CD-R media, the max transfer rate may be up to 7200 Kbps (use 48X discs for best performance); for writing to CD-RW media, the max transfer rate may be up to 4800 Kbps(use 32X high-speed media discs for best performance); for reading CD media, the max transfer rate may be up to 7200 Kbps. Actual transfer rates may vary depending on media quality. 12. One-year limited warranty for parts, labor and next-business-day support. 13. Three-year limited warranty for parts, labor and next-business-day support. 14. Four-year limited warranty for parts, labor and next-business-day support. 15. Service levels and response times for HP Care Packs may vary depending on your geographic location. Restrictions andlimitations apply. For details, visit www.hp.com/go/carepack. 16. Wireless use requires separately purchased service contract. BroadbandAccess is available to more than 140 million people in 171 major metropolitan areas and 68 primary airports. Access limited to coveragearea of Verizon Wireless. Check with Verizon Wireless for availability and coverage in your area. Verizon Wireless BroadbandAccess offers download speeds of 400 to 700 Kbps. National Access provides download speeds of 60 to 80 Kbps. BroadbandAccess speeds are basedon Verizon Wireless network tests with 5MB FTP data files without compression; National Access speeds are based on Verizon Wireless network tests with 101KB FTP data files. 17. The hyperthreading feature is a new technology designed to improve performance of multi-threaded software products; please contact your software provider to determine software compatibility. Not all customers or software applications will benefit from the use of hyperthreading. Go to http://www.intel.com/info/hyperthreading for more information, including whichprocessors support HT Technology. Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Celeron, Celeron Inside, Centrino, Core Inside, Intel, Intel Core, Intel Inside, Intel SpeedStep, Intel Viiv, Intel Xeon, Itanium,Itanium Inside, Pentium, Pentium Inside, the Centrino Logo, the Intel Logo and the Intel Inside Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. ©2006 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.

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• L1506 15" TFT Flat Panel Display, add $219

A WIDER SCREEN RATIO ALLOWS YOU TO SEE THE WHOLE PICTURE.

STANDARD RATIO

www.LGusa.com

©2006 LG Electronics, Inc. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. LG Design, Life’s Good, and FLATRON are trademarks of LG Electronics, Inc. Specifications and model numbers are subject to change without notice.

16:10 wide screen ratio • 1400:1 contrast ratio • 1680x1050 high resolution

The L203WTis available at:

INTRODUCING THE 20.1” WIDE SCREEN LCD MONITOR FROM LG. It features a 16:10 ratio perfect for working with multiple applications simultaneously or watchingmovies. Add to that the combined power of a 1400:1 contrast ratio and our unique f-ENGINE – the world’s first picture-enhancing chip – and you’ll see colors that are more brilliant and images more crisp and vibrant. We also back all our monitors with the best warranty program in the industry. That’s what we call the full picture.

Vivid As…Brilliant As…Innovative as LG.

www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 7

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96 C O V E R S T O R Y

A PR IL 1 1 , 2006 • VOL . 25 NO. 6

CONTENTS www.pcmag.com

First Looks 26 Low-Cost LCD TVs • Proview RX-326

• Vizio L32

• Westinghouse LTV-32w1

28 Cell Phones • T-Mobile SDA

• T-Mobile MDA

• Motorola SLVR L7 K

• Cingular 2125

41 Digital Cameras • Fuji FinePix E900

• Pentax *ist DS2

• Canon PowerShot SD450

44 MP3 Players • Creative Zen MicroPhoto

46 Speakers • Saitek A-250 K

• i.Sound Max

48 Storage • Iomega XL Desktop

Hard Drive

• Maxtor OneTouch III

Turbo (1 TB)

50 Desktops • Velocity Micro Vision GX K

52 Printers • Kodak EasyShare

Photo Printer 500

• Konica Minolta

PagePro 1400W

54 Scanners • Visioneer Strobe XP300

• HP Scanjet 4890 Photo Scanner

56 Laptops • Toshiba Satellite A105-S361

58 Photo-Sharing Tools • AOL Pictures

• BubbleShare (beta)

• FilmLoop (beta)

• Phanfare

• SnapJot (beta)

Small Business 60 Displays • HP LP2065 K

• NEC MultiSync 90GX2

• Lenovo ThinkVision L201p

61 John Dickinson on Small Business

62 Software • QuickBooks Online Edition

• Laplink PCdefense

65 VoIP • IP Telephony DVX-1000 K

69 What to Buy • The best products in one place.

�

ON THE COVER

When Windows falls short, photos blur, networks leak, audio crackles, and generally, nothing seems to be working just right, what you need is a good utility—or, rather, 87 of them. Here are some of the favorites of our PC Magazine experts.

14th Annual Utility Superguide

SPEED!POWER!LOOKS!FUN!

Utility Superguide page 96

Smarter HDTVShopping page 26

RAZR Remix page 32

Easy Project page 120

http://www.acura.com

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com10

Opinions 13 Jim Louderback 17 Michael J. Miller: Forward Thinking 89 John C. Dvorak 91 John C. Dvorak’s Inside Track 93 Bill Machrone

Solutions 134 The Connected Traveler:

Silicon Alley; hacker conven-tions; free Wi-Fi in many parks, hotels, and coffee shops.

135 Ask Loyd: Choosing a digital projector; graphics card com-patibility; are more megapixels necessarily better?

136 Ask Neil: Control displayed text size with a mouse; clear unread messages in Windows XP; color-code Outlook messages.

137 Security Watch: Is your laptop connecting to unsavory Wi-Fi networks on the sly?

138 SMB Boot Camp: Microsoft Ex-change isn’t the only option for workplace collaboration.

141 Vista Revealed: Will Windows regain our trust?

142 Software Solutions: Multipage scanning and markup made easy.

Gaming + Culture 156 Digital game delivery: It’s

not just for pirates. 159 Gearlog: Attention Harley

fans! Meet the motorcycle PC.

Also in This Issue 71 Feedback 160 Backspace

Pipeline 21 Download hi-def movies, fast.

Put online dates to the test. Pleo, the infant dinosaur robot.

The surge in Net searches.

Future Watch 22 Making nanoscale movies; Is

that a projector in your iPod?

Online www.pcmag.com

Extend Your NetworksLooking to grow your home or

small-offi ce network? Our latest

book excerpt shows you exactly

how to extend your network to new

machines and more rooms.

(go.pcmag.com/

extendyournetwork)

BOOK EXCERPT

Product comparisons to help you decide! Coming soon:• LCD TVs under $1,000

• The best multimedia desktops

• Low-cost photo printers

• iTunes and Google vie for video

(go.pcmag.com/roundups)

REVIEW ROUNDUPS

Discussions: Log on and participate!

(discuss.pcmag.com)

Downloads: Check out our indexed

list of utilities from A to Z.

(www.pcmag.com/utilities)

TOOLS YOU CAN USE

DVORAK ONLINEK Each Monday, John C. Dvorak gives you his take on what’s happening in

high tech today. Visitgo.pcmag.com/dvorak.

EXCLUSIVE COLUMNS

ULANOFF ONLINEK And each Wednesday, Lance Ulanoff puts his own unique spin on technology. Visitgo.pcmag.com/ulanoff.

Coming up:• The 10,000-rpm scenic drive• Putting WASD into top gear• SLI vs. CrossFire: Three mother-

boards for the Athlon 64

(www.extremetech.com)

R E A L-WO R L D T E S T I N G

130 $900 LCDsBraving everyday consumer has-sles, we left our sanitized lab world and vendor-supplied test models in a search for retail fl at-screen LCD bargains. Here’s what we thought of the TVs—and the stores.

B U I L D I T

120 A DIY BACKUP SERVERDon’t throw out your old tower PC! Use it as the core of a data server to back up your new machine or net-work. We let you know what hardware and software you’ll need—and how to put it all together.

Cars 64 Mercedes Benz S550 Pioneer AVIC-N2 OnStar Turn-By-Turn Navigation 65 Bill Howard

�

www.pcmag.com

J I M L O U D E R B A C K

T H E R E ’ S NOT H I NG L I K E T H E satisfaction of building something your-self. That’s why we include a DIY project in every issue of PC Magazine.

So why does it seem like everyone from Microsoft to Cable Labs wants to snuff out the build-it revolution? A range of new ca-pabilities are coming to PCs, but there’s no place at the table for you and me.

Let’s start with Microsoft. Windows XP Media Center Edition’s been out for years, but you still can’t (offi cially, at least) build it into your own PC. I’ve tried and tried to get a boxed copy, but Microsoft refuses to comply, saying it’s only for OEMs, because of the variable “quality of experience.” That’s a red herring. Any competent PC builder will deliver a better experience than the econo-boxes from Dell or HP will, especially using new HD tuners from ADS and others. Nero’s upcoming Media Center competitor has me salivating, but there’s no reason for Microsoft’s reticence.

Next up: CableCard. The big buzz at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show was how Windows Vista will support the cable industry’s standard DRM device—the CableCard. This PCMCIA-style smart card validates your cable TV subscrip-tion and authorizes your hardware to decode and display digital TV, both SD and HD. It’s a leap forward, because the PC can replace those brain-dead digital set-top boxes to pro-vide DVR functionality (such as recording HBO and ESPN HD)—but it’ll work only on “certifi ed” PCs, authorized by the cable industry’s tech cops at CableLabs. You’ll be able to buy a CableCard-equipped Dell, but not build your own. And what happens if you decide to upgrade that Dell? Will that “decerti-fy” your PC? I smell a big mess, and again the DIY guy loses.

Next problem: HDCP. Even if you could build your own CableCard-enabled PC, you’d still need a brand new monitor and graphics card. Even if you only want to watch Blu-ray or HD-DVD movies, your current hardware is inadequate. Al-most every monitor and graphics card sold today doesn’t fully support the HDCP DRM used to protect those video streams.

I could go on, but you get the point. The industry (and I must admit, PC Magazine) keeps hyping this wonderful high-defi nition media world. But the draconian constraints on actually recording and viewing all this content—let alone streaming it around your house—spell doom. Forget mash-ups, case mods, and custom systems. Go vanilla or go home.

New technology success starts with you, PC Magazine’s readers. You adopt it early, work out the bugs, and lord it over your friends—who end up buying it for themselves. But not this time—and that spells failure for CableCard on PCs, high-defi nition DVDs, and even the PC as a home media hub. Ca-bleCard is a sham. HDCP will kill HD content. Instead, we’ll be forced to watch Gilligan’s Island reruns on our iPods.

MORE ON THE WEB: You can contact Jim Louderback at Jim_Louderback@ziffdavis.com. For more of his columns, go to go.pcmag.com/louderback.

The DIY Deathwatch: Long Live DIY

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Jim Louderback

EDITOR, REVIEWS Lance Ulanoff

EDITOR, TECHNOLOGY Ben Z. Gottesman

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER (ONLINE) Robyn Peterson

EXECUTIVE EDITORS Stephanie Chang, Carol L. Gonsher,

Vicki B. Jacobson (Online), Jeremy A. Kaplan

ART DIRECTOR Richard J. Demler

MANAGING EDITOR Paul B. Ross

REVIEWS

SENIOR EDITORS Dan Costa (Consumer Electronics), Jennifer DeFeo (Hardware),

Carol Mangis (Cars), Sebastian Rupley (West Coast, Pipeline), Sharon Terdeman

(Software/Web/Security)

LEAD ANALYSTS Cisco Cheng, Robert Heron, Davis D. Janowski, Oliver Kaven, Mike Kobrin,

Neil J. Rubenking, Joel Santo Domingo, Sascha Segan, M. David Stone, Terry Sullivan

REVIEWS EDITORS Kyle Monson (Software/Web/Security), Laarni Almendrala Ragaza

(Consumer Electronics), Eric Rhey (Hardware)

WEB PRODUCERS Rachel B. Florman, Molly K. McLaughlin, Jen Trolio

PRODUCT DATABASE MANAGER Gina Suk COMMERCE PRODUCER Arielle Rochette

PRODUCT REVIEW COORDINATOR Philip-James Jacobowitz

INVENTORY CONTROL COORDINATOR Nicole Graham

FEATURES

FEATURES EDITORS Sean Carroll, Dan Evans, Sarah Pike

SENIOR WRITER Cade Metz STAFF EDITOR Tony Hoffman

ART

SENIOR ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Michael St. George ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Liana Zamora

ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR Aaron Able GRAPHICS DIRECTOR David Foster

STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Scott Schedivy

PRODUCTION

ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR Michal Dluginski PRODUCTION MANAGER Jennifer Murray

COPY CHIEF Elizabeth A. Parry COPY EDITORS Gary Berline, Ann Ovodow, Steven Wishnia

ONLINE

SENIOR PRODUCER Yun-San Tsai PRODUCER Mark Lamorgese

ASSISTANT PRODUCER Whitney A. Reynolds PRODUCTION ARTIST Erin Simon

NEWS EDITOR Mark Hachman NEWS REPORTER Bary Alyssa Johnson

ASSISTANT EDITOR Jennifer L. DeLeo

UTILITY PROGRAM MANAGER Tim Smith COMMUNITY MANAGER Jim Lynch

EDITORIAL COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER Anita Anthony

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Helen Bradley, John Clyman, Richard V. Dragan, Craig Ellison,

John R. Delaney, John C. Dvorak, Galen Fott, Bill Howard, Don Labriola, Bill Machrone,

Ed Mendelson, Jan Ozer, Larry Seltzer, Don Willmott

INTERNS Veronica DeLeon, Nathan Edwards

CORPORATE PRODUCTION

ASSISTANT PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Ivis Fundichely

PRODUCTION MANAGER Michelle Chizmadia TRAFFIC MANAGER Amanda Allensworth

CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER Michael J. Miller

THE INDEPENDENT GUIDEPC 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 fi rms whose products or services we review, nor do

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PC Magazine reviews are of products and services that are currently available. Our reviews

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www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 13

14 PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com

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�

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www.pcmagconnect.com

COMING TO YOU LIVE AND ON-DEMAND – IT’S DIGITALLIFETV.COM!Twice a week, host and tech journalistPatrick Norton and co-host RobertHeron dish up product reviews andhow-tos on the coolest digital tech-nology, video games and equip-ment and new Website launches fortech fans. Go to DL.TV today!

Visit PC Magazine Connect for tips,tools, and special offers from PCMagazine and our select partners.It’s your resource for sweepstakes,downloads, announcements andupdates to keep you connected!

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* x=150 KB/sec. 4 GB = 45x. 2-GB card may require updated device drivers. Consult the device documentation for requirements.Please note: Some of the listed capacity is used for formatting and other functions and thus is not available for data storage. For more information, please consult Kingston’s Digital Media Guideat kingston.com/Digital_Media_Guide. ©2006 Kingston Technology Company, Inc. 17600 Newhope Street, Fountain Valley, CA 92708 USA. All rights reserved. All trademarks and registeredtrademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 17

K

We take for granted the concept of Internet neu-trality, the idea that your broadband connection will wing you to any Web site at a pace limited only by the speed of the network. I can only imag-ine the tangled mess the Web would be if every site had to cut a deal with all the different broad-band providers. Yet the current system in which you get whatever information you want as fast as your connection can deliver it is under attack on several fronts.

In our current system, end-us-ers pay for Internet service, and Web sites pay for Web hosting and incoming connections (but not for delivering data). This system has worked so far, but in recent months, executives of several large telco ISPs have suggested that companies del iver-ing information over the telco infrastructure—say Google—should pay for that privilege. And if the information being delivered is bandwidth-con-suming video clips and phone calls, they should pay even more.

What’s behind this strategy? The phone compa-nies are worried that Voice over IP services such as Skype and Vonage threaten their businesses. And in the long run, video over IP could threaten cable TV providers as well.

In most cases, I agree with the free-market argument, which says companies should make

deals that are in their best interest and then let consumers choose the services they want. In-ternet access is different, though, because your choice of broadband providers is often very lim-ited. In most markets, broadband service is either a monopoly or a duopoly. Your options are your phone or cable company, which use lines and

rights-of-way granted to them as monopolies. These companies have argued strongly that they shouldn’t be required to make their infrastructures available

to competing providers. I argue just as strongly

that Internet lines should remain open to all data, and that data should be allowed

to travel as fast as the con-nection speed permits. The

alternative that some of the telcos are suggesting is unten-able. In their scenario, I would

get to some Web sites quickly and to others slowly—depending on which ones my ISP has brokered a deal with.

The good news is that so far, the Net has for the most part remained open and neutral. But concerns about ISPs changing the playing field prompted Congress to hold hearings on the topic in February. It also spurred some senators to talk about introducing legislation to preserve the Net’s neutrality. The big ISPs will fi ght any such legisla-tion. If you care about an open Internet, let your Congresspeople know.

One area where we agree that all content is not cre-ated equal is e-mail. Nearly all ISPs use software to stop spam or at least attempt to minimize it. But this too is changing. The idea of companies paying for the privilege of sending e-mail as a way to ex-pedite bulk mail and distinguish it from spam has gotten attention recently. AOL and Yahoo!, two of the world’s biggest e-mail account providers, are telling their biggest mailers that for 0.25 cents per

piece, they’ll deliver the mail faster than usual. Both are implementing a system from Goodmail that enables fast delivery for a fee.

AOL and Yahoo! claim they are doing this for mostly altruistic reasons, to separate legitimate mail from junk and thus cut down on spam. We already have solutions designed to identify legiti-mate senders, such as Return Path’s Bonded Sender Program, but they haven’t been widely deployed.

The telcos’

alternative is

untenable. I would

get to some Web

sites quickly and

to others slowly.

Why We Need a Neutral Net

Paying for Faster E-Mail Delivery

ILLU

ST

RA

TIO

N B

Y R

OB

ER

T N

EU

BE

CK

ER

Forward Thinking

M I C H A E L J . M I L L E R

18 PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com

MORE ON THE WEB: Join us online and make your voice heard. Talk back to Michael J. Miller in our opinions section, go.pcmag.com/miller.

Starting next issue, my column will be a single page, and I’ll be covering tech news and analysis on my blog (blog.pcmag.com/miller). So while I have the chance, I want to mention some under-appreciated products.

Adobe Photoshop is a truly wonderful product, but if you’re an artist or just want to touch up your digital pictures, you should also check out Corel Painter Essentials 3. It’s a lot of fun, and it lets you

do some amazing things with your digital photos. Pair it with a Wacom Graphire Tablet for best re-sults and to get a great deal on the software.

I’m a fan of subscription music services, and use Rhapsody and Yahoo! Music a lot. (I try out new music every Tuesday.) And to get the most out of an iPod or any music player, you need great ear-phones. I like the in-ear models from Etymotic Re-search and Shure best, since they’re easy to take along when I travel.

I’m not a huge user of photo-sharing services (though Flickr and the upcoming version of Ya-hoo! Photos look great), but photo mugs, books, and bags make for unique and very popular pres-ents. Each service has slightly different offerings, so check around. I’ve been happy with Smugmug, Shutterfl y, and Snapfi sh.

If you make a lot of presentations, check out Serious Magic’s Ovation, a tool that makes Power-Point slides look much more professional. I use it with Interlink’s RemotePoint presenters.

X1 is still my favorite tool for searching through all my e-mail messages and fi les. And ActiveWords is a great way of using shortcuts, even on a tablet computer. If you were a DOS power user, you’ll probably love it.

If you’re really interested in a behind-the-scenes look at the making of computer chips, read Robert Colwell’s The Pentium Chronicles (IEEE). And Robert Scoble and Shel Israel’s Naked Conversa-tions (Wiley) does a great job of explaining how blogs can make a business more transparent and improve relationships with customers. It’s not as revolutionary as the indispensable Cluetrain Man-ifesto, but it offers some great tips. I’m just a begin-ner, but I enjoyed it a great deal.

See you online, and back here next issue.

Recommended Software and Other Odds and Ends

A paid e-mail system has many benefi ts. It would force companies to be more careful with their bulk-mail lists, which might decrease the amount of mail we get. And it very likely would reduce phishing—mail that claims to come from a legit company but really comes from someone trying to steal your account information or passwords.

The mail companies like the concept of paid mail because they could earn lots of money from e-mail senders if this practice were widely adopted. E-mail marketing was an $885 million business in 2005, according to Jupiter Research.

On the other hand, a paid mail system would

also affect the regular mail. If paid mailings are re-ally faster than unpaid mail, would these services slow delivery of unpaid messages? That would risk alienating people accustomed to mail arriving nearly instantaneously. But will bulk-mail market-ers pay to send mail if it isn’t delivered any faster? For now, all the mail companies say that regular mail will go through at its usual speed and that all mail is still subject to spam fi lters.

I’ll accept some spam in order to keep a truly open system. And I suspect that most Internet us-ers feel the same way. We simply don’t want to lose the free e-mail system.

Forward ThinkingM I C H A E L J . M I L L E R

COREL PAINTER ESSENTIALS 3

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$1606ALL THESE FEATURES AND MORE - STARTING AT

©2006 MPC Computers, LLC (“MPC” or “Seller”). MPC is not responsible for omissions or errors in typography or photography. All offers are subject to availability. Prices and specifications may change without notice; prices do not include shipping,handling or applicable taxes, unless specifically required under contract. Seller's return policy does not include return freight and original shipping/handling charges, and a restocking fee may be charged. All return and warranty periods begin fromdate product is shipped. All sales are controlled by Seller's current terms and conditions of sale and limited warranty, copies of which are available on Seller's website or from its sales representatives. On-site service is provided at sole discretion ofMPC. A qualifying diagnostic determination must be made by MPC prior to on-site service (if any). On-site service is provided by a third-party service provider under a separate contract between you and the service provider. Advertised configura-tions may differ from award-winning configurations. Intel, Intel Inside, Intel Inside logo, Intel Centrino, Intel Centrino logo, Celeron, Intel Xeon, Intel Speedstep, Itanium, Pentium and Pentium III Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of IntelCorporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Other product names herein are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of theirrespective companies. 1. All hard drive sizes calculated with 1GB equal to 1 billion bytes. 2. MPC 56K modems capable of receiving downloads at up to 56Kbps and sending at up to 31.2Kbps. Due to FCC regulations on power output, receivingspeeds are limited to 53Kbps. Actual speeds may vary. 3. 52X = 52X max./17X min. 48X=48X max./17X min. 24X = 24X max./10X min. 8X DVD = 8X max./1X min.

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Coverage not available in all areas. Limited-time offer. Other conditions and restrictions apply. See contract and rate plan brochure for details. Up to $36 activation fee applies. Equipment price and availability may vary by market.Early Termination Fee: None if cancelled in first 30 days; thereafter $175. Some agents impose additional fees. Sales tax calculated based on price of unactivated equipment. Rebate: Price before $50 mail-in rebate is $349.99. Allow10–12 weeks for rebate card. Rebate card not available at all locations. Must be customer for 30 consecutive days. Must be postmarked by 4/27/06. Additional hardware or software may be required. The BlackBerry and RIM familiesof related marks, images, and symbols are the exclusive properties of and trademarks or registered trademarks of Research In Motion Limited–used by permission. RIM and Research In Motion are registered in the U.S. Patent andTrademark Office and may be pending or registered in other countries. ©2006 Cingular Wireless. All rights reserved.

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THE WEB HAS ALREADY become a major medium for delivering TV, video content, and movies, but costs and long download times have loomed as problems. Now start-up com-pany Itiva (www.itiva.com) is out to change that with its unique Quantum Streaming technology. The system lets users execute lickety-split downloads of high-definition video content over standard broadband lines.

In a demonstration for PC Magazine, Itiva president Michel Billard downloaded in mere seconds a 2-minute high-def 720p movie trail-er from a major movie studio, at a transfer rate of 5.5 Mbps. The trailer even played while the download was finishing. To put that in per-

spective, remember the general rule about down-loading HD video using competing technologies: Downloading content takes longer than watching it.

Take a look at the peer-to-peer model, popular-ized by technologies such as BitTorrent. Peer-to-peer fi le sharing breaks a movie up into various pieces to transmit it, inherently in-creasing wait times. By

contrast, Itiva breaks HD video up into http-based Web pages (called quanta), which can be cached at an ISP just like standard Web pages. With the speeds Itiva is achieving, you could download a 90-minute movie in less than 15 minutes.

One major studio has already signed on to have Itiva distribute its content, and Itiva is seeking deals with more fi lm studios. But the company has its eyes on independent film-makers, too. “Scaling small is as important as scaling big,” says Itiva director Tom Taylor. Public applications for Itiva’s technology are only weeks away. It may play a key role as the Web goes Hollywood.—Sebastian Rupley

What’s Your Love GPA?

IF YOU THINK you hold your

signifi cant other to high

standards, take a gander at

OKCupid.com. In the latest

spin on online dating, the site lets amorous-but-picky romantics

create and post tests that potential dates must pass before a match

is made. “The Slut Test,” “The Politics Test,” and the 50-question

“Three-Variable Purity Test” were among recent examples.

Many users take multiple posted tests, and you can review their

answers to all of them before making an electronic advance. Oh, and

in a break from the online dating trend, OKCupid.com is entirely free,

including messaging. Don’t settle for an expensive dunce!—SR

Giving human responses and skills to new breeds of robots is all the rage. The Pleo, unveiled recently at the DEMO conference in Arizona, is a convincingly humanlike Camarasaurus.

“Pleo is the fi rst truly au-tonomous life form capable of emotions that allow per-sonal engagement,” says Ca-leb Chung, who created the Furby robotic characters and developed the Pleo. Ugobe, a robotics technology group, will begin selling the Pleo for $199 by the holiday season.

The tiny robot has an op-erating system called LifeOS and 40 onboard sensors. The Pleo’s most interesting attri-bute, though, is that its base set of simulated emotions is customizable through Internet downloads. If only humans could download bet-ter moods, too. . . .—SR

Dino Bot

Net Film Distribution Coup Want to see a hi-def movie get downloaded? Want to see it again?

Source: Nielsen/NetRatings Megaview Search

PIPELINE T E C H N O L O G Y T R E N D S & N E W S A N A L Y S I S

BEAM ME UP LiftPort Group has stood a space elevator cable one mile into the air, held aloft by a weather balloon, and robots have success-fully climbed up and down. Eventually, the company wants to extend one 62,000 miles into space, for transporting people and cargo.

go.pcmag.com/pipeline

www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 21

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com22

Making Mini MoviesTHE NEXT STEP FOR nanotech-

nology is in the can: movies shot

at nanoscale. Researchers at

Georgia Tech have created an

atomic force microscope ca-

pable of high-speed imaging 100

times faster than its competi-

tors. The colorful photos seen

here, stills from a nanofi lm, show

real-time molecular interactions.

Such movies can inform scien-

tists about the properties of the

material the molecules came

from, and they may aid in the

fabrication of tiny devices.

The breakthrough could

become “the ubiquitous tool for

examining nanostructures,” says

Dr. Calvin Quate, one of the inven-

tors. The microscope has already

fi lmed the fi rst-ever movies

showing the elastic and adhesive

properties of carbon nanotubes.

For scientists puttering with

Lilliputian technologies, leaping

from still images to movies is big

news.—Sebastian Rupley

Portable video players are cool, but they’re hampered by their tiny little screens. What if the size of the gadget’s display were totally irrelevant? That futuristic scenario may be upon us. British company Light Blue Optics has developed a projection system the size of a matchbox, which can easily fi t into pocket-size devices. All you need is a nearby fl at surface to view, say, a music video from your digital player.

The PVPro’s projection system uses computational algorithms that allow for tiny lasers and a minuscule size. Light Blue Optics is working with several partners that will integrate the technology into portable gadgets, according to company CEO Nic Law-rence. And DigiSmart is working on similar mini-projector technology. Starting later this year, you may not have to curse that stamp-size screen on your digital music player.—SR

Big Things from a Tiny Projector

F U T U R E WATC HF U T U R E WATC H

go.pcmag.com/futurewatch

http://www.nero.com

1. Toshiba EasyGuard technology comprises a number of features some of which may or may not be available on a particular Toshiba notebook depending on the model selected. See www.easyguard.toshiba.com fordetailed information. 2. Toshiba’s shock absorption technology provides higher impact protection for your system as compared to Toshiba systems without similar shock protection features based on Toshiba’s drop tests.Toshiba’s standard limited warranty terms and limitations apply. Visit www.warranty.toshiba.com for details. ConfigFree, libretto, Portégé, Satellite and Tecra are registered trademarks and EasyGuard and Qosmio aretrademarks of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc. and/or Toshiba Corporation. Intel, the Intel logo, Intel Inside, the Intel Inside logo, Celeron, Intel Centrino, the Intel Centrino logo and Pentium are trademarks or

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registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.Wi-Fi is a registered certification mark of the Wi-Fi Alliance. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. While Toshiba has made every effort at the time of publication to ensure the accuracy of theinformation provided herein, product specifications, configurations, prices, system/component/options availability are all subject to change without notice. Toshiba is not liable for pricing, typographical or photographyerrors. Prices listed are based on products listed at ToshibaDirect.com at time of publication printing. Reseller/Retailer pricing/products may vary. © 2006 Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

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H A N D S - O N T E S T I N G O F N E W P R O D U C T S • go.pcmag.com/first looks

Proview RX-326T h e 3 2 - i n c h Proview RX-326 ($949.99 list) is an LCD TV that of-

fers high-defi nition res-olution at an affordable price. It produced some of the most eye-pleasing imagery we’ve seen on a TV at this price.

The lack of an over-the-air HD tuner techni-cally makes the RX-326 an “HD-ready” TV, but an NTSC tuner is provided for standard-definition analog reception. The LCD panel used in the RX-326 offers a native 1,366- by 768-pixel res-olution. Though home theater PC users can drive the RX-326 using either HDMI or VGA input, only the VGA input eliminated overscan (exten-sion of the edge of the picture beyond the active portion of the display) without requir-

ing adjustments in the video card’s driver control panel.

Viewing the RX-326 from more than 20 degrees off center in any direction made colors look noticeably faded. Other similarly priced LCD TVs typically start to fade at around 30 degrees.

In the lab, the RX-326’s warm-color temperature preset produced colors that

came closest to the standard used in film and video pro-duction. Unlike the Vizio L32 or the Westinghouse LTV-32w1, it didn’t suffer from degraded color qual-ity when using component video input. We measured the RX-326’s contrast ratio at 595:1 (ANSI checkerboard test pattern), just above aver-age among LCD TVs.

On the HQV benchmark DVD, the RX-326 failed to engage 3:2 pulldown prop-erly for fi lm-based video (24 frames per second), produc-ing visible moiré artifacts and losing detail. But the RX-326’s adjustable noise-reduc-tion function was a rare fi nd for an LCD TV at this price, and it eliminated most noise without signifi cant blurring .

The R X-326 offers HD resolution at an affordable price. The Vizio L32 has more input options and the West-inghouse LTV-32w1 offers

more comprehensive im-age controls, but our eyes preferred the image qual-ity and A/V input perfor-mance of the RX-326.

Proview RX-326

$949.99 list. Proview, www

.proview-usa.com. llllm

Vizio L32Barely sneaking in under the $1,000 price point, the 32-inch Vizio L32 ($999.99 list) is one of the least expensive LCD

TVs currently offering high- definition resolution. The L32’s bright and even picture isn’t without some minor fl aws, but it represents a good value.

The L32’s 31.5-inch panel offers a native resolution of 1,366 by 768 pixels (16:9 aspect ratio). VGA input came clos-est to the native resolution at 1,360 by 768 pixels and elimi-nated overscan.

An unfortunate similar-ity that the L32 shares with the Westinghouse LTV-32w1 is poor component video when compared with digital

Most of us would love to own a big, thin HDTV, but the prices

are just too high. Or are they? We hit the pavement and found

three LCD TVs that retail for less than $1,000, a reasonable fi g-

ure for those making that fi rst leap to high-defi nition. All three

TVs have a similar screen size (around 32 inches, diagonally),

a maximum resolution of 1,360-by-768, and a built-in NTSC TV tuner and

speakers. One of these three could be your ticket to HDTV viewing heaven.

THE MAGAZINE WORLD’S LARGEST

COMPUTER-TESTING FACILITY

Low-Cost LCD TVs

28 T-Mobile SDA 28 T-Mobile MDA32 Motorola SLVR L732 Cingular 212541 Fuji FinePix E900

42 Pentax *ist DS2 42 Canon PowerShot SD450 44 Creative Zen MicroPhoto 46 Saitek A-250 46 i.Sound Max

48 Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo48 Iomega XL Desktop Hard Drive50 Velocity Micro Vision GX52 Kodak EasyShare Photo Printer 50052 Konica Minolta PagePro 1400W

BY ROBERT HERON

MORE ON THE WEB Check out the full reviews ongo.pcmag.com/cheaplcdtvs

THE RX-326’S SIMULATED SURROUND SOUND mode is effective

at making a sound fi eld that seems to come from all directions.

F I R S T

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com 26

USEFUL KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS for navigating digital magazines

PAGE DOWN flip to next page

PAGE UP flip to prior page

ENTER zoom in on left page

SHIFT+ENTER zoom in on right page

ENTER zoom back out to full-page view

C flip to Table of Contents

HOME flip to front cover

END flip to back page

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USEFUL KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS for navigating digital magazines

PAGE DOWN flip to next page

PAGE UP flip to prior page

ENTER zoom in on left page

SHIFT+ENTER zoom in on right page

ENTER zoom back out to full-page view

C flip to Table of Contents

HOME flip to front cover

END flip to back page

.................................

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WHAT THE RATINGS MEAN: LLLLL EXCELLENT l LLLLM VERY GOOD l LLLMM GOOD l LLMMM FAIR l LMMMM POOR

Westinghouse LTV-32w1 The 32-inch Westinghouse LTV-32w1 ($900 street) LCD TV struck us with a sense of déjà vu, as it’s cosmetically similar to the company’s 37-inch LVM-37w1 television. In

video input. Our subjective examinations using DVD videos, Windows Media Vid-eo HD clips, and over-the-air HDTV revealed that the L32 was sacrif icing dark detail and adding a slight green tinge to skin tones. Switching to the L32’s HDMI input significantly reduced these issues.

In the lab, the L32’s “Viv-id2” picture mode registered very good primary color accuracy but showed more variation than we like to see in grayscale tracking (color measurements of stepped levels from black to white.)

