Table of contents for Apr-12 in PCWorld

NATE RALPH BUILT his first PC before he was 6. That’s not a typo. At an age when most kids are learning their ABCs, our future beat editor for desktop PCs was focused more on CPUs: scavenging old floppy drives and monitors, dismantling and reassembling cast-off chassis, and attempting to turn a ragtag collection of discarded parts into working computers. Now, to be fair, Nate had a lot of help from his father, a talented tinkerer who had been trained in his native Jamaica as an electrician. But when the senior Mr. Ralph moved to New York, he got a job as a sanitation worker. That’s when Nate’s love affair with the nuts, bolts, and guts of computing began. “New York City didn’t have a good recycling program for electronics…

SOUNDJAW If you find the Apple iPad 2’s tinny sound intolerable, look into a SoundJaw. Just snap this small plastic part onto your iPad 2 at the back corner where the tablet’s perforated speaker ports reside. The $13 SoundJaw then directs the audio from the iPad 2’s speakers toward you, thus increasing the sound quality and the volume. www.soundjaw.com BULLETTRAIN EXPRESS HOME THEATER KEYBOARD TRAY This stylish, lap-friendly keyboard platform lets you combine a wireless Apple keyboard and a Magic Trackpad, and it enables you to work with a desktop Mac while you’re seated, say, on your sofa. The silver version of the tray is $79; it also comes in nine metallic colors for $99 each. www.bullettrain.com NOMAD BRUSH You can make using art apps on an iPad even more…

GOOGLE DOCS USERS can now get offline access to documents on their Android-based phones and tablets. The upgraded app makes offline access possible for Google documents, presentations, spreadsheets, uploaded images, and file formats such as .pdf, .doc, .xls, and .ppt, according to Google. Users can make a document available offline while they have an Internet connection, or send a request to do so while their device is disconnected; in the latter case, the document will update the next time the device reconnects to the Internet. Google still has work to do to make the Docs app more useful on Android smartphones and tablets, however: The app still doesn’t let users edit documents offline. For more on offline access, see Google’s blog post at find.pcworld.com/72653.…

ADS ARE ARRIVING on your Android phone—inside games and apps, in your mobile browser, and as push notifications. They distract you when you’re playing a game, blink and flash when you’re trying to browse the Web, and eat up the little bit of data available on your not-so-unlimited data plan. But hope is not lost: You can reduce bothersome ads, to a degree. Ad-Blocking Apps The Android Market has apps that claim to block all ads, but most of them—such as the well-regarded AdAway, AdFree Android, or NetSpector Sniffer/Ad Blocker—require a rooted phone. Why? They often make changes to the host’s file, a process that only rooted devices allow. (For more on rooting an Android device, see find.pcworld.com/72635.) Don’t want to root your phone? You have other options. One alternative…

SOME AT&T CUSTOMERS have reported that their mobile devices are dropping from 3G speeds to 2G speeds after they exceed 2GB of data consumption per month, despite having grandfathered-in unlimited data plans from the carrier. Blogger John Cozen noticed a severe reduction of his data speeds after he had used only 2.1GB of data in a recent month. AT&T representatives told Cozen that the carrier begins throttling speeds for customers who are in the top 5 percent in data consumption among users with unlimited data plans. The throttling occurs despite the fact that AT&T currently offers tiered plans, one of which charges $30 a month for 3GB of data. “This is unacceptable and unfair,” writes Cozen. “I signed up for an unlimited data plan at the agreed-upon price, and am…

THE GOOD, AND perhaps daunting, news about buying a workgroup printer is that you have a lot of choices. The standard monochrome laser or LED printer is now joined by color laser and LED models, as well as by multifunction variants that offer scanning, faxing, and copying. Higher-end inkjets claim good speed, better image quality, and comparable or better consumables costs. How do you decide? Know what you need your printer to do. A workgroup printer is built for speed and capacity, typically ready to juggle the needs of 10 to 20 networked users. It will have its own processor, expandable memory, and a standard or optional hard drive for storing fonts and forms. Its monthly duty cycle will run into the tens of thousands of pages (this is an…

