Table of contents for Aug-13 in PCWorld

THIRTY YEARS AGO, PCWorld published its very first issue, a magazine packed with essential advice for PC early adopters. It was a pioneering publication written by, and written for, tech enthusiasts. Fast-forward 30 years: Our hardware has changed dramatically. Processor performance has increased exponentially, and we no longer run various versions of DOS. But like the PCWorld of 1983, today’s PCWorld remains committed to the basic tenets of technological progress: We love consumer electronics. We embrace forward movement. And we’re interested in the many different ways we can use technology to make life more fun, convenient, and productive. PCWorld has evolved in sundry ways since our first issue, but we haven’t lost our pioneering spirit, and this month I am excited to introduce a new chapter in our history. Beginning…

GOOGLE HAS announced a new kind of inbox for Gmail that automatically sorts messages into categories, or “tabs.” Updates from Google+ and other networks go into a Social tab, deals and offers into a Promotions tab, forum messages into a Forums tab, and receipts and bills into an Updates tab. Most other types of messages will be in the Primary tab. On the desktop, the new tabs will appear just above the inbox, so you can switch between them with one click. On Gmail for Android (4.0 and up) and iOS, non-Priority tabs appear in the left sidebar menu, and as teasers in the main inbox view. The auto-sorting inbox isn’t mandatory. In a blog post, Google says users will be able to switch back to the Classic view, or…

Oculus Rift Virtual Reality Headset Once you strap this virtual-reality gaming gizmo to your face, its built-in sensors image your head’s movement through space. The $300 Rift then translates that data into a stereoscopic 1080p virtual world. Available for preorder. go.pcworld.com/oculusrift Adobe Photoshop CC Newly updated Photoshop CC is one piece of Adobe’s new Creative Cloud subscription service (the company is dropping traditional software licenses). Photoshop ($20 a month for a year’s subscription) now contains such improvements as camera-shake reduction and a revamped Smart Sharpen filter (shown here) designed to minimize noise and halos during sharpening. go.pcworld.com/photoshopCC Asus VivoMouse The USS Enterprise–like VivoMouse is a hybrid touchpad and remote control. It functions traditionally—by sliding on a surface—or airborne, as a handheld touchpad. Click or swipe the disc with multi-touch gestures…

WE’VE ALL been there: Time is short, deadlines loom, and a mysterious glitch has stopped your computer in its tracks. You’ve gone through the usual bag of tricks, and now it’s time to try an outside resource. Here are some good bets. 1. Start with the freebies:CyberTechHelp.com, Suggest-A-Fix.com, and TechGuy.org, among other sites, have comprehensive forums on a wide range of topics. Also, conducting a Web search on the error message or a quick description of the problem can be fruitful. 2. Use recommendations based on firsthand experience: Ask family, friends, and colleagues about their experiences with tech support companies. Did the company solve the problem? How long did it take? How much did it cost? 3. Beware of misleading company names and search results: A site that calls itself…

IF YOU’RE USING LinkedIn only as a glorified business-card collector, an email re-placement, or a kind of Facebook counterpart for business contacts, you’re missing out on its recruitment potential. With 200 million users, Linked In has been making great strides to offer better tools for searching and posting jobs. Here are five ways your business can use LinkedIn for recruitment. 1. Approach anyone via Talent Finder The free version of LinkedIn may not cut it for finding suitable employees, but that should not be the case for the premium LinkedIn Talent Finder. Businesses can use Talent Finder to contact all LinkedIn members with the InMail feature, see expanded profiles, get more search filters, and even discover candidates who are not actively seeking a job. LinkedIn Talent Finder costs about $75…

TOSHIBA’S luxurious Kirabook is the first Windows laptop to feature a display rivaling what Apple’s Retina technology delivers. It’s also thinner and much lighter than Apple’s MacBook Pro, and it comes with a touchscreen. While I wish I could say that Toshiba has crafted a masterpiece that justifies its $2000 price tag, this machine suffers from a few significant flaws. With a native resolution of 2560 by 1440 pixels, the Kirabook’s 13.3-inch display delivers a pixel density of 221 pixels per inch—just shy of the 227 ppi that Apple packs into the 13-inch MacBook Pro’s 2560-by-1600-pixel display. If you think Apple’s computers are overpriced, consider the fact that a 13-inch MacBook Pro with a 3.0GHz Intel Core i7-3540M processor sells for $100 less than the Kirabook, which runs on a…