On the HQV benchmark DVD the L32 scored lowest among the 32-inch LCD TVs we have seen. The L32 was slow to engage 3:2 pulldown for fi lm-based video (24 fps), producing visible moiré arti-facts in the racetrack clip.

The Vizio L32 offers high-definition resolution at an affordable price. Though we were disappoint-ed by the TV's component video q u a l i t y w h e n compared with digital video in-put, this is an all-too-common trait a m o n g v a l u e -priced HD moni-tors. For digital video enjoyment, the L32 is a strong performer with good color accu-racy and picture detail.

Vizio L32

$999.99 list. Vizio, www.vinc.com.

lllmm

our lab testing, the LTV-32w1 delivered impressive high-defi nition image quality when fed a digital signal but fell short when receiving analog.

The LTV-32w1 offers a na-tive resolution of 1,366 by 768 pixels. We were impressed

that 720p video sig na ls ex h ib -ited no overscan, and 1080i signals showed only a slight overscan. The lack of an over-the-air HD tuner puts the LT V- 3 2 w 1 i n the “HD-ready” category, but an NTSC tuner pro-vides standard-defi nition analog reception.On our subjective

viewing examinations, the LTV-32w1’s display defaults using component video input

produced a cool image, and shadows appeared too dark, obscuring detail. Switching the LTV-32w1 to its warm-est color temperature preset yielded a more natural-look-ing picture, but it wasn’t un-til we switched to DVI input that we felt the dark detail was where it should be.

Compared with the 32-inch Proview RX-326, the LTV-32w1 gave us about 10 degrees more of a viewing angle be-fore the colors began to fade.

In the lab, we continue to be impressed by the ability of Westinghouse LCD TVs to produce very bright imag-ery and very dark black lev-els. The LTV-32w1 managed a record-shattering 833:1 ANSI contrast ratio using its maximum backlight setting and 834:1 ANSI contrast ra-tio at its minimum backlight settings. We have yet to see this range of control any-where else.

The Westinghouse LTV-32w1 has the best contrast ratio we’ve measured to date, but we continue to be disap-pointed by Westinghouse’s treatment of analog inputs. Driven digitally, the LTV-32w1 is one of the best-per-forming HD monitors in this category. Its component video inputs, however, make it more suitable for console gaming than for crit ica l viewing of quality video.

Westinghouse LTV-32w1

$900 street. Westinghouse

Digital Electronics, www

.westinghousedigital.com. lllmm

54 Visioneer Strobe XP30054 HP Scanjet 4890 Photo Scanner56 Toshiba Satellite A105-S36158 AOL Pictures 58 BubbleShare (beta)

58 FilmLoop (beta)59 Phanfare59 SnapJot (beta)60 HP LP206560 NEC MultiSync 90GX2

61 Lenovo ThinkVision L201p62 QuickBooks Online Edition62 Laplink PCdefense65 IP Telephony DVX-1000RED denotes Editors’ Choice.

>Check out our HDTV shopping trip on page 130.

THE VIZIO L32 comes with a good selection of A/V connections

for an HD monitor at this price.

THE 32W1’s bottom-mounted

speakers make it look bigger.

L O O K S

www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 27

F I R S T L O O K S Consumer Electronics: Cell Phones

BY SASCHA SEGANW h e t h e r s y n c i n g with Microsoft Out-look, playing music, or surf ing the Web

over Wi-Fi, the T-Mobile SDA ($299.99 list) puts an irresistible amount of pow-er into your pocket. That makes this delicious little Microsoft Windows Mobile Smartphone our new Editors’ Choice among keyboardless smartphones.

We appreciate every but-ton on the SDA, particularly those dedicated to music. Stretched above them is a beautiful 320-by-240 VGA screen fi lled with bold icons and calendar information.

As a quad-band world-phone, the SDA can make calls anywhere from Toledo to Tashkent with very good reception. The earpiece volume is acceptable, if not loud. We got clearer sound

through a Plantronics Voy-ager 510 Bluetooth headset.

Battery life was good, with more than 9.5 hours of talk time and more than 7 hours of PDA usage time.

The SDA syncs easily with Microsoft Outlook using ActiveSync 4.1 software. The built-in e-mail client han-dles POP3/IMAP accounts, over-the-air syncing with Exchange servers, and text messaging. Push e-mail will come soon.

The SDA’s Wi-Fi is part of T-Mobile’s move to compete with high-speed cellular networks run by Cingular, Sprint, and Verizon. At pres-ent, T-Mobile has 7,365 U.S. Wi-Fi hot spots. A new un-limited data plan gives you as much EDGE and Wi-Fi as you want for $30 a month. We got acceptable Class 10 EDGE speeds (from 126 Kbps to 155 Kbps) on our tests.

We wish, however, that the SDA had more than 20MB of memory. We never had more than 5MB available.

The new phone beats our previous Editors’ Choice, the Nokia 6682 from Cingular. The glossier Microsoft OS is more fun to use than the older phone’s; and the Wi-Fi capability is truly amazing. We’d also give the SDA the nod over the RIM BlackBer-ry 7105t, which doesn’t have any of the media capabilities.

T-Mobile says that this is more than a business device, and we agree. It’s also a great way to carry around your calendar, play music, and fi nd the nearest Mexican res-taurant—all with the aid of the built-in Web browser. We expect the T-Mobile SDA to appeal to more than just suits.

T-Mobile SDA

$299.99 list. T-Mobile,

www.tmobile.com. llllm

Power in Your Pocket

A Smartphone For Checking E-Mail on the GoBY SASCHA SEGAN

A Sidekick for grown-ups , the T-Mobile MDA ($399 list) han-

dles e-mail and Web brows-ing over Wi-Fi or EDGE with aplomb. Unfortunately, its lackluster phone per-formance and the stiff competition from other keyboard smartphones will limit its success.

The MDA is a round-ed handheld, much like the Sprint PPC-6700, but smaller, lighter, and with better-separated keys. Dedicated buttons let you access e-mail, In-ternet Explorer, your contacts , the camera, and the networking manager with one touch.

E-mail and text-messaging are a breeze with the snappy keyboard. Turn the phone on with the keyboard closed and you’re running Micro-soft Windows Mobile 5.0 on

a 320-by-240 touchscreen. Slide the keyboard out and the screen automatically ro-tates in response.

After adding a few pro-grams, we still had 20MB of free storage memory and

23MB of free program memory—plenty for everyday use.

When not in Wi-Fi range, the MDA works with the T-Mobile EDGE SDA network. Us-ing our MDA as an EDGE modem for a laptop, we got excellent Class 10 EDGE speeds of 140 to 189 Kbps.

Alas, the MDA isn’t as good a phone as it is

an e-mail device. It has quad-band support, so it can

roam across the U.S. and the world, but we found recep-tion only so-so. In addition, the earpiece was so quiet we had trouble making out the other end of a conversation in a noisy environment. The speakerphone was better.

Battery life in PDA mode was middling, at almost 5 hours when playing back vid-eos with the backlight turned way up. Phone talk time was good, at 9 hours 37 minutes.

Like so many other PDA/phones, the T-Mobile MDA doesn’t look good when com-pared with the easy-to-use Palm Treo 650 and the power-ful Sprint PPC-6700. Overall, the MDA isn’t a bad PDA/phone, it just isn’t the best.

T-Mobile MDA

$399.99 list. T-Mobile,

www.tmobile.com. lllmm

THE SDA is a small, rounded

phone with tiny buttons.

THE MDA has

a handy slide-out keyboard.

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com 28

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F I R S T L O O K S Consumer Electronics: Cell Phones

BY SASCHA SEGAN

The Motorola SLVR L7 ($299.99 direct) may be the handsomest

phone in America. But even though it runs Apple’s popu-lar iTunes music player, its feature set doesn’t excite us. (One example: Like the RAZR V3, the SLVR L7 uses the primitive recorded-tag form of voice dialing.) This is a phone that will best satisfy voice callers who want a see-and-be-seen device.

Ever y t h i ng about t he SLVR’s design is well done. The anodized-aluminum back, glass-infused plastic case, metal keypad, glass screen, and well-balanced heft of this half-inch-thick status symbol make it feel far more expensive than it is.

Along with its RAZR cou-sins, the quad-band SLVR L7 gets excellent reception, though the sound quality

isn’t quite as good. We found the earpiece volume loud enough, if not very loud. We easily hooked the phone up to Jabra, Logitech, and Plan-tronics Bluetooth headsets.

The SLVR L7 stores up to 100 songs per microSD card in iTunes. Plug the phone into an iTunes-equipped com-puter and it will appear as an iPod shuffl e.

Audio performance is ad-equate, as long as you’re not into bass. On our frequency response test, it dropped off very quickly below 100 Hz, resulting in pretty weak lows. Overall, sound with the included earbuds was very muffl ed. If you use “real” ear-phones, you have to unplug them every time the phone rings—totally unacceptable.

Other than iTunes, the SLVR’s feature set is pretty 2004. There’s a basic POP3 e-mail client, an instant-mes-

saging client, a dim, blurry camera that takes VGA stills, 5 -frame-per-second, 176-by-144 video, and a glacially slow GPRS data capability. You can use the phone as a PC modem, though it crawls along at 30 to 40 Kbps.

Bluetooth support is pret-ty good: You can sync your contacts and calendar and transfer photos to and from your PC. But it’s the slower Bluetooth 1.2, not the newer, faster Bluetooth 2.0+EDR.

The SLVR L7 is available for $199.99 with a two-year contract from Cingular. An unlocked model, suitable for T-Mobile but lacking iTunes, is $359.00 from Dynamism. com. We’d recommend it to non–power users looking for a pretty, pretty phone.

Motorola SLVR L7

$299.99; with contract, $199.99 and up. Motorola, Cingular Wireless,

www.cingular.com. lllhm

Crazy, Sexy, Cool: Motorola’s SLVR

The 2125 Puts Power in Your PocketBY SASCHA SEGAN

Th e C i n g u l a r 2 1 2 5 ($299.99 with con-tract) is a powerful,

good-looking smartphone that brings Windows Mobile flexibility to a truly pocket-sized handset. It ’s a good choice for making phone calls, syncing with PIM data, and surfi ng the Web.

The petite (4.3 by 1.8 by 0.7 inches, 3.7 oz) 2125 is easy to hold and looks professional in its gray-and-silver case. It’s flatter and squarer than the T-Mobile SDA; the dedicated music-player buttons are gone from the front; and the row of four soft keys below the screen is now two.

Inside, we found the 2125’s performance to be very simi-lar to that of the SDA. The two phones share the same

195-MHz TI OMAP proces-sor and quad-band EDGE radio. We found the 2125’s signal strength to be excel-lent, and the quality of sound through the earpiece and Bluetooth headsets to be ac-ceptable. The 2125 got much more talk time than the SDA, a fabulous 14 hours.

As a Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone, the 2125 syncs with Windows PCs running ActiveSync 4.1. You can trans-fer music and video with Win-dows Media Player 10.

You can use the 2125 as a laptop modem on Cingular’s EDGE network, and we got excellent EDGE speeds of 159 to 185 Kbps in our tests. But with Cingular now turning on its 3G HSDPA network, we’d like to see some HSDPA in its smart devices.

The 2125’s 1.3-megapixel camera is pretty poor. Vid-eos record at 176-by-144 and 10 frames per second. You can save photos or videos to the internal memory or to the memory card. We didn’t run into problems with the phone’s 15MB of storage.

The Cingular 2125 is small-er, brighter, and syncs better with PCs than the competing Nokia 6682. And the phone is better all around than the venerable, beloved Audiovox SMT 5600. Still, we’re re-serving our Editors’ Choice in keyboardless smartphones for the T-Mobile SDA, the 2125’s overachieving sibling, which has Wi-Fi and dedi-cated music buttons.

Cingular 2125

$299.99 with contract. Cingular Wire-

less, www.cingular.com. llllm

YOU’LL WANT to show off the SLVR L7.

THE 2125 has a big, bright 320-by-240 screen.

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com 32 J U M P TO N E X T PA G E >>

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April/May 2006

Acer recommends Windows® XP Professional.

Acer® TravelMate® 4200Dual-Core Powerhouse

For the name of a reseller near you or further information, please call Acer or visit our Web site:

800-571-2237 www.acer.com/us

Price

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• Intel® Centrino® Duo Mobile Technology- Intel® Core™ Duo Processor- Mobile Intel® 945GM Express chipset- Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945ABG network connection

• Genuine Windows® XP Professional• 1GB DDR2 667 SDRAM

The Acer TravelMate 4200 allows you to experience all the benefits of dual-core performance_and more_at a price you canlive with. Intel® Centrino® Duo Mobile Technology includes a processor optimized for the multitasking you do every dayplus full 802.11a/b/g wireless capability. Images are stunning on the 15.4” wide-screen display that delivers razor-sharp1280 x 800 resolution. Abundant memory boosts the performance of application programs, while ample storage space isprovided by the hard drive and integrated DVD-Dual drive (DVD+/-RW).

• 100GB1 hard drive• Integrated DVD-Dual drive (DVD+/-RW)• 15.4" WXGA (1280 x 800) TFT display • Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950 • 802.11a/b/g WLAN, 10/100 LAN, V.92 modem • One-year limited warranty2

Acer TravelMate 4202WLMi

$1,299INTEL® CORE™ DUO PROCESSOR T2300

(2MB L2 CACHE, 1.66GHZ, 667MHZ FSB)GENUINE WINDOWS® XP PROFESSIONAL

(LX.TAV06.040)

MULTITASKING MADE EASY

Acer AL2416Wd

Prices shown are estimated street prices and do not include tax or shipping. Retailer or reseller prices may vary.

• 24" wide-screen TFT LCD

• 1920 x 1200 native resolution

• 1000:1 contrast ratio• 178° horizontal

viewing angle• 178° vertical

viewing angle

• VGA, DVI-D signal connectors

• 500 cd/m2 brightness• 6ms gray-to-gray

response time• Internal power

adapter• Silver color

Acer AL2416Wd

$919(ET.L6102.018)

24" WIDE-SCREEN

• 20" wide-screen TFT LCD,Acer CrystalBrite Technology

• 1680 x 1050 native resolution

• 800:1 contrast ratio• 176° horizontal

viewing angle• 176° vertical

viewing angle

F-20

Acer® Flat Panels: Displaying Quality & Value

• Two 5.0W integrated speakers

• VGA, DVI-D signal connectors

• 300 cd/m2 brightness• 8ms gray-to-gray

response time• External power

adapter• Gloss black/red color

Acer ® TravelMate® 2420 Priced Right for Work & Play

Whether you need a notebook for your small business or for everyday home computing, the Acer TravelMate 2420 has you covered. Track budgets, plan a killer marketing campaign, work on schoolassignments or surf the Web with this affordable system. Thanks to integrated wireless access, you’re nottied to home base. Feel free to take the TravelMate 2420 anywhere there’s a hotspot—meetings, yourfavorite coffee shop or class. You also get a built-in combo drive for your recording and viewing pleasure.

INTEL® CELERON® M PROCESSOR 370 (1MB L2 CACHE, 1.50GHZ, 400MHZ FSB)

GENUINE WINDOWS® XP PROFESSIONAL

512MB DDR2 400 SDRAM AND 80GB1 HARD DRIVE

(LX.TB206.050)

$200 PRICE CUT! $120 PRICE CUT!

Acer TravelMate 2423WXCi-XPH

$599INTEL® CELERON® M PROCESSOR 370

(1MB L2 CACHE, 1.50GHZ, 400MHZ FSB) GENUINE WINDOWS® XP HOME EDITION

256MB DDR2 400 SDRAM AND 40GB1 HARD DRIVE

(LX.TB205.077)

Acer TravelMate 2423WXCi

$699

• Intel® Celeron® M Processor

• Genuine Windows® XP Professional or

- Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition

• Integrated CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive

• 14.1" WXGA (1280 x 800) TFT display

• Mobile Intel® 910GML Express chipset with integrated graphics

• 802.11b/g WLAN, 10/100 LAN, V.92 modem

• One-year limited warranty2

Acer recommends Windows® XP Professional.

Prices shown are estimated street prices and do not include tax or shipping. Retailer or reseller prices may vary.

F-20

$539(ET.L380B.063)

Acer® TravelMate® 4060Enjoy the Freedom of Mobility

The Acer TravelMate 4060 strikes just the right balance between performance andaffordability. Along with Intel® Centrino® Mobile Technology, you get a panoramic15.4” wide-screen display for side-by-side document viewing plus integrated wireless with Acer’s exclusive SignalUp technology for enhanced antenna efficiency.An excellent choice for office or home computing, this notebook lets you enjoy the freedom of mobility to work faster and smarter without sacrificing features.

Acer TravelMate 4062WLCi

$849INTEL® PENTIUM® M PROCESSOR 740

(2MB L2 CACHE, 1.73GHZ, 533MHZ FSB) GENUINE WINDOWS® XP PROFESSIONAL

(LX.TAK06.075)

15.4” WIDE-SCREEN

• Intel® Centrino® Mobile Technology

- Intel® Pentium® M Processor

- Mobile Intel® 915GM Express chipset

- Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200BG network connection

• Genuine Windows® XP Professional

• 512MB DDR2 533 SDRAM

• 80GB1 hard drive

• Integrated CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive

• 15.4" WXGA (1280 x 800) TFT display

• Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 900

• 802.11b/g WLAN, 10/100 LAN, V.92 modem

• One-year limited warranty2

• 19" TFT LCD, Acer CrystalBrite Technology

• 1280 x 1024 native resolution

• 700:1 contrast ratio

• 150° horizontal viewing angle

• 135° vertical viewing angle

• Two 1.5W integrated speakers

Acer AL1951C• VGA, DVI-D signal

connectors

• 400 cd/m2 brightness

• 4ms gray-to-gray response time

• External power adapter

• Silver/black color

Acer AL1951C

$359(ET.L4108.068)

4MS RESPONSE TIME

Compare LCD Prices/Features & You'll Choose Acer®

Prices shown are estimated street prices and do not include tax or shipping. Retailer or reseller prices may vary.

• 19" TFT LCD with height adjustment and rotation

• 1280 x 1024 native resolution• 1000:1 contrast ratio• 178° horizontal viewing angle• 178° vertical viewing angle• Two 1.0W integrated speakers

Acer AL1717 BbmdAcer AL1923 r• 17" TFT LCD• 1280 x 1024

native resolution• 700:1 contrast ratio• 150° horizontal

viewing angle• 135° vertical viewing angle• Two 1.0W integrated speakers

• VGA, DVI-D signal connectors

• 300 cd/m2 brightness• 8ms response time• Internal power adapter• Black color

• VGA, DVI-D signal connectors

• 280 cd/m2 brightness• 8ms response time• Internal power adapter• Titanium color

Acer AL1923 r

$339(ET.L660B.048)

ADJUST HEIGHT& ROTATE

Acer® ezDockThe one-plug Acer ezDock manages and organizes peripheral connections with ease, allowing you to add or remove devicesinstantly, without turning off your notebook computer. Thiscompact docking solution features 21 interface ports and two cardslots for desktop-like expansion possibilities, as well as PCI Express™

technology and a Kensington® lock slot.Acer TravelMate 4062WLMi

$999

Acer® TravelMate® 4060Your Essential Business Tool

• Intel® Centrino® Mobile Technology

- Intel® Pentium® M Processor

- Mobile Intel® 915GM Express chipset

- Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200BG network connection

• Genuine Windows® XP Professional

• 512MB DDR2 533 SDRAM

• 100GB1 hard drive

• Integrated DVD-Dual drive (DVD+/-RW)

• 15.4" WXGA (1280 x 800) TFT display

• Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 900

• 802.11b/g WLAN, 10/100 LAN, V.92 modem

• One-year limited warranty2

INTEL® PENTIUM® M PROCESSOR 740 (2MB L2 CACHE, 1.73GHZ, 533MHZ FSB)

GENUINE WINDOWS® XP PROFESSIONAL

(LX.TAK06.079)

15.4" WIDE-SCREEN

Count on the Acer TravelMate 4060 for growing your business. Powered by Intel® Centrino® Mobile Technology,this stylish notebook boasts high-end features at a price that won’t break your budget. The wide-screen 15.4”display is perfect for viewing documents side by side. The integrated optical drive offers flexibility and convenience, and the wireless LAN will keep you connected and productive wherever your work takes you.

Acer ezDock Docking Station

$299COMPATIBLE WITH THE TRAVELMATE 8200, 8100, 4650, 4400

3000, C310, C200; FERRARI 4000(LC.D0103.004)

Acer recommends Windows® XP Professional.

Prices shown are estimated street prices and do not include tax or shipping. Retailer or reseller prices may vary.

Acer ® TravelMate® C310 Tablet & Full-Featured Notebook in OneThe Acer TravelMate C310 is the convertible tablet that you'll want to use asyour primary computer. With a big 14.1" XGA display, full-size keyboard, modular optical drive and optional ezDock Docking Station, it's similar to astandard notebook but offers much more. The screen becomes a writing surface when you rotate it and fold it back over the keyboard, perfect fortaking notes, annotating documents and completing online forms.

• Intel® Centrino® Mobile Technology

- Intel® Pentium® M Processor

- Mobile Intel® 915PM Express chipset

- Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200BG network connection

• Genuine Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition

• 4-in-1 card reader for optional MultiMediaCard™, Secure Digital card, Memory Stick® or Memory Stick PRO™

• 14.1" XGA (1024 x 768) TFT display

• NVIDIA GeForce™ Go 6200 graphics

• 802.11b/g WLAN, Bluetooth®,gigabit LAN, V.92 modem

• Full-size EMR pen with eraser

• One-year limited warranty2

Acer AL1717 Bbmd

$249(ET.1717B.MD8)

700:1 CONTRAST RATIO Acer AL1716 b• 17" TFT LCD

• 1280 x 1024 native resolution

• 500:1 contrast ratio

• 150° horizontal viewing angle

• 135° vertical viewing angle

• VGA signal connector

• 300 cd/m2 brightness

• 12ms response time

• Internal power adapter

• Black colorAcer AL1716 b

$219(ET.1716B.012)

GREAT VALUE

Acer TravelMate C312XCi

$1,699INTEL® PENTIUM® M PROCESSOR 740

(2MB L2 CACHE, 1.73GHZ, 533MHZ FSB)GENUINE WINDOWS® XP TABLET PC EDITION

512MB DDR2 533 SDRAM, 80GB1 HARD DRIVE

AND MODULAR CD-RW/DVD-ROM COMBO DRIVE

(LX.T270E.029)

Acer TravelMate C314XMi

$1,999INTEL® PENTIUM® M PROCESSOR 760

(2MB L2 CACHE, 2GHZ, 533MHZ FSB) GENUINE WINDOWS® XP TABLET PC EDITION

1GB DDR2 533 SDRAM, 100GB1 HARD DRIVE

AND MODULAR DVD-DUAL DRIVE (DVD+/-RW)(LX.T870E.032)

CONVERTS HANDWRITING TO TEXT

The AcerPower S280 boasts an impressive feature set in a stylish chassis at an affordable price. Ample power meansyou can efficiently perform everyday tasks. Multiple expansion slots make the system easy to upgrade, while the eightUSB 2.0 ports give you the ability to connect to the latest peripherals. All in all, an excellent choice for home, schoolor office computing.

Prices shown are estimated street prices and do not include tax or shipping. Retailer or reseller prices may vary.

• 2000 ANSI lumens• XGA (1024 x 768) native resolution• 2000:1 contrast ratio• 16.7 million displayable colors• PC and Mac compatible

Acer PD120D

• 2000 ANSI lumens• SVGA (800 x 600) native resolution• 2000:1 contrast ratio• 16.7 million displayable colors• PC and Mac compatible

Acer PD100

Acer PD100

$669(EY.J2101.006)

Acer PD120D

$999(EY.J2201.012)

• Intel® Celeron® D Processor • Genuine Windows® XP Professional• 80GB1 hard drive

Display sold separately.

Display sold separately.

Even if you’re short on space, you don’t need to sacrifice performance. Thecompact Acer Veriton 2800 business desktop gives you an Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor with HT Technology, dual-channel memory andeight USB ports for connecting to a printer and other office peripherals.

Acer® Veriton® 2800 Powerful but Compact

• 10/100 LAN• Integrated SiS Mirage™ graphics• One-year limited warranty2

Acer Veriton 2800

$689Acer® AcerPower™ S280Affordable Computing at its Best

INTEL® PENTIUM® 4 PROCESSOR 521 WITH HT TECHNOLOGY

(1MB L2 CACHE, 2.80GHZ, 800MHZ FSB)GENUINE WINDOWS® XP PROFESSIONAL

(VT2800-U-P5210)

AcerPower S280

$369INTEL® CELERON® D PROCESSOR 336

(256KB L2 CACHE, 2.80GHZ, 533MHZ FSB)GENUINE WINDOWS® XP PROFESSIONAL

256MB DDR SDRAM AND

CD-ROM DRIVE

(APS280-U-C3600)

AcerPower S280

$429INTEL® CELERON® D PROCESSOR 346

(256KB L2 CACHE, 3.06GHZ, 533MHZ FSB)GENUINE WINDOWS® XP PROFESSIONAL

512MB DDR SDRAM AND

CD-RW/DVD-ROM COMBO DRIVE

(APS280-U-C4600)

Digital Light Processing™ from Texas Instruments is an all-digital display technology for projectors and otherproducts that delivers the best picture in terms of clarity, brilliance and color.

Acer® Projectors with DLP™ Technology

• Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor with HT Technology

• Genuine Windows® XP Professional

• 512MB DDR2 533 SDRAM

• 80GB1 SATA hard drive, 7200RPM

• CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive

• Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950

• Gigabit LAN

• Three-year limited warranty2

Acer recommends Windows® XP Professional.

Stability, ease-of-deployment and comprehensive management tools are the

hallmarks of Veriton, Acer's premier business desktop series. Each of these

features has been enhanced in the Acer Veriton 6800, with an improved

tool-less chassis design, fortified security tools, more powerful Intel®

processors and Acer eManager software.

Acer ® Veriton® 6800 Optimized for Business

Prices shown are estimated street prices and do not include tax or shipping. Retailer or reseller prices may vary.

Replacement Lamp for PD525,

PD116

$299(EC.J1001.001)

Keep a Replacement Lamp onhand for the Acer PD525,PD120D, PD116P or PD100projector. Expected life inhours is 2,000 standard mode,3,000 economy mode.

• Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor with HT Technology or

Intel® Pentium® D Processor

• Genuine Windows® XP Professional

• Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950

• Gigabit LAN

• Three-year limited warranty2

Acer Veriton 6800

$999INTEL® PENTIUM® D PROCESSOR 830

(2X1MB L2 CACHE, 3GHZ, 800MHZ FSB)GENUINE WINDOWS® XP PROFESSIONAL

1GB DDR2 533 SDRAM; 160GB1 SATA HARD DRIVE, 7200RPM;AND DVD-DUAL DRIVE (DVD+/-RW)

(VT6800-U-S8301)

For permanent placementof an Acer PD525, PD120D,PD116P or PD100 projector in a conference room or classroom,you’ll want an easy-to-installCeiling Mount.

Ceiling Mount

$79(EZ.PCM03.007)

Replacement Lamp for PD120D, PD100

$199(EC.J2101.001)

Acer Veriton 6800

$879INTEL® PENTIUM® 4 PROCESSOR 650 WITH HT TECHNOLOGY

(2MB L2 CACHE, 3.40GHZ, 800MHZ FSB)GENUINE WINDOWS® XP PROFESSIONAL

512MB DDR2 533 SDRAM; 160GB1 SATA HARD DRIVE, 7200RPM;AND CD-RW/DVD-ROM COMBO DRIVE

(VT6800-U-P6501)

Acer Veriton 6800

$699INTEL® PENTIUM® 4 PROCESSOR 630 WITH HT TECHNOLOGY

(2MB L2 CACHE, 3GHZ, 800MHZ FSB)GENUINE WINDOWS® XP PROFESSIONAL

512MB DDR2 533 SDRAM; 80GB1 SATA HARD DRIVE, 7200RPM;AND CD-RW/DVD-ROM COMBO DRIVE

(VT6800-U-P6301)

Acer Veriton 6800

$799INTEL® PENTIUM® 4 PROCESSOR 640 WITH HT TECHNOLOGY

(2MB L2 CACHE, 3.20GHZ, 800MHZ FSB)GENUINE WINDOWS® XP PROFESSIONAL

512MB DDR2 533 SDRAM; 80GB1 SATA HARD DRIVE, 7200RPM;AND CD-RW/DVD-ROM COMBO DRIVE

(VT6800-U-P6400)

DUAL-CORE PROCESSOR160GB HARD DRIVE

Acer Notebook/Tablet Service Upgrades Protect Your Valuable Investment

1 When referring to storage capacity, GB stands for one billion bytes and MB stands for one million bytes. Some utilities may indicate varying storage capacities. Total user-accessible capacity may vary depending on operating environments.

2 For a free copy of the standard limited warranty end-users should see a reseller where Acer products are sold or write to Acer America Corporation, Warranty Department, P.O. Box 6137, Temple, TX 76503.

© 2006 Acer America Corporation. Information and prices are subject to change without notice. Pricing is effective from March 7, 2006 through April 15, 2006.Product images are representations of some of the models available and may vary from the model you purchase. Acer, TravelMate and Veriton are registered trademarks and AcerPower a trademark of Acer Inc. Aspire is a trademark of Acer America Corporation. Celeron, Celeron Inside, Centrino, Core Inside, Intel, Intel Core, Intel Inside, Intel SpeedStep, Intel Viiv, Intel Xeon, Itanium, Itanium Insi-de, Pentium, Pentium Inside, the Centrino logo, the Intel logo and the Intel Inside logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. Microsoft andWindows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

Quality is built into every notebook and tablet PC Acer makes, and each comes with aone-year standard limited warranty.2 It includes hardware technical support via toll-free phone plusa concurrent International Traveler’s Warranty for travel outside the U.S. and Canada. Extra protection is available with one of these upgrades:

2-Year Extension of Limited Warranty (146.AB820.EX2)

$99Prepays freight to and from Acer repair depot.

Excludes extension of International Traveler's Warranty.

It’s a tough world out there, and accidents do happen—sticky spills, dangerous drops, nastyknocks—which is why you should consider the Total Protection Upgrade. It runs concurrently withthe limited warranty2 and limited warranty extension and covers the cost of a replacement unitif your covered notebook cannot be repaired.

2-Year Extension of Limited Warranty + 3-Year Total Protection Upgrade (146.AD077.002)

$199Prepays freight to and from Acer repair depot.

Excludes extension of International Traveler's Warranty.

For the name of a reseller near you or further information, please call Acer or visit our Web site:

800-571-2237www.acer.com/us

Prices shown are estimated street prices and do not include tax or shipping. Retailer or reseller prices may vary.

Acer TravelMate 8204WLMi

$2,499INTEL® CORE™ DUO PROCESSOR T2500

(2MB L2 CACHE, 2GHZ, 667MHZ FSB)GENUINE WINDOWS® XP PROFESSIONAL

(LX.TAX06.034)

• Intel® Centrino® Duo Mobile Technology- Intel® Core™ Duo Processor- Mobile Intel® 945PM Express chipset- Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945ABG network connection

• Genuine Windows® XP Professional• 2GB DDR2 667 SDRAM• 120GB1 hard drive, 5400RPM• Modular Super-Multi drive

(DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD-RAM)

• 5-in-1 card reader for optional MultiMediaCard™, Secure Digital card, Memory Stick®, Memory Stick PRO™ orxD-Picture Card™

• 15.4" WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) TFT display • ATI® Mobility™ Radeon® X1600 graphics • Integrated, adjustable webcam• 802.11a/b/g WLAN, Bluetooth®,

gigabit LAN, V.92 modem • One-year limited warranty2

Have a videoconference

almost anywhereIntegrated

Webcam

DUAL-CORE PROCESSOR

Acer recommends Windows® XP Professional.

Acer® TravelMate® 8200The Visible Power of Mobile Leadership

The Acer TravelMate 8200 includes all the new and high-end features you could want in anotebook and earned the prestigious PC Magazine Editors’ Choice Award in January 2006.Intel® Centrino® Duo Mobile Technology delivers superb dual-core mobile performance, allowing you to easily run demanding applications simultaneously. Supercharged ATI® Mobility™ Radeon® X1600 graphics turn this notebook into a mobile entertainmentsystem and make the most of the wide-screen 15.4" WSXGA+ display. You also get the Acer OrbiCam, an 1.3-megapixel adjustable webcam built into the black carbon-fiber chassis.

F I R S T L O O K S Consumer Electronics: Digital Cameras

Fuji’s Nine-Megapixel Sharpshooterof the highlights. Overall col-or saturation was quite good. There was a bit less fringing in the fl ash image than in the daylight shot. In general we found a decent exposure with the fl ash, although we didn’t quite get the deep, rich black we got in the daylight shot.

Because of the high mega-pixel sensor, the E900 image had very high line counts on

our resolution test: It aver-aged a score of 2,000, which is the limit that the test target allows us to read. The E900 was quick, booting up in 2.4 seconds. But we were disappointed in the 4.7-second re-cycle time, which is very slow in today’s market. There was virtually no shutter lag, very little barrel distortion, and no pincushioning.

Yet we found some things we think Fuji

could improve upon. For instance, the 2-inch

LCD could be larger and could be articulating. For video, the E900 doesn’t use MPEG-4 compression for smaller fi le sizes, and there’s no way to zoom during fi lm-ing of video clips.

If you’re looking for a cam-era that can produce excellent images that you can blow up to large print sizes, the FinePix E900 will not disappoint. It’s our Editors’ Choice for a top-quality point-and-shoot com-pact digital camera.

Fuji FinePix E900

$500 street. Fuji Photo Film U.S.A. Inc.,

www.fujifi lm.com. llllm

BY TERRY SULLIVANJudging a camera’s va lue i s no longer the megapixel num-bers game it used to

be. Consumers are starting to understand that there’s a lot more to consider: zoom range, ISO, lens sharpness, shooting mode, menu struc-ture, wireless capabilities, and so on. A perfect example is the Fuji FinePix E900 ($500 street), which offers a 9MP image sensor and a whole lot more.