RECENTLY I RESCUED my sister-in-law’s laptop from some seriously nasty malware. Even after I ran utilities like Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, and then used UnHide to restore the system’s missing icons and folders, something was hijacking the Web browsers. Yes, that’s browsers, plural. Whenever I clicked a link in Internet Explorer or Firefox (the latest versions of both), a malicious bit of code would redirect the browser to a phishing site. That’s how hijacking works, and it’s very frustrating. Because it was happening in both browsers, I knew there was a deeper problem than just a rogue plug-in or toolbar. The likeliest culprit: a rootkit, a sneaky form of malware that can hide itself from normal methods of detection. And sure enough, it was the notorious TDSS, which, as reported by IDG…

WANT TO DO your taxes while on the go? Last year, Intuit introduced SnapTax, an iPhone app designed to handle filing very simple returns (1040EZ only). And this year most competing services are offering tablet-based tax-prep apps. TurboTax for the iPad: This snazzy-looking version of Intuit’s software has the same data-import capabilities and unlimited access to tax experts as TurboTax Online. The iPad version is free to try, too: You pay only when you print or file. And because it resides on your tablet, you can work on your taxes even when your iPad isn’t online. SnapTax: Last year’s iPhone app is back, but this time it’s available for Android devices (2.1 or later), too. SnapTax users must file using the 1040EZ form; they must not own a home or…

THE ALIENWARE X51 ($999 as configured) cuts costs and girth to deliver a PC that’s palatable to the masses but doesn’t lose any of Alienware’s gamer cred. The model I reviewed has a 3GHz Intel Core i5-2320 CPU, 8GB of RAM, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 555 graphics card, and a 1TB hard drive. On WorldBench 6, the X51 earned an impressive score of 147, topping the budget PCs class and giving some lower-end performance systems a run for their money. On our Crysis 2 test, it had a frame rate of 46.2 frames per second at 1920 by 1080 and fairly high settings. On Dirt 3 at the same resolution and settings, the X51 produced a rate of 84.3 fps. But the real story is the case. Just over 1…

THE HAUPPAUGE BROADWAY is a set-top box that supports place shifting—letting you watch whatever’s playing on your home TV on a Web-connected mobile device (in this case, a device running an iPhone or Android OS, or any device that has both a browser and Flash support; I used the Broadway to watch television on my iPad). The Broadway grabs video via antenna, coaxial cable, or satellite or cable TV box; transforms that video into a format suitable for streaming; and sends it to your device over your home network or, optionally, the Internet. At $199, with no additional charges for client software, it’s less expensive than some competitors, but it also has fewer features. For example, it doesn’t work with my cable box’s DVR and on-demand controls. And setup is…

THE 64-BIT versions of Windows 7 and Vista offer 32- and 64-bit variations of Internet Explorer. But both operating systems use the 32-bit browser by default. The reason is backward compatibility. Many plug-ins have yet to be rewritten to work with the x64 version, though you can download and install 64-bit versions of Adobe Flash Player and Google Toolbar now. If the plug-in limitations don’t bother you, there are reasons to use IE x64. For instance, the 64-bit browser can use 4GB or more of memory, and it appears to be faster, as well. In my own, very casual benchmark testing, I clocked the 64-bit IE performing 7.1 percent faster than the 32-bit version. More-extensive tests by FavBrowser.com showed a significantly higher speed gain of 34.7 percent.…

Airports for Tech Travelers This story [“The 20 Best Airports for Tech Travelers,” February] is limited to 40 commercial airports. Generally, the smaller airports offer free Wi-Fi and other amenities that aren’t found at the big airports. They do this to attract customers who are tired of being nickeled-and-dimed at the bigger airports. ChrisW716y, PCWorld.com forums As an Oregon student from Minnesota, I frequently use the tech-related features at both the Minneapolis airport and Portland International. To see Minneapolis outrank Portland in your survey is simply astounding. Minneapolis charges exorbitant fees to use its Wi-Fi, making it unaffordable on a student budget. Also, I hardly get cell phone reception at MSP, whereas Portland offers excellent 3G and 4G reception for Sprint (not that I need it, as Portland provides free…