ATTRACTIVE LAPTOP models equipped with a touchscreen and running a full version of Windows 8 are getting more affordable. Asus’s 15.6-inch VivoBook S550CA has a list price of $750—and you can find it for less online. With a full-size keyboard and an optical drive, plus that touchscreen, it’s a pretty good deal. The VivoBook S550CA is 0.86 inch thick and weighs 5.7 pounds. It has a 24GB SSD boot drive and a 500GB hard drive, and it starts up in just under 15 seconds. Despite its thin profile, the S550CA accommodates a tray-loading Super-Multi DVD drive. It also hosts a couple of USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, HDMI-and VGA-out, and a gigabit ethernet port, plus built-in 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. The touchscreen is responsive, accurate, and easy…

WE LIVE IN a digital age, but a lot of paper is still out there. Luckily, the Doxie One portable scanner ($149) provides a simple way to make digital copies of stacks of receipts, documents, recipes, and photos, and save them to a PC, Mac, or cloud service. The Doxie One is also good-looking, sleek, and compact; and it’s available in a rainbow palette of colors (black, pink, purple, green, yellow, red, orange, and blue). Measuring 10.5 by 1.7 by 2.2 inches and weighing just 13.6 ounces, the scanner will fit easily on just about any surface and won’t add too much heft to a purse or messenger bag. And it’s designed to be used on-the-fly. It has an integrated SD card so you can scan and save documents even…

BLACKBERRY’S SOLIDLY built Q10 smartphone will please people who’ve longed for a new physical-keyboard BlackBerry, but its small screen and limited app support will discourage others. The Q10’s screen is incredibly sharp and responsive, but it measures a mere 3.1 inches. As a result, browsing anything besides text is a bit claustrophobic: Videos are minuscule, and web-pages without dedicated mobile sites are a chore to navigate. You can zoom, but the narrow screen requires constant horizontal scrolling to see anything. And the Q10 has no landscape mode to help you. The Q10 lacks a dedicated home button; to exit an app, you swipe up from the bottom of the screen. But I repeatedly exited apps unintentionally when the system misinterpreted my attempts to scroll as cues to return to the…

THE LATEST VERSION of Corel VideoStudio adds a slew of new features to bring the super-intuitive video editor and producer into a virtual dead heat with competing programs. New tricks in its bag include animation overlays, the ability to control DSLR cameras for stop-motion animation, free-form motion editing, layer swapping, motion tracking, support for 2K and 4K video, and more. One cool new feature for subtitling is a form of audio beat detection that allows you to sync subtitles to speech more easily. Several sensible design decisions make version X6’s interface friendlier and easier to use than just about anything out there. A nice, simple storyboard view makes adding and arranging items more intuitive. Once you’ve introduced your items, you can use the timeline to tweak their location and lengths,…

ENHANCED EDITION VIDEO BONUS Get a closer look at our testing in Boston. OUR INTERNET EXPERIENCE has become irreversibly mobile, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. It’s not unusual for a family to pay $2000 a year in wireless-service bills alone. For anyone living in the United States, in fact, the cost of moving 1MB of data over a cellular network is among the highest in the developed world. The speed at which smartphones and tablets connect to the Internet couldn’t be more important. That’s why PCWorld (now with our sister site TechHive.com) regularly conducts the nation’s largest independent-media study of real-world wireless network performance. Focusing on the four major U.S. wireless networks, we seek to arm you with the information that you need to judge the carriers’ marketing claims…

MANY PEOPLE CONSIDER Mozilla Firefox to be one of the most se cure Web browsers. But the amount of protection depends on the settings you have and haven’t configured. Also, you can install countless add-ons to bolster your defenses. Enable a Master Password As with Google Chrome, you can view a list of your saved usernames and passwords via the options menu of Firefox. If you employ the same or similar passwords for sensitive sites such as that of your bank, this list can be dangerous. Fortunately, Firefox offers a master-password feature that encrypts and password-protects the saved-password list. When it’s enabled, you must enter the master password the first time you use a saved password, once per browser session. Additionally, even though you enter the master password the first…

VIZIO’S NEW VERSION of the CA24T all-in-one fixes the previous iteration’s disappointing, TV-grade LCD. It’s still pricey, however. The bigger CA27T-B1 has also im proved, but drawbacks remain. 24-Inch CA24T Whereas the prior version of the CA24T suffered from a blurry display, the new model’s 1920-by-1080-pixel, 24-inch touchscreen delivers crisp text, renders movies well, and is nicely responsive to touch and gestures. For its svelte design, Vizio had to use an external power supply, or APU. The company combined it with a subwoofer. The overall sound is clear, spacious, and amazingly loud. The wireless keyboard and touchpad still put style over substance. The keyboard layout is cramped; the home or end keys are missing; and the non sculpted, short-travel keys make typing harder. We tested the $1280, lowend CA24T-B0 model.…

