Table of contents for Jul-13 in PCWorld

RECENT NEWS HASN’T been generous to PCs, especially after market research showed that shipments fell by double-digit percentages in the first quarter. Common wisdom declared that PCs are done. And yet PCs aren’t dead—they’re microwaves. But not for much longer. The Push to Appliancehood Until the early nineties, computers were a luxury. Today, however, everyone has a PC, just as everyone has a stove, a refrigerator, and a microwave. PCs have evolved into appliances—indispensable, yet unexciting. And a whole range of factors helped make this transition happen. Economy: Consumers and companies alike are doling out their dollars with great caution. So the prospect of plopping down a few hundred dollars on a laptop simply isn’t enticing, especially if your current PC still works well enough. Technology: Improvements to computer performance…

IT WAS GOING to happen sooner or later: The clean, minimalist Outlook.com will soon start displaying advertisements alongside your inbox and email messages. Microsoft announced users in the United States and Brazil will be the first to see the new-format ads, christened versaTiles. Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom are set to follow suit soon. The New versaTiles Microsoft’s versaTiles are basically display ads based on flexible-size tile strips that appear along the right-hand side of the screen, next to your main inbox view. They also appear when you are inside an email. At first glance, the ads appear similar to the text ads Gmail users get in their inbox, but when you hover over the Outlook ads, they reveal images, videos, or…

The trend in cameras today is small, lightweight, and powerful, and that is the intent of the Ricoh GR, Pentax Ricoh’s new compact, fixed-lens digital camera for photography enthusiasts. It has a 16.2-megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor paired with an f/2.8 maximum aperture lens and a newly designed autofocus system. Together, they promise improved low-light performance, shallow depth of field, and wide dynamic range in a petite, lightweight shooter. But you can’t attach an electronic viewfinder. The Ricoh GR advanced digital compact camera was released in May and costs $800.…

IF YOU THINK the Retina display on an iPad looks unreal with its 2048-by-1536-pixel resolution at 264 pixels per inch, just imagine a display with 2500 individual LEDs in a package that’s only 5 square centimeters in size—that’s smaller than just about any piece of your phone. I spoke with Lumiode vice president Brian Tull, who says that the company’s microdisplay will be 30 times brighter—and several times more efficient—than your traditional LED-backlit screen, making the display usable even in bright sunlight. Unlike your HDTV or PC monitor, these LEDs—each of which acts as an individual pixel—do not need to shine light through polarizing layers or filters, which can dim the final picture presented on a more traditional display. Lumiode technology is what’s known as an emissive display—that is, it…

IT USES MEMBRANE keys in stead of mechanical ones, but Roccat’s $90 Isku FX de livers the goods. The keys’ comfortable size and even spacing let me settle right in to work and play. The keys are backlit; you can toggle the brightness and disable their annoying pulsing effect through Roccat’s software. You’ll need to install driver software: The keyboard works out of the box, but you’ll have to grab a small (20MB) package from Roccat’s website to tweak the keyboard’s settings. A Standard Layout The keyboard’s layout is fairly standard, though a few extras are scattered about. Five macro keys run along the left side of the keyboard, joined by three thumb-keys nested under the spacebar, plus the macro-recording key, dedicated media keys, and a back-light toggle button planted…

CYBERLINK’S POWERDVD Ultra packages have been the most powerful, feature-laden DVD, Blu-ray, and media players available, but they have also been a bit slow to launch and sluggish to respond. Version 13 starts up more quickly and is better all around, but it’s not a must-have upgrade if you own version 12. That said, it has more than a few new features, including a user interface that Windows 8 afi-cionados will find appealing. The previous two versions of PowerDVD morphed the program into a jack-of-all-trades media player, and version 13 continues that trend to some extent. The software supports the UltraViolet online movie storage/delivery service, as well as video streaming from social networks such as Facebook and YouTube. PowerDVD now provides TrueTheater en hancements for 1920 by 1080 video. True-Theater…

