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Tablets Enter Their Adolescence WHAT A DIFFERENCE seven months makes. Back in June 2011, when last we looked at tablets, we asked, on the cover: “Can Any Tablet Beat the iPad?” The question was largely rhetorical. Though we were enthusiastic about the first generation of Android tablets, Apple’s iPad 2 was the clear winner. Today, we have a horse race. According to Senior Editor Melissa J. Perenson (see “Android Tablets: Finally Ready?” page 56), the iPad 2 and its rivals—from Samsung, Sony, and other makers—are now roughly comparable. Even so, it’s worth recognizing that today’s tablets are a work in progress. We’re still figuring out what these devices are supposed to be, and what we should expect them to do. The design and technology are in their adolescence, and the…

GRIFFIN BEACON If your coffee table is crowded with remote controls, replace them all with your smartphone. The Griffin Beacon turns your phone into an easy-to-use, never-lost remote for your home entertainment center, and is available for Android and iOS models. Beacon pairs with your phone via Bluetooth and works with a free universal remote app. Price: $70. PARROT AR.DRONE This device is a remote-controlled, camera-equipped quadicopter, with your iPhone, iPad, or Android phone as the remote, connecting via Wi-Fi. You can pilot it via the free AR.Freeflight app (iOS, Android) or use it to play dedicated free, multiplayer games at game parties. The AR.Drone is designed for both indoor and outdoor use. The Drone sells for $300. JAWBONE UP This wristband uses sensors and a motion-tracking engine to track…

PHONES AND TABLETS with the Android 4.0 operating system start arriving soon—but which models will get the update, and when? Galaxy Nexus: Expected soon (at this writing) from Samsung, this is the only new phone known for sure to be coming preloaded with Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). LG Optimus 2X: LG has confirmed via its Facebook page that it is “in the process of planning the ICS OS update for the LG Optimus 2X as well as other LG high-end smartphones.” Motorola phones: Motorola says it will be upgrading the Droid Bionic, Droid Razr, and Xoom to ICS—probably some weeks after Google’s official release of the update. Nexus S: Google confirms that it’s working on an ICS update for the Nexus S, but not for other Nexus models. Sony Xperia:…

FOLLOWING SOME UNPOPULAR changes in its service, Netflix saw many fans head for the exits and seek an alternative. I tried four rival for-pay video streaming and rental services: Amazon Prime, Blockbuster On Demand, Hulu Plus, and iTunes rentals. Let’s look at how these services fared against Netflix on price, content, streaming quality, and ease of use. Amazon Prime Price: $79 per year Content: The inventory at Amazon Prime includes a few good, recent titles; but most of the items available through Amazon Prime are older (Notting Hill) or classic (High Plains Drifter). A recent deal with Fox adds 2000 TV shows and movies. Streaming quality: You can stream videos to a PC, Mac, or compatible device; or you can download a rental video and watch it offline on your…

VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS LET you outsource tedious tasks overseas. We gave four services three tests: 1) convert an Excel spreadsheet to Google Docs, 2) create a Tokyo trip itinerary (with a gluten-free dining option), and 3) research e-commerce Web hosting. (For full details, see find.pcworld.com/72354.) AskSunday Within half an hour of our signing up online with AskSunday (plans vary; on-demand service costs $3 per week plus $12 per hour), our India-based assistant Felcy called. AskSunday was responsive, and it did the best work of the four services on the Excel project, improving the chart’s legibility. The next day, when we expected our Tokyo trip plan, we instead received a list of attorneys meant for “David.” We were shocked that this could happen—and that we were billed for this job. The Tokyo…

LIKE MANY OTHER topics we cover here at PCWorld, security has a language of its own. Listening to a group of security experts carry on a conversation, for instance, can be a frustrating experience for mere mortals. And sometimes, technical jargon seeps into everyday security news. Knowing what the following five key security terms mean, however, can help you stay better informed about the threats around you. Zero-day: You may occasionally hear software companies talk about “zero-day” flaws or exploits. The expression “zero-day” refers to any newly discovered software security flaw that has yet to be fixed by the software’s maker. While conventional wisdom suggests that zero-day threats are something you should be seriously concerned about, not everyone is convinced: A recent report from Microsoft shows that very few major…