DAS KEYBOARD promotes the sound of its peripheral with an emphatic tagline: “The Mechanical Keyboard That Clicks.” Now it’s going after prospective buyers who crave the benefits of a mechanical keyboard but not the constant commotion that comes with it. Meet the Professional Model S Quiet: The quietest mechanical keyboard around. In the beginning, keyboards were loud, mechanical, and everlasting. Soon a cheaper approach removed the click-clack in favor of plastic and a domed-shaped membrane. Yet like all good things, the mechanical keyboard came back into favor among typing enthusiasts and gamers alike. And with the Das Professional Model S Quiet, you don’t have to choose between having an awesome keyboard and not annoying your coworkers. The keyboard uses Cherry MX Red key switches to keep the keyboard mechanical without…

FOLLOWING IN THE footsteps of 2010’s Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light improves on the gameplay of its predecessor without ruining what made the series great: the setting. Last Light takes you back to the desolate, post-apocalyptic Russian wasteland of Metro 2033 to deliver a first-person shooter of great pathos and narrative power, with a terrific score. Boot up Last Light, and you are dropped into the boots of Artyom, a man haunted by memories of his mother as he attempts to leave the Russian Metro to capture a mutant Dark One who survived a massive missile strike at the end of Metro 2033. Along the way, you will be captured and will orchestrate an escape with other survivors. Your quest leads you through devastated areas and nests of enemies mutated…

OUR APPROACH TO testing wireless service is to replicate how people use such service in the real world, and to measure how well it truly works. We do the testing ourselves, instead of crowdsourcing the data. We take care to measure the services under similar and repeatable conditions: We use the same devices, so that the comparisons we make really say something about the relative value of each service. We chose our 20 test cities for their varying population densities, physical topography, and cellular environments. In each city we tested at ten locations, five indoors (often in a Starbucks or a similar place) and five outdoors. We selected the locations based on a grid covering the center of the city; we did not test in suburban or rural areas. We…

INTEL’S new Haswell processors are more than just power-efficient speed demons. They also give the world’s biggest name in microprocessors an opportunity to update its Ultrabook specs. An Ultrabook must now be outfitted with a touchscreen, and Intel is encouraging manufacturers to build two-in-one convertible designs (laptops with touchscreens that detach from the keyboards to become tablets). Also, no laptop can be thicker than 23mm if it’s to be marketed as an Ultrabook, and it must now be hardware-ready for voice command and control. The company has extended the battery-life requirements, demanding that batteries provide at least 6 hours of HD video playback; a minimum of 9 hours when Windows 8 is idling; and at least seven days of standby time. An Ultrabook must now wake from sleep mode in…

THE SAFEST PASSWORDS are long, seemingly random strings of letters, numbers, and punctuation marks--and you need a different one for each site you log in to and each application that requires it. Unless you have a photographic memory, you need a program where you can securely store your passwords. That way, you simply need to remember the one password that will give you access to all the others. You need a password manager, which is essentially an encrypted password database. A good password manager should work for both websites and applications. I use Password Safe (go.pcworld.com/passwordsafe). It’s free, open source, and available on multiple platforms. I run it on my PC, Android phone, and iPad. Password Safe doesn’t directly integrate with your browser, but it’s reasonably browser-friendly. When you’re at…

CALL ME OLD-FASHIONED, but I like to know when my hard drive is active. That’s partly so I know when Windows finishes booting, and partly so I can troubleshoot. In the old days, I could hear a drive thrashing inside my desktop PC. But now that I work mostly on laptops, which incorporate much quieter drives (or, in the case of solidstate drives, silent drives), I have to rely on LEDs. Just one problem: Like many newer laptops, my Samsung Series 9 Ultrabook has no LED at all. Happily, I found Activity Indicator (donation requested; go.pcworld.com/actindicator). This utility adds a drive-activity “LED” to Windows’ system tray so that you can keep tabs on a drive’s read/write status. Activity Indicator not only provides basic drive info (total space, space consumed, and…