STARDOCK’S $10 FENCES 2 eliminates the annoyances of desktop icons. It feels like such a natural part of Windows that it makes me wonder why Microsoft doesn’t build a similar feature into the OS. Fences groups icons into virtual folders on the desktop, such as for your favorite applications, frequently used documents, and Web bookmarks. When you launch Fences for the first time, it offers to group your existing icons, so you get three fences to begin with. The groups are easy to rename and rearrange. My favorite feature: Fences can hide the icons once you leave the desktop idle. Double-click anywhere on the desktop, and your fences pop back into view. You can also opt to hide or show the icons yourself. Version 2 introduces a feature called Desktop…

IT’S WHAT’S INSIDE that counts. Though whipping Windows 8 might be all the rage right now, Windows didn’t become the all-encompassing king of the desktop out of sheer luck. Here are a dozen reasons why Microsoft’s latest operating system beats OS X, Linux, and Chrome OS. Beyond the vilified modern UI lies many basic desktop functions that blow the competition out of the water. All the awesome power of Windows 7 is still there in Windows 8, just buried beneath live tiles. Speaking of which, Microsoft snuck some handy functionality into the modern UI, for which Windows’ rivals have no match. Can Windows 8 get better? Definitely. In a lot of ways, however, it’s already the best desktop operating system around. 1 VAST SOFTWARE LIBRARY One of the biggest assets…

THE GAMING PC and the living-room game console have never been close pals. PC fans play their games, console owners play their games, and never the twain shall meet. Or is everything changing? Windows 8 is tearing down that wall. Nestled within the OS are several ways for desk jockeys to interact with their Xbox Live accounts and Xbox 360 consoles without having to abandon their office chairs. The Games App Windows 8’s Games app provides a basic connection between your PC and your Xbox Live account. Here you can track your Xbox gaming history, buy new games that download to your console, view your achievements and Friends List, or customize your avatar and Xbox Live profile. The ability to futz with your avatar is a particular attraction, as it’s…

IF YOU’RE PLANNING to sell or give away your iPad, it’s essential to erase your personal data first. Or, if the device is running sluggishly, sometimes backing up your data, erasing it, and restoring the iPad can improve performance. To perform a wipe, first make sure that you have the most current version of iTunes. Then, plug your iPad into your computer. On the iPad, tap Back Up Now. The procedure may take some time depending on how many files and apps you have. After the backup, unplug the iPad and go to the settings menu (gear icon). Tap General and scroll to Reset. Tap it and select Erase All Content and Settings. The iPad will prompt twice to continue. Since you have backed up your data, initiate the erase.…

MICROSOFT and BlackBerry have been tripping over themselves to toss cash at developers and beef up their app stores in recent months, trying desperately to gain ground on iOS and Android. But is the rush to fill app store shelves a good thing? Quantity doesn’t equal quality, as evidenced by recent Apple and Google moves designed to keep their developers in check and clean up some of the less desirable apps in their shops. Apple is the 800,000-pound gorilla in the mobile app world after unofficially breaking the 800,000-app barrier last month, while Google is nipping at Apple’s heels with over 700,000 apps. Lagging far behind are BlackBerry and Microsoft. But all four have problems related to the number of apps in their stores. Quality vs. Quantity Tim Shepherd, a…

Toshiba Kirabook With 221 pixels crammed into every inch, the Kirabook’s display is practically equal to that of the Retina-equipped MacBook Pro. But this Ultrabook is lighter, thinner, and upgradable to a touchscreen. With a solid-state drive, an all-metal chassis, and a subtly curved keyboard, its pricing is expected to start at $1599. go.pcworld.com/kirabook Sony DEV-50V/B Sony’s new recording binoculars have a dual-sensor design that records 3D HD video and shoots 20.4-megapixel stills—perfect for birding fanatics. It has a water-and dust-proof coat, increases zoom over its predecessor—the DEV-5—to 25X, and weighs a third less to ease a $2000 price tag. go.pcworld.com/dev50v Seagate Series 600 SSDs Seagate is jumping into the consumer SSD market for the first time, offering its Series 600 and Series 600 Pro drives in 120-, 240-, and…