Lock Down Your Wireless Network IF YOU HAVE a wireless network at your home or business, you must protect it against opportunistic hackers seeking to steal your data or hijack your Wi-Fi. We asked Steven Andrés, chief technology officer of security consulting firm Special Ops Security, about the best ways to lock down Wi-Fi. To get started, you will need to log in to your router’s administrative console by typing the router’s IP address into your Web browser’s address bar. Most routers use an address such as 192.168.1.1, though alternatives like 192.168.0.1 and 192.168.2.1 are also common. Check your router’s manual to determine the correct IP address, or locate it on the manufacturer’s website. Change Your Passwords The first step is simple: Change your passwords! Default router passwords like “admin”…

Long a powerful suite for creating, editing, transcoding, and burning video and photo slideshow discs, plus editing audio and doing backups, Nero’s latest release improves several major components and links them via a new media-file browser. The $100 Nero 11 has support for AMD, Nvidia, and Intel hardware GPU video-encoding acceleration, and it adds a Time Machine–like backup function. In my hands-on, Nero 11 installed without a hitch, though I had a couple of issues with its desktop icons. Updated with a modern look and feel are the capable Nero Video editor, Kwik Media (a Windows Media Player–like module), BackItUp, and the Recode CD/DVD ripper and transcoder. The look is friendly, classy, and far more intuitive, with better workflow and an easier learning curve. But not all components have these…

COREL PAINTSHOP PRO X4 ($100) is a powerful, capable image-editing app that could use some serious pruning. The revised program relies on three primary workspace tabs: Manage, for photo organization; Adjust, a lead-me-by-the-nose editing mode; and Edit, with a vast array of manual image-editing tools. When you change from one mode to another, you have to save your image and wait as the app shifts things around. The Edit mode houses several interesting new features. Vignette permits you to select the primary subject of your image, and blur and darken the areas around it. Selective Focus feathers one area of your image and blurs the rest. PaintShop Pro X4 contains more than 75 performance updates, including GPU optimizations, and it supports editing 16-bit images with more tools than before (valuable…

It’s smart to have three copies of your vital data: the original, a local backup, and an offsite backup. LaCie’s CloudBox NAS device lets you back up to the ethernet-connected unit, which then backs up to LaCie’s cloud service. But easy as it is, the CloudBox is also expensive, low-capacity, and quite slow. You pay $199 for a 100GB hard drive plus one year of the backup service; a $129 yearly fee for backing up online kicks in after the first year of service ends. Matching the local capacity with the online capacity does keep things simple, and 100GB is more than adequate for backing up financial documents, email, and the like. But it isn’t enough space to support a full backup of many users’ data. The gigabit-capable CloudBox wrote…

THE HOOPLA SURROUNDING tablets today is clearly focused on Android and iOS models, but that doesn’t mean you can’t buy a tablet running Microsoft Windows. Several companies are offering such slates, including Dell, ExoPC, Fujitsu (the Stylistic Q550, pictured below), Hewlett-Packard, Motion Computing, Samsung, and ViewSonic. With prices starting at $650 and running to nearly twice that, however, depending on the configuration, manufacturers typically are positioning these tablets for use in the business world, where the Windows operating system reigns supreme, and where buyers tend to have custom software already designed for the OS. Higher prices, shorter battery life, and the lack of a touch-optimized operating system and apps are among the many reasons Windows tablets remain a niche item so far, but that situation should change soon. When it…

Dell and HP consumer laptops have become more durable over the years, but not as rapidly as several smaller rivals have. As a result, readers continue to ding the two large vendors on reliability measures. Apple laptop users gave their machines high marks for durability, support, and most features, except “performance for the price.” Asus, in contrast, got praise from customers for selling a lot of laptop for the money. 1 IN 5: PROPORTION OF PROBLEMS FOR WHICH LAPTOP MAKERS’ ONLINE RESOURCES OR LIVE PHONE SUPPORT COULD NOT PROVIDE A SOLUTION. TOP 10 THINGS THAT GO WRONG WITH LAPTOPS 19% Operating system 18% Hard drive 11% Power supply 9% Graphics/Video 9% Keyboard 9% Motherboard 6% Monitor/Screen 6% Wireless connection 5% DVD drive 4% System memory/RAM Overall satisfaction with laptop reliability…

Though a multitude of competing tablets have entered the marketplace, our results show that the iPad remains miles ahead of the pack in durability, ease of use, and features such as battery life, screen quality, and overall speed. In fact, Apple soaked up almost all of the high scores in those areas, leaving the rest of the field saddled with average or below-average scores on our survey measures. “I discovered that it’s surprisingly complicated to navigate, and many apps won’t install.—ACER TABLET OWNER” Satisfaction WINNERS & LOSERS Battery life Design Available ports Display quality Overall speed…