T he E90 0 , t he successor to the Fuji FinePix E550, does more than just cre-ate big image files. For starters, it con-veniently runs on two double-A bat-teries and features a 4X optical zoom lens with a 7.2mm to 28.8mm range (the equivalent of a 35mm lens with a 32mm to 128mm zoom) and cor-responding maximum f-stops of f/2.8 to f/5.6. We like the 32mm end of the zoom, which begins at a wider angle than many other compacts do.

Of course, the 9MP Super CCD-HR sensor gives you large fi le sizes, fi ne for large prints or doing lots of crop-ping. But this compact cam-era also lets you save images directly as high-quality RAW files, a rare feature among compact point-and-shoots.

In our real-world tests the E900 captured images with a very wide dynamic range, even when just shooting 8-bit

JPEGs instead of 16-bit RAW fi les. For example, on a foggy morning, we shot a suburban landscape—trees, trash cans, parked cars, shrubs—and a sidewalk leading into the mist. We love how the camera rendered foreground objects with lots of contrast and still showed distant objects em-bedded in the fog. The path itself provided a test strip of sorts: It displayed a plentiful

your portraits a more natural appearance. It’s not a pana-cea for every low-light photo op, but in our informal, real-world tests (at our local Star-bucks), our shots of people had minimal blur, and we could even read the lettering and prices on various signs and on small bags of java.

Ou r lab tests showed mixed results. In our daylight

shot, Fuji’s Real Photo tech-nology increased the ISO and thus the noise as well. Color saturation was right on the money, and we were pleased to see no color casts. We did see some fringing, however, but the shot was well exposed and displayed a very wide dynamic range.

The fl ash coverage on our fl ash test shot was maybe too good, since it blew out some

range of tones from a dark gray to a very light gray.

The E900’s Natural Light mode takes advantage of Fuji’s Real Photo technol-ogy, which we first saw on the FinePix F10. In this mode, Fuji boosts the ISO, which gives you a better chance of stopping the action (via a quicker shutter speed). It also makes it easier to shoot without fl ash, which can give

ANALYST'S TIPTerry Sullivan , Lead Analyst

In the past, the RAW fi le format seemed to be only for professional shooters and those with high-end D-SLRs. But today, even point-and-shoot digital cameras are offering this option. So, when looking for a digital camera, look for a RAW option in the image settings, especially if you plan to do a lot of photo manipulation in Photoshop or other image-editing programs.

www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 P C M AG A Z I N E 41

THE FINEPIX E900’s pop-up-style

strobe makes the fl ash easy to control.

BY TERRY SULLIVAN

The Pentax *ist DS2 ( b o dy on ly, $ 75 0 street) falls well short

of the standard set by its D-SLR counterparts. Aside from a large LCD screen and its ability to run on double-A batteries, we didn’t fi nd much to get excited about.

Funneling light to the 6.1-megapixel sensor is the Pen-tax smc P-DA 18mm to 55mm zoom lens (equivalent to a 35mm lens with a 27mm to 82.5mm zoom range) with corresponding f-stops from f/3.5 to f/5.6. The lens ($199.95 list) is not included with the camera, though, which seems overpriced. Beyond that, per-formance is so-so.

We found the burst mode to be steady, although not ultrafast, and we liked that we could take shot after shot without pausing. But when we compared our test images

with the stunning results from cameras like the Rebel XT, the Olympus Evolt E-500, and the Nikon D50, the DS2’s underexposed and lackluster pictures just didn’t cut it.

In our daylight shots, the DS2 introduced more grain and colored noise than the D50. The daylight still life was underexposed by about 1.5 to 2 f-stops, re-sulting in a dark image. Color saturation was good, especial-ly in the reds and yellows.

Our f lash test shot was also underexposed. Again, the camera was most accu-rate at rendering the reds and yellows, and there was very little fringing. The average of horizontal and vertical reso-lution was 1,400 lines—low for a 6.1MP camera.

The DS2 took an average of 1.2 seconds to boot, which is slow for a D-SLR. The 1.5-

second recycle time was also slow, though we found virtu-ally no shutter lag.

The image displayed some barrel distortion at the wide-angle end of the zoom and some pincushioning at the telephoto end.

In the incredibly competi-tive world of D-SLRs, manu-facturers must create nearly

f lawless devices. Given the unimpressive performance and image quality of the Pen-tax *ist DS2, we think most competitors, including our present Editor’s Choice, the Nikon D50, are better buys.

Pentax *ist DS2

Body only, $750 street. Pentax Imag-

ing Co., www.pentaximaging.com.

llmmm

Pentax’s Disappointing D-SLR

Better Shots for Small Hands BY TERRY SULLIVAN

As with Canon’s 7.2-megapixel PowerShot SD550 Digital Elph,

our current Editors’ Choice in the high-end ultracom-pact category, there’s a lot to like about the 5MP Canon PowerShot SD450 Digital Elph ($399.95 list). Yet there comes a point when a camera is a tad too tiny, and the SD450 may have reached that point.

Just how small is the cam-era? The numbers tell the story: 5 ounces and roughly 3.5 by 2 by 0.8 inches. The tiny buttons in and around the multifunction selector are too close together and will con-found fat-fingered photogra-phers. A somewhat confusing interface adds to the problem.

The SD450 has a lot of fi ne features, including a 2.5-inch

LCD and a glass viewfinder. This shooter, like the SD400, has a 5-megapixel sensor and a 3X optical zoom with a 5.8mm to 17.4mm range (equivalent to a 35mm lens with a 35mm to 105mm zoom)

and corresponding maximum f-stops of f/2.8 to f/4.9.

Our daylight shots had noticeable noise, but color saturation was exceptional. Overall, the exposure was extremely good: It had excel-lent dynamic range and made

colors really pop off the page. On our fl ash test shot, cover-age was very good but just slightly underexposed, caus-ing the colors to be a bit mud-dy, although color saturation was quite good.

The SD450 averaged 1,400 lines of resolution, which is very good for a 5MP camera. Boot time was just 2.5 sec-onds, but the 2.9-second re-cycle time was not as quick as the Kodak EasyShare V530’s 1.1 seconds. We noticed little shutter lag and found no sig-nificant pincushion distor-tion—just a bit of the usual barrel distortion.

Despite its small size, most users looking for a super-portable will be quite happy with the SD450’s image qual-ity and performance.

Canon PowerShot SD450 Digital Elph

$399.95 list. Canon U.S.A. Inc.,

www.usa.canon.com. llllm

THE *IST DS2 is no

model D-SLR.

THE SD450: one of

the best ultracompacts on the market.

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com 42

F I R S T L O O K S Consumer Electronics: Digital Cameras

Introducing Internet phone servicefrom the Internet experts.

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Call 1-866-ELNKVoice to sign up or go to www.earthlink.net/voice.

- Unlimited local and long-distance calling in the continental U.S. and Canada.

- Premium calling features like voicemail, caller ID and call waiting – no extra charge.

- First month of service FREE!

© 2006 EarthLink, Inc. *Offer and rates subject to change. Service not available in all areas. trueVoice Basic plan is billed at a rate of $.04/minute after first 500 minutes each month. Per minute international rates vary by country and are always billed in addition to monthly fees. Equipment Recovery Fee of $50.00 may apply to unreturned or non-working equipment upon cancellation. Activation fee may apply. Service is for fixed residential use only. Certain taxes, shipping, handling and other fees may apply. E911 service may be limited or not available before service is activated or in the case of power or broadband service failure. Directory or operator assistance charges will apply. See www.earthlink.net for all charges and rates. Cancellation must be by phone, U.S. mail, or FAX before the next billing period begins to prevent further charges. Other restrictions may apply.

All you need is a high-speed Internet connection and your regular phone handset. Then we’ll provide the rest, including award-winning service and support.

F I R S T L O O K S Consumer Electronics: MP3 Players

The Zen MicroPhoto Is Even Better in Colortery lasted for just a bit under 15 hours. Although that isn’t extraordinary, it’s certainly not terrible.

The 1.5-inch, 262,144-color OLED screen isn’t as bright as we hoped it would be, even with the contrast set at 100 percent, though colors are more vivid than on the Apple iPod nano. Pictures looked fi ne overall, and even though the detail wasn’t great, they looked the same from any viewing angle. Unfortu-nately, you can’t watch slide shows or view individual photos with musical accom-paniment.

You can set as many as ten manual bookmarks, en-

abling you to jump back into a fi le from where you left off. The FM tuner supports up to 32 presets, as well as FM recording.

Given the choice between the Zen MicroPhoto and the Philips GoGear HDD1630 (an 8GB version of that play-er, called the HDD1850, is now available), the Creative player has a slight edge in usability and screen quality. Although its tested battery life isn’t great, we like the fact that it has a removable battery. And let us not forget to mention that it’s available in ten colors.

Creative Zen MicroPhoto

$249.99 direct. Creative Technology

Ltd., www.creative.com. llllh

BY MIKE KOBRIN The new Creative Zen MicroPhoto ($249.99 direct) is still a com-pact 2 by 3. 3 by 0.7

inches and 3.8 ounces, like the original, but improves on it with a slightly larger (1.5-inch) color OLED screen,a beefi er (8GB) hard drive, and a few minor enhancements. Deep down, though, this is the same MP3 player we all know and (sort of) love.

The new edition is nearly identical to its monochrome predeces-sor, but now the front face is textured and protrudes slightly from

the white plastic back. All this does is make us-ing the touch strip a bit more of a tactile experi-ence. Unfortunately, the buttons surrounding the strip are also touch sen-sitive, so you can easily miscalculate and wind up jumping to the wrong spot in the menu system. But at least you can navigate in the dark, thanks to the signature glow-ing-blue outline and backlit buttons.

You can make part of the hard drive into a USB mass storage class–compatible drive for data storage, though you can’t load music this way. The Zen Micro Photo syncs with Windows PCs

via Windows Media Player or you can use Creative’s included software. The de-vice is PlaysForSure-com-patible, so you can load it up with protected WMAs from various online music down-load and subscription ser-vices, as well as with MP3s, unprotected WMAs, and

able wallpaper, was respon-sive overall, though we did experience a few temporary lockups when using the track skip buttons, and we often saw a “Please wait…” mes-sage when moving around in the menu system. We like the confi gurable main menu, though we wish you could

also confi gure the contex-tual menus.

LEGACY OF SOUNDOur subjective listen-ing tests proved that the Zen MicroPhoto con-tinues Creative’s legacy of producing very good sound quality.

Frequency response

is very flat. It begins to roll off as soon as it hits the bass region, but gen-tly enough that the play-er is down only about 7 dB or so at 20 Hz.

When using its default settings, the Zen Micro-

Photo puts out a remark-ably clean signal up to 24 on its 25-step volume scale. Smart Volume is still one of our favorite features in this line of players, because it eliminates harmonic distor-tion and keeps the volume uniform. It does lower the maximum output, but the level is still loud enough to make your ears ring.

The Zen MicroPhoto’s re-chargeable, removable bat-

WAV files. Unfortunately, the player still doesn’t sup-port lossless compression formats or gapless playback. Nor, as of this writing, does it support content from Au-dible.com, but that should be coming soon.

The interface, which adds a color screen and customiz-

THE ZEN MICROPHOTO is

available in ten colors.

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com 44

ANALYST'S TIPMike Kobrin , Lead Analyst

Flash memory prices are coming down, and capacities are rising. The fi rst 6GB fl ash-based MP3 player is here, and we’ll probably see double that within the next couple of years. Flash-based devices have no moving parts, and they won’t skip no matter how much you shake them. In addition, they can be signifi cantly smaller. Expect to see fl ash players put a lot of pressure on the “small hard drive” market in the coming months.

http://www.motioncomputing.com

F I R S T L O O K S Consumer Electronics: Speakers

BY MIKE KOBRINSaitek, best known for its gaming periph-erals, now has some welcome portable au-

dio entries. The Saitek A-250 ($129.95 direct), for example, is a versatile one-piece dual-speaker set with a neat trick up its sleeve: It can receive music wirelessly from any Windows PC via a USB 2.4-GHz transmitter.

An unusual design certain-ly helps separate this prod-uct from the pack. The A-250 looks a bit like the head of a praying mantis, reminding us of Zorak from Space Ghost but in a high-gloss black finish. The tweeter grilles are out-lined in metallic red (left) and copper (right). What makes this thing look really creepy are the 1-inch red drivers vis-ible beneath the grilles.

The A-250, billed as a 2.1 speaker system, has two eye-

like tweeters on either side behind black metal grilles. A downward-firing 3-inch subwoofer underneath is ported out the back. An active crossover at 400 Hz distrib-utes the high and low audio signals among the three in-ternal amplifiers. Although portable, at 3.5 by 13.8 by 4.8 inches (HWD) and about 1.7 pounds without batteries, the system is more suitable for the home than for travel.

You can control play/pause, track skip, and volume with your music software or the buttons on the speaker. The buttons work with any music software that supports

media keys on a PC keyboard. The line-in port and included cable let you connect to any audio playback device.

The 3-inch subwoofer is held off the surface by little rubber feet, so you actually do get a nice, tight bass re-sponse. Upper bass is excel-lent, which is what keeps the speaker from sounding tinny.

The volume is good up to about 9 on the 10-step scale: The speaker tends to distort

at maximum volume. We got a clear signal up to about 100 feet through walls and doors.

We like the A-250 a lot, but we have a couple of ideas for making it even better—Mac support, for starters. We’d also like to see a transmitter for portable players, and the monochrome LCD could use some beefi ng up in the view-ing-angle department. De-spite these minor quibbles, we give the Saitek A-250 our Edi-tors’ Choice and recommend it for vacation homes and for home/offi ce/dorm desktops.

Saitek A-250

$129.95 direct. Saitek,

www.saitekusa.com. llllh

Funky Wireless Speakers Deliver Sweet Sound

Snap, Crackle & Hiss: A Noisy iPod DockBY MIKE KOBRIN

Th e i . S o u n d M a x ($129.99 list) is a very n ice - look i ng por-

table iPod speaker/dock that pumps out plenty of volume and has the most full-featured iPod remote control we’ve seen yet. Its price is competi-tive with similar offerings from major players such as Altec Lansing. But the qual-ity of sound channeled by the dock is marred by distortion, hiss, and digital noise. With a hard drive–based Apple iPod, the noise is loud enough during playback t o m a k e i t hard to rec-ommend this product, but the results are somewhat bet-ter with the nano.

The speaker itself is a one-piece, two-channel affair, shaped rather like a bow tie. The dock is directly on top of the speaker. On either side are bass ports, which give the Max an advantage in low-end

sound over nonported models .

We tried o u t t h e Max with

several iPods, including full-size iPods, a mini, and a nano, and we heard a lot of digital noise at the beginnings of tracks with all of them. This included hard drive whine, chirping, swirling (which sounds like radio interfer-ence), hiss, and a continuous high-pitched sound. With the hard drive-based models, some of these noises contin-ued throughout playback,

though they disappeared after a few seconds with

the nano. When we pressed the wide-s t e r e o b u t t o n , we got a bit more bass and the highs

sounded livelier, but the distortion increased as well. We got far better results using the auxiliary line-in ca-ble instead of the iPod dock.

The best thing about the Max is its remote control, which has dedicated buttons for a surprising number of iPod features including scroll-ing through playlists, albums, and shuffl e/repeat modes.

The digital-noise prob-lem in the dock connector is the main thing holding the i.Sound Max back from su-perstardom in its category. But for now, the auxiliary line input is an acceptable workaround, though that means you can’t charge and play your iPod simultaneous-ly, and you lose access to the remote-control features. In its current state, the Max is listenable, but not quite ready for prime time.

i.Sound Max

$129.99 list. dreamGEAR,

www.dreamgear.net. llmmm

THE A-250’S COOL DESIGN is

matched by its performance.

YOU CAN dock your iPod on

top of the Max speaker.

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com 46

http://www.motioncomputing.com

F I R S T L O O K S Hardware: Storage

Storage Brontosaurus: 1-Terabyte Hard Drivesit houses four 250GB hard drives as opposed to the two 500GB drives in the One-Touch III Turbo and an inter-nal power supply.

The XL Desktop is rela-tively quiet, even with four drives spinning. In a design similar to that of high-den-sity servers, each hard drive slides easily in and out of the enclosure, making upgrading drives or replacing failed ones easier. This is a bit ironic, though: You can confi gure the XL Desktop only in a RAID 0 (striping) array. Since RAID 0 links all four drives togeth-er to achieve the 1TB capacity (and speed up performance), if you lose one drive you lose all your data.

Whether backing up using Windows or with Iomega’s Automatic Backup Pro soft-ware, our 1.2GB fi le took just 56 seconds.

The included Automatic Backup Pro software is pretty good, supporting scheduled backups, versioning, com-pression, Microsoft Windows readable backups, and cata-strophic failure recovery us-ing the bootable Solutions CD. Dantz’s Retrospect Express is included for Mac users.

The Iomega XL Desktop Hard Drive provides a direct-attached storage solution for those who need copious amounts space. But if you val-ue your data, you might wait until the next generation, which will support RAID 1 and RAID 5.

Iomega XL Desktop Hard Drive

$800 direct. Iomega Corp.,

www.iomega.com. lllmm

BY JOEL SANTO DOMINGO

So how much is a terabyte, really? Well, be sides the abstract notion of its

being 1 million kilobytes, it’s also enough storage for sev-eral million digital photos, a few hundred thousand MP3s, or thousands of hours of digital video. For most, a 1TB drive is overkill, but if you’re a graphics professional, post-production video editor, or anyone else who works fre-quently with massive files (and you don’t need network-ing capability), a 1TB direct-attached storage drive is the way to go.

Maxtor OneTouch III TurboThe Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo ($900 list) has RAID 0 and RAID 1 capability and stores

up to 1TB of data. Although we’d like to see a couple of improvements, this is the high-capacity direct-connect storage device to beat.

The OneTouch III Turbo’s small chassis—3.8 by 8.5 by 5.5 inches (HWD)—is clean-looking and attractive. (The power adapter is external, which helps the enclosure maintain its svelte fi gure). On the inside sit two 500GB hard drives in a RAID 0 array out of the box. RAID 0 stripes data across both drives, giv-ing you truly 1TB of storage. You can also easily confi gure the drives to RAID 1 (mirror-ing), which gives you 500GB of storage and 500GB of auto-matic backup. Unfortunately, the individual drives are not removable, and replacing them yourself voids the war-

ranty (if one fails, you have to send the OneTouch to a ser-vice center).

You can conf igure the single-button backup facil-ity for the default Retrospect Express HD backup (which is useful but basic), Maxtor’s Sync software, or any other program. The drive i s compat ible with Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows XP but comes formatted for OS X out of the box.

On our tests, the Retrospect Express HD soft-ware took around 2 minutes 30

its RAID 1 capability edge out the challenger, the Iomega XL Desktop. The OneTouch III Turbo earns our recommen-dation and should be at the top of your list.

Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo

$900 list. Maxtor Corp., www.maxtor

.com. llllm

Iomega XL DesktopHard Drive

The Iomega XL Desktop Hard Drive ($800 direct) is user-friendly and has good per-formance. But the fact that it offers only RAID 0 is restric-tive and leads us to conclude that the XL Desktop is not the best choice for mass storage.

The XL Desktop is rela-tively large—roughly 13 by 7 by 8 inches. But to be fair,

seconds to back up our 1.2GB test file via USB 2.0 when the array was configured to RAID 0. Although the overhead from the Retrospect software’s verifi cation process leads to the longish backup times, it also ensures data integrity.

The Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo excels as both an ac-tive data drive and a backup system. Its compactness and

ANALYST'S TIPJoel Santo Domingo , Lead Analyst

RAID 1 (or mirroring) uses two identical hard drives to maintain a continuous hardware backup of all the fi les you store on that drive. While it may seem like a waste to use hard drive storage in this manner, it can pay off if you lose your baby’s pictures to the gremlins that seem to plague hard drives these days. If one of the drives fails in a RAID 1 array, your data is safe and usable.

DO YOU really need

1TB of hard drive

space? Maxtor and

Iomega think so.

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com 48

http://www.alienware.com/mobile

F I R S T L O O K S Hardware: Desktops

Velocity Goes Mainstreamdia machine than the Gamer Ultra, which has a second SLI slot for a dual graphics card setup, its Doom 3 score (68 frames per second) shows that it can play games well at 1,024-by-768 resolution. Also thanks to the Vision GX's Ge-Force 6600 graphics proces-sor, you can take advantage of nVidia's PureVideo tech-nology, which improves vid-eo quality on DVD videos as well as on HD-encoded Windows Media fi les.

Si nce it ’s a si ng le -core system, it ’s a bit slower than some with dual-cores, such as the recently reviewed Poly-well MiniBox2 939NP-MCE, on tasks l ike running the Windows Media Encoder test (the Vision GX took 12:40; the MiniBox2, 7:43). Of course, the

M i n i Box 2 i s a more specialized (a nd more ex-

pensive, at $1,888) Media Center PC. The Vision GX performed well on

our Adobe Photo-shop Action set (1:51),

though again, it was slower than the dual-core

units we tested. Still, the Velocity Micro

Vision GX is a good main-stream PC that’s a bit less ex-pensive than similar systems from the larger manufactur-ers, and it’s more attractive, to boot. All in all, it justifi es the extra cost of moving up from compact and more lim-ited entry-level systems.

Velocity Micro Vision GX

With 2.2-GHz AMD Athlon 64 3700+

processor, 1GB DDR SDRAM, 200GB

SATA hard drive, 256MB nVidia Ge-

Force 6600 graphics card, dual-layer

DVD±RW drive, DVD-ROM drive, 17-

inch LCD monitor, Microsoft Windows

XP Home, $1,399 direct. Velocity

Micro Inc., www.velocitymicro.com.

lllhm

BY JOEL SANTO DOMINGO

The Velocit y Micro Vision GX ($1,399 direct, $1,104 with-

out monitor) is a main-stream retail system with a bit of boutique fl ash. It’s designed for those who want a powerful, upgrad-able multimedia machine but don’t want to spend more than about $1,500. Since Velocity Micro is ex-panding from direct sales into retail chains, you can even look one over before you buy.

This computer is for users who are not serious graphics or video professionals but who like to dabble in media tasks—perhaps taking red-eye out of digital photos, rip-ping entire CD collections to MP3, or occasionally burning DV camera footage to DVD. Such jobs need a machine that’s faster than the typical entry-level desktop and has a bit more hard drive space, RAM, a graphics card, and connectivity options.

The first thing you notice is the Vision GX’s sturdy metal case. Though mini-malist in design, it’s painted in a deep bluish-purple tone that’s somewhere between indigo and midnight blue. The keyboard, monitor, and speakers are the standard black, however. (This PC is aimed at the multimedia market, so Velocity Micro has omitted the ostentatious styling of its high-end gam-ing boxes.) The spacious case easily fits two or more hard drives and a couple of opti-cal drives. The motherboard has available ports for adding extra drives and also has free spots for a pair of PCI cards, a PCIe x1 adapter, and extra memory. The PCIe x16 slot is occupied by the included Ge-Force 6600 card, but this is easily swapped out for next-

generation graphics cards when they are released.

The Vision GX won’t re-quire any immediate up-grades, though, with an AMD Athlon 64 3700+ (a good main-stream 64-bit compatible pro-cessor), 1GB of DDR memory, a 256MB nVidia GeForce 6600 graphics subsystem, eight USB and two FireWire ports, and two DVD drives (one a dual-layer DVD±RW).

You won’t find the dual-core processor that some units, such as the Cyber-power Gamer Ultra 8500 SE

($999) include, but for many people that’s only a minor drawback. You don’t re-ally need dual-core’s multitasking capabilities if your multimedia dabbling is lim-ited to ripping, burning, and encoding once in awhile, and you mainly surf or play the occasional game. (You also have the consolation of a met-al case instead of a plastic one protecting your investment.)

And you certainly can play games on the Vision GX. Though it’s more of a general-purpose multime-

THE VISION GX

is a single-core

multi media system

with good compo-

nents, upgradabil-

ity, and a dash of

boutiquelike fl air.

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com 50

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F I R S T L O O K S Hardware: Printers

BY M. DAVID STONE

Certainly the most eye-catching feature on the thermal-dye Kodak

EasyShare Photo Printer 500 ($199.95 direct) is its 3.5-inch LCD for previewing photos. But while the large LCD is a nice touch, the EasyShare 500 stands out from the pack of dedicated photo printers for a different reason—the sheer number of its connec-tion choices.

The 500 has memory card slots for CompactFlash, Se-cure Digital, MultiMedia-Card, a reduced-size Multi-MediaCard, an xD-Picture Card, Memory Stick, Memo-ry Stick Duo, Memory Stick Pro, and Magic Gate connec-tors for printing from a PC, a PictBridge camera, or a USB key; and Bluetooth support for printing from camera phones and PDAs. An 802.11b card ($99.95 direct) lets you

connect the printer to a wire-less network.

The 2.8-pound EasyShare 500, at 3.1 by 13.1 by 7.3 inches (HWD) including the tray, is a touch larger than most printers dedicated to produc-ing 4- by 6-inch photos.

Output quality was very good, meeting our ex-pectations . Almost every print was true photo quality, but we did notice a tendency to lose detail in light areas. In one photo that included white clouds and a light-blue sky, both the clouds and the sky came out almost completely white. Colors otherwise tend to be punched up compared with the real thing. Output is waterproof, as it is with prints from all thermal-dye printers.

On our standard test suite for 4- by 6-inch photos, the EasyShare 500 averaged 1

minute 19 sec-onds per photo. That’s slower than the less expen-sive Canon Selphy CP510, our Editors’ Choice, which took 1:09, but faster than the high-end Editors’ Choice Epson PictureMate Deluxe Viewer Edition, which averaged 1:32.

Q u a l i t y i s a s tep above that of the CP510 and a step below the PictureMate’s, so for these three competitors, higher quality seems to go hand-in-hand with

slower speed. As w i t h m o s t printers , the E a s y S h a r e 5 0 0 s l o w e d d o w n a b i t when printing

images directly from a camera or

memory card.Even if you don’t

take advantage of the EasyShare 500’s

many connection op-tions, its balance of speed, quality, and cost per photo makes it a good choice.

Kodak EasyShare Photo Printer 500

$199.95 direct. Eastman Kodak Co.,

www.kodak.com. llllm

A Printer with Strong Connections

Small, Low-Priced Personal Monochrome Laser BY M. DAVID STONE

The Konica Minolta P a g e P r o 1 4 0 0 W ($119.99 direct) is one

of the least expensive mono-chrome laser printers we’ve seen, second only to the $99 Dell Laser Printer 1100. But although it’s fast, its output quality is below par. That makes it a poor choice for business use but a reasonable possibil-ity as a home or dorm room printer, with quality that’s adequate for things like personal correspondence and schoolwork.

At 9.4 by 13.9 by 16.1 inches (HWD) with paper tray and just 15.6 pounds, it’s light enough to move around easi ly and small enough to fi t on your desk.

The 1400W is built around a 17-page-per-minute engine, which pays off in reasonably fast performance. On our business applications suite, it finished in 9 minutes 50 sec-

onds. That’s roughly a minute faster than the Dell 1100 but slower than some competing models at the same price.

Unfortunately, the 1400W loses points on output qual-ity, producing text, graphics, and photo quality well below par for a monochrome laser. On our tests for text quality,

although more than half of our test fonts were easi-

ly readable at 4 points, one highly stylized font had some let-

ters merging into each other, making the text

hard to read even at 12 points—a problem we’ve never seen before with a monochrome laser. The most important

problem we saw with graph-ics output was a distracting banding, or streaking, on

most images. But there were other significant problems, including uneven coverage in solid fi lls and a tendency for thin lines to disappear.

Photos showed streaks, and there was a tendency for areas with similar shades of gray to blend into one another, as well as a loss of detail in dark and light areas.

If you care about output quality above all, the Dell 1100 is the better choice. And if you care about speed above all, go with the Brother HL-2040. As is, there is no com-pelling reason, at this price, to choose the 1400W over the competition.

Konica Minolta PagePro 1400W

$119.99 direct. Konica Minolta

Printing Solutions U.S.A. Inc., printer

.konicaminolta.com. llmmm

THE KODAK

EasyShare

includes a

bright LCD.

THE 1400W is fast, but quality is low.

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com 52

http://www.downloadovation.com

F I R S T L O O K S Hardware: Scanners

BY M. DAVID STONE

The Visioneer Strobe XP300 ($399 direct) is the latest in a long

line of Visioneer scanners that are both small enough to fi t between your keyboard and monitor—at 2 by 2.5 by 12 inches (HWD)—and highly portable (at 1.25 pounds). The XP300 also brings something new to the party: duplex scanning. That gives it a big leg up on earlier models.

You can supply power via the included AC cable or USB, which is a nice touch. Keep in mind, however, that the scanner slows down a bit when powered over USB.

ScanSoft PaperPort, the XP300’s primary software, is one of the best programs we’ve seen for scanning and document management. It lets you track your scanned documents and drag and drop fi les from the PaperPort

desktop into other programs. The XP300 we tested came with PaperPort 9, but Version 10 should be available by the time you read this. You can also download the new release from the Visioneer Web site.

The XP300’s claimed maximum optical resolution of 600 pixels per inch is more than enough to handle the offi ce-oriented tasks it is de-signed for: faxing, document management, creating e-mail attachments, and scanning to PDF fi le format—but it’s not ideal for photos.

PaperPort’s built-in optical character recognition (OCR) and the included ScanSoft OmniPage 12 OCR program both managed to recognize our Times New Roman test samples at 10 points and our Arial samples at 8 points without a mistake.

We ran into two minor problems in testing. First, when open, the paper guide in the back provides a straight-through path for input; when closed, it sends paper on a curved path. Finding the right partly-open position to make the guide work as promised was a little tricky.

The second, more trou-bling problem was how eas-ily the unskew feature, which electronically straightens crookedly scanned pages,

crashed the program, forc-ing us to reboot. Once you’re aware of the bug, you can avoid it by waiting a few sec-onds for processing to fi nish. Visioneer expects to have a fi x available for downloading by the time you read this.

Despite this problem, those who need convenient scan-ning will fi nd that the XP300 does the job and does it well.

Visioneer Strobe XP300

$399 direct. Visioneer Inc.,

www.visioneer.com. lllmm

Duplex Scans in a Record Small Size

HP’s New Flatbed Photo ScannerBY M. DAVID STONE

The HP Scanjet 4890 P h o t o S c a n n e r ($199.99 direct) is

the best argument we’ve seen lately for never buying a scanner based on the big numbers on the box. The claimed 4,800-pixel-per-inch (ppi) optical resolution and 48-bit color depth prom-ise excellent results for both photographic prints and slides. The real-ity doesn’t meet the promise.

Although photo is in the 4890’s name, the 4890 does well on almost every-thing but. It comes with both Twain and WIA drivers, so it scans from most Windows programs. And you can modify color

saturation, tint, and bright-ness, plus adjust brightness for highlights, shadows, and midtones.

To use the integrated OCR, you select a text for-mat for the output f ile. Choices

include RTF and searchable PDF, limiting the document-management capabilities. Also, there is no automatic

document feeder. Ac-curacy was reason-able, with no errors reading Times New Roman text at 10 points and Arial text at 8.

For slides, this was by far the fastest fl atbed

sc a n ner we ’ve seen, taking just 26 seconds , at 2,400 by 2,400 ppi, for one slide. M o s t f l a t b e d s c a n ner s t a ke twice as long.

Unfortunately, quality, not speed,

is where the 4890 falls short. On our

2,400-ppi slide test, it didn’t

deliver the level of detail it should have for the claimed resolution. The output was blurry compared with the 2,400-ppi results from other less-expensive models we tested. Photo scans showed a loss of detail in dark areas of complex slides, though the quality was acceptable in less-challenging slides.

The 4890 also had problems with photographic prints. One scan showed obvious streaks along a side—appar-ently the result of light leak-ing in along the edge.

The 4890 scans of images on photo paper are accept-able if you just want to print snapshots. But there are plen-ty of less expensive and bet-ter choices out there.

HP Scanjet 4890 Photo Scanner

$199.99 direct. Hewlett-Packard

Development Co., www.hp.com.

llmmm

THE SMALL XP300 offers duplex scanning.

THE HP 4890 doesn’t quite live up to

its name as a photo scanner.

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com 54

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F I R S T L O O K S Hardware: Laptops

Big on Extras, Short on Battery Lifetion to upgrade to Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. Fortunately, there are enough third-party applications that can help you organize your music and photos—and since there is no TV tuner, the lack of MCE is

not a deal-breaker.We l ike seeing

USB ports spread out , and the Sat-el l ite has two on the side and two in back. Rounding out its connectivity op-tions are FireWire, S-Video, and VGA ports , as well as a 5-in-1 memory card reader. As you would expect, the Satellite comes with a dual-layer DVD±RW drive (and these days, you

should expect nothing less from a multimedia notebook).

For those who enjoy watching movies, editing home videos, and fi ddling around with photos, the

Toshiba Satellite A105-S361 is a good choice, especially

considering the price. But the short battery life limits you to brief trips away from your desk, and the options are not as extensive as those that you’ll f ind on the HP Pavilion dv4000.

Toshiba Satellite A105-S361

With 2.0-GHz Intel Pentium M 760,

1GB SDRAM, 120GB hard drive, Intel

Graphics Media Accelerator 900

GM, 15.4-inch widescreen LCD, Intel

Pro Wireless 2200BG, dual-layer

DVD±R, Microsoft Windows XP Home

Edition, $1,450 direct. Toshiba

America Information Systems Inc.,

www.toshiba.com. lllhm

BY CISCO CHENG

The Toshiba Satellite A105 -S361 ($ 1 ,450 direct) is for media

lovers who are passionate about editing video, watch-ing movies, and uploading photos to Flickr. Toshiba has built a mainstream unit that remains portable even with a 15.4-inch widescreen. And although it isn’t a gaming ma-chine, its components should satisfy your need for speed.

The shade of dark gray sur-rounding the lid creates a nice slimming illusion. But the unit is already fairly light—6.0 pounds—compared with other 15.4-inch-screen note-books such as the HP Pavilion dv4000 (6.4 pounds) and the Acer TravelMate 8204WSMi (6.7 pounds). The Satellite has a bright, high-contrast screen—perfect for watching a DVD or working with photo or video files, but the glare can be troublesome when you’re working in bright l ight on documents such as Microsoft Word or Excel fi les.