PLANNING A SUMMER getaway? The last thing you want to worry about while you’re gone is a break-in. Fortunately, you don’t need to shell out for an expensive home security system. As long as you have a smartphone, an Internet connection, and a webcam (or an extra computer or mobile device with a built-in camera), you can set up your own surveillance system using one of the tools listed here. iCam ($5; Android, iOS): This system uses your computer’s built-in or IP webcam to monitor and record motion, and then it alerts you when it detects activity. You simply download and install the webcam software from SKJM’s site (www.skjm.com) on your computer, install the corresponding iCam app on your smartphone, and then configure a few settings (you definitely want to…

E-SIGNING TOOLS represent a much-needed response to the vast inefficiencies of dealing with physical signatures. Are e-signed contracts legal? Indeed, most courts have made rulings that e-signatures are just as legitimate as the ink ones. Federal judges use digital signatures, after all. Cloud-based services simplify the whole process of contract management. Mobile apps allow recipients to sign a document via fingertip on a smartphone or tablet (especially handy for in-person dealings). Here’s how the major e-signing tools work. DocuSign Google-backed DocuSign is a straightforward and feature-filled service. After you upload files to Docu-Sign (the service keeps files in “envelopes” that you can send as a group), you drag and drop signature boxes onto the documents, which DocuSign then emails to your recipients. You can also set signature reminders, and set…

AT FIRST GLANCE, Lenovo’s IdeaPad Y500 doesn’t look like anything special. This thick, heavy (6.2 pounds), 15.6-inch laptop is encased in a plain, sturdy chassis with a brushed-aluminum cover. It sports a sleek look, but has a tendency to attract fingerprints. Good Gaming Machine Nothing obvious about the Y500 hints that it is a rather powerful—yet surprisingly affordable—gaming-oriented laptop with a third-generation Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, and not one but two Nvidia GeForce GT 650M graphics cards under the hood. Our review model—configured with a 1TB hard drive, a 16GB SSD boot drive, a glossy full HD display, and a full-size backlit keyboard with ten-key numberpad—starts at around $1100. That makes it a bit more expensive than Lenovo’s $800 base model, but it still has a great…

WITH THE RIGHT midrange graphics card, you can get your game on. In fact, AMD and Nvidia are clamoring to place one of their under-$200 cards in your system. We look at those cards here. MSI Radeon HD 7790 The Radeon HD 7790 from AMD fills the gap between the 7770 and the 7850 in price and performance, and is a great entry-level choice for budget-conscious PC builders. For $150 you get 1080p gaming. The 7790 is also the first rival to Nvidia’s GTX 650 Ti at the $150 price level. MSI’s version of the 7790 sports 1GB of GDDR5 memory and a core clock speed of just over 1GHz. For multiple-monitor fanatics, it offers two Dual-Link DVI connectors, an HDMI connector, and a DisplayPort output. Plus, it manages to…

AT&T’S $170 MIFI Liberate mobile hotspot, made by Novatel, is reasonably easy to use, and it can achieve fast feeds when connected to the AT&T LTE network. This hotspot also differs from predecessors in that it has a touchscreen, and it can tether to your device so that you don’t have to rely on a wireless connection between the two. The small touchscreen is not as responsive or pretty as an iPad screen, but it’s good enough to facilitate basic interaction with the device. The screen first shows four icons (Connection Details, Data Usage, Connected Devices, and Settings); you simply touch one of these icons for more information or options. The top bar of the home screen displays the connection strength, the time, the number of connected devices, and the…

Cases in point: These 12 components, ports, and devices have lingered far beyond their freshness date. Legacy hardware often overstays its welcome. Who, me? Extinct!? Some technology hangs on long after it’s needed. TIME MARCHES ON, but some PC technologies don’t know when they’ve worn out their welcome. While we applaud motherboard manufacturers for helping us extend the lives of our hardware, we also realize that we’re paying for many components that we’ll never, ever use. So we’ve rounded up a dozen legacy technologies that no longer serve much of a purpose. Begone, obsolete tech! 1. PATA PATA (Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment), also known as IDE (Integrated Device Electronics), is so old that you might never have heard of it. Designed as an interface for mechanical hard drives and optical…