Among camera brands, Canon and Nikon are this year’s co-champs. Readers again rewarded Canon for producing durable cameras, high-quality LCD screens, and attractive images. Nikon owners liked the LCD screen, shutter speed, and picture quality of their cameras, but said that the cameras were relatively hard to use. WHICH ARE EASIEST TO USE? 90% Percentage of Canon owners who are “very satisfied” or “extremely satisfied” with their camera’s picture quality. Satisfaction WINNERS & LOSERS Shutter response Video quality Picture quality LCD screen Warranty ABOUT OUR RESULTS MORE THAN 63,000 PCWorld readers responded to our online and print advertisements or email messages, and volunteered to participate in our survey. With the help of statistical consultant Ferd Britton, we analyzed the survey data to determine which companies’ results were reliably above or…

MANY FACTORS AFFECT a broadband Internet connection’s overall performance. One of the least-understood factors is the user’s Domain Name System server. The DNS translates more-easily remembered domain names into numeric IP addresses. For example, when you enter www.pcworld.com in a browser, your system checks its DNS resolver; if the IP address isn’t cached, your system requests it from DNS servers until one gives the address (in our example, 70.42.185.10). If the request fails at one name server, you have to wait as your system asks another name server. Your ISP likely assigns DNS servers for your connection. But depending on your ISP and location, you may find that they’re underperforming or unreliable. As a result, some sites take too long to load (if they load at all), and email is…

WHEN IT COMES to cleaning an LCD screen, there’s a right way and a wrong way. Let’s focus on the right way (natch). For starters, turn your monitor off. In fact, to eliminate any risk of shock or electrical damage, unplug it. (Better safe than sorry.) This cleaning will involve some moisture, and the last thing you want is for liquid to contact anything powered. Dampen a clean, soft cloth (a paper towel will do, but it isn’t the best choice) with water. Don’t soak it—just moisten it. And don’t use anything other than water. Ammonia- and alcohol-based cleaners can ruin an LCD. If plain water doesn’t do the job, make a 50/50 solution of distilled water and white vinegar. If you decide to use a spray bottle, don’t spray…

IF YOU WANT to make your classic (pre–Windows XP) games run on a modern PC, you’ll have to become familiar with DOSBox, a fully configurable DOS PC emulator. Head to find.pcworld.com/72362 and pick up a copy for your operating system. I’ve based this guide on DOSBox version 0.74 for Windows. Install DOSBox anywhere. Next, set up a folder for your games with a short name, such as C:\DOSGAMES, and create a separate folder in that directory for each game. In the days of DOS, all files had to have eight characters before the period and three after, so for simplicity’s sake keep your filenames at eight characters or less. Now you need to mount the C:\DOSGAMES folder as a virtual hard drive. Double-click the DOSBox executable in your Start menu,…

I TEND TO have a lot of tabs open in my browser, such as for pages I haven’t read yet. The thing is, I don’t want to leave my PC running just so I can keep all these tabs “live.” Nor do I want to bookmark them, as I don’t intend to store them permanently. Fortunately, Chrome and Firefox each offer an easy way to keep tabs open from one session to the next—no plug-ins or extensions required. (Alas, if Internet Explorer 9 has a way to do likewise, I haven’t found it.) Here’s how to enable the option in Chrome: 1. Click the wrench icon that’s located in the upper-right corner, next to the address bar. In the menu that pops open, select Options. 2. In the Basics section…

Our Windows 8 Preview: A Mixed Reaction Let us see if Microsoft gets it right with Windows 8. The company’s track record seems to show that every other release either has not caught on or has been problematic. Windows 95 was good considering the massive change it represented from Win 3.0. Windows Me was a disaster. XP was great. Vista was a mess. Windows 7 was spot-on. Hope Windows 8 does not follow this pattern. Ralph Schlessinger, Henderson, Nevada This new OS [Windows 8] is looking mighty good. It’s really taking shape, and has some rather nice features. The whole PC industry is starting to get interesting, and about time too. It’s felt stagnant for years. HankRearden, PCWorld.com forums Windows 8 isn’t due out till mid- to late 2012, so…

MAJOR TECH FIRMS, including Amazon, Apple, and Google, are lining up alongside smaller service providers to help consumers store and stream their music collections online. Accessing your music online is particularly ideal on mobile devices, since many phones and tablets are limited in storage to 16GB or less. Some services require you to upload your music, while others will match your files with an online catalog, no uploads required. And one service (Murfie) does something original: It lets you ship your entire CD collection to a storage facility in the Midwest, where somebody else will digitize your music collection for you (and you can sell or trade CDs). Amazon Cloud Drive (for storage) and Cloud Player (for streaming): 5GB of storage is free (20GB or more starts at $20 per…