The components you get on the Satel l ite are very similar to those of its close competitor, the HP Pavilion dv4000, for about the same price. The Satellite comes loaded with a 2.0-GHz Penti-um M 760, 1GB of RAM, and integrated Intel graphics. Unlike with the HP, however, you can’t upgrade to a dis-crete graphics solution.

Toshiba will let you up-grade to a 120GB hard drive; by contrast, you can’t go above 100GB on the dv4000. If you plan on doing some

heavier video editing while running other tasks, you may want to consider a dual-core system, such as the Dell In-spiron E1705.

On our SYSmark 2004 SE benchmark tests, the Satellite and the dv4000 were very close r iva ls , with the Satel-lite narrowly e d g i n g o u t t h e d v4 0 0 0 on the over-all score (153 versu s 1 5 1). Both scores are good, sig-nifying that these systems are effective at handl ing media appli-

about 3 hours, according to the company.

A set of media buttons (Play/Pause, Stop, Rwd, and FFWD) controls DVD and CD playback in Windows and the Toshiba Express Media Play-er. Express Media Player is a

more stripped-down instant-on interface than HP’s Quick-Play 2.0, so you can access only content from the optical drive. (With QuickPlay, you can access any multimedia fi le on your hard drive). The built-in Harman Kardon speakers offer crisp MP3 playback. The touchpad is responsive, but we found it a bit too small.

One important note: This system does not offer an op-

cations such as Adobe Photo-shop, Adobe Premiere, and those from Macromedia.

Unfortunately, the sys-tems also shared unimpres-sive battery life, though the Satellite managed to last 17 minutes longer (2 hours 28 minutes) than the dv4000 (2:11). Toshiba does offer an eight-cell battery pack ($145), which weighs a little less than half a pound and lasts

ANALYST'S TIPCisco Cheng , Lead Analyst

Dual-core processing is the latest craze in notebooks. The performance gain of a system with an Intel Core Duo processor compared with a Pentium M system is astounding. If you’re in the market for a new laptop and demand high performance for your work (or just for fun), investing into a Core Duo laptop is a smart move. The list of vendors offering dual-core portables is growing by the week, and prices are very competitive.

THE TOSHIBA A105 has many multimedia extras.

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com 56

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F I R S T L O O K S Software

Five New Approaches to Photo Sharing

to browse photos already on your PC, and it’s also a means of sending and receiv-ing digital images. Much like Flickr, it lets you swap pics with strangers as well as with loved ones, fostering an online community of photo enthusiasts.

Whereas other apps orga-nize photos into virtual al-bums, FilmLoop sorts them into loops—long strips of images that scroll endlessly across your screen. You can view one loop at a time or string them together. Natu-rally, the scrolling images are thumbnails—not full-size photos—but when you see one you like, you can blow it up to full size, print it out, or attach comments.

Creating your fi rst loop is as simple as dragging a few pictures onto the FilmLoop ticker and dropping them. As you do, the client automati-cally uploads your loop to the company’s servers, and you’re free to share with oth-

BY CADE METZ

What’s the best way to share dig ita l photos? That’s a

matter of opinion. There are many tools to choose from, and each has its merits—not to mention its drawbacks. Here, we review five of the latest products. If you can’t f ind something you l ike among these six, you’re ter-ribly hard to please.

AOL PicturesAOL Pictures, open to anyone, gives you un-limited online photo storage, simple photo-

editing tools, and professional printing and gift services. It’s also delightfully easy to use.

After downloading an ActiveX control, you can up-

load photos simply by drag-ging them into your browser window and dropping them there. The photo-manage-ment tools aren’t unusual, but they’re powerful enough—and straightforward enough—for the average user.

What’s unusual is the way the service shares photos. With most such sites, you simply upload images to the Web and mail out a URL that friends and family can visit to view the shots and order

prints. You can do the same for friends or family who aren’t AOL Pictures users. But for fellow AOL Pictures users, you can go one step further and have your pho-tos posted to their AOL Pic-tures accounts, right beside their own photos. If you’re an AOL member, you can even use AOL Pictures from your mobile phone or PDA.

AOL Pictures

Free. America Online Inc.,

www.aol.com/pictures. lllhm

BubbleShare (beta)BubbleShare is billed as “the first zero-registration, pri-vate service for sharing photo albums with voice captions over the Internet.” That’s not exactly true—you’ll have to enter your name and e-mail

address—but this is one of the Web’s most elegant and intuitive photo sites. You can share impressively slick on-line photo albums in minutes, dragging pics straight from Windows Explorer and drop-ping them into the app. And, yes, you can even tag your pictures with voice captions.

The built-in editing tools are surprisingly dynamic. You can change the album’s title, for instance, simply by double-clicking on it and typ-

ing straight onto the page. And you can drag and drop to reorder images.

To share your album with others, simply hit the button marked Share Album, then key in the e-mail addresses you’d like to send a link to.

The company touts Bub-bleShare’s “zero-registra-tion” setup, but in the end, this is the service’s one draw-back. The service doesn’t create an umbrella account that lets you access all your albums. Instead, each time you create one, you’re sent a new link where you go to continue editing and manag-ing. But saving and keeping up with all those different links can be a pain.

BubbleShare (beta)

Free. BubbleLabs,

www.bubbleshare.com. lllhm

FilmLoop (beta)FilmLoop is a free download-able app that scrolls picture after picture across your desktop. It’s a terrific way

PICTURES YOU RECEIVE from other AOL Pictures members are

automatically added to your AOL Pictures folder.

FILMLOOP USES a ticker format

to exhibit photos. Your images are

added to a loop that acts as a sort

of scrolling slide show.

BUBBLESHARE’S EDITING TOOLS are surprisingly dynamic,

letting you input your edits right on the page and drag and drop

images to adjust their order.

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com 58

F I R S T L O O K S Software

ers. You can list your new loop in the FilmLoop Public Directory, giving access to anyone, or you can key in a few e-mail addresses, sharing only with people you know.

If you like, you can even give friends and family the freedom to edit your loops with their own comments or pictures. If ten people attend the same party, for instance, they can create a single loop of party photos, uploading from their own cameras, and anyone can comment on any-one else’s pictures.

FilmLoop (beta)

Free. FilmLoop Inc.,

www.fi lmloop.com. llllm

PhanfarePhanfare is not for everyone. Some will take issue with the way it straddles the line be-tween local app and Web service; others may feel it needs bet-ter photo-manage-ment tools. But for sharing photos and videos, it’s wonder-fully quick and easy.

Typically, such a sharing tool is either a pu re brow s er -based Web service or a downloadable app (l ike OurPic-tures) that the per-son v iew i ng t he content must also

dow n load . T houg h you download and install Phan-fare locally, it shares your photos by posting them to the Web. For $54.95 yearly (or $6.95 per month), the compa-ny provides a sharp-looking personal site where you can post up to a gigabyte of con-tent each month. You simply drag pictures or videos and drop them onto the client app, which seamlessly up-loads them to your Web site.

When so many other ser-vices are Web-only applica-tions, why go through the trouble of installing software locally? The client makes or-ganizing pictures and videos into various albums a snap. And, since it uploads to the Web in the background, you don’t have to thumb-twiddle waiting for pictures to post.

With the local app, you can do basic photo editing, add captions, change the look of online albums, and send

e-mail notif ica-tions about new postings. If you like, you can even send notifi cations via RSS feed.

Phanfare auto-matica l ly com-presses photos a n d p r o m p t l y posts them, so several seconds after you’ve set up an album, your pictures show up

on your site. Once this low-res version posts, the client also sends a high-res copy to the Web servers, creating a backup for your photo col-lection and also letting you order high-quality prints. (The service integrates with online printers Kodak, Shut-terfl y, and SnapFish.)

Phanfare

$54.95 per year, $6.95 monthly.

Phanfare Inc., www.phanfare.com.

llllm

SnapJot (beta)Storytelling is part of the fun of sharing photos with loved ones, and SnapJot is an effort to bring this to the Web. You don’t just post photos and videos to the site, you post them as part of a running nar-rative, adding descriptions, explanations, anecdotes, and

other memories. As people browse, they can include their own photos, videos, and stories. The ba-sic service is free and provides up to 10 0M B of on l i ne storage each month.

Once you s ig n up, you can launch your f irst SnapJot story with a mouse click. You begin each with a title, a short description, and a cover picture, then

you build a list of “Jots”—a series of events that make up your narrative. Each Jot is a separate Web page you can fill with photos, videos, and rich text. One disappointment is that rather than uploading files en masse, you’re forced to post them one at a time.

Once your story is f in-ished, you can send private links to friends and family or open the story up to the en-tire SnapJot community. You can give viewers the power to post comments, add their own media and text, or even create new Jots.

If you’re not willing to put a healthy amount of time into the service, your finished product won’t be that com-pelling. But if you’re a story-teller, SnapJot could be just what you’re looking for.

SnapJot (beta)

100MB storage per month, free; 1GB

per year, $24.99; 2GB, $39.99. SnapJot

Inc., www.snapjot.com. llhmm

Photo Finish

AOL PICTURES The site for the

masses, AOL Pictures gives

users smooth photo sharing,

whether or not their friends are

members.

BUBBLESHARE This service

gives you a quick-and-dirty

way to edit and post your im-

ages for friends to see. It’s as

close to “zero-registration”

as you can get.

FILMLOOP The scrolling ticker

is addictive, and FilmLoop lets

you view your own “Loops,”

Loops from friends, or Loops

from the community at large.

PHANFARE Phanfare is easy to

use, and you’ll get great-look-

ing results. Just upload images

using the local app and send

your friends online to view and

download hi-res images.

SNAPJOT SnapJot is a way to

share memories, not just pic-

tures. It takes more time and

effort than the other services,

but if you’re a storyteller, this

might be the way to go.

WITH SNAPJOT, your photos become part of a

narrative made up of “Jots”—groups of pictures

and captions that tell a story.

www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 59

PHANFARE TAKES an interest-

ing approach, letting you up-

load and edit your online photo

albums using a local app.

Slim and Versatile LCDs NEC MultiSync 90GX2

The 90GX2 ($480 street) is NEC’s latest addition

to its MultiSync line. Fast pixel response,

a USB hub, a nd solid image qual-

ity will make this 1,280-by-1,024, 19-inch monitor

appeal to gamers and multimedia buffs.

The 90GX2’s off-white case and thin silver bezel provide a welcome change from the standard black. Less welcome, in some situations, is the panel’s high-gloss, anti-refl ective coating. It produces a crisper image but is too re-fl ective under bright light.

The monitor t i lts and swivels but does not allow height or pivot adjustment. A removable panel on the rear hides DVI-D and analog con-nections, an upstream USB port, and two downstream USB ports. Two additional downstream USB ports are on the left side of the screen. A removable shroud on the mounting arm keeps the vari-ous cables tucked away.

We were generally pleased with the 90GX2’s motion display. The 4-ms pixel-re-sponse rate worked well for displaying fast-action 3D graphics. Colors were bright and movement fl owed smoothly, although we saw sporadic ghosting. Some motion artifacts appeared during DVD viewing, but im-age quality was quite good. The 90GX2 did have some trouble, however, displaying small font sizes.

Those who work with de-tailed images or a lot of text should look elsewhere, but gamers and video buffs will appreciate the NEC Multi-Sync 90GX2’s performance.

NEC MultiSync 90GX2

$480 street. NEC Solutions (America)

Inc., www.nec.com. lllhm

BY JOHN R. DELANEY

Are you sti l l getting by w it h t he sa me bulky, dusty, beige

CRT monitors? It’s time to put them out to pasture. The new generation of LCD moni-tors is slender, versatile, and affordable. And the best part is, they work equally well in the offi ce as they do at home. Here, we review three top contenders that conserve precious desktop space, offer good performance, and even ease eyestrain. (Flick-ering CRTs are to blame for many—though not all—end-of-day headaches.)

Some of today’s ‘business’ displays include more video input options, integrated USB ports, and fast pixel-response times. If blasting aliens is your idea of kicking back after a tough day at the offi ce, these monitors are ready to rumble. You know what they say about all work and no play.

HP LP2065 The new f lagship business display from Hewlett-Pack-ard—the HP LP2065 ($649 direct)—brings style and

functionality to any setting, home or office. And its relatively fast pix-el-response rate will even make this monitor ap-pealing to some gamers.

T h e 2 0 . 1 - i n c h screen has a resolution of 1,600 by 1,200 pixels and includes a built-in USB hub. The black rectan-gular stand tilts 35 degrees, swivels 90, and lets you ad-just the height by 5 inches. The panel pivots 90 degrees counterclockwise and comes with Portrait Display’s Pivot Pro software. A quick- release latch at the rear of the display lets you remove the panel from its pedestal for wall or swing-arm mounting.

If you prefer not to use the on-screen display (OSD), HP’s Display Assistant soft-ware lets you play with the image via a wizard. The monitor also comes with four downstream USB ports, two DVI-I connectors, an upstream USB port, and a cable-lock slot. And while we

like the display’s dual DVI-I connectors (most dual-input LCD monitors come with only DVI-D and RGB), we wish it included S-Video or composite video inputs.

The LP2065’s performance is much better with a digital signal (instead of analog), but it did an excellent job of displaying small fonts (down to 5.3 points) in both modes. Viewing angles were very good in both vertical and horizontal planes. It also did a fi ne job of displaying fast-motion sequences on our DVD and gaming tests, with only occasional artifacts and ghosting.

There are less-expensive 20-inch LCD monitors out there, but the LP2065 is a good deal for corporate or home users who demand high-end performance and require fl exibility when con-necting to their various PCs.

HP LP2065

$649 direct. Hewlett-Packard Develop-

ment Co., www.hp.com. llllm

THE 90GX2 has

a sharp image

that sometimes

feels too bright.

THE HP LP2065 offers a vari-

ety of connectivity options.

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com 60

F I R S T L O O K S Small Business: Displays

F I R S T L O O K S Small Business: Displays

Lenovo ThinkVision L201p The classic business-black Lenovo ThinkVision L201p monitor will blend into any offi ce environment, particu-larly those already equipped with IBM/Lenovo systems. But even die-hard IBM buy-ers may want to think twice before making the leap with this monitor. Although it has good image quality and wide viewing angles , you can fi nd better and lower-priced alternatives.

The 20.1-inch, 1,600-by-1,200 resolution LCD panel is framed by an ultraslim bezel that widens slightly at the bottom. The monitor can pivot up to 90 degrees clock-wise, tilt 30 degrees, swivel 90, and move as much as 4.3 inches vertically. The screen doesn’t come with image-ro-tation software, however, so

unless your graph-ics card supports rotat ion , you’l l have to shell out another $35 or so to use the pivot capability.

The L201p pro-vides digital and a n a l o g i n p ut s and comes with cables for both connections, but that’s the extent of the connectiv-ity options—no USB ports or multimedia video inputs as seen on the HP LP2065.

The L201p’s performance on our DisplayMate tests was better than average. Results in analog and digital modes were nearly identical, and grayscale performance was good across the board. But

we were disap-pointed with the way the panel dis-played small text; fonts below 6 .8 points were very diffi cult to read.

Our DVD movie and gaming tests revealed that the monitor had a mod-erate tendency to produce ghost trails and artifacts (which we expected, since the panel has a 16-ms pixel-response time). The Lenovo Think-

Vision L201p is a very capable 20-inch LCD monitor. It per-forms well but is priced sig-nificantly higher than other top performers.

Lenovo ThinkVision L201p

$799 direct. Lenovo Group Ltd.,

www.lenovo.com. lllmm

THE LENOVO L201P is

outfi tted in classic black and is

business-ready, yet it is also a

bit pricey.

www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 61

Sometime this year Windows Vista, the next incarnation of Micro-

soft’s operating system, will appear. And during roughly the same

period, Microsoft Offi ce 12 will show up. Should you upgrade?

Not if you can help it. Operating-system upgrades are particu-

larly diffi cult, because your machines aren’t equipped for them.

Your PCs were confi gured specifi cally for the version of Windows

they came with. Pushing a new, more demanding OS onto them

will almost certainly cause heartaches, because every PC in your

company is different. Despite your best efforts at standardiza-

tion, every employee has a slightly different software suite and

often different hardware as well. After an upgrade, some systems

will work and some won’t. Even when they do, you'll likely be left

with performance problems, because the upgraded machines

probably lack suffi cient processor power, memory, or disk capac-

ity to cope with the new operating system.

But believe it or not, applications upgrades can be even trickier,

because employees may not have the same

set of applications. Even if they do, they often have different versions. So the effects

may be unpredictable. Here are just a few

examples of problems from my own experi-

ence and from the experience of others.

• When PayCycle customers tried to up-

grade from Quicken 2004 to Quicken 2005,

they could no longer download their payroll transactions because

Intuit abandoned the QFS fi le-transfer format.

• Quicken 2005 lost track of my own online payments, and In-

tuit tech support could not fi gure out how to get it to remember

them. Their recommendation was to revert to Quicken 2004.

• Outlook 2003 disabled my Sony Clié's ability to communicate

with Outlook. It took a serious effort at reverse kludging (not the

same as reverse engineering) to fi x the problem.

• Symantec's Norton Antivirus 2005 disabled my Netgear

MP101 digital music player's ability to fi nd its disk database on my

server. It also blocked the ability of installation programs, such

as Hewlett-Packard's multifunction printer programs, to commu-

nicate with the computers on a network. Finally, a senior tech at

Symantec advised me to disable the product's worm protection,

which he said is safe to do because the product's AutoProtect

feature provides more than adequate protection.

I could go on, but I'm sure you could

as well. If there is a bottom line here, it’s

that if your users don't absolutely need

to use the features in a new version of

a product, don't upgrade. And when it

comes to operating systems, if you feel

compelled to upgrade, bite the bullet and

buy new computers, too. >MORE ON THE WEB For reviews, tips, and advice,

all with a focus on small and

medium businesses, visit

www.smartcompany.com

Why I Hate Upgrades

John Dickinson

F I R S T L O O K S Small Business: Software

BY KATHY YAKAL

T he most signif icant change to QuickBooks Online Edition is the

new payroll preparation sys-tem, though there are tons of other additions, like new customization, invoices , billable time tracking, and multiple user-permission levels. The online version is a far cry from Intuit’s top-of-the-line small business pro-duct, QuickBooks Premier ($399.95), but its anywhere/anytime access makes it a capable tool.

Tracking money in and out is fast and easy. You can man-age your fi nancial accounts; keep contact records for customers, vendors, and em-ployees; and pay bills. The site also handles invoices, estimates, and sales receipts, and generates reports. An in-teractive graphical fl owchart divides primary tasks into

income and expenses. Nu-merous links take you to vari-ous tasks and transactions, as well as to overview pages for your company and employ-ees, customers and vendors, banking and reports, lists and help. Each of these cen-ters are exceptionally well designed and effective.

QBOE’s biggest defi cits? No inventory, meaning there’s no way to keep track of your product levels and need for reordering. And QBOE lacks purchase orders, online bank-ing and bill-pay features, and any true job-tracking tools.

Support is handled through the Web site, with responses

within 30 minutes to help re-quests made between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Pacifi c time, Mon-day through Friday).

Businesses with modest needs can get by with the basic package ($19.95). Online Pay-roll, implemented simply and well, is an extra $14.95/month; budgeting and class track-ing, $7.95/month; and sales-related tools, $9.95/month. Online Edition Plus wraps this all up for $39.95/month.

We’d be happy to see a low-er price, especially consider-ing what this current iteration lacks, but if your financial processing needs are fairly modest and you need remote access, this is your only really viable choice.

QuickBooks Online Edition

$19.95/month, plus numerous ad-

ditional charges for three users and an

accountant; $39.95 for Online Edition

Plus, which includes all extras. Intuit

Inc., www.qboe.com. lllmm

Keep Your Books on the Web

Disappointing DefenderBY NEIL J. RUBENKING

Laplink’s new PCdefense includes real-time pro-tection against spyware

and keyloggers, on-demand scanning for malware, di-saster recovery, and repair of system settings, but this fi rst release doesn’t succeed.

We installed PCdefense on a clean system and tried to install our standard col-lection of spyware and keyloggers , with disappoint-ing results. One of the 6 commer-cia l keyloggers wiggled past Key-logger Prevention, logging keystrokes and other activ-ity with impunity. PCdefense tried

to block the other 5, but all installed at least partially. PCdefense did detect all 15 of our spyware samples, but even so, it fully prevented in-stallation of only 3.

After a signifi cant malware alert, you’ll want to scan the system to clear out all traces. Unfortunately, though PCde-

fense offers three distinct scans—for viruses, spyware, and rootkits—the results were disappointing here, too. PCdefense repeatedly locked up Windows Explorer on one test system and did a dismal job of locating, disabling, and removing the malware.

The Rootkit Scan turned up suspicious ele-ments in several of the infested sys-tems, but it didn’t offer to remove them. A help tech-nician suggested either searching the Internet for a specific removal tool or using Di-saster Recovery to back up, refor-mat, and restore the system. This

is Laplink’s recommended technique, but it would be a lot faster to use a product with rootkit removal built in, such as Spy Sweeper 4.5 or Spyware Doctor 3.5.

The Disaster Recovery module does offer impres-sively simple backup and restore of the entire sys-tem. It’s similar to a Norton Ghost-style image backup, but it omits hardware-specif-ic elements that could cause problems. Backup is an im-portant part of data security, but PCdefense needs to han-dle malware more effective-ly. And while some problems that we encountered, such as Explorer locking up, were fixed, more improvement is needed. We can’t recommend this version, but keep an eye out for updates.

Laplink PCdefense

$44.95 direct. Laplink Software Inc.,

www.laplink.com. llhmm

QUICKBOOKS ONLINE EDITION’s anywhere/anytime access

makes it a good choice for many small businesses.

LAPLINK’S PCDEFENSE combines security with

backup, but the security doesn’t succeed.

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com 62

Lenovo recommends Windows® XP Professional

It looks like a revolutionary. But don’t let the titanium cover fool you. Underneath, it’s all ThinkPad. TheLenovo ThinkPad Z60 titanium with Intel® Centrino® Mobile Technology.New Thinking. New Thinkpad.

Lenovo recommends Windows® XP Professional

Availability: All offers subject to availability. Lenovo reserves the right to alter product offerings and specifi cations at any time, without notice. Lenovo is not responsible for photographic or typographic errors. *Pricing: Prices do not include tax or shipping and handling or recycling fees and are subject to change without notice. Reseller prices may vary. Warranty: For a copy of applicable product warranties, write to: Warranty Information, P.O. Box 12195, RTP, NC 27709, Attn: Dept ZPYA/B676. Lenovo makes no representation or warranty regarding third party products or services. Footnotes: (1) Mobile Processors: Power management reduces processor speed when in battery mode. (2) Wireless: based on IEEE 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g respectively. An adapter with 11a/b, 11b/g or 11a/b/g can communicate on either/any of these listed formats respectively; the actual con-nection will be based on the access point to which it connects. (3) Included software: may differ from its retail version (if available), and may not include user manuals or all program functionality. License agreements may apply. (4) Memory: For PCs without a separate video card, memory supports both system and video. Accessible system memory is up to 64MB less than the amount stated, depending on video mode. (5) Hard drive: GB = billion bytes. Accessible capacity is less; up to 4GB is service partition. (6) Battery: These model numbers achieved Battery Rundown Time of at least the time shown during testing. A description of the testing is availableat lenovo.com/pc/ww/thinkpad/batterylife. Battery life (and recharge times) will vary based on many factors including screen brightness, applications, features, power management, battery conditioning and other customer preferences. (7) Activating Verizon Wireless Service: Lenovo customers will be contacted after purchase to activate service; requires separate agreement with Verizon Wireless and is subject to the Customer Agreement, Calling Plan and credit approval. Service and airtime charges will apply; $175 early termination fee. Verizon Wireless, not Lenovo, is solely responsible for service. Service not available in all areas; purchaser is responsible for verifying that service is available for the intended location before purchasing a computer equipped with WAN card. Network details, coverage limitations and maps at: http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/mobileoptions/broadband/serviceavailability.jsp?opener=b2b (8) Client Security Solution: preloaded on select models; requires software download. (9) Travel Weight: includes battery and optional travel bezel instead of standard optical drive in Ultrabay bay, if applicable; weight may vary due to vendor components, manufacturing process and options. (10) Thinness: may vary at certain points on the system. Trademarks: The following are trademarks of Lenovo: ThinkPad, ThinkCentre, UltraConnect, Access Connections, Rescue and Recovery, ThinkPad Part Replicator II, Active Protection System, ThinkPad dock, ThinkVantage and ThinkVision. IBM and the IBM logo are registered trademarks of IBM and are used under license. Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Celeron, Celeron Inside, Centrino, Core Inside, Intel, Intel Core, Intel Inside, Intel SpeedStep, Intel Viiv, Intel Xeon, Itanium, Itanium Inside, Pentium, Pentium Inside, the Centrino logo, the Intel logo and the Intel Inside logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of other companies. ©2006 Lenovo. All rights reserved. Visit www.lenovo.com/safecomputing periodically for the latest information on safe and effective computing.

To shop or locateyour local reseller

It takes all kinds to make up a family. Well, here are some members of ours. Serious machines for serious business. Lenovo ThinkPad®

notebooks and ThinkCentre® desktops for the creative, practical, ambitious, nomadic, thrifty and even clumsy members of your family. Each featuring the kind of world-class technology that continues to make ThinkPad and ThinkCentre the envy of the industry. Just part of a whole line of Lenovo PCs.

ThinkCentre E50 Towerdistinctive innovationsRescue and Recovery™ – one-button recovery and restore solution

system featuresIntel® Celeron® D 331 Processor (2.66GHz)

Microsoft® Windows® XP Home

256MB DDR memory at 400MHz

40 GB Hard Drive, CD-ROM

6 USB 2.0 ports (2 Frontside)

think express model

$379 PN 9214A1U

Option17” ThinkVision® Flat Panel L171 Monitor$319 PN 9417AB1

ThinkPad T60distinctive innovationsActive Protection System™ – Airbag-like technology to help protect your hard drive

system featuresIntel® Centrino® Duo Mobile Technology

Intel® Core™ Duo Processor T2300 Intel® Pro/Wireless 2915abg

Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional

14” XGA TFT (1280x768)

512MB DDR2 memory at 667MHz

60GB Serial ATA Hard Drive, CD-RW/DVD Drive

think express model

$1499 PN 1953D6U

Option512MB DDR2 memory at 667MHz $94 PN 40Y7733

ThinkPad X60distinctive innovationsThinkVantage™ Client Security8 – Strong security as a standard feature

system featuresIntel® Centrino® Duo Mobile Technology

Intel® Core™ Duo Processor T2300 Intel® Pro/Wireless 2915abg

Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional

12.1” XGA TFT

60GB Serial ATA Hard Drive

4.1lbs travel weight9 and only 1.1” thin10

think express model

$1499 PN 170947U

OptionThinkPad X60 Series Extended Life Battery$179 PN 40Y7005

ThinkCentre E50 Towerdistinctive innovationsRescue and Recovery™ – one-button recovery and restore solution

system featuresIntel® Pentium® 4 519 Processor (3.06GHz)

Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional

512MB DDR memory at 400MHz

80GB Hard Drive, CD-RW

6 USB 2.0 Ports (2 Frontside)

think express model

$699 PN 921525U

OptionLexmark X7170 All-In-One printer with USB cable$149 PN 40Y8260

ThinkPad Z60 notebook available with Intel® Centrino® Mobile Technology

ThinkPad Z60mdistinctive innovationsThinkPad Productivity Center – ThinkPadhelp at your fi ngertips

system featuresIntel® Centrino® Mobile Technology

Intel® Pentium® M 740 Processor (1.73GHz)1

Intel® Pro/Wireless 9215ABG2

Microsoft® Windows® XP Home3

15.4” SXGA Widescreen (1280x800)

512MB4 DDR2 memory at 533MHz

40GB5 Serial ATA Hard Drive, CD-RW/DVD Drive

think express model

$1149 PN 2529-03U

OptionThinkPad Z60m 9 Cell Li-Ion Battery6

$179 PN 40Y6797

ThinkPad Z60tdistinctive innovationsActive Protection System™ – Airbag-like technology to help protect your hard drive

system featuresIntel® Pentium® M 740 Processor ( 1.73GHz)

Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional

Integrated BT and Verizon WWAN7

14.1” XGA Widescreen (1280x768)

512MB DDR2 memory at 533MHz

80GB Serial ATA Hard Drive, DVD Recordable Drive

think express model

$1799 PN 2511-FEU

OptionThinkPad Essential Port Replicator$179 PN 250510W

Call 1 866 426-7853 Go to lenovo.com/newthinkpad/m100

F I R S T L O O K S Software: VoIP

Talk Gets Cheaper for Small Businesses

mail after a certain time. Hunt groups let calls be dis-tributed to a team simultane-ously or according to criteria such as whose line is free.

To prevent the system from choking, administra-tors can limit mailbox stor-age to anywhere between 1KB and 5MB. A good over-view screen shows how much space each user is occupying, and Web access to messages lets users easily manage their voice mail accounts.

We were amazed at the breadth of features packed into the DVX-1000, like the CDR capability that lists every call handled by the system along with the calling parties, date, time, and dura-tion. We were also impressed by the ease of system setup and confi guration.

T he DPH-14 0 phones could use a more automated configuration and tighter integration into the overall system, but the DVX-1000 lets you outfi t your company with a feature-packed IP te-lephony solution for under $2,000 (plus $139 per seat). If you run a small shop, that should put this PBX at the top of your shopping list.

IP Telephony DVX-1000

DVX-1000, $1,599 direct, plus $139 per

seat. D-Link Corp., www.dlink.com.

llllm

BY OLIVER KAVEN

Recently D-Link intro-duced an IP PBX for businesses with 25

or fewer employees: the IP Telephony DVX-1000 ($1,599 direct). The product is part of a complete line called the xStack IP Telephony Solution, which consists of the DVX-1000, an analog trunk gate-way (the DVG-3004S), and DPH-140S VoIP telephones.

The DVX-1000 is a SIP (Session Initiation Proto-col) telephony switch that includes an auto-attendant, a call-forwarding and hold capability, IVR (Interactive Voice Response), voice mail with Web-based user access, and support for up to 25 ex-tensions. The integrated con-ferencing bridge has a Web interface that lets you sched-ule conference calls, issue invitations to participants, and restrict access via PIN authentication.

EASY TO CONFIGURESetup is no harder than for any other network-attached device that uses a Web inter-face. You can give the DVX-1000 a static IP address or have it obtain one from your DHCP server. Once the unit has an IP address, you can use the Web interface for all configuration, including the setup of the gateway, DNS parameters, and SMTP-deliv-ered system alerts. To ensure date and time accuracy—es-pecially important since time stamps for voice mail and Cal l Detai l Reporting (CDR) rely on the PBX clock—you can point the DVX-1000 to two external NTP (Network Time Proto-col) sources.

Adding a new user or a new extension merely requires a few mouse clicks in the Call Server section. Registration involves nothing more than

assigning the new username and extension to a valid SIP ID on the network.

Once configured with an ID and extension, a DPH-140 ($134.99) phone is available to the DVX-1000. This is the only part of the solution that requires advanced know-ledge of SIP and the workings of an IP telephony system.

The DVX-1000 can use multiple gateways. This en-ables administrators to send certain traffi c over the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) and other traffic over the Internet using SIP. Connecting the DVX-1000 to the PSTN requires a bridge between the local PSTN and your IP network. The $699 D-Link DVG-3004S can do the job. It offers four RJ-11 an-alog FXO (Foreign Exchange Offi ce) ports for connecting to the local PSTN and one

10/100 Base-TX connector for attaching to your local Ethernet network.

ROUTING CALLSAuto-attendant with full IVR—a feature usually found only in higher-end systems—lets administrators config-ure the PBX to greet callers and direct them to different departments, specific user extensions, or a prerecorded message. You can also create rules that route callers based on your company’s working hours or observed holidays. Upload any voice prompts you want as WAV fi les.

The DVX-1000 supports user groups and hunt groups. Both allow a set of names or extensions to be treated as a whole for easier administra-tion. A rule applied to the sales group, for example, could shunt calls to voice

www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 65

D-LINK’s solution has features that you’d

expect only from higher-end systems.

MESSAGES TO BE PLAYED for callers can be set up in the Auto-attendant confi guration menu.

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com66

More jaw-dropping technology resides in the Mercedes-Benz S550 than

in any other car today. The COMAND cockpit-control knob on the console

outdoes similar systems from Acura, Audi, BMW, and Infi niti. Voice input

works well; we like the way possible phrases show up on the center-of-dash

COMAND display. Night View Assist sees 500 feet into the dark and dis-

plays a bright monochrome image on an LCD panel. Two front-fi ring radar

units assist your braking and bring all 4,270 pounds to a safe stop. The 600-

watt, 14-speaker Harman Kardon audio system has a PC Card for inserting

your own tunes. The 2007 S550 is technological perfection, 2006-style.

Pioneer AVIC-N2 In the space usually taken up by your radio/CD player,

the Pioneer AVIC-N2 fi ts a CD/DVD player, an XM radio,

a navigation system, XM’s NavTraffi c real-time traffi c

updates, and a jack for a $100 iPod adapter. You can

load needed routes into memory and display them on

the motorized 6.5-inch screen, then play standard,

MP3, or WMA CDs or show a movie to backseat pas-

sengers. The AVIC-N2 fi ts in any car with a standard

removable radio.

$1,800 street. Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc.,

www.pioneerelectronics.com. llllm

CARS

www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 67

Bill HowardIf GM Goes Bankrupt,

Will Anyone Care?

MERCEDES-BENZ S550$86,175 TO $110,000 The Mercedes-Benz S550 bypasses

the Audi A8L and BMW 750Li as the

world’s best ultrapremium sedan. It

features an active infrared Night View

Assist system, radar-assisted braking,

and the best cockpit controller. The

options are so enticing you’ll have a

hard time staying under $100K. An all-

wheel drive model is due this fall, and

a gas-saving diesel one in 2007.