I RECENTLY TRIED to pinpoint a problem with my Internet connection. Usually I blame my ISP, Comcast, for connection problems, but Comcast outages tend to be a total interruption of service. This time, however, the problem was intermittent. Sometimes my connection would slow to a crawl, and on other occasions it would disappear altogether for a few minutes. Time for some detective work. I used the free SpeedTest (speedtest.net) service to test the speed of my Internet connection. First, I ran it on my Samsung laptop. Sure enough, my usually speedy Comcast connection was dragging its feet: Download performance ranged from 2 to 8 megabits per second; I normally see at least 30 mbps. But that alone didn’t tell me whether the cause lay with Comcast, my router, my laptop,…

EVER SINCE JANUARY, when Microsoft introduced Office 365 Home Premium subscriptions, we’ve been wondering when the company might give up on packaged versions of Office. Now we may have our answer, from Redmond itself. The software giant is betting that, over the next ten years, most people will pick subscriptions over traditional boxed software. “We think subscription software-as-a-service is the future,” Microsoft says on its official Office blog. “Within a decade, we think everyone will choose to subscribe be cause the benefits are undeniable.” Microsoft says, however, that for now it will continue to offer packaged Office suites as well as Office 365 subscriptions, saying that the transition will take some time. These comments follow Adobe’s announcement that it was dumping Creative Suite as a software package and going all…

SAMSUNG TVs WILL be able to play movies streamed directly from PCs running Intel’s latest processors by the end of this year. In June, Intel and Samsung announced a joint effort under which the chip maker’s Wireless Display technology would be integrated directly into Samsung’s TVs. That in tegration will eliminate the need for a separate receiver to play PC content on TVs. Samsung is a big customer win for Intel. Around 10 million TVs from manufacturers including LG, TCL, and Toshiba already have Wireless Display integrated; with Samsung, that number will double by the end of the year, Kirk Skaugen, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s PC Client Group, says. Wireless Display capabilities are available in Intel’s latest Core processors. Intel has said that it will eventually…

Eye-Fi’s new Mobi wireless SD Card promises to make the business of wirelessly transferring photos faster, easier, and cheaper. The Eye-Fi Mobi uses Wi-Fi to let you connect directly to your smartphone or tablet, providing instant sharing opportunities. The Mobi works through a free Eye-Fi app for iOS, Android, or Kindle Fire. Enter the card’s unique ten-digit code to pair the card with one or more devices, and then you can transfer high-resolution photos and videos. The Wi-Fi range is 90 feet outdoors and 45 feet indoors. The new Mobi (eye.fi/products/mobi) costs $50 for the 8GB card and $80 for the 16GB card.…

ARDUINO HAS A history of making it easier to build your own electronics projects (see go.pcworld.com/arduino101). Now the microcontroller-board maker has entered the robotics market with something that it calls “the first official Arduino on wheels.” According to an announcement made in May, the company has teamed up with Complubot, the four-time world champions in the Robocup Junior robot soccer tournament, to create a new Arduino robotics kit. Its hardware is completely open-source—just like a regular Arduino board—so you can change the software controlling the robot or stack your own hardware on top of it. The kit comes with everything you need to get started on your first robotics project, including the hardware, software, and documentation. Also included are both a new version of the Arduino developer tools and a…

WHETHER YOU’RE SEEKING a consumer-or a business-class router, here are eight core features that you should look for. Wi-Fi AP: Most routers have a built-in Wi-Fi access point (AP) to provide wireless connections for PCs and other devices. You can also buy APs to extend the router’s range. A stand-alone AP can also add wireless capabilities to a wired router. Many wireless standards are in use. 802.11n is the latest ratified standard, and 802.11ac is in “draft” mode. If you’re buying today, pick a model based on these two standards. Guest Wi-Fi access: Some consumer-class routers include wireless guest access that allows you to broadcast a separate wireless network name (SSID) with different security settings so that guests can’t access your main network. Virtual LANs and multiple SSIDs: Many business-class…

WHEN YOU’RE multitasking, one monitor doesn’t provide enough real estate to display every open window without many of them overlapping each other. But constantly rearranging multiple browser, chat, and photo-editing windows saps productivity and invites frustration. Regrettably, using multiple displays isn’t a panacea. First, you need a graphics card that can support two displays. Second, multiple video and power cables add clutter. Third—and most important—a gap between the displays is inevitable. Even the narrowest bezel will create a blind spot as your pointer crosses from screen to screen. That’s why the new 29-inch, ultrawide displays are a welcome addition to the market. They’re just the ticket for productivity apps, and they’re not bad for gaming, either. The Contenders Three such models recently passed through the PCWorld Labs: the AOC Q2963PM,…