How can I acquire songs for an iPod without spending money? —Janisum YOU CAN DOWNLOAD a lot of free music online, but you probably won’t find the particular song or album you want—at least not legally. You’re limited to recordings that have fallen into the public domain or ones that their owners have made available for free. That’s understandable. Songwriters, singers, musicians, and recording engineers expect to be paid for their work. (I’m focusing on legal options, here. After all, I’m financially dependent on copyright law. I’m also married to a musician.) But first, a suggestion: Stick to MP3 files. They come without the restrictions of digital rights management, and they’re universally supported; I know of no device that can play digital music files that can’t play MP3s. For downloads,…

IF YOU’RE NEW to Windows 8, you probably find certain aspects of it confusing. For example, if you’re using the modern Start screen, you’ve undoubtedly installed some apps. But how do you remove an app? It’s not immediately obvious. If you pull up the charm bar and tap Settings, you’ll find no help. If you tap the ‘Change PC settings’ link, you’ll get no uninstaller there either. Well, there’s always good old Control Panel, right? Wrong: When you get there, you’ll see that apps aren’t listed. Guess they’re not “programs” in the traditional sense. As it turns out, if you’re operating Windows 8 with a mouse, it’s a snap to uninstall an app: Just mouse over its tile, right-click, and choose Uninstall from the options toolbar at the bottom of…

AS LAPTOP AND DESKTOP sales plummet, some PC manufacturers are wading out of their comfort zones in hopes of breathing life back into the market. Two recent examples: Toshiba, a manufacturer perhaps best known for midrange PCs at competitive prices, took a swing at the ultrapremium market with the Kirabook, a thin and light laptop with an ultrahigh-resolution display on a par with Apple’s Retina-packing MacBook Pros. And HP placed a big bet on futuristic motion controls, announcing that it will bundle Leap Motion controllers with select PCs, embedding the technology directly into future devices. Other PC makers are trying their own experiments. Acer has teased about a “unique notebook” that may be able to convert into a desktop with a raised touchscreen. Meanwhile, Asus has launched a desktop that…

RESEARCHERS AT THE University of Michigan have invented a way for different wireless networks crammed into the same space to say “excuse me” to one another. Wi-Fi shares a frequency band with the popular Bluetooth and ZigBee systems, and all are often found in the same places together. But it’s hard to prevent interference among the three technologies because they can’t signal each other to coordinate the use of the spectrum. In addition, different generations of Wi-Fi sometimes fail to exchange coordination signals because they use wider or narrower radio bands. Both problems can slow down networks and break connections. Michigan computer science professor Kang Shin and graduate student Xinyu Zhang, now an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, set out to tackle this problem in 2011. Last July,…

WINDOWS 8 TABLETS have yet to find their niche. It’s difficult, after all, to be more expensive than Apple’s evercool iPad, yet less usable than an inexpensive laptop. The Asus VivoTab Smart, however—a slim little 10.1-inch tablet with a Clover Trail processor—is relatively cheap. It starts at just $499, and that includes 64GB of built-in storage. It also runs the full version of Windows 8, which means you don’t have to settle for Windows RT. But compare it to a lowpowered Ultrabook, and it’s toast, though it’s moderately powerful for a tablet. Battery life is good and long—7 hours, 36 minutes in our tests. The $499 price tag doesn’t include the VivoTab’s accessories: a Smart Cover–esque magnetic screen protector that folds into a stand, and a separate Bluetooth keyboard and…

IF YOU USE Google Chat, Skype, or a Web-conferencing app with advanced collaboration features, video is likely part of your online meeting toolbox. But the video quality a laptop’s integrated webcam delivers can be inadequate for business communications. The Brother NW-1000 Webcam and the Logitech BCC950 ConferenceCam cost more than a generic webcam, but they can help business conferees see what’s going on at the other end of the line. Brother NW-1000 The high-def (1080p) NW-1000 is optimized to work with Brother’s OmniJoin conferencing and collaboration service, though you don’t need one to use the other. The $99 NW-1000 has a stand for sitting on a table or desk, but the stand can also fold to clip to the top of a monitor or laptop display. It’s wider (but at…