Mercedes-Benz USA LLC, www.mbusa.com.

lllll

New OnStar NavExpected this spring, OnStar Turn-By-Turn

Navigation provides spoken directions

without requiring the driver to enter a

destination manually—the system calls

a live operator who asks where you’re

going, but you won’t need continued op-

erator involvement (unlike current OnStar

directions). Also, there’s no navigation

display. It will require a 2007 GM car and

cost about $10 a month more than current

basic OnStar service.

www.technoride.com

Former General Motors president

Charles Wilson is famous for his (slightly

misquoted) 1953 statement: “What’s

good for the country is good for General

Motors, and vice versa.” But how good

would it be for America if the nation’s

biggest automaker turned out the lights?

There are two GMs: One is the “your

father’s Oldsmobile” GM that fought

emissions and safety standards, cel-

ebrated “road-hugging weight” as if

Madison Avenue had repealed the laws

of physics, and to this day turns out

too many cheap-looking dashboards.

The other is the GM that builds some

world-class cars and has U.S. produc-

tion facilities that match the Asians for

assembly-line quality.

Then there’s GM’s tech-

nology. The company and its

partners have OnStar, by far

the biggest wireless safety,

information, and routing sys-

tem for cars. GM’s Magne-

Ride shock absorbers, which

adjust to road conditions by

applying magnetic force to

the iron particles inside, are a brilliant

invention. GM was the first to take the

plunge with its PhatNoise entertainment

system, with a 40GB hard drive you just

fill with digital media from your PC and

dock in your car so you can stream multi-

ple channels of audio and video. And GM

was also fi rst with head-up displays.

Furthermore, the Corvette is a world-

class sports car with sophisticated

engine and suspension technologies, for

half the price you'd pay for other similar

cars. (Funny how the Corvette’s tangen-

tial failings, such as uncomfortable seats,

are called crude; on a Porsche or Fer-

rari, they’d be part of the car’s inherent

charm.) GM’s Saturn brand wasn’t the

fi rst to use plastic body panels that don’t

rust and can withstand parking-lot dings,

but it helped to popularize them. Finally,

GM established a dealer channel where

the sales reps treated customers decently

(not technology, but still important).

Other automakers also offer tech-

nologies such as automatic braking,

lane-departure warnings, and blind-spot

detection. But GM’s problem is figuring

out which car to put all this good stuff in.

Because of costs—$2,000 isn’t uncom-

mon for any single leading-edge tech-

nology—these tech features need to be

incorporated into a vehicle that's priced

at $50,000 to $75,000 and already has a

leading-edge image.

GM has precious few of these: the Cadil-

lac STS, Cadillac Escalade, and Chevrolet

Corvette. The ideal car to serve as a tech

platform would be a big brother to the

STS, competing with the Audi A8L, BMW

7 Series, Lexus LS430, and Mercedes-

Benz’s awesome new S-Class.

If I owned General Motors, I’d tell all

hands to pay attention to the everyday

cars, too. First, make Blue-

tooth and line-in jacks stan-

dard; a year later, do the

same for PC Card slots and

USB jacks (which let you con-

trol any music player from

the radio). The rich aren’t the

only ones who drive with cell

phones and iPods. The next

step would be to make the

interiors more inviting and to add more

style to the exterior. Design statements

like that of the Cadillac CTS go a long way.

GM’s biggest challenge lies outside

technology. The company has too many

indistinguishable brands selling undis-

tinguished vehicles by dealers that buy-

ers would rather not deal with (GM is

not unique in that). And like Ford and the

Chrysler part of DaimlerChrysler, GM

has a ton of retirees with medical ben-

efi ts, which adds something like $1,500

in costs per car. Something that might

save GM—and would also benefit self-

employed entrepreneurs and people in

the high-tech sector whose jobs come

and go—is national health insurance.

What’s good for General Motors. . . .

>MORE ON THE WEB To check out the full reviews for

these products, navigate over to

www.technoride.com, the car site for tech fans.

How good would it be for America if its biggest auto-maker turned out the lights?

mailto:spark@ziffdavis.com

HARD DRIVEMaxtor OneTouch II Small Business Edition (SBE)Maxtor Corp.; $599.95 direct

One-touch data back-up.

Works with Windows

2000/2003 Server and

Small Business Server.

Unattended backups. Can

be removed and locked

down easily.

go.pcmag.com/

MaxtorOneTouchIISBE

SOFTWAREBACKUP SOFTWARENTI ShadowNewTech Infosystems Inc.; $29.99

Fast, simple, continuous backup.

go.pcmag.com/NTIShadow

ANTISPYWARESpyware Doctor 3.5PC Tools; $29.95

Best version yet. Removed more spyware

than other tested products.

go.pcmag.com/SpyDoc35

FINANCIAL SOFTWARETurboTax Premier 2005Intuit Inc.; $14.95–$69.95

Excellent coverage of personal tax top-

ics. Top-notch interface and help. Free

deduction-tracking application and a

rewards program can add value.

go.pcmag.com/TurboPremier05

HOME NETWORKINGBuffalo LinkTheaterBuffalo Technology (USA) Inc.; $300

Streams digitized content from PC to

entertainment center.

go.pcmag.com/LinkTheater

CONSUMER ELECTRONICSLOW-COST LCD HDTV Proview RX-326Proview; $949.99 list

Widescreen 32-inch display.

Pleasing picture quality.

Good image quality with

analog/digital inputs.

Inexpensive.

go.pcmag.com/RX326

SMART PHONES (KEYBOARDLESS)T-Mobile SDAT-Mobile; $3,299.99 direct

Wi-Fi. Dedicated music buttons.

Excellent screen. Syncs with Outlook.

go.pcmag.com/SDA

ULTRACOMPACT DIGITAL CAMERACanon PowerShot SD550 Digital Elph Canon U.S.A. Inc.; $449.95 list

Quick performer. Excellent image quality.

Unique “My Color” feature. Good ergo-

nomics. Sleek and attractive.

go.pcmag.com/SD550

TRAVEL SPEAKERSCreative TravelDock 900Creative Labs Inc.;

$79.99 direct

Very compact. Good

sound quality and power.

Good battery life with

alkaline batteries.

go.pcmag.com/

traveldock900

HEADPHONESEtymotic ER6iEtymotic Research Inc.;

$130 street

Great sound quality and

sensitivity. Good bass

performance. Comfort-

able. Effectively blocks

outside noise.

go.pcmag.com/er6i

HARDWAREDEDICATED PHOTO PRINTER Canon Selphy CP510 Compact Photo PrinterCanon U.S.A. Inc.; $99.99 direct

Very affordable. Fast performance and low

running cost. Very good photo quality for

the price. Prints on a variety of paper sizes

up to 4 by 8 inches. Battery option.

go.pcmag.com/canoncp510

LAPTOP Dell Inspiron 6000 (Media Center)Dell Inc.; $968.80 direct (E-Value Code 1111-i6004pc)

Media Center OS. 15.4-inch widescreen

display. Very good performance.

go.pcmag.com/DellInspiron6000MCE

DESKTOPS Apple iMac (Intel Core Duo)Apple Computer Inc.; $1,699 direct, $1,799 as tested

Dual-core processor. Front row. Mini-DVI

port for true dual-monitor usage.

go.pcmag.com/appleimacintel

Dell Dimension E310Dell Inc.: $746; with 17-inch LCD, $929

Windows Media Center Edition. DataSafe

option for added storage protection. Great

bang for the buck.

go.pcmag.com/dellE310

ALL-IN-ONE PRINTERCanon Pixma MP500Canon U.S.A. Inc.; $199 street

Prints, scans, and copies. Fast perfor-

mance. Excellent paper handling.

go.pcmag.com/

CanonPixmaMP500

LCD MONITOR (21-INCH)Gateway FPD2185WGateway Inc.; $599.99 direct

Excellent image quality. Lots

of video connections. Highly

adjustable.

go.pcmag.com/GatewayFPD2185W

T-Mobile SDA

Canon

Selphy CP510

WHAT TO BUY

69

go.pcmag.com/whattobuy • F I R S T L O O K S

www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE

Proview RX-326

Find tools and guidance to defend your network at microsoft.com/security/IT

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Microsoft Security Assessment Tool: Complete this free, online self-assessment to evaluate your organization’s security practices and identify areas for improvement.

ON “STUPID” USERSI’ve been a faithful reader for years and have owned one PC or another since 1980. Thus, I’m the guy everyone comes to when their computer gets slow or won’t boot, etc. Your article on “Stupid Users” (“The Sorry State of Security”, February 21, page 78) is dead on. I’ve spent countless hours fi xing stupid user mistakes for friends, neighbors, and people at work. I agree with the article that every-one—users, publishers, hardware manufac-turers, and the media—is to blame, but you can avoid most problems by some simple daily and weekly maintenance.

When I tell folks how to protect their data and hardware, they get a glazed look in their eyes and wait patiently for me to remove all the junk that has built up in their PCs over months of neglect and ignorance. As you can get pretty good protection from a variety of sources for free, I don’t see why anyone should fall into these traps. I realize you can do everything right and still end up with a virus or spyware problem, but keeping your protection up to date lessens the likelihood of this. Thank you for putting into words the frustrations I’ve felt over the past couple of years.

Bill Barnes

I wanted to say how much I agree with your assertion that the stupid consumer is responsible for many of the problems related to PC security. After all, setting up and maintaining security on a PC is so simple! Users need to do only the follow-ing easy tasks:

Install a security suite and deal with its complex settings. Confi gure the fi rewall and grant the correct programs ac-cess to the Internet. Confi gure the antispam tool to integrate with an e-mail client like Outlook. Deal with the time- and system-resource-consuming software upgrades and scans. Install and confi gure a good antispyware tool (which may confl ict with the security suite and—if not set correctly—may block some legitimate programs on start-up). And again, deal with upgrades and system scans.

For broadband, install a router and con-figure the firewall. Configure the wireless security settings. (Online gamers and others will need to set up individual port access and perform advanced router configuration.) Users should also set up wireless security on all wireless devices in the network: print server, home laptop, offi ce laptop, entertain-ment server, etc. (This could entail several hours on the phone with tech support for each device.)

And in addition: Confi gure browser se-curity settings. Deal with Web privacy is-sues (including managing cookies, temp

fi les, history fi les, and so on). Be alert for programs that want to install themselves on your PC (and then report your ac-tions back to some database not easily identifi able as spyware because the programs seem to come from a legitimate ven-dor like Google or Logitech or Sony). Also: Keep Windows up-dated with the unending series of MS security patches. And stay informed about new threats, like rootkits and fl ash cook-ies, that seem to appear almost weekly.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten something, but you get the idea. This security business is child’s play, and only stupid people don’t keep their PCs secure!

Steve Chapman

THAT PESKY MS MESSENGERThe way Jim Louderback replied to Talha bin Hamid (Feedback, February 21) was fi ne, but Jim could at least have told him how to solve the problem. After all, you are a PC magazine.

Basically, all you need to do is open MSN Messenger, then go to Tools | Options, then select General, uncheck Automati-cally run Messenger when I log on to Windows, and click OK. No more MSN Messenger starting up when you’re on Win-dows start-up.

Even if you remove MSN Messenger from start-up, it will just re-add itself if the above option remains checked.

Elliot Svec

Jim Louderback’s response to the reader complaining about Microsoft’s AntiSpyware beta program allowing the start-up of MSN Messenger was way out of line for a couple of rea-sons. The purpose of antispyware applications is to put the user in control of which applications get installed or run. MS AntiSpyware smacks of the safe computing initiative: “We’ll decide what’s best for you.” Also, the fact that the software is currently free is a red herring. It’s a beta version, and Micro-

How to Contact UsWe welcome your comments and suggestions.

When sending e-mail to Feedback, please state in the subject line of your

message which article or column prompted your response.

E-MAIL pcmag@ziffdavis.com. MAIL Feedback, PC Magazine, 28 East 28th

Street, New York, NY 10016-7940.

All letters become the property of PC Magazine and are subject to editing. We

regret that we cannot answer letters individually.

MS AntiSpyware smacks of the safe computing initiative: “We’ll decide what’s best for you.”

www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 71

‘‘ ’’FEEDBACK

go.pcmag.com/feedbackgo.pcmag.com/feedback

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com72

Neil and Loyd are a formidable duo that I’ll enjoy reading for as long as PC Magazine prints them.

soft has every intention of charging for it once the beta testers are done being lab rats.

What a snotty reply to a reasonable complaint.Mark Scardiglia

MOTOROLA’S NAME COMPRESSIONThe whole Moto phone nomenclature (phonenclature?) cracks me up. The name SLVR makes me think of pain un-der a fi ngernail. Does it have a companion phone called the TWZR to remove a SLVR? One can surmise that they used RAZR because KNFE was taken. Had they used KNFE in-stead, imagine the product tie-in with the Victorinox folks: A Swiss Army KNFE. I don’t know about you, but I could use a phone with a corkscrew for my next bottle of Kendall-Jackson cabernet sauvignon.

As for the PEBL, you would think they have a tie-in with Hanna-Barbera. What’s next, cell phones for couples? They could make a FRD and WLMA or a BRNY and BTTY, or even a ruggedized phone called the BMBM. And maybe a GPS-en-abled phone for pets called—you guessed it—the DNO. Now that would add a new dimension to calling your dog.

Frank Goad

Somebody please buy this company a vowel. (But fi rst check out our SLVR review on page 32 of this issue.)—Jim Louderback

THE DYNAMIC DUOI was totally geeked when I saw your new Solutions section. It is one of my favorite sections of PC Magazine. First, I came across “Ask Loyd,” accompanied by Loyd Case’s photo. I’ve been a fan of his since his days at Computer Gaming World. I’ve wished many times I was in Loyd’s shoes testing some of the hottest new tech on the market. Then I turned the page and stared in awe at the photo of the tech guy I most aspire to be like: Neil J. Rubenking. No set of initials in PC Magazine carries as much credibility as NJR. To fi nally see the face be-hind the writing is an absolute treat and provides some well-deserved recognition to a true PC Magazine hero. I’ll miss the fact that Neil won’t be initialing his responses now that he has his own column, but I’ll deal with it—congrats to Neil on getting his own space at last.

Neil and Loyd are a formidable duo that I’ll enjoy reading for as long as PC Magazine prints them.

David Rosa

PCS FOR REAL POWER USERS“The Name Game” (Feedback, February 7) resonated with me. Gamers seem to be the only folks that the trade magazines ad-

dress for performance. Rick Altman’s letter pointed out one set of users who require serious speed: digital video creators.

I agree with him that the majority of magazines seem to ex-pect that all business users just use e-mail and Word and are happy with the mainline systems provided by the vendors.

I sure know I’m not. I write software for a living and manage other software engineers. The last thing I want is to be paying a high-priced engineer to watch an hourglass spinning during a compilation. It is getting worse, as modern systems not only re-quire a compiler but also usually start up an application server, a JSP container such as Tomcat or Resin, and talk to a back-end database. In the words of ToolTime Tim, we need more power.

I would appreciate some reviews and discussion of how the new systems compare. Does it make sense to buy the hottest single CPU or a hot dual-core? Or do we still have to go to the expense of getting dual Xeon systems (nominally for servers) to deliver the desktop performance that professional developers require?

Pat Farrell

These days, the reason for getting a workstation desktop over a high-end multimedia PC or “performance” desktop PC mainly boils down to support: driver support for specialized hardware, technical support for specialized apps (CAD/CAM/CGI or fi nancial/database/development, and such), and hand-holding for your IT guys. This support can be life or death in the face of a looming deadline. That said, dual-core and multiprocessor PCs and workstations help only if your key program is written to take advantage of multithreaded processing. This is true for graphics programs as well as compilers. Unlike general-purpose PCs, individual workstation confi gurations (memory, storage, CPUs, graphics) are more closely tied to the task. Since worksta-tion confi gurations are specialized for niche tasks, you rarely see them in general media magazines. What might be a great work-station for software development may be a poor choice for a dig-ital photofi nishing fi rm, and vice versa.—Joel Santo Domingo, Lead Analyst, Desktops and Workstations

Corrections and Amplifi cations

In our First Looks piece “Dual-Core for Your Mobile Lifestyle” (February 21, page 32), we

incorrectly reported the percentage of improvement of the two reviewed systems (the

Acer TravelMate 8204WLMi and the HP Pavilion dv1000t) over the comparison system

(the Gateway NX850XL). On SYSmark 2004 SE, the Acer system performed 45 percent

better than the Gateway system on Offi ce Productivity (OP) and 58 percent better on

Internet Content Creation (ICC). On the same tests, the HP system performed 34 percent

better than the Gateway system on OP and 46 percent better on ICC. For the multimedia

tests, the Acer system performed 78 percent better on Windows Media Encode (WME)

and 111 percent better on the Photoshop CS2 Action set (PS2). The HP system was 72

percent better on WME and 35 percent better on PS2.

‘‘ ’’FEEDBACK

go.pcmag.com/feedback

J U M P TO N E X T PA G E >>

http://www.1and1.com

http://www.1and1.com

http://www.1and1.com

http://www.1and1.com

http://www.1and1.com

http://www.1and1.com

http://www.1and1.com

www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 P C M AG A Z I N E 89

A look at the white papers and articles ar-chived on the Center for Digital Democ-racy’s Web site reveals paper after paper on how the telecom companies want to make the Internet into a tiered service,

so that your 1.5-Mbps service is not the same as my 1.5-Mbps service.

These companies are preoccupied with deep-packet analysis. Instead of just routing traffi c, the new routers will also determine the nature of the packet. This isn’t for security or spying, but to fl ag Skype and other VoIP calls so you can be charged extra for making them. You can assume that IPTV traffi c will be charged differently, too. One of the more shameful aspects of this is that Cisco seems to be promoting some of these ideas so that it can sell more specialized (and expensive) gear.

If they were serving the public interest, the telcos and cable companies would simply provide a very fast connection, and services would fl ow over those connections in ways determined by the user— everything IP-driven. But these companies would like to use gangland tactics to get into every part of your business. You buy the 1.5-Mbps link, it costs a fi xed amount. You actually want to use it, it costs more. How about putting a server on it? Nope, you have to pay extra. Can you make a VoIP Skype call? No way, costs more. So you’re not getting a real 1.5-Mbps line at all—you’re getting scammed, in fact.

This reminds me of the early era of Internet connectivity, where an ISP would buy a 1.5-Mbps T-1 line from the phone company and resell it over and over and over to hundreds of customers, with the rationalization that the line was magically multiplexed and was providing T-1 service to 500 people. When you read the fi ne print, you discov-ered that you couldn’t really use the whole capac-ity of your T-1 at all. This sort of scam is still with us, only now the big boys are doing it. The state and local public utilities commissions say nothing. The Federal Communications Commission says nothing. Nobody says anything.

It seems to me that if you buy a 1.5-Mbps con-nection, you should be able to redline the connec-tion, to use the full capacity without being charged more. And you should also be able to use it for whatever you want to use it for. Otherwise, it’s like selling public-utility water to people and making them pay more to use it for washing dishes.

As this fiasco unfolds, I blame the Telecom-munications Act of 1996. Its apologists still claim that it’s working, when it has clearly resulted in the consolidation of the phone companies and the lu-dicrous fact that the original monopoly, AT&T, is actually re-emerging as a big clunky ogre, despite its 1984 court-ordered breakup. Where is Judge Harold Green when you need him?

This was made clear when SBC grabbed a slew of the one-time Regional Bell Operating Companies created by the breakup, including Pacifi c Bell. Then SBC merged with AT&T and is now called AT&T. In just six years, the name of the fabulous baseball stadium in San Francisco has gone from Pac Bell Park to SBC Park to AT&T Park. Just the expense of changing the signage and promotional collateral tells you that someone is making plenty of money.

The entire nation’s telecom infrastructure will consolidate, probably into three monopolies: land-line, cellular, and cable. The Internet will change drastically. Just look at a list of the documents archived by the Center for Digital Democracy (www.democraticmedia.org) to see where all this is headed. The guys who run these telecom compa-nies have no qualms about openly discussing their plans to ream the public. With weak public utili-ties commissions and an FCC that is not serving the public, what is the point of being secretive?

Apparently nobody cares. The folks in Congress are technophobic and clueless; they just listen to the lobbyists who work for the big telecom compa-nies. The FCC is out to ruin the country by giving the big companies anything they want. The execu-tive branch is all about corporatism at the expense of the public. And the public itself seems not to care, or these jokers would be voted out of offi ce.

Meanwhile, Western Europe and Asia will glide along the Net at 30 to 100 Mbps with IPTV, VoIP, and slick services with a reasonable connection fee, while we struggle to get a solid 1 Mbps while paying all sorts of usage fees. Soon we’ll be comparing our-selves to Bolivia or Paraguay and patting ourselves on the back saying, “We’re number one.”

And sure, in the Western Hemisphere we’ll be number one—if you leave Canada out.

John C. DvorakHijacking the Internet

The original telecom

monopoly, AT&T, is

now re-emerging

as the big clunky

ogre that was once

broken up.

MORE ON THE WEB: Read John C. Dvorak’s column every Monday at go.pcmag.com/dvorak. You can reach him directly at pcmag@dvorak.org.

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J O H N C . D V O R A K

Inside Track I

ntel has made an exclusive deal with Skype so that PC users cannot use Skype’s VoIP telecon-ferencing capabilities with more than fi ve people unless they’re using Intel microprocessors. This

had to be a pure cash deal, and it had to be for a lot of money, since it will certainly annoy current Skype customers and tarnish Skype’s reputation. These sorts of exclusionary deals are generally seen as un-fair and creepy.

It’s not as if the Intel processor is better at Skype. There is no real reason for this partnership except to screw AMD. This is nothing new. What’s new is the partnership. Essentially, the system will incorporate some code that looks for the CPU identifi er. To me, this scheme amounts to building a public highway that doesn’t allow Chevys to drive on it because Ford did a deal with the transportation board. I wonder how that would fl y.

There are a number of image problems with this deal. First, Intel is already being investigated for antitrust and unfair practices. An AMD-promoted legal raid by Korean authorities on Intel’s Seoul of-fi ces took place recently, and Intel would like to get revenge. But this Skype move is an amateurish way to go about it.

The way to pull off a deal like this is not by mak-ing it obvious that you are simply disabling features for anyone using your competitors’ processors, as Intel is doing. Instead, it should have released Skype Special Edition and distributed the software itself for its customers. Intel could then claim that there was so much demand for the special edition that it would go into the wild so that anyone could down-load it. The company could claim that it was devel-oped for its own chips, and that it locked out other chips because it simply wasn’t tested for them. Intel could say, “We can guarantee it only for our own chips. Why should we be doing work for AMD?” and act puzzled.

Skype could have then called it Skype 2.0 and left it at that. Instead Intel looks nefarious and Skype looks sleazy. Not that they wouldn’t have been nefarious and sleazy with my approach—they just wouldn’t look it.

That said, I see no reason why someone can’t de-sign a spoof to make an AMD system look like an In-tel system to Skype. I suspect such a patch will be rolled out quickly.

This situation is somewhat reminiscent of the hassle caused by Web sites that will work only with Internet Explorer. This is a ridiculous annoyance. But once a handful of these sites began appearing, Opera put a patch in its browser so that when asked by a Web site “what browser are you?” Opera would

say it was Internet Explorer. I’m sure Microsoft con-sidered suing Opera, but that would have opened up a whole new can of worms.

The only drawback to Opera’s false claim of being IE is that so many people have implemented this fi x that it’s diffi cult to get a handle on how many people actually use Opera. This fi x infl ates the number of IE users on the Web stat programs.

Crash and Burn Dept.: One of the hot topics of late has been the buzz around a Wi-Fi startup called FON, the brainchild of the affable Spanish entrepre-neur Martin Varsavsky. This idea isn’t new, but he’s added a new twist to the concept of sharing our Wi-Fi connections so that people can park outside your home and download their e-mail. This idea has been tried in various forms for years and hasn’t gained traction. What’s really different about this attempt? The marketing.

Varsavsky has managed to schmooze a slew of high-profi le bloggers and even a few columnists into becoming paid advisors to the project. But instead of just advising, they are promoting the FON con-cept on various blogs and publications, essentially becoming PR people. Some people are saying that this is a confl ict of interest, but it seems transparent enough, and it is obvious what they are up to with this boosterism. In fact, this situation provides an interesting marketing laboratory. These folks, who are mostly bloggers with an infl ated sense of pur-pose, have always believed that if you can put to-gether a critical mass of the sharpest people (which they have arguably managed to do here), you should be able to shape and manipulate public opinion to an extreme. Thus they are convinced that they can make this FON idea fl y despite the failure of similar ideas in the past and the numerous drawbacks of the system.

So far the FON folks have scored about $21 million in venture funding. We’ll see where it goes. It will be fun to deconstruct the process when it’s over. I per-sonally expect to hear a thud.

Sex Text Messaging Dept.: Now there’s some-thing called short-message sex, which is suppos-edly emerging on mobile phones. This is according to a Jack Kapica column in the Toronto Globe and Mail. Can anything be so silly? Here’s the kicker: Ac-cording to Kapica, “ Virgin Mobile Canada recently asked TV sex kitten Pamela Anderson to write a book called The Joy of Text, to be sold in bookstores and given away with a cell phone kit that Virgin calls its Pleasure Pack. In it, Ms. Anderson talks about ‘tex-tual intercourse’ and offers Canadians advice on ‘how to spice up their text lives.’” Are people that bored in Canada?

The Intel/

Skype scheme

amounts to

building a

public highway

that doesn’t al-

low Chevys on

it because Ford

did a deal with

the transporta-

tion board.

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www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 P C M AG A Z I N E 93

Having just returned from DEMO 2006, held in Phoenix this year, I’m stoked on new technology. Some of the new prod-ucts I saw there were entertaining, some practical, a few were electrifying, and

one was delicious. The delicious one was MooBella, a box the size of a soda machine that mixed up a fresh cup of ice cream, with any of 11 different fl avors and a handful of different toppings, in less than a minute. It’s in beta test now; the machines could be ubiqui-tous in a year or two.

Too many of the products, however, left me with a sense of déjà vu. Even some of the more impres-sive ones, like Riya, were as much clever mash-ups of existing technologies as breakthroughs. Riya is face- and word-recognition software that helps you tag your photographs by who’s in them and where they were shot. It appears that its recognition code is fi nely honed, so it reads billboards, placards, and street signs to help you fi nd and categorize your photos. Riya can go one step beyond your existing photo organizer software—and anything that can make sense out of the digital shoebox that your hard drive has become is welcome. But the good guys were spotting the bad guys with face recogni-tion software back at Super Bowl XXXV, so chalk one up for progress, not revolution.

New search engines were everywhere—no surprise, considering Google’s stock price and Yahoo!’s resurgence. As a group, I thought they were rather overspecialized. And the big search companies generally have the technology to do all that any successful upstart might do (and more), or they can just acquire the fl edgling. But maybe that’s the idea.

I always guess wrong about community applica-tions, and I’m always amazed when they take off. I can’t fi gure out why I’d want a site that tells me what my buddies are watching on TV, but that’s what eVoke TV does. Bet against me. History is on your side.

When it comes to saving money, though, I get it right. Eqo (pronounced “echo”) extends your Skype phone to your cell phone, bringing big potential sav-ings over roaming charges. Again, Eqo has a trendy community angle, “Take your buddies with you,” but the real message here is “Save a bundle.” You may need a different calling plan that can handle the background data traffi c, though. Check it out.

You’ve probably read about Pleo, the cuter-than-cute robotic dinosaur from the inventor of the Furby. Do I need one? No. Do I want one? Oh, yeah. And I both need and want an iGuitar, a fully analog and digital guitar with USB output. It plugs right into music recording programs, and it’s a re-ally nice electric guitar in its own right. I mean no disservice to the 60 or so products that I haven’t mentioned, but let’s move on.

Sometimes the journey is the destination, and I had some interesting traveling companions in ad-dition to my wife. One was the iGo charging sys-tem, the one you see in Radio Shack and in travel and laptop catalogs. The single charging brick runs on AC or DC and can simultaneously power your notebook and your choice of personal electronics: cell phone, MP3 player, Walkman, CD player, and more. The TSA screeners gave the charging unit the hairy eyeball at the airport, but they ultimately decided it wasn’t a threat—unless I were to drop it on someone’s toe.

The iGo will charge just about anything; it has a wide selection of adapter tips, and more are becom-ing available all the time. The tips play an active role in setting the correct voltage and current settings for each device. Unlike some adapters that simply burn off voltage with a crude resistor or (better) a voltage regulator, the iGo senses a tip’s unique iden-tity and programs itself accordingly.

I also had a loaner Verizon phone, a Motorola V325, which has GPS capabilities. It was loaded with VZ Navigator, an excellent mapping and directions system that uses the Navteq database. After the con-ference, we took in the Heard Museum, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West, and the Apache Trail. VZ Navigator talked us through every twist and turn, and displayed the route on a very readable screen. Turn-by-turn instructions are a little hard on the battery, however, so I ducked into a strip mall Ra-dio Shack and picked up an iGo tip that worked with my phone. With the 12-volt cord, the iGo kept the phone charged, and we stayed on course. Back on notebook duty, the iGo didn’t even get warm when it charged my depleted IBM T42p and N-Charge auxiliary battery simultaneously. Good stuff.

Technology Travels

MORE ON THE WEB: You can contact Bill Machrone at Bill_Machrone@ziffdavis.com. For more of his columns, go to go.pcmag.com/machrone.

Eqo extends your

Skype phone to

your cell phone,

bringing big

potential savings

over roaming

charges.

Bill Machrone

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Sony recommends Windows® XP Professional.

Oddly enough, no one has come up with the perfect PC with

the perfect operating system and the perfect applications

that make everyone happy all the time. Crazy world.

That’s why we turn to utilities, from the little ones

that show you the weather forecast and keep you from making common

e-mail faux pas to the far bigger ones that search your system at the speed

of thought and back up your hard drive. And as the pace of major software

development slows—yes, it really has been five years since Windows XP

shipped, and three since Microsoft Offi ce 2003 arrived—familiarity begins

to breed contempt. Imperfections are magnifi ed, and we search out better

ways to get things done.

At PC Magazine, we’re lucky to have an expert group of editors, writers, ana-

lysts, and contributors who are constantly searching for a better way, both at

work and at home. For this year’s Utility Guide, we asked them to share their

discoveries, reviewing and presenting their favorite utilities. We also spoke

with three utility developers: Mark Thompson, founder of the free utility site

AnalogX; Steve Gibson of Gibson Research, which produces some of the best

SPEED!POWER!

in this story

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com 96

[ ]14th Annual Utility Superguide

C OV E R S T O R Y

98 Incredibly Useful Utilities

100 For Home Networkers

101 For Microsoft Offi ce Workers

104 Make It Pretty

106 For Photo Enthusiasts

108 For Video Enthusiasts

112 For Audio Enthusiasts

114 For Web 2.0 Addicts

116 For Your Browser(s)

118 Top 10 PC Magazine Utilities

99 Q&A: Mark Thompson

100 Q&A: Steve Gibson

114 Q&A: Mark Russinovich

LOOKS!FUN!

online network security test utilities; and Mark Russinovich,

cofounder of Sysinternals, which brought us Filemon and

Regmon. We also sneak a peek inside the system trays of

other utility creators and users. Whose is the biggest? Well,

correcting for screen resolution and blatant

tray-padding . . . it’s PC Magazine editor

Lance Ulanoff, who boldly predicted the out-

come from the get-go.—Sarah Pike

Our Experts Pick the Best

Illustration by Daniel Pelavin

and send it along. SnagIt goes far beyond simple screen cap-ture. It can capture the full content of a scrolling window or Web page. You can grab all the images on a Web page, capture menus using a time delay, snap full-screen graphics-intensive games, and even make a video of on-screen actions. Save the result in any of a zillion formats, including PDF, and directly send it off via e-mail, IM, or FTP. This screen-capture program does it all. (TechSmith Corp., www.techsmith.com. lllll)

DIRECTORY OPUS 8 ($64) makes Windows Explorer obso-lete. DOpus fanatics typically let it replace Windows Explorer completely; if you get past the initial learning curve, you won’t go back. Common tasks such as managing ZIP archives, setting fi le attributes, and moving fi les from one folder to another are all easier in DOpus. Among its many, many

Once X1 DESKTOP EDITION ($74.95 direct) indexes your sys-tem, you can locate an elusive fi le, e-mail message, attachment, or contact as quickly as you can type. The initial indexing takes a while, but after that, X1 updates in the background on a user-defi ned schedule. It has advanced search options, but we usu-ally just start typing—each character narrows the results. On a budget? Yahoo! Desktop Search (desktop.yahoo.com) uses X1’s engine and offers nearly all of the same features free. (X1 Technologies Inc., www.x1.com. llllh)

ROBOFORM PRO 6.6 ($29.95) fi lls Web forms and manages your innumerable passwords. It memorizes each username and password the fi rst time you log into a site, then automati-cally supplies them when you return. All you have to remem-ber is one master password to decrypt your data; for other passwords you’ll use strong (and hard-to-remember) pass-words from the built-in Password Generator. RoboForm will print out all your data for offsite storage, just in case, and it’s also available in a portable version for USB keys. (Siber Systems Inc., www.siber.com. llllm)

Windows XP includes basic ZIP file management, but a proper ZIP utility does much more. We use WINZIP 10.0 ($29.95). It integrates nicely with Windows Explorer and offers numer-ous context-menu items—we especially like “Zip and E-mail.” WinZip can encrypt archives with 256-bit AES, save ZIP fi les directly to CD/DVD, split large fi les for storage or sharing, and store repeated tasks. Best of all, you can launch a fi le inside a ZIP archive, edit it, and save the changed fi le back to the archive. (WinZip International LLC, www.winzip.com. lllhm)

Next time you respond to Uncle Clem’s e-mailed plea for help, snap a picture of the solution with SNAGIT 8.0 ($39.95)

GOOGLE EARTH

BY NEIL J. RUBENKING

DIRECTORY OPUS 8

X1 DESKTOP EDITION

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com98

ure, we test hundreds of new software programs each year to help you

choose the best ones. But when we see ones that will make our lives bet-

ter, they get permanent homes on our own PCs. Editors Ben Gottesman, Jim

Louderback, Michael Miller, and I compared our lists of these drop-dead

useful utilities. They overlapped a lot; some utilities showed up on three or even all four

of our lists. We boiled them down to this collection of gems you’ll defi nitely want to try.