THE VAIO FIT 15 is certainly no Ultra book, at 5.7 pounds sans power adapter, and it packs some beefy hardware: 8GB of DDR3/1600 memory, a 750GB hard drive, a DVD burner, and an HD touchscreen. Depending on configuration, prices range from $849 to $1699. Our re view unit had a tag of $949. With a native resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, the 15-inch display is bright. It also has a distractingly glossy finish, but its oleophobic coating keeps greasy fingerprints away, important on a touchcentric, Windows 8 system. This model uses Intel’s 1.8GHz i5-3337U (Ivy Bridge) processor. The integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 GPU that drives the display delivered relatively poor gaming performance. The stereo speakers in the Fit’s hinge generated plenty of volume, but little more. The…

V-MODA’S CROSSFADE M-80 headphones sport a metal, plastic, and cloth design that looks angular, industrial, and edgy. The M-80 is available in shadow (black/dark gray) and pearl (white/light gray) color schemes. You can customize the outside of each earpiece with interchangeable “shield” faceplates that are available in various of colors, with optional text or logos (including the option to submit a custom logo). You get another pair of shields free if you purchase the M-80 directly from V-Moda, or you can purchase them later for $25 per pair. V-Moda bundles a couple of cloth-wrapped and Kevlarre-inforced cables in the package: Each has an inline microphone, but one features an Apple-style three-button inline remote and a microphone, while the other uses a one-button inline remote for use with non-Apple devices. The…

THE $99 PLAIR video streaming stick targets users who run a 20-foot HDMI cable from their laptop on the couch to the back of their HDTV. Using a Chrome plug-in, you can “send” your TV video content by choosing it from the browser on a Mac running OS X 10.6 or later, or on a Windows PC running XP or later. In effect, you’re telling a particular website to send the content directly to the Plair. (The company actually uses the word beam, but that isn’t really right either.) You also get more-limited functionality from mobile de vices running iOS 4.2 or later and Android 2.3 or later, and support for streaming videos and photos directly from your computer or mobile device. The Plair is an interesting concept, but in…

Your PC is a machine of many talents. It can serve as a photo editor, a gaming machine, a workspace, and a home cinema. But sometimes something in your system fails just when you need it most. Whether you’re dealing with a dead monitor, a corrupt Windows installation, or a new operating system, you can solve many common PC headaches in a flash once you know where to look. To that end, we’ve collected a few of our favorite quick fixes for the hardware, software, and services you use. With these tricks, you won’t just be better prepared to fix an ailing system—you’ll be able to tweak your PC to work stronger, faster, and better than before. Quick PC Fixes End Spontaneous System Shutdowns 5 minutes: If your PC regularly…

ENHANCED EDITION VIDEO BONUS Take a look at PCWorld's first Haswell speed tests Intel recently introduced its latest Core microprocessor technology, code-named Haswell. The new chips address the need for higher performance and lower power consumption. But the real question is this: Will anybody want one? Although Haswell may be the fourth generation of Intel’s Core processor technology, it’s the first to enter what many people are calling the post-PC world. Clearly, these days most consumers want smaller, thinner, and more-portable PCs. Smartphones and tablets are great for what they are, but they can’t replace the computational horsepower of a genuine PC. There are just too many tasks that tablets and smartphones can’t handle, ranging from sophisticated photo and video editing to playing hard-core games. Meeting the Challenge Intel’s challenge,…

THERE HAS NEVER been a better time to take Linux for a spin. With Windows 8 promoting a “touch-first” desktop interface—Microsoft’s words, not ours—and with Valve’s Steam on Linux bringing much-needed games and popular attention to the often-overlooked operating system, some Windows users might consider other options. Dipping your toes into the penguin-filled waters of the most well-known open-source ecosystem is easy, and you don’t have to commit to switching outright to Linux. You can install it alongside your current Windows setup, or even try it without installing anything at all. Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution for desktop and laptop Linux users, so we’ll focus on Ubuntu throughout this guide. For the most part, Ubuntu just plain works. It sports a subtle interface that stays out of your…

Xbox One Microsoft’s upcoming console is designed to be all things to all audiences. It will play the latest games, but it will also link to your streaming media accounts, your cable box, and your tablet—via the SmartGlass app—in a bid to rule your living room. 1 Live-TV Integration If you hook your cable box into your Xbox One via its HDMI-in port, you can switch to live TV simply by pressing a button—or by saying “Xbox, live TV” loud enough for the Kinect microphone to recognize the command. The console also features an “Xbox One Guide” that outlines currently available broadcast-TV programming alongside on-demand content. You’ll be able to organize media content by your “favorites,” as well as by the degree to which it is currently trending in popularity.…