HERE’S THE CONCEPT: You attach a QR code to your key ring; if you lose the ring and someone who finds it scans the code, that scan opens a texting window with the message “I found your keys!”—a message set to be sent to your phone. How useful are QR codes in the real world? Our experiment tries to find out, using a clever key-chain trick. When I first saw this suggestion (at find.pcworld.com/72385), I couldn’t help but wonder how many of the people who might find my keys would have smartphones, and how many of them would even know what to do with a QR code. I decided to put this idea to the test. I went to a local hardware store to make copies of an old key,…

Should Your Phone Be Your Cash Card? IF YOU OCCASIONALLY can’t find your wallet, often don’t carry a checkbook, but always have your phone handy, you might like to pay your bill at a local store by bumping your phone against a digital receiver. In coming months, Near Field Communication receivers will appear next to the cash registers of many brick-and-mortar stores. NFC is a way to transfer information wirelessly between two nearby antennas. Google has equipped its Sprint Nexus S 4G with an NFC antenna and offers the much-anticipated Google Wallet app to encourage shoppers to make phone-based payments. RIM is adding NFC antennas to many of its new phones, and is introducing a feature called “Tag” that will let BlackBerry users transfer not just payment information, but any…

Make Your iPad a PowerPoint Presenter IF YOU FREQUENTLY make presentations, you know what a time sink it can be to work with PowerPoint on a laptop. You have to connect a projector, wait for the PC to boot, run PowerPoint, load your slide deck, switch the laptop’s video output to projector mode, and on and on. You can easily blow 10 to 20 minutes just setting up your presentation. Enter the SlideShark (www.slideshark.com) iPad app. Actually, it’s both an app and a service, and it’s free—for a starter account, anyway. After signing up and installing the app, you upload your slide decks (SlideShark supports both .ppt and .pptx files) and then wait a few minutes while the service optimizes them for iPad viewing. Afterward, you fire up the app…

Patches Galore From Google, Apple THIS GO-AROUND, GOOGLE repaired more than 20 flaws in its Chrome browser (many of them rated critical or high). Apple also released updates to correct issues in iTunes, Mac OS X, and Safari. Google Chrome’s Fixes The updates to Google Chrome address vulnerabilities that could allow denial-of-service attacks, attacks via JavaScript, or memory corruption, among other things. Google also announced the release of Chrome 15.0.874.102—a more-stable version for Windows, Mac, and Linux—and the Chrome Frame plug-in, which contains a number of improvements. Altogether, Google repaired 24 vulnerabilities in Chrome. Of these, 1 was rated critical, while 17 were rated high; 2 were medium and 4 were low. Among the bugs rated high, two, designated CVE-2011-2880 and CVE-2011-2881, affect how Chrome handles hidden objects in a…

WANT TO TURN your Windows 7 PC into a killer DVR that has potentially limitless storage and requires no monthly fees? Three new products will pipe your high-definition cable TV signals into your PC without even requiring you to open the computer’s case. When you use your PC to record shows, you can do what you want with them. If you wish to keep shows forever, you can. If you prefer to watch them on a phone or tablet, converting them is easy. And with (in most cases) an HDMI cable, you can watch them on your TV. The three products I tried each use a CableCard TV tuner from a cable provider. All of them are external devices that promise plug-and-play simplicity. Two models require a USB port, while…

WITH THE HARMONY Link, a $100 base station that works with free iOS and Android apps as well as a Wi-Fi network, Logitech allows your mobile device to do everything a conventional high-end remote can do and then some. But for the Link to be a truly satisfactory alternative to a hardware remote, its software needs improvement. Black, shiny, and shaped like a compact, 6-inch flying saucer, the Harmony Link hardware takes about half an hour or more to set up, depending on how many devices it will control. For setup, Logitech provides a small printed booklet with pretty good instructions. After setup, I installed the Harmony software for my iPhone and iPad, logged in to MyHarmony, and synced the app with my account. With that, the Link was ready.…

IF YOU OWN a digital camera, you probably have lots of digital images to file, sort, edit, and share. CyberLink’s PhotoDirector 2011 ($100) aims to help you do just that. Using PhotoDirector is easy and intuitive. You can import images—proprietary RAW formats, JPEG, or TIFF—directly into albums; flag, rate, and label them; duplicate or delete; sort by metadata; locate the original; and export. When you export images, PhotoDirector can add copyright information, resize images, and resave them as TIFF or JPEG files, among other possibilities. You can create and save profiles to standardize export options that you commonly use. PhotoDirector also lets you share images via Facebook or Flickr, or assemble a slideshow movie and share it as an AVC, MPEG, or WMV file (complete with MP3 soundtrack) on YouTube.…