IN RECENT MONTHS, several companies, including HzO and Liquipel, have introduced nanotechnology-based coatings designed to shield electronic devices from liquid damage. At this year’s CES trade show, I visited with another company, UK-based P2i, as it demonstrated the impressive powers of its Aridion nanotechnology. P2i’s Aridion is a superthin coating (it’s less than 30nm thick, about one-thousandth of the thickness of a human hair) that makes electronic devices liquid- and stain-repellent. P2i says that it’s the leader in liquid-repellent nano-coating technology, and backs up that claim with a figure: Over 7 million hearing aids currently have the coating. During CES, P2i demonstrated the powers of Aridion with something very basic: a tissue. Two tissues, actually. One was a regular tissue, while the other was a piece treated with Aridion coating.…

ALL INTERNET CONNECTIONS may seem the same, but you can find some differences—beyond price—between Internet service providers, and between the types of connections that an ISP offers. Here are tips on choosing the ISP and the connection that best suit your small or midsize business. Internet Connection Types These are the three most common connection types you’re likely to see when shopping for an ISP. DSL: Generally this is the cheapest connection type, with business-class prices ranging from $30 to $90 per month. Though DSL uses traditional telephone lines, you can carry on voice calls and transfer data at the same time. DSL performance depends on how far your location is from the ISP’s exchange, but speeds may reach 15 mbps for downloads and 1 mbps for uploads, which can…

ON MARCH 1, Google’s new privacy policy unified the privacy policies of more than 60 Google services so that the company can share your data across all of those services. If you use multiple Google services, you may benefit from having your location, search history, preferences, and other data shared across multiple Google services to improve your experience with Google products. For an idea of what Google knows about you, check your Google Dashboard: Browse to google.com/dashboard, and sign in with your Google account information. The Google Dashboard shows data and devices tied to your Google account. For more privacy controls, click your name in the upper right corner of a Google Website while logged in, and select Privacy from the drop-down menu. From here, you can bolster your privacy…

HTC’S REZOUND AND Vivid 4G phones have a lot in common. Currently offering the Sense overlay atop Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), both are slated for an upgrade to 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) sometime this year. And although both are plagued by disappointing battery life, they’re excellent for multimedia. Rezound for Verizon Measuring 5.08 by 2.58 by 0.54 inches, the 6-ounce Rezound ($300 with a two-year contract) may not fit in every pocket, but it feels rock solid. The dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon processor keeps it zippy. The display, a 4.3-inch, 1280-by-720-pixel super LCD, looks great, but on occasion it lagged when I pressed a button or swiped between home screens. In the FCC-approved Ookla Speedtest app, I clocked download speeds of 11.55 megabits per second, and upload speeds of 10.38 mbps, on…

YMAX’S MAGICJACK PLUS fixes the biggest issues we found in the original MagicJack, which offered reliable phone service for a hard-to-beat price but required you to leave it plugged into your continuously running PC. In contrast, the MagicJack Plus can connect to a router for always-on phone service (though it can still plug into a PC). And YMax now lets you transfer your phone number, so the Plus can legitimately replace your landline. For $70 you get the device and one year of unlimited local and long-distance calls to U.S. numbers; each additional year costs $30. No landline phone service comes close to that kind of deal. The one-time setup, which requires a PC, guides you through a seemingly endless catalog of choices and nickel-and-dime upgrade options. You can tack…

THE MOTOROLA DROID 4 ($200 with a two-year contract on Verizon) is the latest keyboard-toting phone in the Droid series. It lacks the excitement of the original Droid, however: A blurry screen and poor cameras overshadow the phone’s excellent keyboard and zippy processor. At 2.75 by 5 by 0.5 inches, the Droid 4 should fit comfortably in most hands and pockets. The only buttons, apart from the slide-out keyboard, are a volume rocker and the power button. You can remove the back cover with the aid of an included plastic tool. But once the cover’s off, you can’t do much. The battery isn’t user-removable, and the SIM and MicroSD card slots can be hard to get to. (The phone doesn’t ship with a MicroSD card, but it has 8GB of…