BOWERS & WILKINS’S $400 Z2 speaker offers a Lightning-connector dock and AirPlay wireless streaming. Supporting the latest iPhone, iPod touch, and iPod nano models, the Z2 measures 12.6 by 3.9 by 7.1 inches and weighs 5.7 pounds. My iPhone 5 connected to the dock easily, and felt secure there. In front of the dock sit two tiny capacitive buttons for controlling volume. They are among the first touchsensitive speaker buttons I haven’t hated: Because you can see and feel them, there’s never any doubt that you’re pushing in the right spot, and the buttons are responsive. Getting the Z2 on my network wasn’t too painful in the free B&W Control app for iOS. The process takes the older approach of connecting your device to an ad hoc wireless network that…

FROM THE CANDLELIT crypts in 2007’s Sanctuary to the blue skies of 2011’s Heaven, Unigine benchmarks serve up stats with a helping of eye candy. In the latest benchmark, Valley, the twist is size—and plenty of it: They’ve squeezed a national park into this one. Valley consists of 18 scripted runs through the environment, from flowerbeds to mountaintops, in rainstorms and dappled sunshine. Depth of focus changes, shadows lengthen, leaves flutter, and drops of water splash. At the end you get a raw score and frames-per-second numbers (average/minimum/maximum). It’s enough to gauge your PC’s gaming potential in a general fashion. You can also explore at will; Valley’s enormous size makes hikes in its meticulously designed forests a holodeck-style pleasure. Nice as Valley is, benchmarking is moving beyond basic framerate numbers.…

IT’S TOO BAD Windows 8’s modern UI is so contentious, because the new OS is hands down the best version of Windows Microsoft has ever released. (For a recap of the ways Win 8 outpoints OS X, Linux, and Chrome OS, see “How Windows 8 Trumps the Non-Windows competition,” page 78.) Plenty of tile-and touch-averse desktop PC users would love to add the nuts-and-bolts improvements that Microsoft introduced with Windows 8 to their trusty Windows 7 systems. And the good news is that to a surprisingly large extent you can. Many of Windows 8’s best under-the-hood improvements can be yours for the using in Windows 7 with the help of a few handy-dandy applications. So have your cake and eat it, too—it’s sweet. Better File Copying and Moving Not to…

THINK YOUR CPU is king? Think again. The most complex processor inside your PC is bolted to your graphics card. GPU drivers include software that gives you granular control over image quality and performance, but such control panels can be confusing. This guide will explore some of the settings in the control panels from AMD and Nvidia. Before I dive into controlpanel specifics, here are two important guidelines that you ought to keep in mind. First, use Windows controls for basic settings. If all you need to do is set the resolution for one monitor, do so in the Display control panel built into the OS. Sure, you could use the GPU control panel—but if you change graphics cards later, you’ll need to learn where the setting is in a…

THE ‘REPLY ALL’ button is a fickle mistress. It’s useful for communicating with a group, but it is easily and frequently abused, filling your inbox with a chain of inane responses that you just don’t need to see. No matter how many times you delete these messages from your inbox, the next message in the chain will make everything come flashing back. For Gmail users, there’s a quick response that doesn’t require you to mark the messages as spam or threaten the emailers with bodily harm. Gmail makes it easy to mute specific email threads and keep them out of your inbox. If you’re accessing the Web version of Gmail, simply locate the offending email message or thread, click the More button on the top toolbar, and select Mute from…

YOU MUST KNOW ABOUT... 1 Versatile Components Running Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich and packing 12GB of usable flash storage (16GB total), the Google Glass Explorer charges via Micro-USB and has a microphone, Bluetooth and 802.11b/g radios, a camera that can take 5-megapixel photos or 720p video, and a bone-conduction transducer that sends audio to your inner ear. If your phone runs Ice Cream Sandwich or later, you can download the MyGlass app and pair it to display texts, directions, and more on your Glass headset. 2 Affordable Hardware Although the current Google Glass Explorer prototypes cost developers and select tech celebrities $1500 apiece, the hardware inside the headset doesn’t cost nearly that much to manufacture. The final consumer version of Glass will likely be much cheaper—Google claims that the…