INCREDIBLY USEFUL UTILITIES

SS

high-end abilities are fi nding duplicate fi les, changing date/time stamps, handling FTP transfers, preview-ing almost any type of fi le, and splitting and rejoining large fi les—the list is almost endless! (GPSoftware, www.gpsoft.com.au. llllm)

More and more people find instant messaging handy at work as well as at home, but not everyone uses the same IM system. You don’t have to put up with the ads and annoyances of multiple IM cli-ents—just load up TRILLIAN BASIC 3.1 (free). It will communicate with your buddies on AIM, ICQ , IRC, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger, keeping them all in one handy list. You can audio-chat with buddies whose service supports it, log conversa-tions, and set your away/back status for all servic-es at once. The $25 Pro version supports additional IM services and adds a host of advanced features. (Cerulean Studios, www.ceruleanstudios.com. llllh)

Microsoft’s TWEAKUI (free; not supported) pulls to-gether an amazing number of Windows XP tweaks in one small package. For example, you can bypass the Welcome screen’s password prompt to log in automat-

ically, change the location of special folders such as My Pic-tures, add user-defi ned locations to the Places Bar in standard fi le dialogs, and set specifi c applications (say, Solitaire) so they won’t appear in the Start menu’s most-used programs list. The one thing TweakUI won’t do is help you fi nd a specifi c tweak, so you’ll want to step through the entire list and get a feel for what’s available. (Microsoft Corp., www.microsoft.com. llllm)

Travelers who can’t live without full access to their home-base computers will pay for a high-end remote-access solution. For the rest of us, the remote control provided by LOGMEIN FREE (free) should be enough. Just set up an account and install the software on your base computer. Now you can securely log in from any other Internet-connected computer to run pro-grams and access data. You’ll have to upgrade to the Pro ver-sion to get fi le transfer and synchronization, but LogMeIn Free still lets you copy/paste between the local and remote systems or remotely control your e-mail or IM client to send yourself a fi le. (3AM Labs Inc., www.3amlabs.com. lllmm)

You don’t often need PARTITIONMAGIC 8.0 ($69.95), but when you do, it’s irreplaceable. For example, to install the still- changing Windows Vista prerelease without losing your exist-ing OS, you’ll have to create a new partition for it. PartitionMagic can move, copy, resize, create, and delete drive partitions, and even merge multiple partitions into one. Best of all, you can de-fi ne a complex series of partitioning tasks, confi rm the sequence visually, and then let it execute all those lengthy actions while

you take a break. (Symantec Corp., www.symantec.com. llllm)Sharing editable documents via e-mail makes sense when

you’re collaborating on the result, but not when you aim to broadcast a fi nished document such as a press release. With an inexpensive tool such as PDF995 ($9.95) turning a document into stable, noneditable PDF format is as easy as printing it. Just send the document to the PDF995 “printer” instead of your regular printer. If even $9.95 seems too steep, you can use the product free and pay by viewing an advertisement each time you use it. (Software995, www.pdf995.com. llllm)

Is GOOGLE EARTH (free) incredibly useful? Possibly, possi-bly not, but it is drop-dead gorgeous. Who would’ve imagined touring the world from your desk chair? It offers satellite- photo views of the entire world, often at an amazing level of detail. You can impress friends by dropping them into the Grand Can-yon or zooming in on their roofs. (Google, www.google.com. llllh)

Neil J. Rubenking has been with PC Magazine since 1986, serv-ing as technical editor, User-to-User answerer, and PC Maga-zine Labs lead analyst. He continues to answer questions for readers in the ongoing “Ask Neil” column and in PC Magazine’s online discussion forums.

WINZIP PRO 10.0

After years as a contract programmer and a

stint at Motorola, Mark Thompson now runs

a small “tech incubator” known as The Avi-

ary Group. But he’s better known as a utility

writer. He’s the brains behind more than a

few PC Magazine utilities, and since 1998,

his site, AnalogX, has served up free utilities

touching on everything from digital music

editing to DNS caching.

AnalogX has more than 30 million registered users, and not a banner ad in sight. Why?The computer industry has given me a lot,

so it’s nice to give something back to the

general user for free. But it’s also fun. And

it’s a challenge. It’s fun to write programs

and solve things without having to worry

about anything else. I can make a program

that only ten people want, and that’s fi ne. Or

I can make a program that tens of thou-

sands of people want, and that’s cool too.

How did the site begin?It started out as a band site, a place where I could put my songs. But

then I started writing small utilities and putting them up there, and

more and more people started to use them.

Were these tools you wrote for yourself? Or were you look-ing to reach an audience?The very fi rst utility I put up was a “delay calculator” for digital mu-

sic. When you do echoes and things like that, if you want them syn-

chronized to the tempo, you need to know how many milliseconds to

set the delays to. So I wrote this command utility for myself. Then I

thought, “Someone else might want this too,” and I just put it up.

Ever tempted to sell ads?I want to keep AnalogX completely free. I’ve had offers to do more

with it. But that’s not really why I started, and it’s not what I want it

to be.

www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 99

How many utilities are running in your system tray? 5.

What’s the fi rst one you reinstall after a reformat? MultiEdit (a text editor).

How many have you written? 120 plus.

What do you develop in? C.

Q&A with Mark Thompson

2 0 0 6 U T I L I T Y G U I D E

and WWW.SPEAKEASY.NET/SPEEDTEST (llllm). ISPs generally use dynamic IP addresses, so chances are

yours will change. Typically, your router gets the public IP ad-dress and assigns your computer a private one so command-line utilities such as ipconfi g won’t tell you your WAN address. Should you need to fi nd your IP address, for example, to con-nect to a webcam or nannycam from a remote location, go to WWW.MYWANIP.COM (free), which will report the public IP address for your network. If you prefer, you can download an executable version that runs in your system tray. (lllmm)

Craig Ellison is a real networking kind of guy. He’s been design-ing networks for years, and has had networks in his home for over 20 years. He loves inexpensive (and free) utilities to help him manage networks at home and at work.

If you have more than one computer on your network and have tried to share files between them, or share a printer, you know how frustrat-ing the setup can be. NETWORK MAGIC from Pure Networks ($29.95 for up to 5 computers) solves those problems for you. Network Magic creates a map of your entire network, shows the status of each device on your network, and constantly monitors your Internet connection. If you have a supported router, the integrated Net2Go feature allows you to share fi les or photos on the Internet. (Pure Networks Inc., www.purenetworks.com. llllm)

Naturally, you have a router as well as a per-sonal firewall, but is it really working? Gibson Research (www.grc.com) has several free utili-ties that can help you assess the security of your network. Gibson’s most popular utility by far is SHIELDSUP!!, which can scan your public IP ad-dress for either common ports or all ports. Excellent tutori-als on the site help you understand the results. LEAKTEST is a simple program that attempts to connect to GRC’s Web server. It’s intended to test whether your fi rewall will block unknown outbound connections that could “leak” data out of your net-work. It’s free to use and worth trying out. (Gibson Research Corp.,

www.grc.com. ShieldsUp!! llllm; LeakTest lllmm)Though GFI’s LANGUARD NETWORK SECURITY SCANNER 7.0

(free for ten days for up to 25 IP addresses) is primarily intended for corporate networks, running it on your home network could prove eye-opening. Languard N.S.S. 7.0 will scan your entire local network for hundreds of known vulnerabilities and pro-duce a comprehensive report for each computer or device it dis-covers. It shows missing patches (with references to Bugtraq reports), open ports, and any security vulnerabilities it fi nds. After the ten-day trial the price is quite a bit steeper, starting at $495 for up to 32 IPs. (GFI Software Ltd, www.gfi .com. llllm)

Ever wondered about what happens in the background when you enter an address into your browser? TCPVIEW (free), from Sysinternals, gives you a bird’s-eye view of all of the network communications on your computer. The site also has other free networking utilities worth checking out. (Sysinternals, www.sysinternals.com. lllmm)

Who owns that domain? How is my traffi c routed across the Internet? How long does it take to do a DNS lookup? Answers to these questions and many more are at DNSSTUFF.COM. DNSstuff.com is a site full of free utilities that let you look up domains, run traceroutes, and even check out your ISP’s DNS. (llllm)

You’re paying for a fast broadband connection, but just how fast is it? Are you getting the speed you’re paying for? A num-ber of sites will test the speed of your Internet connection for free. These include: WWW.DSLREPORTS.COM/STEST (lllmm)

BY CRAIG ELLISON

FOR HOME NETWORKERS

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com100

To many, Steve Gibson is famous for publicly

questioning Microsoft’s approach to Windows

security. Just recently, he claimed that the

Seattle software giant had intentionally planted

Windows’s infamous WMF vulnerability. But

Gibson also writes extremely popular PC utilities,

including SpinRite, a data-recovery tool that

debuted in 1989.

What was the inspiration for SpinRite?I fi rst wrote it when a hard drive belonging to

my girlfriend’s business crashed. It had never

been backed up, and it had several years of the

company’s accounting data on it, and she was

devastated. Well, I liked her, and she was desper-

ate. So I quickly wrote something that basically

recovered the data on her drive.

Once you write a tool like this, how do you sell it?I wrote my fi rst program for Gibson Research, FlickerFree, in the

evening while I was working as a consultant; printed up the manu-

als; and sold it at software swap meets. Around the same time,

I made a deal with InfoWorld magazine to write a column called

TechTalk—which ended up running for eight years—and I did an ad

trade. I said, “I don’t need to be paid, but I do need to run an ad.”

Today, SpinRite sells for $89, but the rest of your utilities are free. How come?Everything else drives traffi c to our Web site. Then people en-

counter SpinRite and say ‘That’s still around? Holy s***!’ They’ll

upgrade their old copy, or it will just plant the seed in their mind

that it’s there if they ever have a problem with their hard drive. The

other stuff is just marketing material for SpinRite. SpinRite has

paid all of our bills for 17 years.

early every PC Magazine reader has a broadband Internet connection, and most

have a local area network at home. But are you getting the most out of your home

network? Are you sharing resources between multiple computers? Is your network

safe from outside intruders? Is your connection as fast as it’s supposed to be? Here

are some of our favorite utilities that will let you proudly say, “I’m a network admin!”

How many utilities are running in your system tray? 5.

What’s the fi rst one you reinstall after a reformat? Gravity news-group reader.

How many have you written? 1,000 plus.

What do you develop in? Intel Assembly Language.

Q&A with Steve Gibson

NN

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www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 101

Picking up where ASAP leaves off (but with some feature overlap), POWER UTILITY PAK V6 ($39.95) offers 120 utili-ties and functions from its drop-down menu, including batch printing and elaborate column- and row-combining functions. Spreadsheet-polishing func-tions include resizing all charts to the same dimensions. (J-Walk & Associates Inc.,

www.j-walk.com/ss. lllll)

MICROSOFT OUTLOOKMany add-ins display RSS feeds in Micro soft Outlook, but ATTENSA FOR OUTLOOK (beta; will be $20 per year) stands out for its implementation and feature set. Add-in toolbars for Firefox

and Internet Explorer make adding feeds easy, and the program can insert tagged pages and feeds to your existing tags at del.icio.us. (Attensa Inc., www.attensa.com. llllm)

The elegant YOUPERFORM 1.1.4 ($29.95) lets you create ap-pointments by sending yourself an e-mail or insert boilerplate text using hotkeys. It warns you before sending any Reply to All message or if you forgot to add the fi les you said were attached, and gives much more. (You Software Inc., www.yousoftware.com. llllh)

Low-priced, high-powered BELLS & WHISTLES FOR OUTLOOK 2.5 ($19.95) shares many features with YouPerform, including warnings for missing attachments and Replies to All. The pro-gram also includes some unique conveniences, such as message templates and an exclusive e-mail tracking features. (DS Develop-

ment, www.emailaddressmanager.com. llllh)

Edward Mendelson stops using Offi ce only long enough to teach English classes at Columbia University. After more than 14 years reviewing Offi ce tools, he knows a keeper when he sees one.

MICROSOFT WORDDon’t let Microsoft Word give away your secrets: Use Microsoft’s free RE-MOVE HIDDEN DATA to save a copy of an open fi le with all revisions, reviewers, comments, and other hidden data re-moved. (Microsoft Corp., www.microsoft.com;

search for rhdtool.exe to download. llllm)Word users may hunt through a

dozen menus for settings that seem to have taken over their documents. CROSSEYES 3.0.45 ($49.99; less per copy for multiple licenses) displays a “reveal codes” pane in Word’s window that shows exactly where format settings, language markers, bookmark codes, and every other Word feature begins and ends. (Levit & James Inc., www.levitjames.com. llllm)

Instead of Microsoft’s clunky equation editor, try RAPID-PI 1.2 ($50; $20 for students). It lets you type equations by using intuitive abbreviations or by selecting symbols from a toolbar. Note that people who receive your fi les will need to install the free Rapid-Pi fonts. (Trident Software Pty Ltd., www.rapid-pi.com. lllhm)

WORDPIPE 4.9 ($99 home edition; $499 unlimited) searches and replaces text and metadata in multiple fi les automatically, and can even replace graphics with an image that you place in the Windows clipboard. Other functions abound; this is the ulti-mate automator for Word. (DataMystic, www.datamystic.com. llllh)

MICROSOFT EXCELFreeware ASAP UTILITIES 3.11 provides two-click access to 300 convenient features. Most are simple time-savers, such as com-bining pasting in values and formatting them, removing empty sheets, inserting the fi lename in the page header, or putting the fi lepath in the title bar. (ASAP Utilities, www.asap-utilities.com. lllll)

BY EDWARD MENDELSON

FOR MICROSOFT OFFICE ost veteran Microsoft Offi ce users will admit that the suite has far

more features than they know about—but they’ll also complain that it

doesn’t have the features they need. Enter the add-ins, small programs

that fi t into the Offi ce interface and get jobs done that are otherwise dif-

fi cult or impossible. Here are some of my favorites.

YOUPERFORM 1.1.4

MM

In 1993, while still a graduate student, Mike Kronenberg started Mijenix, a utility company. By 1999, when he sold it to Ontrack Data Recovery, its

revenue topped $10 million. Today, he runs two new software firms—one dedicated to desktop security, the other to online photo-sharing.

These are the connectors between my PC and my BlackBerry, and synchro-nization software for the BlackBerry.

I’ve probably tried every password reminder and online form-completion software. RoboForm is my favorite.

This is Cyberhawk, our behavior-based security software, currently in beta.

Mike Kronenberg: What’s in your tray?

2 0 0 6 U T I L I T Y G U I D E

© 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, the Windows logo, Windows Server, and Windows Server System are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

CAN IT REDUCE COSTS

AND SHOW AN EARLY RETURN

IS IT LINUX

DECREASE TIME TO MARKET

OR WINDOWS SERVER

GET THE FACTS.SWITCHING FROM RED HAT LINUX TO WINDOWS SERVER WILL SAVE TOMMY HILFIGER AN ESTIMATED 25–30% IN IT COSTS.

“Our migration to Windows ServerTM will reduce our IT costs by an estimated 25–30

percent, but that’s only the start. Our efforts are improving our competitive advantage.

We developed a full e-commerce site within six months, in time for the 2005 holidays,

and we’ll continue to benefi t from compressed product design times and an

optimized supply chain.” –Eric Singleton, CIO

For these and other third-party fi ndings, go to microsoft.com/getthefacts

oes it really matter whether your Windows desktop is nice to look at?

Of course it does. Ignoring appearances is incredibly shallow. Thank-

fully, there are more than a few PC utilities designed to spruce up the

old desktop. You can change colors, fonts, and icons, add new screen-

savers and widgets, even replace your entire GUI. Yes, some of these tools are con-

cerned with more than just appearances—but don’t hold that against them.

Yahoo!’s picture-frame widget (see next page) is nice. But it’s nothing compared with FILMLOOP (free). FilmLoop acts as a kind of photo “ ticker,” scrolling picture after picture across your screen. It’s a wonderful way to liven up your desktop. But it’s also a way of sharing photos with others. Each time you create a new album, the client automatically uploads it to the company’s servers, and you can instantly send it to friends, family, and colleagues anytime (FilmLoop Inc., www.fi lmloop.com. llllm).

Want something more from a screensaver? Try the new MSN SCREEN-SAVER (beta, free). It too displays your personal photos, but it also serves

up the date, time, and current news and weather, or just about anything else avail-able through RSS. You can also use it to track your MSN Hotmail and MSN Messen-ger conversations or even search the Web from a built-in dialog box (Microsoft Corp.,

screensaver.msn.com. llllm)

DD

With CHANGERXP ($18.95), you can apply any digital image to your boot screen, Windows XP log-on screen, desktop wallpaper, Internet Explorer skin, or screen-saver—and, you can set these im-ages to change as often as you like automatically, perfect for those with big photo collections. You can download the full version without paying the registration fee, but our feeling is that if you want to use it, you should open up your wallet. (Nihuo Software, www

.nihuo.com. llllm) IL

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PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com104

BY CADE METZ

MAKE IT PRETTY

While still in college, Brad Wardell wrote ObjectDesktop for OS/2, a way of revamping IBM’s less than user-friendly interface, and it soon became

the platform’s best-selling third-party app. Now a Stardock property, ObjectDesktop is an even bigger seller as a Microsoft Windows utility.

Thank goodness you’re doing this story, because if it were PC World, the Startup Cop thing wouldn’t go over so well.

Stardock’s WindowBlinds, of course, to make my system look whichever way I want it to look.

KeepSafe is a new program Stardock is going to release in March. It does real-time data backup/archiving at the file-system level.

Google Desktop is a killer application for me. It lets me find stuff in my e-mail much faster than anything else I've found—that I like.

Brad Wardell: What’s in your tray?

Tired of the same old Windows desktop? Check out the SPHEREXP beta (free). It re-places Windows’ two-dimensional desk-top with a stunning three-dimensional interface. The idea is that you’re in the middle of a sphere that carries your ap-plication windows. To get from one app to another, you spin around—virtually, of course. You can also move objects for-ward or push them back. It takes some get-ting used to and it’s still a bit buggy, but it sure is fun. Microsoft .NET 2.0 required. (SphereSite, www.hamar.sk/sphere. lllmm).

The YAHOO WIDGETS ENGINE (free) lets you run all sorts of handsome mini-apps from anywhere on your desktop, at any time. You can run an animated clock, a calendar, or a day planner. Or a stock ticker. Or a notepad. Or a virtual picture frame. And that’s just the beginning. Thousands of widgets are already available from the Yahoo! Web site, and if you don’t see what you want, you can build your own. These little fl oating tools are wonderfully useful, but, more impor-tant, they’re so much fun to look it (Yahoo! Inc.,

widgets.yahoo.com. lllll).

One of our perennial favorites is WINDOWBLINDS ($19.95; free, limited version available), a tool capable of customizing almost every nook and cranny of the Microsoft GUI. Natu-rally, you can change the look and feel of ordinary application windows, but you can also make changes that aren’t usually accessible: You can cus-tomize log-on and log-off dialogues, progress animations, and Control Panel backgrounds. And you needn’t use the same “skin” across all win-dows. You can mix and match, using one visual theme here, another there. (Stardock Corp., www.stardock.com. llllh).

www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 105

Cade Metz joined PC Magazine in the fall of 1994, and his fi rst byline appeared in the 1995 Utility Guide. He reviewed a product from Xerox called TabWorks, a $49 facelift for the Windows GUI. His desktop looks fabulous.

2 0 0 6 U T I L I T Y G U I D E

RAWSHOOTER ESSENTIALS 2005 (free) offers strong tools for viewing and processing RAW format images at an unbeatable price. The pro-gram supports more than 50 RAW formats, including DNG. The un-obtrusive gray interface lets you fl ag and prioritize images and view them in a slide show. Image-correction tools include controls for temperature and tint, shadows and highlights, and noise suppression. The program also offers fast batch-converting of RAW fi les to TIFF or JPEG formats. The $99 upgrade to RawShooter premium 2006 gives you image comparison modes, support for Curves and Levels, and additional controls. (Pixmantec ApS, www.pixmantec.com. lllhm)

MACHINE WASH IMAGE FILTERS I, II, and III ($32 each) fly in the face of traditional im-age-enhancement software. Machine Wash is image-degradation software, dedicated to distressing your photos and graphics in amaz-ingly realistic ways. Give a photo that “faded T-shirt appliqué” look, or blast your logo onto a wooden surface or brick wall. Effect names include Crackle, Scrape, Mangled, Old Bag, Sandblast, Abusive, and Sweat—60 per CD. These “fi lters” are actually recorded Photo-shop Actions that work only in that program. (Mr. Retro, www.misterretro.com. llllm)

BY GALEN FOTT

s more cameras—and camera users—begin to take advantage of

RAW-formatted images, programs and utilities are appearing to help

in handling those high-quality fi les. Here are eight of our favorite

new imaging utilities for managing and editing your photos, and of

course, some specifi cally designed for use with RAW photos.

FLUID MASK ($249) is the best solution we’ve seen yet for one of the most diffi cult and time-consuming tasks in image editing: isolating the subject of an im-age from its background. This plug-in for Photoshop and compatible programs works along the same lines as Photoshop Elements 4’s new “magic” selection tools, in that you loosely define areas to keep and areas to remove, and the plug-in sorts out the edges. But Fluid Mask easily outstrips both Elements’ tools and Photoshop’s Extract command. It’s pricey, but worth the money if you do a lot of masking. Version 2.0 should be out by the time you read this. (Heligon, www.vertustech.com. llllh)

FOR PHOTO ENTHUSIASTS

AA

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com106

PHOTOZOOM PROFESSIONAL ($129) is an excellent standalone program dedi-cated to upsampling, the process of enlarging digital photos by increasing the pixel count so that you can make large, attractive prints from low-resolution fi les. Though almost any image editor can upsample, PhotoZoom Professional gives you greater control than you’d get from Photoshop CS2’s bicubic inter-polation choices. The program relies on patented S-Spline technology (though other interpolation options are available), and also includes sharpening controls for crisp, clear output. PhotoZoom Professional can help you get the most from those tiny camera-phone photos. (BenVista, www.benvista.com. llllh)

SHARPENER PRO 2.0 ($170 Inkjet Edition; $330 Complete Edition) is a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop and compatible programs. It provides a blissfully easy alternative to the tricky Unsharp Mask command usually found in image editors. You simply tell Sharpener Pro what size print you want and specify a couple of specs about your printer and paper, and the plug-in automatically analyzes your image and sharpens it. The Inkjet Edition is quite suffi cient for most users; only professional printers should need the Complete Edition. Version 2.0 features support for 16-bit images and lets you selectively paint sharpening into your image. (Nik Software Inc., www.nikmultimedia.com. llllh)

ADOBE DNG CONVERTER (free) brings welcome consistency to the confusing world of RAW-formatted images. DNG Converter translates RAW fi les from 113 different cameras into Adobe’s open-standard DNG (Digital Negative) RAW format. RAW images contain exactly the pixels captured by the sensors of higher-end digital cameras, without the inter-nal processing and compression found in JPEGs. But almost every camera uses its own proprietary RAW format. DNG Converter lets you rename images and even allows you to embed the original RAW fi le inside the DNG. (Adobe Systems Inc., www.adobe.com. llllm)

Just the thing for photographers who’ve been dragged grudgingly into the digital world, EXPOSURE ($199), a time-saving plug-in for Photoshop and compatible programs, specializes in mimicking the classic looks of specifi c fi lm types. The program includes more than 40 film-stock presets, from the luscious color of Fuji Velvia 100 to the distinctive grain of the black-and-white Ilford Delta 3200. From the presets, you can customize the color, tone, and focus of your images, as well as control the plug-in’s realistically rendered fi lm grain. (Alien Skin Software LLC,

www.alienskin.com. llllm)

Galen Fott (can you fi nd his picture here?) is a con-tributing editor of PC Magazine and the coauthor of eight books on computer graphics. He’s also an animator whose fi rst fi lm, Roberto the Insect Architect, was just released by Scholastic/Weston Woods. His Web site is www.grundoon.com.

MICROSOFT RAW IMAGE THUMBNAILER AND VIEWER FOR WIN-DOWS XP (free, unsupported) is a “PowerToy” that provides thumbnails, previews, printing, and metadata display for RAW images from supported Nikon and Canon cameras. You won’t fi nd any image-processing tools here, but this utility makes or-ganizing and viewing supported RAW images in Windows Ex-plorer just about as easy as working with JPEGs. There’s a slide show feature to boot. (Microsoft Corp., www.microsoft.com. lllhm)

www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 107

2 0 0 6 U T I L I T Y G U I D E

We know we should use a tripod when shooting video, but it’s not always practical. STEADYHAND from Gooder Video ($66.66) removes the shakes from your hand-held footage, so friends and family can watch without getting seasick. If you accept the default parameters, which worked well in our tests, operation is simple; just load the video fi le and press Start. The program automatically

detects minor shakes in the video, and minimizes horizontal, vertical, and ro-tational motion. SteadyHand works well on videos from cell phones and digital cameras, which are hard to hold steady and generally don’t offer onboard stabi-lization, but you’ll probably need a video-conversion utility to convert videos from these devices into one of SteadyHand’s three input formats, AVI, MPEG, and ASF. (Gooder Video, www.goodervideo.com. llllm)

Most video editors can import and output a limited number of fi le types, so if your productions include video from digital cameras, cell phones, or the Web, or you need to output video in iPod-compatible or DivX formats, you may need a video-conversion utility. We like two programs here. Xilisoft’s VIDEO CONVERTER ($35) successfully input seven of eight videos from still-image cameras and DivX, AVI, WMV, MPEG, MOV, and MP4 test fi les, and output fi les in iPod-compatible MP4, DivX, and MPEG formats. But the pro-gram lacks a DV output preset. DV format is the Switzerland of video for-mats, compatible with virtually all video editors and authoring programs. For converting your videos to DV fi les for further production, we like River Past’s VIDEO CLEANER ($29.95). It can’t produce MPEG, MOV, or MPEG-4 fi les, but it input all test fi les and output usable DV fi les. (Video Converter: Xilisoft Inc., www.xilisoft.com/video-converter.html, llllh. River Past Video

Cleaner: River Past Corp., www.riverpast.com/en/prod/videocleaner/index.php, llllm)

If you work with video long enough, sooner or later you’ll need to split your fi les, whether to meet e-mail transfer limits or to store them on CDs, DVDs, or other media. For fast, simple, and accurate operation, it’s tough to beat ACCUSPLIT ($12). In Standard mode, AccuSplit creates multiple fi les of the specifi ed size, each with an .seg extension, which the program uses to recreate the original fi le, bit for bit. If you send the SEG fi les to third parties, however, they’ll need AccuSplit to recreate the original. With AVI or MPEG-1 fi les, however, you can use Video File Smart Split mode, which splits the fi le into smaller, independently playable video fi les, though you can’t recombine those fi les back into one. (Joseph Flynn, members.cox.net/accusplit_support/index.htm. llllm)

Usually you have to be online to play the Internet’s vast store of audio/visual content. Applian Technologies’ RM RE-CORDER and WM RECORDER (for RealMe-dia and Windows Media, respectively; $29.95 each, $49.95 together) avoid this limitation by capturing streaming audio and video to disk. You navigate to the streaming fi le in your browser, click Re-cord in the respective Recorder program, then play the streaming fi le via VCR-like controls. You can even change the name of the video fi le before recording to sim-plify retrieval. Both Recorders store the entire streaming fi le to disk, even if you stop playback, so you can record multiple streams simultaneously. (Applian Technologies Inc., www.applian.com.

llllh)

BY JAN OZER

FOR VIDEO ENTHUSIASTS ll home video producers have one or more pri-

mary programs for editing and/or producing

DVDs, but a range of inexpensive utilities pro-

vides features that extend these capabilities,

often dramatically. Here are our favorites, all of which you

can download as trial versions.

AA

Jan Ozer has worked in digital video since 1990. When not chasing his daughter with a camcorder, he makes videos and DVDs for local music groups.

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com108

© 2004 NVIDIA Corporation. NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, and The way it’s meant to be played logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All rights reserved. * PC Mark 2004 System Benchmark performance comparison between Integrated Intel Extreme Graphics 2 and NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra. All prices are subject to change without notice or obligation. CyberPower is not responsible for any typographical and photographic errors. Copyright © 2006 CyberPower. All rights reserved.

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PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com112

navigate to your music folders, where ID3-TagIT gives you instant access to the tag information. You can edit individual fi les, a group, or the entire folder. You can also edit fi lenames, update them from FreeDB, and add sequence/track numbers for players that require tagged songs to maintain album order. The program even corrects capitalization and removes special characters from fi lenames. (ID3-TagIT, www.id3-tagit.de. llllm)

The podcast receiver formerly known as iPodder has a new name: JUICE 2.1. It’s still free and still one of the best ways to receive and manage your podcast subscriptions. You’ll appre-ciate new features such as auto cleanup, and the utility now works with feed managers such as PodNova. The tabbed in-terface moves you easily from downloads to subscriptions to the podcast directory, and from the cleanup tab you can re-move old podcasts from the downloads folder or your player’s library. Juice doesn’t get bogged down, even with gigabytes of audio. It’s available for Windows and Mac, with a Linux ver-sion due soon. (The Juice team, juicereceiver.sourceforge.net. llllm)

What Juice is to podcasts, REPLAY RADIO is to Web radio. You can use the built-in Replay Media Guide to fi nd specifi c stations or shows. Replay Radio will record by download-ing or as you listen, and will schedule downloads for shows when you’re not around. The search function lets you find shows easily. Replay Radio will also download podcasts (in fact, the free demo version is just for podcasts) and will automatically check for new updates. It supports all the popular streaming formats, interfaces with an XM receiver, and can save shows to a CD or your MP3 player. This one’s

worth the $49. (Applian Technologies Inc., www.replay-radio.com. llllm)Satisfy your inner geek with this function-limited version

of Yoshimasha Electronic’s highly regarded DSSF3 audio analysis package ($83), which turns your PC into a precision audio-measurement lab. The spectrum analyzer shows you frequency response, harmonic distortion, even energy distri-bution by frequency. Better, you can log the data for further analysis in math/spreadsheet programs. The oscilloscope has autotrigger and automatic ranging and oversampling, and the signal generator can crank out just about any kind of waveform imaginable. Cut through the confusing Web site: You want DSSF3 Light. (Yoshimasha Electronic Inc., www.ymec.com. lllll)

Bill Machrone lives in a noisy place between analog and digital audio, using his computer as a virtual recording studio and modi-fying his beloved Fender Blues Junior amplifi ers to play louder.

How much would you pay for a 16-channel audio editor that can record at up to 32 bits/96 kHz, re-move hum and hiss, read and write WAV, AIFF, and MP3 fi les, and has en-velope editing, equalization, mixing, resampling, and unlimited undo/redo? You don’t have to pay a thing: AUDACITY is free, and it’s spectacular. It can also alter playback speed without pitch shift, shift pitch without changing the speed, and includes a host of other effects. Au-dacity can’t edit WMA, AAC, or other proprietary formats, but it accepts stan-dard VST plug-ins in case its built-in ef-fects aren’t enough. It runs on Windows, OS X, and Linux. (Open source, audacity.sourceforge.net. lllll)

Your old vinyl records may not be picking up any new scratches these days, but they’re not getting played, either. MILLENNIUM ($59) is the entry-level product from Diamond Cut, which also makes those forensic audio fi ltering programs that you see on CSI. With hundreds of presets, Millennium can remove ticks, pops, scratches, hiss, rumble, and more from your records and tapes so you can transfer them to CD. You can even do speed corrections and punch up the dynamics of the fi nished track. You’ll feel like a professional sound engi-neer with this one—and you’ll get great results. For $59, it’s the best investment you can make in your old records. (Diamond Cut Productions Inc., www.diamondcut.com. llllh)

You can fi nd many freeware ID3 tag editors, but you won’t fi nd a better one than ID3-TAGIT (free; PayPal contributions ac-cepted). Using a standard Windows Explorer hierarchy, you

BY BILL MACHRONE

FOR AUDIO ENTHUSIASTS he brilliant, underlying truth of the PC is that it’s anything you want it to be, and

that’s especially evident with audio. The audio utilities available are dramatically

different, but you can use them synergistically, too. And you can harness them at

any level, from just listening to sophisticated audio engineering. These utilities al-

low your PC to receive, store, organize, analyze, and improve audio. They will never demand

more from you than you’re ready to give, but they’ll also be ready to take it to the next level.

AUDACITY

MILLENNIUM

TT

Prices shown are HP Direct prices; reseller and retail prices may vary. Prices shown are subject to change and do not include applicable state and local taxes or shipping to recipient’s address. Offers cannot be combined with any other offeror discount, are good while supplies last and are available from HP Direct and participating HP resellers. All featured offers available in U.S. only. Savings based on HP published list price of confi gure-to-order equivalent ($1177 - $100 instantrebate - $100 instant savings = SmartBuy price $977). Certain warranty restrictions and exclusions may apply. For complete warranty details, call 1-800-345-1518 (U.S.). 1. For hard drives, GB=Billion Bytes. Actual formatted capacityis less. 2. Optional Remote Insight Lights-Out Edition II (RILOE II) sold separately. 3. Service levels and response times for HP Care Packs may vary depending on your geographic location. Restrictions and limitations apply. For details, visitwww.hp.com/go/carepack. Intel, the Intel Logo, Xeon and Xeon Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. © 2006 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.

HP ProLiant servers offer expandability to better adapt to your business needs.

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hat’s all this talk about Web 2.0? It’s really quite simple. Web 2.0 is what the

cool kids use. It’s things like blogs, RSS mashups, and tagging sites. If you

plan on joining the Internet in-crowd, most of what you need can be accessed

through an ordinary Web browser—sites such as Blogger, Flickr, and del.icio

.us—but there are several Web 2.0 tools that run on your local PC, interfacing with various

services across the Net. These will make you even cooler.

If you really want to surf the cutting edge, replace your browser. The new FLOCK browser (free) is designed specifi cally for the Web 2.0 aficionado. It dovetails nicely with popular blogging services such as Blogger, TypePad, and WordPress, letting you quickly and easily post information to online dia-ries. In much the same way, it hooks into del.icio.us, so you can tag your browser “favorites” and share them with others. And it ties into Flickr, allowing for the quick upload and download of tagged digital photos. Based on the same code as the popular Firefox browser, Flock also includes a built-in RSS reader, giv-ing you instant access to online news feeds. Unfortunately, it is still in beta and far from polished (Flock, www.fl ock.com. lllhm).