TO THE CENTRAL function of making big files small, the $30 WinZip Standard 16 adds a more powerful engine and better support for second- and third-tier compression formats. In addition, the tool supports cloud computing (this year’s buzzword). WinZip 16 also has upgraded its core compression algorithm to 64 bits (it still works fine on 32-bit PCs), increasing performance. The utility now has built-in support for tight integration with WinZip’s ZipSend cloud service (you’ll have to create an account in order to use the cloud features; both free and paid options are available). If you’ve ever been stymied by email gateways that won’t let you send files of any significant size, this could be a clincher for you. A word of caution: When installing WinZip, you’ll get the option of…

IN CHOOSING a browser for your phone, you have to take into account the more tenuous data connection, the smaller screen, and the kinds of tasks that you need or want to do on your handset. Here’s a look at some of the most popular Android browsers, to help you decide which one is right for you. Note: Though third-party browsers are available for iOS as well as for Android, Apple doesn’t allow such tools to replace the built-in Safari browser altogether. For that reason, we’ve chosen to focus on Android browsers here. Dolphin Browser HD If you’re an RSS fiend, Dolphin Browser HD (find.pcworld.com/72680) may become your new best friend. Dolphin lets you create a webzine from popular websites’ RSS feeds, presenting simplified versions of Web pages with much…

HAVE YOU NOTICED the strange, seemingly random appearance of the letter J in some email messages—sometimes at the end of sentences, and other times in the middle of them? What’s happening here is that the messages contained smiley emoticons, but your email client for some reason didn’t display them properly. For example, in Outlook, when I type a colon and a right parenthesis, and then press the space bar, Outlook’s autocorrect feature automatically converts this widely used smiley emoticon into an actual little smiley-face icon. (I’ve yet to find a way to shut off this feature.) Recipients of the email message may see the smiley face or they may see only a letter J—especially in a smartphone- or Web-based email client. In Gmail, for example, the J shows up in…

ONE COOL USE of a photo-editing program is to add a waterlike mirroring reflection to the base of a photo. The first step is to expand the canvas that the photo occupies. In Photoshop Elements, choose Image Resize Canvas Size, and set the new height to 150 percent. In the Anchor section, click the up arrow to bump the existing photo to the top of the canvas and add the new part to the bottom. Click OK. To get a better view, zoom out: Press the <Alt> key, and scroll the mouse wheel until you can see the entire canvas. Or click the Magnifying Glass tool (second from the top of the toolbar) to zoom. To copy the part of the photo that will be reflected in the water at…

TO SAVE STORAGE space, audio file compression formats such as .mp3 and .wma discard some information, lowering the sound quality. But the Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) format uses lossless compression, which shrinks the files without hurting the sound. When I ripped a single, 9-minute recording in three formats, the resulting file sizes differed significantly: The uncompressed .wav file was 92MB; the .flac file was 40.5MB, and the 320-kbps .mp3 file—the type of .mp3 file that compresses the least—was 20.8MB. In other words, the .flac was about half the size of the uncompressed audio, but nearly twice as large as the .mp3. Regrettably, iTunes doesn’t support FLAC, and Windows Media Player does so only fitfully. You must install Open Codecs to play .flac files in WMP. And even then, you…

FROM OUR READERS A Grammar Expert It Are? CHRIS HORTON OF HortonSEO.com was writing a letter recently when Outlook took issue with his word choice, applying the squiggly line of disapproval to the word we’ll. “I thought, how is that wrong?” he tells us. “So I right-clicked to see its suggestion.” And the suggestion turned out to be us’ll. We are pleased to report that Horton did not take Outlook’s advice. Power Tester Bulks Up COLUMBIA, MISSOURI, resident Art Hartle was surprised to discover that a power supply tester he found online at Best Buy for Business weighed 308.6 pounds—an amazing number given that the device is not much bigger than a USB key. For that kind of density, we can only assume that it’s made from a black hole.…