LIGHTNING-FAST SEARCH tool CloudMagic finds search results in email, calendar entries, and more. With one query, this browser add-on for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox sifts through Gmail, Google Apps Email, Google Docs, Google Calendars, Google Contacts accounts...and now Twitter, too. CloudMagic’s tabbed interface lets you switch between five categories of content—Mails, Events, Docs, Contacts, and Tweets—so finding what you want is a snap. And in my tests, the results that CloudMagic delivered were excellent. The vendor says that the version 3.1 beta is up to 100 times faster than previous versions—and though I didn’t attempt to corroborate that figure, I can attest to the fact that CloudMagic is very fast. Search results appear in real time. Though useful, CloudMagic’s new Twitter search is limited to searching your tweets, retweets,…

WHAT WILL TABLETS look like in the coming year? You can expect them to become even lighter and thinner than they are now. Already, 1.2 to 1.3 pounds is the new normal weight, with 0.3 to 0.4 inch the new standard in thickness. Higher-resolution displays are coming, as well. For example, the 1024-by-768-pixel iPad 2 offers only 132 pixels per inch, but the upcoming Toshiba Thrive 7” Tablet (the smaller cousin of the Thrive on our chart), with a 1280-by-800-pixel display, will boast 225 pixels per inch, the same as on the T-Mobile SpringBoard reviewed in this roundup. The extra pixels help smooth out the text, so you won’t see the dots that form the letters. Rumors are running rampant that a high-resolution display, akin to the one in the…

PCWorld readers like their iPhones; more survey participants own this model than any other phone, and they praised its durability, ease-of-use, design, and camera quality. HTC phones scored well in those areas, too. But readers had little good to say about LG and Samsung phones, finding fault with their phones’ ease of use and with features such as design, touchscreen responsiveness, and overall speed. WHAT BREAKS MOST 2% Power port 4% Bluetooth 6% Microphone/speaker 12% Battery 3% Display screen 4% GPS 33% Operating system 12% Touchscreen 3% Physical keyboard 3 IN 4: PROPORTION OF SMARTPHONES THAT WERE REPORTED TO BE TROUBLE-FREE 2 IN 5: PROPORTION OF PROBLEMS NOT COMPLETELY RESOLVED BY CARRIER SUPPORT…

Among our readers, at least, LG seems to have emerged as the brand to beat in the HDTV market. Readers gave LG sets high marks for ease of use and reliability (along with Panasonic), as well as for features such as connection ports and the remote control. Mitsubishi owners, on the other hand, were dissatisfied with their TVs’ design, durability, and ease of use. “I had a problem with a line of dots running down the right side of the screen.—MITSUBISHI HDTV OWNER” 47% Percentage of people who said they were less than completely satisfied with the speakers in their HDTV. Even among the TV owners who were most satisfied with their set’s speakers—those who bought Magnavox HDTVs—31 percent said that they weren’t completely satisfied. Satisfaction WINNERS & LOSERS Design…

Navigating app stores can be tricky, with vague descriptions, dubious user reviews, and sometimes buggy apps. So we searched across platforms for the best apps available. OPERATING SYSTEMS Android (Google) BlackBerry OS (RIM) iOS (Apple) Windows Phone 7 (Microsoft) * shown with an icon means “optimized for tablets.” TO DOWNLOAD AN app, go to the “More Online” box at the end of this article and use the QR code there to access the download links online. Keep Track of Everything LOCALE $4 Locale lets you create location-based tasks. For example, you can have your phone turn on Wi-Fi when you get home, or have the phone silence itself when you get to work. It’s a great way to automate minor tasks, saving you a few extra minutes—and the embarrassment of…

HAVE YOU EVER wanted to remove icons, specifically those for unused programs, from the lower-right corner of the Windows screen? That collection of icons is called the system tray, the systray, or the notification area. But they aren’t just icons; they’re running programs that use RAM, clock cycles, and so on. Each one is slowing down your PC a bit. They might also be conflicting with other software, making Windows less stable. Some of these programs are worth such potential problems. For instance, you need an antivirus app’s real-time malware protection. To remove icons for programs you don’t use, however, your best bet is to uninstall the unwanted software itself. If you don’t recall the app’s name, point your mouse at its icon, and information should turn up. Or right-click…