There’s something to be said for handling RSS news feeds straight from a browser such as Flock or Firefox, but you might be better off tracking, reading, and organizing your feeds from a dedicated application. Our favorite is FEEDDEMON ($29.95). When you first run it, a simple tutorial walks you through the app’s basic layout. It comes preloaded with several popu-lar feeds, and the interface is wonderfully intuitive: Even the greenest of computer users can pick up the RSS game in no time. (NewsGator Technologies Inc., www.bradsoft.com. llllh)

Another good option is SHARPREADER. Though not quite as intuitive or as handsome as FeedDemon, it’s free and relatively easy to use. We particularly like the alerts that pop up over your Windows system tray whenever a new feed arrives. And if this sort of thing matters to you, it’s more compact than FeedDemon and easier to run alongside other apps. Donations from happy users accepted. (SharpReader, www.sharpreader.net. lllhm)

You can also install a dedicated blogging client. These give

BY CADE METZ

FOR WEB 2.0 ADDICTS

you the freedom to compose off-line—or post the same ma-terial to multiple blogs running on multiple services. We’re most impressed with QUMANA (free). The coolest feature is the Qumana DropPad, a transparent window that fl oats above your desktop. You can drag and drop text, photos, and graphics onto the DropPad, and they’ll automatically appear in the main Qumana editor, where you compose your blog entries. You can instantly upload these to several popular blogging services, including Blogger, TypePad, WordPress, BlogWare, Movable Type, and more (Qumana Inc., www.qumana.com. llllh).

Cade Metz recently moved to San Francisco. When he lived in New York, RSS was a way of keeping up with current events. Now it’s a way of keeping up with the Joneses.

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com114

FLOCK BROWSER WITH FLICKER BAR

In the mid-1990s, during off-hours,

Mark Russinovich began writ-

ing Windows utilities with Bryce

Cogswell, an old graduate-school

buddy. Ten years on, their freeware

site, Sysinternals, receives over a

million unique hits a month, and

the enterprise software company it

spawned, Winternals, serves over

70,000 organizations worldwide.

In the early years, were you writing free tools just for fun? It helped us get a business started.

We were drawing traffi c to Sysin-

ternals, attracting people interested

in the free tools, and then we put a banner on the home page that

pointed people to Winternals. Except for this one link, Winternals did

no advertising for the fi rst two years. But it was kind of an accident.

It’s not like we said, “Let’s make a free site, put free tools there, then

do a commercial site and bootstrap ourselves.”

So, where does the inspiration for a new utility come from?When I started out, I expected I’d be driven a lot by people sending in

suggestions and comments. It turns out I might get a useful sugges-

tion every now and again, but the direction of the tools is driven by

my own experience.

Such as?The fi rst two tools we developed were Filemon and Regmon, which

are still among the fi ve most popular tools on the site. They’re both

real-time monitors. Filemon lets you see all fi le-system activity and

shows you what process is accessing what fi le and other detailed

information. Regmon is the same, except it shows Registry access.

Q&A with Mark Russinovich

How many utilities are running in your system tray? 8.

What’s the fi rst one you re install after a reformat? VMWare.

How many have you written? 70 plus.

What do you develop in? C or C++.

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nternet Explorer 7.0 might be just around the corner, but for more browser

power right now, check out some of these indispensable IE extensions, which

add a variety of features you can’t get with your basic IE6 installation . They’re all

free (unless otherwise marked). And the many users who have turned to Firefox

for its stripped-down, streamlined operation (and because it’s less of a target for mal-

ware than IE) can take advantage of one of the open-source browser’s benefi ts: a huge

aftermarket for add-ons that extend its feature set. The basic browser works fi ne by

itself; add some of these and you can truly harness the Internet’s power.

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PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com116

GOOGLE TOOLBAR adds a number of new features for its Version 4 beta. You now get suggestions for your searches as you type, along with the abil-ity to add and position bookmarks and toolbar buttons. This is on top of its already full-featured toolbar, which gives you an on-the-fl y spell-checker for web-mail and forum posts, as well as Google’s PageRank tool. (Google

Inc., toolbar.google.com. llllh)The fi rst thing that strikes you about DOGPILE is its scroll-

ing ABC News ticker: Newshounds will want it for that feature alone. Otherwise, Dogpile gives you metasearch capability for using multiple search engines simultaneously. It also includes its own pop-up blocker, scrolling search terms entered by oth-er people, and a hot link to Dogpile’s Yellow Pages. (InfoSpace Inc.,

www.dogpile.com. lllhm) Click the Stumble button in the STUMBLEUPON toolbar and

you’ll be transported to a random site that matches one of your (preselected) interests. You can vote to indicate whether it’s up your alley and/or add descriptive tags, to help fine-tune the site’s relevance for everyone else. A great way to fi nd high-quality sites that match your interests, and an absolutely ter-rible way to be productive. (StumbleUpon, www.stumbleupon.com.

lllmm)Get defi nitions—and pronunciations—on the fl y with the

useful MERRIAM-WEBSTER ONLINE TOOLBAR. Quick-launch

Lance Ulanoff is editor, reviews, for PC Magazine, where he oversees all product and review coverage for the magazine and for PCMag.com

and also writes a weekly online technology column. Lance’s musings on his system tray can be found at go.pcmag.com/lancetray.

I know how people feel about this utility, but I love having the Live WeatherBug icon in my tray. I always know the temperature outside.

Google Desktop is one of the most useful tools I have for finding anything on my desktop, though X1 does a better job of finding older e-mail messages.

Probably the best thing I ever did for my overstuffed system tray was to install Startup Cop Pro 2. It made the whole tray a lot more manageable.

Lance Ulanoff: What’s in your tray?

INTERNET EXPLORER EXTENSIONSYAHOO! TOOLBAR WITH ANTI-SPY includes a search box, a pop-up blocker, an antispyware utility, and loads of quick links to various Yahoo! properties (My Web, Yahoo! Sports, News, Yahoo! Mail, and more). There’s also a nifty highlighting tool for Web pages: Light up some text and run a search or IM it to someone, all from a pop-up icon that appears next to the text you highlighted. (Yahoo! Inc., toolbar.yahoo.com. llllm)

MSN TOOLBAR WITH WINDOWS DESKTOP SEARCH will now, as the name indicates, search either your computer or the In-ternet from inside IE, Outlook, or a separate Deskbar that sits neatly in your Windows XP Taskbar. It also adds a form-fi lling tool and even tabbed-browsing capability, a sorely needed fea-ture for the aging browser. (Microsoft Corp., toolbar.msn.com. llllm)

BY JAMIE LENDINO

FOR YOUR BROWSER(S)

SURFSAVER AND THE GOOGLE TOOLBAR

GOOGLE TOOLBAR OPTIONS

buttons to a thesaurus and a “word of the day” feature round out the package. (Merriam-Webster Inc., www.m-w.com/toolbar. llllm)

AM-DEADLINK 2.7, a flexible bookmark manager, isn’t re-ally a built-in extension for IE, but it should be. DeadLink goes through all of your bookmarks (including those for other browsers on your system) and gets rid of links that no longer work. (Martin Aignesberger, www.aignes.com/deadlink.htm. lllhm)

Have you ever tried to save a Web page you liked? If you use IE, chances are you were disappointed when you tried to read it later. SURFSAVER ($19.95) to the rescue! It lets you save indi-vidual pages in “cabinets” you specify in a toolbar along the left-hand side of your browser. You can also save multiple link levels, grabbing the page you need and every single page it’s linked to. (askSam Systems, www.surfsaver.com. lllmm)

MAXTHON is a shell that adds tabbed browsing to IE. It also gives you an enhanced drag-and-drop feature, an RSS reader, privacy protection and better extensions management. It’s like having a whole new browser, but it doesn’t affect your original IE install; you can still run an untouched version of IE sepa-rately. (Maxthon International Ltd., www.maxthon.com. lllmm)

MOZILLA FIREFOX EXTENSIONSGOOGLE TOOLBAR, our Editors’ Choice for browser toolbars, fi nally works with Firefox. This isn’t huge news, since the browser has included a Google search box since Version 1.0. But Google Toolbar is still a more-than-worthy download, because of its comprehensive spell-checker, form fi ller, and map-linking features. (Google Inc., toolbar.google.com. llllm)

FOXYTUNES works with a number of popular MP3 players, in-cluding the obvious (WMP 10 and iTunes) and not-so- obvious (Yahoo! Music Engine, jetAudio, Musicmatch), letting you con-trol them without leaving the browser interface. You can ar-range icons in several ways, such as by artist or song title, and there is a row of convenient player control buttons. It’s oddly convenient. (Alex Sirota, www.foxytunes.org/fi refox. llllm)

FASTERFOX speeds up your Firefox browsing experience. You can turn on a special prefetching feature that increases the load on Web servers but turns up pages faster on your machine. The basic options box includes choices such as “courteous,” “opti-mized,” and “turbo charged.” One neat bonus: a timer display in your Firefox status bar tells you how long it took to load the current page. (Tony Gentilcore, fasterfox.mozdev.org. llllm)

With FORECASTFOX, you get icons for the current weather in your ZIP code and to forecast the next few days—all this is confi gurable—as well as an AccuWeather map. Rolling your

mouse over the icons gives more information, such as sunrise and sunset times, low and high temps, and more. You can add information for other places as well and switch between loca-tion profi les. (ForecastFox, forecastfox.mozdev.org. lllhm)

With GOOGLEPREVIEW, a graphic thumbnail showing a min-iature version of the target Web page appears to the left of each search result. It’s a boon when you’re running lots of Google searches, and it doesn’t seem to detract at all from Google’s fast results engine. (GooglePreview, ackroyd.de/googlepreview. lllmm)

Ever close a tab by accident? Wish you had an undo button? To get this much-needed feature, try TAB MIX PLUS. It includes a host of tab-management capabilities, including duplicating tabs, and a session manager that can restore your tab confi gu-ration even after a crash. (Tab Mix Plus, tmp.garyr.net. llllm)

INFOLISTER lets you manage installed extensions, themes, and plug-ins in one place. You get active hyperlinks to each extension’s host site (though not to plug-ins’ sites), and you can save lists to take to another machine, along with the dates you last updated each extension—and most important, you can save the fi le locally. It’s a stopgap until the day when we can ac-tually save Firefox confi gurations and not have to go through the hassle of reinstalling our many extensions and themes. (Open source, mozilla.doslash.org/infolister. lllhm)

ADBLOCK blocks nearly all ads on the Internet, including fl ash animations. You may need to train it—right-click on any ad you see and choose “Adblock.” Better yet, download the Ad-block Filterset.G Updater from addons.mozilla.org along with Adblock; this will automatically confi gure it to block the most common kinds of ads. (Open source, adblock.mozdev.org. lllll)

FLASHGOT powers up download managers so that they work with Firefox, even if they were originally designed for Internet Explorer. Consequently, you’ll need to have a download man-ager (such as GetRight or FlashGet) in place; by itself, Flash-Got does nothing. Once you get one, use Ctrl-F2 (FlashGot Selection) or Ctrl-F3 (FlashGot All) and you’re in business, though we would have appreciated a “cancel” function half-way through a batch-download command. (InformAction, www.fl ashgot.net. lllhm)

In addition to reviewing Internet tools for PC Magazine, Jamie Lendino creates sound effects and music for games. He’d give any-thing for an Adblock extension that works on highway billboards.

www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 117

FASTERFOX

INFOLISTER

2 0 0 6 U T I L I T Y G U I D E

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com118

Tim Smith is the manager of PC Magazine's Utility Library. He’s been in the software industry for over a decade, both as a writer and a software

developer. Tim ran his own software and development company and before that worked in Ziff Davis’s Internet division from 1993 to 2001.

HD HeartBeat monitors the health of your hard drives. Among its features, it displays the temperature of your drives when you hover over the tray icon, which I do every few hours.

I love having Media Monkey running in the tray, because every time a new MP3 track is played, it pops up and shows me the track name and artist.

I don’t have an overwhelming number of tray icons. I use Startup Cop Pro to eliminate a lot of programs that launch on Windows start-up.

Tim Smith: What’s in your tray?

your drive’s capacity, partitions, and sizes and, if it’s supported by the drive model, the temperature.

5 REGISTRYMASTER improves on Win-dows’ Registry Editor with a more

powerful search tool, simpler Registry key navigation, and a History tab for undoing changes and reverting to previous states.

4 WMATCH is a classic—it started out in 1989 as a DOS utility—and it remains

at the top of our download charts. With WMatch 3 you can compare fi les in differ-ent folders, including network and local, compare contents by date and size, and schedule synchronizations.

3 DUPELESS 2 scans your drives and shows all the duplicate fi les it can fi nd in the directories you specify, grouped by

the criteria you choose: fi les with the same names and sizes, fi les of the same sizes (even with different names), and fi les with the same names, sizes, and dates.

2 TASKPOWER 2 is a powerful replacement for Windows’ built-in Task Manager. All processes can be easily viewed

to fi nd critical information about each process, such as which modules it uses, its memory and CPU usage, who developed it, a description of what it does, and more.

1 STARTUP COP PRO 2 puts you in control of the Windows start-up process. You can easily enable, disable, and delete startup

entries. You can specify exactly when a program launches: on a time delay, at a specifi c time, on a specifi c day, when another program is running, or when your live network connection is detected. It will also monitor your system, warning you when a program is trying to add itself to the system start-up. E

10 With DISKPIE PRO’s cus-tomizable pie charts, you

can see where your overweight folders and fi les are, and even see what fi le types are eating up your drive space. Disk Pie Pro then helps you clean up, and it moni-tors the disk (or network drive) in the background.

9 In this age of computer virus-es and short attention spans,

it pays to know every detail about a file before you double-click on it. FILESNOOP 2 makes exploring Windows not only safer, but also much more effi cient, giving you snapshot information about every fi le, including executables—and quick previews of com-mon fi le types—without having to open them in their some-times slow and bulky parent programs.

8 PORTSNOOP monitors applications with network connec-tions. It gives you detailed information and bandwidth us-

age levels on each running app, alerts you when unauthorized apps use connections, and terminates network connections and applications.

7 INSTABACK’s genesis was the desire for a backup solu-tion that was easy to use and always on. As you save fi les,

InstaBack instantly backs them up. You can maintain up to ten versions of a backup, and compare versions.

6 HD HEARTBEAT communicates with hard drives that are equipped with S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and

Reporting Technology), and pops up warnings or even sends you e-mail alerts about the drive. It also shows you info on

BY TIM SMITH

ince its inception, PC Magazine Utilities has grown to include more than 140 utili-

ties, addressing everything from screen cosmetics to network monitoring. In March

2003, we began charging for utility downloads ($19.97 per year for unlimited access,

or $5.97 for a single download), letting us devote more resources to development. Here

are the top ten downloads, in descending order, since you started ponying up for the privilege.

You’ll fi nd our utilities, with detailed usage instructions, at go.pcmag.com/utilities.

TOP 10 PC MAG UTILITIES

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http://www.pctools.com

BUILD IT: A DIY BACKUP SERVER

Don’t throw out that old PC! Save yourself from hours of work, lost business, and thousands of dollars in lost revenue by using it to back up your network. We show you how.

By Bill Machrone

Illustration by Brian Stauffer

120 PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com

TURN THE PAGE...and open the gatefold for

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When is the right time to upgrade your technology?

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The question is not whether you’re

going to lose data, but when. And the

more machines you have on your net-

work—home or small business—the

greater your exposure. But that same

network can also be the key to regu-

lar, reliable backups: With the current

low price and phenomenal capacity

of disk drives, you can put a chunk of

storage on the LAN, and that will be

the backup repository for all your ma-

chines. It’s called network-attached

storage, or NAS, but it can be much

more than a disk drive with an IP ad-

dress or a shared drive letter visible

from all of your computers.

Backup servers and personal serv-

ers have become a hot item, offered

by Mirra, Netgear, and others. They

go beyond network-attached storage

by having enough onboard smarts to

run backup software and other func-

tions. These are solid, turnkey solu-

tions, but it’s both cheap and easy to

build your own server from an old

PC. There are many ways to do this,

and ours is only one of many valid

approaches. But you can duplicate it

easily and have a powerful, reliable

backup server of your own.

Tower systems have loads of room

and a power supply large enough for

big hard disks, and if the system can

run Windows XP, it’ll easily run the

backup software, too. You should

start with a clean install of XP;

there’s no sense in burdening your

backup server with the leftovers from

dozens or hundreds of applications, a

clogged Registry, and a dog’s break-

fast of processes that start at boot-up,

whether you want them to or not.

We chose a Dell Dimension 4100 as the foundation for our

backup server. It’s over fi ve years old, but its 1-GHz Pentium

III was actually more than we needed. The 384MB of installed

memory gives XP some elbow room, and for most tasks, we’ll

take memory over clock speed. Remember, you can’t buy a

machine this slow, even if you wanted to. It’s obsolete, but

just right for our project. This one was kicking around in our

labs, but if you actually have to buy one, you shouldn’t spend

more than $100 or so.

The 4100 had a fresh copy of XP SP2 on the 40GB hard disk,

but we wanted to have it back up four machines, with a total

of around 30GB of active storage. This problem was solved

with an 80GB Western Digital WD800. We popped it in,

formatted it, and gave it a drive letter. We wanted a dedicated

drive for backups, even though most of the C: drive would

be unused. We bought a second WD800 for more storage

or possible mirroring but decided to start with one drive

while we tested various software solutions. The Dell 4100’s

motherboard doesn’t support mirrored drives, but we fi gured

we’d fi nd some too-clever way to do it. The Dell already had

a network card, so at least for our single-drive version, we

were all done, other than making some nice mounting rails

for the drive.

When you confi gure your own machine, make sure it has at

least 256MB of memory and several times more disk storage

than the total amount you want to back up. Remember that

you probably need to back up only data; in case of disaster,

applications generally need to be reinstalled from their CDs.

HARDWARE

1 Don’t use a

magnetic

screwdriver. It

might just lead to

bigger problems.

logy brands. (In other

1 This old PC This project is perfect for an old tower PC you were going to get

rid of. Just keep in mind that you may need to upgrade the operating system if it’s really old.

2Storage is cheap Large-capacity hard drives are coming down in price faster

than a skydiver in trouble. Such new drives are great for a DIY project like ours. But before you buy, check to see whether your old PC has IDE connectors or the newer SATA.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

2 Disconnect

the power

cable and remove

the old hard drive.

3 Be very careful

when removing

the IDE cable. Hard

drive pins bend easily.

5 The IDE cable

is notched and

will fi t only one way.

Don’t force it.

6 Hard drive screws

are different from

other screws used in

the case. Don’t mix

them up.

words, everything you need

3 More RAM Your server will work fi ne just the way it is, but adding $40 worth of RAM

will improve performance notice-ably. You can spare that, right? Again, be sure to check whether you’re using SDRAM or DDR RAM before you leave for CompUSA.

4Software choices Another great thing about this proj-ect is how easily you can per-

sonalize the server for your needs. Some NAS units are designed for quick personal backup, while others are made to integrate quickly with a complex corporate network.

SOFTWAREThe array of software for network backup is mind-boggling, but we

settled on Cobian Backup 7 (www.educ.umu.se/~cobian /cobianbackup.htm). The current version has some nice features. It’s not your typical

backup-and-restore software; it makes security copies of the fi les

and folders you select, as often as you schedule them. It doesn’t use

proprietary fi le formats and won’t compress fi les unless you tell it to.

But it can compress them using standard ZIP algorithms and encrypt

backed-up fi les. You restore fi les or folders from Cobian Backup simply

by copying them back to the original drive. It will do full, incremental, or

differential backups. And the price is a DIYer’s dream: free.

One of the things you have to decide when designing a network

backup strategy is where you want the backup software to run—on

BACKING UP THE BACKUPOur venerable Dell Dimen-sion doesn’t support RAID, but what if you want a second, identical copy of each backup? No problem: Just run Cobian Backup against itself. Periodi-cally copy the entire contents of the backup drive to another drive—there’s your mirror.

If you are worried that theft or fi re could wipe you out, never

fear. Since Cobian Backup also supports FTP backup, you can send your backups to a remote FTP server or, as above, back up your backups to an FTP server. You can also get fancy, leaving your local backup unencrypted but your FTP backup encrypted.

8 Once you’ve formed the parti-

tion, you can format the drive.

The New Partition Wizard under the

Computer Management utility takes

care of business.

7 Before you throw

out that old

hard drive, make sure

it’s been completely

wiped clean.

4 Make sure that

the new drive’s

jumpers are set to

Master before you

install it.

d.)

INCREMENTAL VS. DIFFERENTIALDifferent kinds of backups serve different purposes. You need to decide whether or not to overwrite exist-ing backups, and how many copies to keep. You can store many backups that let you recreate month-end, year-end, or other snapshots. • Full backup All specifi ed fi les and folders are backed up in their entirety.• Incremental backup Only the fi les that have changed since the last backup are archived.• Differential backup Only the fi les that have changed since the last full backup are archived.

the individual PCs or on the backup server. We wanted ours to

be a true backup server, with all of the centralized fi le manage-

ment options that entails, not just a repository drive for data

dumped on it by the client machines, so we opted to run Cobian

Backup on the server.

You then choose how you want Cobian to access the fi les

on the client machines. The fi rst step, of course, is to turn on

fi le- and print-sharing. From there, set the sharing permission

for each folder you want to back up or simply drag the folders

you want to back up into the Shared Documents folder. Cobian

can see that folder on every machine that has fi le- and print-

sharing turned on.

TIME TO SPLITAnother way to archive important fi les, such as full monthly backups, is to move them to opti-cal discs that can be stored off-site. Cobian Backup will split back-ups into CD-, DVD-, or other-size chunks, with or without compres-sion or encryption.

MORE ON THE WEBMake an external hard disk!

go.pcmag.com/diy

This works best in a “friendly” environment, where individual

users don’t need to keep fi les secret from one another. If you

want to minimize exposure of client PCs to one another, run

Cobian on each machine and encrypt the backups to the central

drive. In any case, you probably don’t want to turn on sharing

for the entire drive on the client PCs: You’d be opening the door

to inadvertent damage as well as malicious mischief.

Tasks in Cobian Backup are extraordinarily easy to set up.

A tabbed menu lets you choose the type of backup; select the

fi les and folders; schedule the backup; choose compression or

encryption; include and exclude specifi c fi les, fi le types, or fold-

ers; and perform scripted events before and after each backup.

NAS VS. SANOur backup server, built for network-attached storage (NAS), is limited to fi le storage and management tasks. A storage-area network (SAN), by comparison, offl oads the main network, moving large amounts of data among storage devices, usually with many-to-many connections between servers and storage. A full copy of Windows XP is overkill for NAS tasks, but the user interface and familiar tools are convenient.

We see your brain working. You’re thinking, “If I can build my own NAS, can I build my own SAN?” In a word, no. While there are some open-source SAN projects that are available, there’s nothing easy and reliable out there. Yet.

9 Cobian Backup makes it easy to

create and modify tasks. Our fi rst

task backs up three major folders on

a laptop computer. In this case, we’ve

selected a weekly full backup.

10 Backup scheduling is very fl exible.

You can set backups to occur on a

regular schedule, on any given date, or

even every couple of minutes.

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The army runs on its stomach, but businesses run on their data. In most SOHO networks, a wealth of internal services (such as file and printer sharing and any intranet tools) run off a central server. Additionally, most businesses have a handful of external services—such as the company Web site, e-mail, and remote-access or even VPN capabilities—that may or may not run from the same server. Take a few minutes to map out your company network and determine which parts of the operation need to be backed up. File servers usually contain mission-critical data that should be archived as regularly as your employees’ data. Back up the site, user accounts, and mail files, too. E

ISP/Internet

Firewall

Server

Cable/ADSL

Printer

Internal services:• File sharing• Print sharing• DHCP

Backup:• NAS

Internalusers’PCs

Remoteemployees

External services:• Web site• DNS• FTP• Mail

Router

NETWORK NEEDS

DIY BACKUP ALTERNATIVESOTHER DIY BACKUP SOFTWAREFor our backup server, we went with Cobian Backup 7, but you’ll fi nd quite a few other software choices to use for your own server.

BACKUP2006PRO ($65 street)Pros: Simple UI. Uploads via HTTP or FTP to remote servers.Cons: Designed for single user, not network.

HANDY BACKUP ($30 street)Pros: Well-regarded. Provides FTP support and encryption. Cons: Requires add-ons for Registry, Outlook, and other special functions. Can back up over network but is intended for single machines.

VICE VERSA PLUS/PRO ($30/$60 street) Pros: Comprehensive backup and scheduling. Easy, attractive UI. Cons: Restrictive licensing. Additional multius-er cost.

NASBACKUP (free/SourceForge)Pros: Uses rsync and Perl scripts to do differen-tial network backup. Simple client UI. Cons: Usually needs a Linux server to run rsync but can be run on Windows servers with addi-tional software. Overall setup can be complex.

The product with the most appealing name:AMANDA (Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver) Pros: Free. Can back up Unix and Windows machines. Cons: Requires comfort with console commands and mod-ding for different confi gurations.

OFF-THE-SHELF NASLooking to save a little time but still need to back up your business? Dozens of commercial NAS devices are available. Here are some recent offerings from some of the top names.

BUFFALO TERASTATION HOME SERVER (1TB, $900 street)The Buffalo TeraStation is currently the unparalleled giant of low-cost NAS. Offering a terabyte of storage, this device should meet or exceed the storage needs of nearly any small business.

IOMEGA STORCENTER (250GB, $289.95 direct)Primarily a wired solution, the StorCenter can be set free with a wireless option for an extra few bucks. It’s also a print server for up to two printers, and it comes with a full suite of backup software. You can expand the device’s capacity easily by adding USB 2.0 hard drives.

LINKSYS ETHERFAST NAS EFG250 (250GB, $700 street)A fl exible fi le server with print sharing, the EtherFast is eas-ily expandable via a spare drive bay. It’s easy to install on an existing LAN and performs DHCP; plus, the drives are in lockable, removable carriers. The wireless option is handy as well.

MAXTOR SHARED STORAGE PLUS (500GB, $499.95 direct)This small-footprint NAS device can be added quickly and easily to any Ethernet network. Print-sharing is a plus, as is expandable USB 2.0 disk storage.

MIRRA PERSONAL SERVER (400GB, $499.99 direct)The Mirra backs up and restores fi les from multiple PCs

effortlessly. Attach it to your Ethernet network, and soft-ware on each PC communicates with the Mirra to perform continuous backups, with up to eight versions stored for each fi le.

B U I L D I T !

plasma screens don’t provide native HD resolution (a minimum of 720p, aka 1,280-by-720 pixels) at sizes under 50 inches. Within our budget, 32-inch LCDs were the best option.

Because these sets lack over-the-air HD tuners, we’d have to buy or rent a sep-arate box, but we’d probably do that any-way to watch cable channels like ESPN and HBO, rather than just the dinosaur networks. With a list of about half a dozen possibilities at four major retailers, we hit the streets to see our picks in person.

WHAT’S IN-STORECostco Membership has its rewards, but shopping help isn’t one. Still, in a change from the past when the warehouse store seemed to be a dumping ground for end-of-life TVs, it had late-model Pioneer plasmas and Sony Bravia LCD TVs (too expensive for us). All the screens at our local branch were hooked up via their component video connectors and played the same loop of challenging HD video clips that included detailed scenic vistas

SHOPPING RETAIL is hell. Big-box outlets, awash in ill-informed clerks, underpaid salesmen, and poorly labeled products are, in a word, useless. No won-der people are turning to the Internet in droves. Still, for big purchases, many of us feel the need to try before we buy.

So we set out, cash in hand, to fi nd the best HDTV deals at brick-and-mortar stores. With dozens of brands and hun-dreds of models, it was a challenge. Get-ting the features you want at a good price requires preparation—and patience.

We decided to focus on fl at-panel dis-plays. (Tube systems, at over a hundred pounds and several feet deep, seem very last-century.) We demanded at least one digital and one component video input so we could plug in a minimum of two high-definition sources. And we capped the price at $1,000—spending more than that on a television seemed, well, extravagant.

We started our search online, perus-ing the sites of local stores to see what was available. Our thin-and-fl at prereq-uisite directed us toward LCD TVs—

SQUEEZE PLAY Maybe you

could stop photographing for

a few seconds and help?

By Robert Heron

SHORT STACKS? Ordinary

TVs won’t do for Mr. Heron.

He likes ’em big.

130 PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com

Real-WorldReal-World Testing:

and fast-paced sporting action, which aided our comparisons.

Amid the visual feast, our eyes settled on a 32-inch Proview RX-326 LCD TV for $950. The set had the required A/V inputs, and dark detail such as the fi ne shadow gradients around a person’s eyes showed up clearly. We snatched it up, fearful of being convinced otherwise by an employee—not that we saw any.

Wal-Mart Our next stop: America’s fa-vorite store. Buried in a corner of the cav-ernous emporium was a sparse selection of TVs. None were models we had picked on the company’s Web site. Undaunted, we found a lone set that met our criteria. We were immediately struck by the rot-ten picture quality. But the TV wasn’t to blame: The store distributes video to ev-ery set over composite cables—the low-est order of video life—or an RF cable connection (possibly the second worst). When the perpetually busy cashier even-tually determined that the chosen set was sold out forever, we enthusiastically took our business elsewhere. Lesson learned: Don’t shop at Wal-Mart for an HDTV.

CompUSA Here too, we encountered a small selection connected to composite or RF cabling. The overall image quality wasn’t as bad as on the Wal-Mart sets, but this location had nothing in our price range that fi t our needs.

Best Buy Our last stop offered a de-cent choice of TVs and had an outlet of the high-end audiovisual equipment and accessory retailer Magnolia Home Theater, where we could admire HDTVs most certainly not in our price range. Best Buy conveniently uses the same HD feed (apart from the commercials) as Costco. This proved very useful, as we were already familiar with the videos.

The looped feed included a scene of four people sitting behind a news desk, one of them wearing a sweater in a shade of coral . . . probably. We were uncertain of the sweater’s exact color, as every TV displayed it slightly differently. It looked more reddish on some, more pinkish on others, and a few were so far off the mark that we never gave them a second glance.

The TV that caught our attention on Best Buy’s Web site was sold out. A sales

A PERFECT FIT! This backseat fi ts

three comfortably—or a 32-inch

square from Japan.

SHOPPING CARTE BLANCHE Will you take a postdated, third-

party, out-of-state check?

JUNK IN THE TRUNK Dude, you’ll never fi t that

monster back there!

www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 131

R E A L- WO R L D T E S T I N G

$900 LCDs

rep (call him Jim) claimed hundreds were in a warehouse, but delivery would take a few days. We couldn’t wait, so we found an alternative: a 32-inch Westinghouse LTV-32w1. The set was $100 over our budget but had the features we were look-ing for. We asked to have $100 knocked off, and the sales rep agreed. Flush with triumph, we bought the unit.

As it turned out, the LTV-32w1 had been on sale the previous week for $200 off, so our savvy bargain was no big deal. Furthermore, most stores guarantee that they’ll refund the difference if you fi nd the same TV elsewhere for a lower price. Had we not rushed, we could have easily saved another $100. Lesson number two: Keep track of competing prices.

UNBOXING DAYWith only two TVs in our possession after visiting four retailers, we wanted another set to see how our purchases compared, so we chose the recently re-leased 32-inch Visio L32 LCD. Its list price was within our budget and like the Proview and Westinghouse, it provided the A/V connections and the resolution we wanted.

Unpacking and setting up these LCDs justified our decision to exclude CRTs. The Proview RX-326 was about 55 pounds, and the Westinghouse LTV-32w1 was 34 pounds. A 32-inch CRT (which has less viewable area) can weigh substantially more; one at Best Buy was 166 pounds. But as LCD screens aren’t as tough as CRTs, we still needed a friend to help ensure a safe journey from the Styrofoam-packed box to the TV’s new

perch. Setup complete, we were ready to put our new LCDs to the test.

After eyeballing the sets just as a reg-ular user would, we put them through our extensive lab tests. None left us in high-def heaven, but the Proview was the best of the bunch. Its picture qual-ity was pleasing, movie scores rumbled nicely, and the TV was attractive yet un-derstated. The Visio’s bright and even picture wasn’t without flaws, but it’s a relatively inexpensive fl at-panel TV and a good value. The Westinghouse LTV-32w1 impressed us with its digital image quality, and its contrast ratio shattered records. Too bad the display quality with analog input wasn’t half as good as with digital.

With any digital set, broadcast analog TV will appear fuzzy and soft, at best. Even with a rooftop antenna that had a direct line of sight to the broadcast tower, we still got noisy, ghost-fi lled im-agery. Luckily, an FCC mandate now re-quires manufacturers to include digital (ATSC) tuners in all mid-size TVs, so fu-ture models will be able to receive over-the-air HD and provide better images with standard-defi nition broadcasts.

As for purchasing from stores, Best Buy and Costco offered the best experi-ences. Keep track of what’s on sale and what just came off sale, and don’t be afraid to bargain! And if you see Jim at Best Buy, tell him we said hi. E

Robert Heron runs PC Magazine’s HDTV lab and hosts DL.TV. For full rat-ings and reviews of these televisions, turn to page 26 in our First Looks section.

SPOTTING THE ELUSIVE HIGH-QUALITY TVFollow these tips and your hunt for a fl at-screen TV will be brief.

• Shop at a store that provides HD

content and familiarize yourself with

it. Best Buy and Costco show the

same looped video feed, so you can

compare across stores. Cool!

• Pay attention to black levels. Do they

appear inky dark or grayish? Convinc-

ing blacks provide better image quality

in a home theater environment.

• Compare shadow and color detail,

with an eye to natural imagery. In the

Best Buy/Costco video loop, watch for

that coral sweater to compare colors. DIGITAL HERNIA Lift

with the legs, and

always bring a friend!

I SEE DEAD PIXELS You’ll never ana-

lyze effectively from the couch. But

it’s hard to watch from this close.

OUR PRESCRIP-TION Take two

of these and

see you Monday

morning.