Follow us on Twitter @PCWPluggedIn. → IRS helps bust 105 people in identity theft crackdown. Though we hear the victims don’t want their identities back until after April 15. → Google announces that every second, one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube. And yet you’re in no danger of missing anything important. → Study: People with pseudonyms leave better comments. Especially on their own company’s website. → FBI to build social network spy app. We wonder: Why can’t they just use Facebook for this, like everyone else? → Analyst predicts “monster” iPhone 5 launch in August 2012. We expect members of Occupy Apple Store to begin camping out at once.…

Big Internet Companies Unite to Fight Phishing A group including Facebook, Google, and Microsoft announced a new specification to streamline how email providers figure out whether messages lead to phishing attacks based on spoofed domain addresses. Called DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance), the initiative is designed to drive scammers away from major domains and toward less-convincing ones. As a result, phishing attacks should become easier for antispam filters (and recipients) to spot. Intel Offers Protection Plan on Unlocked Chips Intel’s new Core i5-2550K desktop CPU is the latest to qualify for the company’s Performance Tuning Protection Plan (www.intel.com/go/tuningplan). The pilot program offers out-of-warranty service and replacements in case of damage caused by overclocking or overvoltage. For the i5-2550K, the plan costs $20. Intel will decide within six months…

I BOUGHT A 240GB OCZ RevoDrive 2 solid-state drive from Newegg.com a few months ago, and one day it just decided to quit working. I realized that the product was beyond the return date for Newegg, but wasn’t really worried, since I knew that it had a good warranty from OCZ. I contacted OCZ for authorization to return the SSD, and shipped it back. A month went by and I still hadn’t heard from the company, so I called; an OCZ representative told me that the item was out of stock. So I waited another week and called again—a different rep said that they had plenty of SSDs in stock, and the rep didn’t know why one wasn’t shipped to me. He said he would send one right out. I…

MOZILLA, ADOBE, AND Google fixed a number of memory bugs this month that, if left uncorrected, might allow attackers to gain access to your system. Mozilla fixed a bug involving its handling of the ICO (icon) file format, and Google put the kibosh on a buffer overflow problem—either of which might allow sensitive data to slip through the cracks. Adobe patched some bugs that might enable attackers to execute code on your system. Mozilla’s Nine Fixes Recently Mozilla found and fixed several critical-rated bugs affecting the browser engine in Firefox and other Mozilla products. Some bugs “showed evidence of memory corruption,” Mozilla says; an attacker could exploit them to run code. Mozilla also fixed a flaw, rated high, in how its software handles the ICO image file format (often used…

A NIFTY LITTLE freebie, Click.to allows you to move copied text or graphics—without doing so manually. For example, once you select a street address in an email message and use <Ctrl>-C to copy it to the clipboard, Click.to pops up (with no special key combination) to let you send it directly to Google Maps (you don’t have to go to your browser, then Maps, and then paste the text). This utility has built-in support for many common sites, applications, and functions, including eBay, Excel, Facebook, spelling checking, and Word. Click.to offers more functions than conveniently fit on the screen, so only a handful appear instantly. Click.to calls these functions “satellites,” because they hover above the cursor. You can choose other options from a drop-down menu in the satellite row. It…

WHETHER YOU ARE at home, work, or school, odds are you spend a lot of time staring at your Web browser. So why does it look—and run—like everyone else’s? This collection of our favorite browser secrets and extensions can make your browser safer and more efficient than ever—and help you figure out what’s wrong when things don’t work as you expect. Unless stated otherwise, our tips are for all of the four major browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari. Use These Essential Tips and Extensions Automatically update your Web browser. The easiest way to keep it stable and secure is to set it to update automatically so you’re always using the latest version. Fortunately, each major browser, by default, updates automatically. Safari receives updates from Apple Software Update (installed…