CALL ME A tree hugger if you must, but I see no reason to keep a computer on when it’s not in use. Wasting electricity is bad for your pocketbook and bad for the planet—and it’s probably bad for the PC. Yes, on occasion I have read arguments insisting that shutting down a PC, and then starting it up cold, causes more wear and tear than leaving it on for 12 hours. I just don’t buy them. All computers are at risk of suffering from heat problems, and one that never gets a chance to cool down will be under more heat stress. Besides, a computer that’s turned off is a computer that can’t catch a malware infection (or if it has already been infected, it can’t behave under orders…

MOST MODERN ANDROID phones do not have data encryption built into their hardware, which means that you have to rely on third-party apps to secure your text messages, email, and other critical communications. Thankfully, you have plenty of app options to choose from. One of the most promising is WhisperCore (find.pcworld.com/72376), a phone encryption app from Whisper Systems that can encrypt your phone’s flash memory and even create encrypted backups in case your phone falls into the wrong hands and you have to perform an emergency data wipe. The app is still in beta, however, and it works only with the Nexus S and Nexus One handsets; we’re hoping that the Whisper team is working hard to extend this awesome app to cover more hardware. Alternatively, Android owners can selectively…

How Mom Made All That Cash WHILE SURFING THE Web recently, reader Jon Gawne of Framingham, Massachusetts, stumbled upon these two unrelated ads, one directly above the other. As he notes, “Secrets are revealed when ads run together.” Truth in Advertising JESSE PEREBOOM FROM Scandia, Minnesota, who runs a small business doing computer repair and tech support, spotted this label on a client’s old PC that he was recycling. And about that claim of never being obsolete? As a doorstop yes; as a usable computer, not so much. Why Buy Anywhere Else? ESTABLISHMENTS ROUTINELY TRY to lure customers with promises of free shipping. But an email from Retrevo to “gadget geek” Lisa Potthoff of Houston offered an even better deal: free shopping. Makes you wonder about the company’s business model.…

SCAREWARE HAS GONE mobile: Users of Android devices are starting to see sleazy ads warning that they need to upgrade their device’s battery. The supposed battery-saver apps that the ads prod you to download, however, could endanger your privacy or siphon money from your wallet—and generally will do nothing to improve your gadget’s battery life, security experts say. Sometimes you don’t even need to agree to download the apps. PCWorld spotted an ad on an Android phone for a battery utility called Battery Upgrade. Tapping the ad—even by accident—launches the phone’s Web browser, which automatically initiates the download of the app’s installer file. These ads cross a line,” says Andrew Brandt, director of threat research for Solera Networks. It’s one thing to market a worthless battery app, he says, but…

Hard-Drive Shortage Prompts Price Hikes Flooding in Thailand, producer of key hard-drive components, is wreaking havoc on HDD manufacturers. And the consumer retail market will likely suffer from significant shortages and price increases, analysts say. Two industry research firms, IDC and IHS iSuppli, have predicted that the overall market shortage will reach 25 percent to 28 percent over the next six months. This means that users should brace themselves for sticker shock: Prices on retail sites such as Newegg.com and Pricegrabber.com are already skyrocketing. IE Posts Biggest Share Drop in Three Years In October 2011, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser lost its largest amount of usage share in three years, a Web-metrics firm reported recently. IE dropped 1.8 percentage points to 52.6 percent during October. Only IE’s November 2008 drop of…

Sharp Aquos LC-80LE632U Bigger isn’t always better—unless you’re talking TVs. Sharp’s new LCD HDTV is 80 inches, dwarfing those 55-inchers. Sure, it costs $5500, but wait till the linebackers show up more than life-size! find.pcworld.com/72419 Corsair Vengeance K60 keyboard If you love smoking your virtual enemies, you’ll love the Vengeance K60 ($110), which uses responsive Cherry MX Red mechanical key switches and has soft, slip-proof gaming keys for top-flight play. find.pcworld.com/72421 Lytro Camera Sick of snapping a picture of a great scene, only to find out later it’s fuzzy? The Lytro camera (starting at $400; due in early 2012) lets you focus after you take your shot, by capturing much more light. find.pcworld.com/72417 Samsung Galaxy Nexus When you read this, the hotly anticipated Galaxy Nexus may be available. The first…

David Wu, Winnipeg, Manitoba OYS responds: After we contacted an HP public relations representative, the company’s customer care department worked directly with Wu to rectify the problem and to supply him with a working TouchPad. HP cited miscommunication between the company’s repair depot (where the broken TouchPad had been sent) and its customer care center (which Wu was told to call). The repair depot had indeed received the unit and had recorded the ticket number information. HP acknowledged its error and sent Wu a new TouchPad backed with a year of free service. Microsoft Support Scam Donna Davis of Tallahassee, Florida, received a phone call from someone claiming to work for Microsoft, saying that her home PC was sending it error messages indicating the presence of infected files that could…