OUTSIDE THE BOX Gotta

hurry! Only 30 minutes

until American Idol is on!

132 PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com

R E A L- WO R L D T E S T I N G

YOUR VOICE COULD BE

600,000TIMES STRONGER

YOUR VOICE COULD BE

600,000TIMES STRONGER

*as ranked by Fortune magazine

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APPLE CORE HOTELS 5 locations in Midtown

www.applecorehotels.com

A well-kept secret, these fi ve

tidy budget hotels have rates

as low as $99.99 per night

and free Wi-Fi. We advise go-

ing with the La Quinta or Red

Roof Inn, both on a fascinating

block of Korean shops and

restaurants.

TRIBECA GRAND iSTUDIO 2 Sixth Avenue

www.tribecagrand.com

The Grand can outfi t any

suite with a Mac G5, iPod, and

editing software.Bring a video

camera and make that indie

fi lm you’ve been dreaming of.

$434 and up per night.

HOTEL GIRAFFE 365 Park Avenue South

www.hotelgiraffe.com

A cozy boutique hotel in Mid-

town, with a real attention to

guest service and free wireless

for all. $339 and up per night.

MERCER HOTEL 147 Mercer Street

www.mercerhotel.com

Celebrities roam the corridors

of this super-hip minimalist ho-

tel in fancy SoHo; see one and

blog your fi ndings with free

Wi-Fi. $440 and up per night.

OMNI BERKSHIRE PLACE 21 East 52nd Street

www.omnihotels.com

A classic business hotel in the

heart of Midtown with free

Internet access. Room rates

are $319 and up, but specials

can go as low as $199.

BEST WIRED HOTELS

SILICON ALLEY: More NYC residents work in the infor-mation industry than resi-dents of three major Silicon Valley counties combined.

PHONES: Verizon has the best voice coverage. Both Sprint and Verizon provide high-speed EV-DO data net-works all over the city. Wi-Fi in the Parks: Down-town Alliance (www.down

townny.com) runs eight free hot spots near Wall Street. There are also hot spots in Bryant Park (Google- sponsored), Tompkins Square, and Madison Square .

FAST FACTS

HOOKED UP IN NYCAlt.Coffee 139 Avenue A

An old-school

early-1990s-style

coffeeshop with

comfy couches, a

student crowd, and

of course, free Wi-Fi.

DT/UT 1626 Second Avenue

A coffeeshop on

the posh Upper East

Side a few blocks

from museums,

with big couches

and lots of free Net.

EasyInternetCafe 234 W. 42nd Street

You’re sure to fi nd

space at one of the

648 PCs in what

may be the largest

Internet cafe in the

world. Yowza!

GETTING AROUND: Don’t take a cab. Fly into JFK Airport and take the new AirTrain (for just $5), a brand-new monorail which zips to Jamaica Station in Queens over the congested Van Wyck Expressway. There you can switch to the subway ($2) or the slightly plusher LIRR train ($5 to $7) to Manhat-tan. Even the billionaire mayor rides the fast and safe subway in New York City; daily passes cost $7. Manhattan subways aren’t wired for cell phones yet, but Verizon customers have luck in the shallower stations, such as the 23rd Street station on the 6 line. Noise-canceling headphones work surprisingly well to kill the bone-rattling subway rumble. — Sascha Segan

TOP TECH ATTRACTIONS: Get old-school with the “Digital Play: Reloaded” exhibit at the Mu-seum of the Moving Image, a set of classic arcade and console games that you can play for free until your fi ngers bleed. 35th Avenue and 36th Street, Astoria; take the R train to Steinway Street. $10 admission; www.movingimage.us. The Sony Wonder Technology Lab is loaded with interactive exhibits where kids can pretend to produce TV shows or music videos. 56th Street and Madison Avenue; www.sonywondertechlab.com. Tech and art fi nd common ground at Chelsea’s Bitforms gallery. 529 W. 20th Street; 212-366-6939; www.bitforms.com.

THE CONNECTED TRAVELER

New York

WHILE YOU’RE IN TOWN Hit the Pennsylvania Hotel from July 21-23, when one of the nation’s biggest hacker conventions, HOPE NUMBER SIX, takes over. Get more info at www.hopenumbersix.net. Get hands-on experience with all the hot new products for the upcoming holidays at DIGITAL LIFE. October 12-15 at the Javits Center, www.digitallife.com.

S O L U T I O N S • go.pcmag.com/connectedtraveler

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com 134

S P E C I A LO F F E R

FOR PC MAGAZINEDIGITAL READERS

Get eWEEK –

FREETOAPPLYFOR A FREESUBSCRIPTION

Only eWEEK provides news,analysis and real world reviews tohelp senior IT decision-makersreach the right decisions in buildingtheir enterprise infrastructure.

S P E C I A LO F F E R

FOR PC MAGAZINEDIGITAL READERS

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Only eWEEK provides news,analysis and real world reviews tohelp senior IT decision-makersreach the right decisions in buildingtheir enterprise infrastructure.

135

ExtremeTech.com’s editor Loyd Case

tackles your toughest hardware problems

each issue. Send him yours at

askloyd@ziffdavis.com.

Graphics Card CompatibilityIf you have a motherboard with an nVidia

chipset, can you use a graphics card

from ATI? Can you use two of them in

CrossFire mode? And if you use a mother-

board with an ATI chipset, will there be

a performance loss in either graphics or

motherboard performance?

TIM MCGLYNN

You can certainly use a single PCI Express

ATI graphics card in an nVidia chipset

motherboard. You can also

install two of them, but only

if you plan on driving two

separate displays. Mother-

boards with nVidia chipsets

do not support ATI’s Cross-

Fire dual–graphics card

technology. If you’re using

an AMD Athlon 64 proces-

sor, then you’ll need a moth-

erboard with an ATI chipset,

such as the Asus A8R-MVP

or DFI RDX200 CF-DR.

Our experience has

shown that the ATI chipsets

result in slightly lower CPU

performance than nVidia

chipset boards, but the

difference is less than 4

percent, so it’s statistically

not signifi cant. However,

it’s been documented that

the ULi south bridge chip

used in most ATI chipset boards does

register slightly slower USB 2.0 through-

put. Whether that’s a problem or not is

something only you can determine.

Note that if you have an Intel processor,

motherboards using Intel’s 975X chipset,

such as the Intel D975XBX or Asus

P5WD2-E motherboards, fully support

ATI’s CrossFire technology.

Choosing a Digital ProjectorI’ve been asked by a client to buy and set

up a projector for showing PowerPoint

presentations. I’d like to know what to

look for and how to set one up.

JEFF GRIM

Digital projectors come in a variety of form

factors, price points, and targeted environ-

ments. So the fi rst thing you should do is

investigate how the projector will be used.

For example, will the projector be

installed into a fi xed location and never

moved? In that case, portability isn’t a fac-

tor, but ease of installation and manage-

ment may be. On the other hand, if your

client is looking for a projector to carry to

different locations, then weight and ease

of setup become major considerations.

Second, what projection surface will

your client use? While a white wall may be

suitable in some cases, a dedicated screen

is often a far better solution. Images will

your client plans on using the projector to

show video or movie content, features such

as component video inputs or sophisticated

video processors are unnecessary.

Most projectors today have VGA inputs,

so connecting a laptop or PC to the projec-

tor is straightforward. Laptop users will

need to know how to switch the output

from their laptop screen to the external

display—the projector in this case. Most

mobile PCs have the option of showing

the image on both the PC and the external

display at the same time,

which can be convenient

if the user is working from

a podium in front of the

screen.

Users may also need to

know how to switch display

resolutions if their note-

book PC’s resolution isn’t

the same as the projector’s

native resolution. Of course,

the users should be familiar

with creating and running

PowerPoint presentations.

Are more mega-pixels better?I can’t decide between a

digital camera with 5 mega-

pixels and its exact twin

with 7MP. What advantages

does 7MP have over 5?

KEN ELM

Our fl ip answer would be “2MP, of course!”

The issue of megapixels with digital

cameras really comes down to how large

you want to print the fi nal images. Five

megapixels is generally enough to look

pretty good at page sizes up to 8-by-10. If

you plan on printing to larger paper sizes,

then more megapixels may be better. More

megapixels also gives you the fl exibility to

crop your photos and still make fairly large

prints. Note that cameras that seem to be

identical except for the pixel count often

perform very differently, so read reviews

on both models. (You can fi nd our camera

reviews at go.pcmag.com/cameras.)

go.pcmag.com/askloyd • S O L U T I O N S

A S K LOY D

www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE

look crisper and brighter on a high-quality

screen. Screens can be portable, perma-

nently mounted on a wall, or retractable

(this type can be rolled up into a ceiling

fi xture). Also, projectors in permanent in-

stallations can be mounted onto a ceiling. A

ceiling-mounted projector can be turned on

with a remote control or wall switch (which

will mean an added installation cost). Some

projectors may be controlled directly by a

PC over an Ethernet connection.

Once you understand the environment,

then you can select the projector based

on the features needed. Note that prices

tend to scale dramatically with higher

resolution, light output, or lower weight. For

PowerPoint presentations, we recommend

a resolution of at least 1,024-by-768. If the

projection area is large, you’ll need brighter

output (more lumens). Smaller facilities

may not need very bright projectors. Unless

ALTHOUGH A 5-MEGAPIXEL image is usually fi ne for 8-by-10 prints,

you may be limited to smaller-sized prints if you crop it much.

5 megapixels

1.9 megapixels

S O L U T I O N S • go.pcmag.com/solutions

Clear XP Unread MessagesOn my XP system, fi ve different users

each have their own account. The log-on

window shows the number of e-mails

that are unread, but it’s totally inaccu-

rate. One time it reads 30, the next 2, the

next 10, and so on. But actually all e-mails

have been read and are marked as such.

How do I turn this useless thing off?

DAN PHILLIPPY

Various e-mail clients put information

on unread messages in the Windows XP

Registry, but this information isn’t always

correct. To clean up the situation, you’ll fi rst

clear the existing information and then con-

fi gure the system so it doesn’t add more.

Launch RegEdit from the Start menu’s

Run dialog and navigate to the key

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\

Windows\CurrentVersion\UnreadMail.

You’ll fi nd one or more subkeys below

this key. Select each subkey in turn and fi nd

the value MessageCount in the right-hand

pane. Double-click that value and set its

data to 0. Now look for a value named Mes

sageExpiryDays. If you don’t fi nd it (and

you probably won’t), choose Edit | New |

DWORD Value from the menu, name the

new value MessageExpiryDays. Set this

value’s data to 0. If there are multiple user

accounts on this computer, you’ll need to

log on as each user and repeat this process.

Just to cover all bases, navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Micro

soft\Windows\CurrentVersion

and look for a subkey named UnreadMail. If

you don’t see it, go to Edit | New | Key to cre-

ate it. Open the Unread-Mail key and fi nd

or create the MessageExpiry-Days value as

before. Set its data to 0. This needs to be

done only once, not once per user.

Mouse-Wheel MessThe type that appears on my display

is very small, almost unreadable. This

happened as I was surfi ng the Net. One

minute it was fi ne, the next it was very

small, and it has been like that since.

What can I do?

THOMAS CALICCHIO

You’ve run afoul of what can be a use-

ful feature of your mouse’s scroll wheel.

Many apps change the displayed text size

when you turn the scroll wheel while hold-

ing down the Ctrl key. Among these are

the Micro soft Offi ce programs, Internet

Explorer, and most e-mail clients. The size

range controlled by the wheel varies from

program to program. Internet Explorer

and Outlook Express have just fi ve size

levels, matching the fi ve sizes under View

| Text Size in IE’s menu. Offi ce programs

can change zoom level almost indefi nitely.

The direction varies too—rolling the wheel

toward you makes text smaller in Microsoft

Word, larger in IE. It’s easy to accidentally

make a size change by pressing Ctrl while

using the wheel, but it’s just as easy to re-

store the desired size once you know how.

Color-Coding Contacts in OutlookIn Microsoft Outlook 2003, how do I set

an e-mail in my Inbox from a specifi c

person to a color—not the entire e-mail

but only the line that appears in my In-

box? For example, if I get an e-mail from

Joseph Blow, I want that line to be red.

LOU MICKLER

This is surprisingly easy to do. Select a

message from the person in question, then

choose Tools | Organize from the menu.

Click the item titled Using Colors. Pick a

color from the drop-down list and click on

Apply Color. From now on, the Inbox line

item for any message from that sender will

be displayed using that color. This format-

ting is specifi c to the active message folder;

if you move the message to another folder,

the formatting will be lost, unless you spe-

cifi cally defi ne it for the other folder as well.

For more control, you can click the Auto-

matic Formatting link at the top of the Ways

to Organize panel. The resulting dialog

lets you defi ne conditions and associate a

typeface, style, size, and color with it. For

example, you could specify that all e-mails

that include attachments and whose sub-

ject line contains “Bjork” will be displayed in

blue 16-point underlined Arial. You can also

reach the Automatic Formatting dialog by

choosing View | Arrange By | Current View |

Customize Current View from the menu and

clicking the Automatic Formatting button.

A S K N E I L

Each issue, PC Magazine’s software

expert Neil J. Rubenking answers your

toughest software and Internet questions.

Send yours to askneil@ziffdavis.com.

TO CLEAR faulty unread message data and disable the feature in Windows XP

requires a Registry tweak.

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com 136

S O L U T I O N S • go.pcmag.com/askneil

IT’S VERY EASY to set Outlook 2003 to color-code messages that meet your criteria.

The Wireless SnareRight now your laptop could be wirelessly connecting

to any available network. That’s unsafe. BY ROBERT LEMOS

central computer to assign network ad-dresses to each member of the network.

This all makes it possible for attackers to join and control ad hoc networks. Be-cause a laptop believes it’s part of a net-work, it might check for e-mail, letting the attacker get the owner’s username and password. The attacking computer can also advertise its connection as an Internet gateway and scan traffi c sent by other laptops for useful information, such as passwords to automated accounts.

More aggressive attackers could use the network to try attacks on specific vulnerabilities in a potential victim’s laptop. In many cases, the laptop will connect to the wireless network, believ-ing that it is the user’s home network. Thus, the confi guration may allow fi le sharing and printer sharing.

How can you protect yourself? First, turn off your laptop’s wireless when not attempting to connect to a known net-work. Also, make sure your laptop doesn’t turn on its wireless when it can’t fi nd an Ethernet connection. Most important, disable ad hoc networking, by clicking the Advanced button of the Wireless Net-work Connection Settings control panel to change it from Any available network (access point preferred) to Access point (infrastructure) networks only.

As with children, the best advice for laptops is to not talk to strangers.

The issue isn’t a vulnerability per se; it’s a cascade failure of a set of default confi gurations that Microsoft has set to make creating wireless networks easier.

Many laptops are configured to at-tempt to connect to both infrastructure networks and what are called ad hoc net-works. In an infrastructure network, the laptop is a client that connects to a base station, similar to the client-server net-work design. In ad hoc networks, many individual laptops form a peer-to-peer network sharing connectivity. This ad hoc networking is done in the back-ground on Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP (up to Service Pack 1). Win-dows XP Service Pack 2 notifi es the user that it’s connecting to an ad hoc network.

Other factors come into play as well. Many people’s home networks connect through a base station identifi ed by the default name, such as “linksys.” More-over, a laptop that connects to an ad hoc network of a different name adds that name to its list of possible networks, pos-sibly advertising that network name to other computers in the future. Further-more, Microsoft has a default address-ing scheme that results in each computer getting a valid address, even without a

The situation’s all too common: You’re at the airport and your fl ight is delayed, so you open your

laptop and start working. Unbeknownst to you, your laptop’s wireless could be putting your computer in danger.

Recent real-world experiments sug-gest that the default wireless settings on many laptops could leave them vul-nerable. During recent travel, researcher Mark Loveless started poking into the reasons why a large number of laptops

Robert Lemos is a freelance technology journalist and the editor-at large for SecurityFocus.

A security researcher finds many people

vulnerable via ad hoc networks at 35,000 feet.

The Unfriendly Skies

Aircraft 1:MD80

Aircraft 3:MD80

Aircraft 4:757

Aircraft 2:MD80

NUMBER OF LAPTOPS IN USE ON FLIGHT

NUMBER OF VULNERABLE LAPTOPS

NUMBER OF AD HOC NETS

Sou

rce:

Mar

k Lo

vele

ss, V

erni

er N

etw

orks

at any given airport were broadcasting common network names, or service set identifi ers (SSIDs), such as “linksys” or “dlink.” He gathered similar data on four fl ights. He found a signifi cant portion of laptops are confi gured by default to seek out and connect to common SSIDs. If no such network is around, many computers create their own wireless network using one of those names. Without any sort of malicious intent, wireless laptops were connecting to each other, he found.

KEEP YOURSELF SAFE! Subscribe to our Security Watch newsletter and get up-to-date info on the latest threats delivered to your inbox automatically: go.pcmag.com/securitywatchletter.

SECURITY WATCHgo.pcmag.com/security watch • S O L U T I O N S

www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 137

Life Without ExchangeWhen it comes to working collaboratively, Microsoft

Exchange isn’t the only game in town. BY MATTHEW D. SARREL

Listen up, recruits: There’re plen-ty of reasons small businesses might want to eliminate (or never

even start with) Microsoft Exchange for e-mail, group calendaring, and more. Though there’s no doubt that Exchange’s integration with the Microsoft Outlook client, groupware features, and shared contact lists are handy, companies may object to its cost and complexity. The cost of running Exchange includes Win-dows Server. Unless you like paying Microsoft a small fortune (up to $8,000 for 25 user licenses for Windows Server and Exchange), you might consider a Linux solution.

Some alternatives work both in Out-look (via a client plug-in) and through webmail interfaces. Many of the open-source alternatives require customiza-tion (a code word for programming). Replacing Exchange may be an excellent way to save money, but you’ll need to plan for the transition to avoid unneces-sary downtime. You’ll need to replicate server settings and deploy and config-ure plug-ins to all Outlook clients on your network.There are many Exchange alternatives; here are our favorites.

Gordano Messaging Suite. Wizard-driven installation and Web-based man-agement make GMS a good Exchange alternative. It’s a solid e-mail server, and optional modules add group calen-daring and collaboration from within Outlook after installing the appropriate plug-in. A full-featured web-mail interface can easily re-place the Outlook client; a version for mobile devices is also available. Gordano of-fers many optional compo-nents, such as antispam and antivirus, which you can customize for your outfit. GMS runs on Windows or Linux. Cost: $45 per seat.

Scalix Email and Calendaring Platform. Scalix is a Linux-based Exchange alter-native with powerful administrative fea-tures more complicated than Exchange’s or Gordano’s. Those with basic Linux ad-ministrator skills should be able to han-dle it. An easy-to- deploy Outlook plug-in provides Exchange functionality, includ-ing real-time free/busy lookup for sched-uling and off-line support. The webmail client works equally well in Internet Ex-plorer or Firefox, and it supports mail,

calendars, contacts, and public folders via a drag-and-drop interface. Scalix eas-ily scales as your company grows. It also has hooks for third-party antispam and AV solutions. Cost: $60 per seat.

Novell SUSE Linux Openexchange Serv-er 4.1. Painless installation and a power-ful Web-based administration interface almost make you forget this is a Linux product. But you’ll remember when you edit text files to configure the open-source AV and antispam modules. More groupware features are enabled through the Web client than through Outlook, so you might ditch Outlook. In addi-tion to scheduling and shared contacts, Openexchange has discussion forums, shared folders, project and task tracking, and document versioning. Cost: $1,249 for server license; free webmail clients; groupware client, roughly $50 per seat.

OpenGroupware.org. This Exchange alternative (aka OGo) provides con-tact management, group calendaring, resource planning, task management, e-mail, document and project manage-ment, news, and Palm syncing, all avail-able via a Web interface. An Outlook plug-in is available. You can manage accounts, groups, and server confi gura-tions using a Web interface. The Projects application lets you share documents and link projects with contacts, tasks, notes, and appointments. The server runs on Linux or Windows. Cost: Free.

Open-Xchange. This open-source app includes portal services, a group cal-endar, contacts, tasks, project manage-ment, document management, webmail, a knowledge base, shared bookmarks,

and bulletin boards. Like OpenGroupware, Open-Xchange lets you organize your content into projects. “OXtenders” support inte-gration of Outlook and the Palm desktop. Hooks to open-source antivirus and antispam modules round out the product. The server runs on Linux only. Cost: $35 per seat.

Matthew D. Sarrel is a consultant and former PC Magazine Labs technical director.

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PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com 138

10

20

30

40

50

2009*2008*2007*2006*200520042003200220012000

Corporate Messaging Software Market Shares

Exchange alternatives count as Others. Numbers are percentages. Yearly totals may not add up to 100 because of rounding. *All figures from 2006 and beyond are projections. Source: The Radicati Group

MS Exchange

Others

IBM LotusDomino/Notes/Workplace

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EMC2, EMC, CLARiiON, Retrospect, RepliStor, and where information lives are registered trademarks and eRoom, Visual SRM, and EMC Storage Administrator are trademarks of EMC Corporation. © Copyright 2006 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

Regaining TrustLet’s face it: Microsoft’s security record isn’t impressive.

BY JOHN CLYMAN

There are a lot of other ways in which Vista’s improved security is readily ap-parent: an expanded Security Center, integrated Windows Defender anti-spyware (which we’ll cover in more de-tail in a future issue), and simpler ways to detect and correct security oversights, to name a few. Parents get controls that let them limit and track how their kids use the PC, a feature we’ll also expand on in an upcoming issue. And of course, Microsoft is enhancing the security of Internet Explorer, a major target for spyware, adware, and phishing scams (see go.pcmag.com/IE7security).

Will Microsoft get it right this time? We’re still working with beta-quality software that isn’t functionally complete or fully tested—nor widely available for hackers to target. But the initial signs are promising.

Corporate IT departments know it, individual users know it, and Microsoft knows it too: Com-

pany representatives regularly assert that Vista has to get security right—all the interface and usability bells and whistles that the new OS can offer are irrelevant if it can’t keep customers’ ma-chines and data safe.

How does Microsoft plan to achieve this goal? To start with, the company is building Vista atop the same code base used for Windows Server 2003 Service

Pack 1, a better-secured successor to Windows XP. Core Windows services have been hardened—their privilege levels and points of access to sensitive OS capabilities reduced —so that even if they are compromised, the damage that an attacker can wreak is more strictly limited. And Vista makes it much more practical to perform day-to-day tasks us-ing a reduced-privilege user account, as has long been possible on Unix variants and Mac OS, with a provision for admin-istrator privileges only when necessary.

VISTA REVEALED

JVISTA’S SECURITYcenter, like its

counter part in Win-

dows XP, provides a

centralized spot for

monitoring the secu-

rity status of a sys-

tem. Vista integrates

Microsoft’s Windows

Defender antispy-

ware software and,

as with antivirus

software, lets third-

party antispyware

developers plug their

utilities into the

Security Center.

VISTA SIMPLIFIES K and clarifi es the UI

for tasks such as

sharing fi les and

printers, which can

have signifi cant

(and not readily

apparent) security

implications. File

and printer sharing

gets its own control

panel applet, which

includes links that

let you see all your

open shared items

at a glance.

LFOR SOME SECURITY changes, Vista

lets you apply reasonable settings with

a single click—far better than walking

through a passive help fi le.

go.pcmag.com/vista • S O L U T I O N S

www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 141

Scanning Made Easy Two hidden Microsoft Offi ce tools could save you

hours of work. BY HELEN BRADLEY

Scanning and managing a multipage paper document can be an exer-cise in frustration. If scanning a

20-page document leaves you juggling 20 individual fi les, it’s time to get help. Microsoft Office Document Scanning, shipped with Offi ce 2003, could be your next best friend.

The Document Scanning tool joined a document-imaging component that has been around in Office for many years. You’ll fi nd both of the programs in the Microsoft Offi ce | Micro soft Offi ce Tools folder in your Start menu. The two pro-grams are interlinked, and in combina-tion they offer a one-stop shop for many typical and otherwise complex scan-ning tasks.

SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS

YOU CAN ANNOTATE your scans, which is

useful for completing forms and working

collaboratively. Tools for that, available

from the Annotations toolbar, let you

draw or write on the document. For larger

pieces of text, drag the cursor to add a

text box over the document and type text

into it. The text box can have a colored

background (with a variable transpar-

ency level). To add a picture over the

top of a page, click the Insert Picture

tool, or you can paste text or graphic

objects from the Windows Clipboard

by choosing Edit | Paste. Annotations

are saved on a separate layer over the

page and can be displayed or not by

choosing Tools | Annotations and then

Hide Annotations or Show Annotations.

2. Write On Your Scans

1. Document ScanningMICROSOFT OFFICE Document Scanning

uses any installed scanner and includes

a range of scanning presets. If none

suit your needs, click the Preset button

and choose Create New Preset to select

scanner and fi le settings such as scan

resolution, type of scan (monochrome,

8-bit gray, 24-bit color), whether to save

the images as multipage TIF fi les or MDI

fi les, and the level of compression used.

You can also confi gure the scan page size,

the save directory, and which automatic

fi le-naming system to use.

Document Scanning

uses OCR to recognize

your scanned text, and it

can automatically rotate

and straighten a scan if

the preset is confi gured

to do so. If you want, you

can choose to view the

scanner’s own dialog

before scanning—or by-

pass it and let Document

Scanning do the work.

WHEN YOU’RE DONE scanning, all the

pages in the fi le appear in the Microsoft

Offi ce Document Imaging tool. Choosing

View | Thumbnails displays page thumb-

nails down the left side of the screen. To

reorder pages, drag and drop them in the

thumbnail area.

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PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com 142

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The HotSeat PC Gamer® (shown with a NASCAR® PC)s the most durable, comfor-able, 6-speaker dolby surround sound gaming hassis around! The HotSeat C Gamer® plays with all PC’sd game console systems.

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known. What was almost as important was its distribution method. Players could download Wolfenstein from a number of FTP sites and BBS fi le areas and play free. The game spread virally, and id built a stake on gracious players’ payments that would carry it through the even more popular shareware title Doom and on to big releases, beginning with Quake.

The pitfalls of the shareware method are obvious. Even then, collecting money was a dicey prospect. Some stu-dios would release demos and require payment to see the rest of the game.

When id released Return to Castle Wolfenstein in 2001, a decade after the

The digital revolution, instead of a violent and bloody overthrow, has been a long, creeping pro-

cess. Take media on demand: In case you haven’t noticed, it’s already happened. iTunes and Napster have brought music downloads into the mainstream, and though Hollywood still bites its nails in anxiety at the thought of video down-loads, Google Video and iTunes are bringing TV down a road that movies will inevitably plod down themselves.

Games are part of this new para-digm—the difference being that game studios have little of the queasiness that has marked the music and movie indus-tries’ efforts to get with the 21st century. Instead, having pioneered digital deliv-ery, games have a tradition to look back to and build from.

SHAREWARE Before the MP3 format made it feasible to share entire songs back and forth on the Inter-net, small shareware programs were the only thing it was possible to trade across dial-up Internet connections. The killer game app was Wolfenstein 3D, introduced by id Software in 1991.

The story of how Wolfenstein 3D rev-olutionized fi rst-person shooters is well

original game, anyone suggesting that it be distributed online, by the same method as the series’ roots, would have sounded crazy. Times have changed again, however, and new services are making downloadable games a real-ity—but for full price.

STEAMThe original Half-Life, which grafted extensive use of scripted events onto id’s Quake engine, was a huge infl uence on just about every shooter game. But its sequel set off an even bigger change by being the fl agship release for devel-oper Valve’s new digital delivery ser-vice, Steam.

Steam’s birth came with some con-troversy, though, because of Valve’s style of digital distribution. The retail version of Half-Life that Valve shipped to stores was more like a formality to appease Vivendi Universal Games, its behemoth publisher: For their $50, gam-ers got a box containing fi ve discs inside a sleeve. If players wanted a manual, they had to refer to the PDF version on the disc, and the irritation at this was nothing compared to what came next:

Half-Life 2 wasn’t playable until you had created a Steam account and reg-

istered the game. Both the retail and digital versions of it

had to check in with Steam to verify the game’s legitimacy at each play ses-sion, and the burden on the Steam serv-ers led to long load times.

All this was very annoying at the time. The key, though, is that Steam got better quickly—and bigger. The service now hosts several games, most by independent third-party develop-ers. When software publisher Strategy First signed a deal with Steam, Tycho of Penny Arcade noted the event, say-ing, “Watching Steam move from The Thing You Get Half-Life 2 From to a more complete content channel has been a real relief.”

Strategy First agreed, saying, “We believe Valve’s delivery system is one of the best methods of connecting gamers to top software titles.” Other studios have also joined in, with indie

FORCED ENLISTMENT Half-Life 2 isn’t

playable without an online account.

Digital Delivery Downloading games isn’t just for pirates anymore.

BY NICH MARAGOS, 1UP.COM

go.pcmag.com/gaming-culture

GAMING + CULTURE

www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 157

games from Darwinia to Rag Doll Kung Fu popping up on the service.

XBOX LIVE ARCADEWhat about consoles, where it’s always been a hard world for small game devel-opers? Until recently, there weren’t many options.

In 2005, though, the unlikeliest friend of the small-time operator stepped forward: Microsoft. When the com-pany debuted its new Xbox 360, one of its most intriguing aspects was an expanded version of the existing Xbox Live Arcade. Arcade became a much bigger part of the next-gen system, inte-grated directly into the new Xbox Live Marketplace.

Although only hard-drive equipped Xbox 360s have storage space for the downloadable items and games in the Marketplace, the experiment seems to be taking off. The real star of Arcade has been Geometr y Wa rs: Retro Evolved, which has seen 45,000 paid downloads.

Digital downloads of cheap and legal emulated games could fi ll a niche that no retail channel has, and could ensure that yesterday’s seminal games sur-vive. The most important aspect of the digital-delivery revolution may be not just a change in the way games are consumed, but one in the way they are made. After years of ballooning budgets and massive development teams, we might see a revival of the spirit of the shareware days, when it was possible to make a game by yourself, release it into the world, and watch it fl y.

PAY TO PLAY Puzzle Pirates is free, but

extra features require a subscription.

1 GRAND THEFT AUTO: VICE CITY New options, new vehicles for the famous game.

2 GRAND THEFT AUTO III Guns, gear, and cars. Need we say more?

3 METAL GEAR SOLID 2: SONS OF LIBERTY Highly cinematic sequel to the original action game.

4 RESIDENT EVIL 4 Get reacquainted with an idealistic cop in a ruined city.

5 GRAND THEFT AUTO: SAN ANDREAS Soon, there’ll surely be 31 fl avors of GTA.

6 GOD OF WAR Deep combat with fi erce enemies. Scale mountain cliffs!

7 TONY HAWK’S PRO SKATER 4 Possibly the best skateboarding game ever.

8 VIRTUA FIGHTER 4 EVOLUTION Challenge a steady stream of opponents, easy and tough.

9 BURNOUT 3: TAKEDOWN For racing gamers and adrenaline addicts.

10 NCAA FOOTBALL 2004 Captures the spirit and intensity of college football.

TOP 10 l Highest-Rated PS2 Games

ON THE AUCTIONBLOCKYou never know what

kind of booty you’ll

fi nd on the block.

ITEM:

Yep, that’s an

original Atari

Pong machine

from the 1970s.

EBAY PRICE:

$91

ITEM:

Wanna sport a

Legend of Zelda

gray T-shirt? Sure

you do.

EBAY PRICE:

$11.85

ITEM:

We found

ten Logitech

Wireless PS2

controllers.

EBAY PRICE:

$0.99

Source: Gametab.com. Ratings, out of a possible 10, are averaged from many reviews.

GOOD THINGS come

in small packages. So

reader Jeffrey Stephen-

son created the pico-

Cluster. It’s a three-node

cluster with a 50-watt AT

power supply and a fi ve-

port switch—like three

computers all within a

6-inch cube. “It has 21

LEDs that put on quite a

light show when it’s cal-

culating pi to eight billion

places,” Jeffrey says. The

pico-Cluster also has a

fanless CPU and a Com-

pactFlash hard drive.

MOD WORLD

9.6

9.6

9.6

9.6

9.5

9.5

9.4

9.4

9.4

9.4

http://www.energystar.gov

Heads up, Harley fans! Out of the Box Computers fi rst revved

its engines a couple of years ago with PC case mods inspired

by motorcycle tanks (www.thinktankpc.com). Now the com-

pany is branching out into customized, hand-painted cases

that house PCs—courtesy of well-known artist Jason Prouty.

The system seen here contains an MSI MEGA 865 system

with a Pentium 4. You can provide your own wish list for what

you want on the outside of your simulated cycle tank. The

custom creations are part of the company’s American Chopper

program. Prices start at $1,450, with a P4 system on board.

Fire up your own design!—Sebastian Rupley MORE ON THE WEB For more cool products, like this dancing and cartwheeling Robonova, head towww.gearlog.com

A F T E R H O U R S • go.pcmag.com/afterhours www.gearlog.com • G E A R L O G

www.pcmag.com APRIL 11, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 159

GEARLOG

GET YOUR PC RUNNING . . .HEAD OUT ON THE HIGHWAY

PC MAGAZINE APRIL 11, 2006 www.pcmag.com 160

WHEN IT’S TIME TO CHANGE, YOU’VE GOT TO REARRANGE!Edited by Don Willmott

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NY 10016-7940 and at additional mailing offi ces. POSTMASTER: Address changes to PC Magazine, P.O. Box 54070, Boulder, CO 80328-4070. The Canadian GST registration number is 865286033. Publications Mail Agree-

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Winners this issue: Jon Austin, Paul Christensen, Norman Dotti, Mark Ericson, Eric Schnaufer, and Dick Sisson.

<< Is there anything you can’t do with a USB port?

<< Another perfect combination!

<< Computer equipment only . . . plus one bright-orange vacuum cleaner.

>> You gotta wonder what this caption, which describes a TV, said in the original Japanese. (Google translation of Sony Japan Web site)

>> Among the many cool features at online magazine PingMag (www.pingmag.jp) is a ten-step lesson on Web site development . . . demon-strated by tiny toys.

>> Yum! The Internet is smelling good in Pushkar, India.

>> The sushi was only so-so. (Google News)

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