Six Reasons to Use Cloud Services for Small Business OUTSOURCING IT FUNCTIONS such as payroll, website hosting, email, and enterprise resource planning has long been normal for businesses of all sizes. But outsourcing critical functions—such as database and file servers, application development, and document storage—gives many organizations pause. Experienced IT admins point to recent well-publicized outages, data losses, and hacking incidents that have cost companies big in lost productivity, lawsuits, penalties, and even bankruptcy. Nevertheless, your business could benefit significantly from using cloud services. Here are the main savings and advantages. 1 You’ll save on infrastructure: Considering that the cost of buying one server with an operating system and applications for in-house use can range from a couple of thousand to tens of thousands of dollars, paying a monthly fee…

YOU KNOW THOSE annoying boxes of jumbled, multicolored, crossed-out, slanted, or reversed text that you have to read to prove to a website that you’re human? They’re called captchas—and now that a team of Stanford University researchers has developed a computer program that can often decode them, this security measure may be obsolete. The researchers—Elie Bursztien, Matthieu Martin, and John Mitchell—developed Decaptcha, which employs a five-stage process. First, the program preprocesses the image for any noise or obscuring lines; the segmentation stage then separates each of the shapes. Postsegmentation analyzes each shape, the recognition stage approximates a letter to each shape, and in the fifth, final stage, the program runs a spelling check. The Decaptcha program was able to defeat 66 percent of the captchas on Visa’s Authorize.net payment site;…

Most new PCs have HDMI ports for sending high-def video to HDTVs, but a few years ago that wasn’t the case. The $60 Cirago USB to HDMI Display Adapter solves the problem for older PCs by linking an HDTV to a computer through a USB 2.0 port instead of a graphics card. However, the video quality isn’t always perfect because of the DisplayLink compression required to meet USB 2.0’s bandwidth limitations. The adapter accepts both a standard USB cable (Cirago includes one in the package) and an HDMI cable (not included). Cirago also adds an HDMI-to-DVI adapter for users who need DVI support. Once I plugged the other end of the USB cable into a Windows 7 PC, the driver and software installed automatically. (Drivers for older Windows versions and…

WANT TO ACCEPT a credit card payment directly on your smartphone? Square and Intuit are offering competing, and slightly differing, schemes to do so. When you set up an account with either plan, you receive a credit card scanner for free. Each service offers apps for iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad) and for Android. Intuit’s GoPayment also supports some BlackBerry phones. The scanners plug into the headphone port. Each service is easy to set up and has a simple fixed-percentage fee with no separate transaction fee. Square Card Reader Square’s reader is sturdy but small, about the size of a quarter. Holding it steady while swiping can be hard, though, and it took several swipes to read some cards. The reader works on Apple iOS devices running 4.0 and…

INEXPENSIVE PROGRAMS for editing Portable Document Format files are common, and all of them cost far less than Adobe’s Acrobat X Pro does. Two newly updated PDF-editing applications, Foxit PhantomPDF 5.0 Business ($149) and Nitro Pro 7 ($100) are the latest programs to take aim at the reigning king; like other competitors before them, however, they don’t blow Acrobat out of the water. Strong on PDF Conversion Both apps converted documents from their native formats to PDF quite well. Microsoft Word and Excel documents reproduced very accurately; HTML documents, less so—but that’s a challenging task. Converting from PDF to a different format is another common task, but neither program handled this job well in my tests. I tried to convert a 58-page, monochrome PDF user manual to Word, but PhantomPDF…

Choice. For a long time, you didn’t have much choice if you were in the market for a tablet—Apple’s iPad was the only good option. But that’s starting to change: Though the iPad 2 remains the top slate overall, the best choice for you may well be one that runs Google’s Android operating system. It all depends on what you need from a tablet. Lots of Android models beat the iPad 2 in specific respects. Some have longer battery life, for instance. Others make it easier to get work done. Some are simpler to use with a camera or TV. Others may come in a size that you find more convenient. Of course, a tablet’s operating system is hugely important. iOS is consistent, polished, and dependable. If you buy Apple’s…

Laptops that malfunctioned within 3 years: 23% iPhone users who were satisfied with call quality: 67% Lexmark printers that broke in first year: 28% People who used a tablet for work: 40% Gateway PC support issues left unresolved: 39% HDTV owners who were satisfied with “connected TV” features: 62% Casio cameras that broke within 3 years: 11%…

Dell and HP business PCs received fairly positive ratings, but the companies’ home PC lines earned poor marks for durability and product support. Apple ruled the Desktops category, with top marks in reliability, service, and features (from product design to ports and connectivity). Asus finished second thanks to high user satisfaction with the reliability, value, and low operating noise of its machines. Satisfaction WINNERS & LOSERS Design Expandability Ports/connectivity Warranty Performance for price 1 IN 4: PROPORTION OF DESKTOP PC PROBLEMS FOR WHICH HP (FOR HOME) SUPPORT COULD FIND NO SOLUTION…

Our survey results suggest that no printer maker is perfect. Samsung received high marks for its printers’ reliability and copy speed, but poor ones for photo and graphics printing quality. Xerox was praised for its machines’ printing speed and network connectivity, but bashed for their poor reliability. Only Canon and Brother had strong showings in reliability and service, and in feature satisfaction. Lexmark 27% vs. All Brands 14% Percentage of Lexmark owners who say they’ve had a significant problem with their printer in the past year, versus the average percentage for all printer brands. “Reduce the noise. When it prints it sounds like a dinosaur eating a helicopter in my room.—UNHAPPY HP PRINTER OWNER”…

GOING TO A LAN party? You don’t have to lug around a desktop or settle for a subpar laptop. I’ll show you how to cram the guts of a gaming PC into a slim case with a MicroATX motherboard. Choosing the Case and Power Supply I used In Win cases years ago, but moved on as other companies produced more interesting designs. Recently, though, In Win has been making seriously good cases suitable for gaming PCs. The In Win Dragon Slayer is one example: It looks like a full tower case that someone has shot with a shrink ray, yet it’s still deep enough for large graphics cards. Admittedly, working inside it is a pain due to the restricted space. For instance, the hard-drive bay sits across from the power…

WHEN A PC goes haywire and the operating system can’t start, the problem often involves misconfigured software or drivers. Luckily, Microsoft includes a tool in Windows called Safe Mode, a bare-bones version of the OS designed for troubleshooting. To enter Safe Mode, take these steps: 1 Turn on (or reboot) the PC. Wait for it to initialize the hardware and prepare to load the operating system. 2 Press and hold the <F8> key. If the Windows logo appears or if the operating system begins to load, you may need to restart the computer and try again. 3 The Advanced Boot Options screen for Windows should appear. Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to select Safe Mode, and press <Enter>. If you know that you’ll need access to the Internet…

SO YOU HAVE a brand-new e-reader or tablet, and you’re looking to fill it with books. Unfortunately, you spent all your cash on the gadget, leaving nothing in your budget for items to read on it. You’ll find many commercial digital bookstores online, but you’ll also run across many legal free ways to read digital books. Project Gutenberg: At the forefront of free digital books is Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org), which launched with the mission of digitizing books in the public domain (and from other sources) and making them available in a wide variety of digital formats without cost to users. Currently, Project Gutenberg is hosting freely downloadable versions of everything from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes to the Kama Sutra. Google Books: Similar to Project Gutenberg, Google Books (books.google.com) is…

WHETHER YOU LOVE touchpads or just tolerate them, they get in the way at times. If your laptop lacks a physical switch or keyboard shortcut to turn off the touchpad, you may be able to disable the feature through software. Look for a touchpad icon in the notification area; double-click or right-click that icon to view the options and disable the touchpad if possible. No such icon? Click Start·Control Panel·Hardware and Sound. Then under ‘Devices and Printers’, click Mouse. (In Vista, click Start·Control Panel·Hardware and Sound·Mouse.) Mouse Properties might have a tab where you can disable the touchpad. Still no luck? Look for a touchpad software entry in the Start menu. If you don’t see that either, try one other option. Click Start, type device manager in the Search box,…

→ Scent machine, dubbed “Olly,” lets you smell the Internet. Next up: spam that actually smells like Spam. → Kindle Library offers free book borrowing with a $79 annual subscription. Wouldn’t $79 cover a whole lot of late fees at a real library? → IBM Blue Gene supercomputer will be as smart as a human by 2019. Goal of being “as dumb as a human” was reached years ago. → Apple’s iPhone 4S sells 4 million units in first three days. Despite the S’s standing for “Same as the iPhone 4.” → Thieves hijack a van loaded with 6000 copies of Modern Warfare 3. Maybe they thought it was carrying copies of Grand Theft Auto.…