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SEAGATE GOFLEX THUNDERBOLT ADAPTER This $100 add-on works with any Seagate portable GoFlex hard drive. Used with a $50 Thunderbolt cable, the adapter lets you retrofit the GoFlex drive to move data faster. Seagate sells a $190 adapter for its external desktop drives, too. go.pcworld.com/goflextbolt WESTERN DIGITAL MYBOOK THUNDERBOLT DUO WD’s unit brings a 4TB ($600) or 6TB ($700) dual-drive configuration to your desktop for lightning-fast data transfer speeds. The Duo supports RAID 0 data striping; RAID 1 mirroring; and directly accessible independent drives. go.pcworld.com/mybooktboltduo ASUS P8Z77-V PREMIUM The first Intel-certified motherboard to carry a Thunderbolt connector is Asus’s P8Z77-V Premium. Transfer speeds can reach 10 gbps—more than twice as fast as USB 3.0. And you can daisy-chain up to six Thunderbolt drives together for more speed. go.pcworld.com/P8Z77Vpremium DROBO MINI…

SEEKING GREATER compatibility between smartphones and PCs, Microsoft has announced plans to base its coming Windows Phone 8 OS on the same OS core as its Windows 8 software for desktop and laptop PCs. The move marks a major change for Microsoft, which based its Windows Phone 7 OS on the Windows CE core. Microsoft said the switch would mean greater support for NFC (near-field communications) wireless technology for mobile wallet apps; easy porting of Windows games to the mobile devices; encryption; secure boot-up; device management applications; support for Microsoft Office applications; and adoption of Nokia Maps as the default mapping client.…

Vizio All-in-One PC Vizio’s sleek new all-in-one PC, available in both 24-inch ($898) and 27-inch ($1099) versions, marks the company’s first foray into home PCs. Both versions include a 1080p HD screen, up to 1TB of storage, and two HDMI inputs. go.pcworld.com/vizioallinone LG 55-Inch EM9600 OLED 3D Smart TV LG’s 55-inch EM9600 OLED 3D TV won the Best of Show award at CES 2012 for its state-of-the-art display tucked into a body that is an astonishing 1/16 inch thick—thinner than a pencil. Not all of the news is good, though. The price of this dramatic TV might be as high as $10,000. go.pcworld.com/lgEM9600 Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 The $650 DSC-RX100 may be the best pocket camera ever. With a 20-megapixel CMOS sensor that dwarfs those in similar cameras, it should offer…

FOR HIGH-SCHOOL students bound for college in 2013—and for their parents—it’s time to get serious about finding a college and figuring out how to pay for it. Get started with these resources. Finding a College The best college sites have search engines to help you locate schools in specific geographic areas or that offer particular degree programs, religious affiliations, size, selectivity, sports, and so on. It’ll help if you can establish a few priorities first. If you want to be within an easy drive of your hometown, for example, or if you’re set on studying wildlife management in Northern California, use those factors to narrow your search results. Many college sites require you to set up an account before you can access all of their available features. Also, make sure…

FOR AS LONG as there has been an Internet, IPv4 has been synonymous with IP and few people ever stopped to think about which version of the protocol it was. But IPv4 has outlived its usefulness. Its successor, IPv6, after nearly two decades of development is finally ready to replace IPv4 as the backbone of the Internet. Why is IPv6 necessary? To put it plainly, IPv4 is out of IP addresses. IPv4 supports only 4.3 billion addresses; and with PCs, smartphones, tablets, and gaming systems connecting to the Internet, the system is running dry. In contrast, IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses and can maintain 340 undecillion (340 x 1036) addresses. How is IPv6 different/better than IPv4? Vastly expanding the pool of IP addresses will yield other benefits, as well. Owing to…

BRITISH AIRWAYS IS crossing the creepy line as it begins to look up its passengers on Google Image Search. The airline is rolling out the “Know Me” program, which tries to improve passenger recognition through Google search and other methods. It will create “dossiers” on passengers, and will offer 4500 “personal recognition messages” by the end of the year, the London Evening Standard reports. For instance, flight attendants may reference Google image results to greet a high-profile first-class passenger who boards the plane. British Airways will also dig into its own passenger data, so if a regular customer had a problem on a previous flight, such as a delay, airline staff could offer a personal apology. Not surprisingly, some privacy advocates are upset. “Since when has buying a flight ticket…

THE SAMSUNG GALAXY S III ($200 with a two-year AT&T contract; also available with service contracts from Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon) combines superb design, excellent display performance, and fine features. The Galaxy S III is 5.37 by 2.78 by 0.34 inches; by way of comparison, the older Galaxy S II on T-Mobile (which has a 4.5-inch display) is 5.11 by 2.71 by 0.37 inches. Like its predecessor, the Galaxy S III feels light, but a bit plasticky. It comes in two colors: “Marble White” and “Pebble,” a bluish-gray. Though the Galaxy S III has a larger display than its predecessor did (4.8 inches versus 4.3 or 4.5 inches), the new phone’s dimensions are only slightly bigger. Sharp Display The phone has a 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display with 1280-by-720-pixel resolution.…

ISCSI STANDS FOR Internet Small Computer System Interface. Although SCSI (sans the i) has long served to connect various peripherals to computer systems, it appears most commonly in storage devices, such as hard drives or tape-backup drives. iSCSI allows users to connect to a remote storage volume over a network, as if that storage volume were a locally attached disk. Simply put, iSCSI transmits SCSI commands over IP (Internet Protocol) networks; it’s like a virtual SATA (or SCSI) cable, in that it uses a network connection to link a system and a storage volume. How does iSCSI differ from any other network share with a mapped drive letter? On many levels, the end results are similar. With iSCSI, however, the attached volume appears to the operating system as a locally…

HAVE A NONRESPONSIVE keyboard? If it’s a USB model, make sure, before Windows boots up, that you’ve enabled support for legacy USB devices within the PC’s BIOS settings. If you use an ancient PS/2 keyboard, try jumping into Windows’ Device Manager, uninstalling the appropriate PS/2 keyboard driver, and rebooting. It’s also possible (but unlikely) that, somehow, the PS/2 ports got shut down via the motherboard BIOS. For USB keyboard users, one easy trick worth trying is to switch the USB port you use for the connection. Shut down the computer and move the keyboard’s USB connector from the front of the case to one of the motherboard’s USB ports, or vice versa. If you’re using a USB 3.0 port, try switching to USB 2.0. Sometimes, a keyboard with USB 3.0…

Follow us on Twitter @PCWPluggedIn. → U.S. and Mexico reach a border spectrum agreement. Will critics demand a fence to keep pesky electromagnetic waves from sneaking in? → Google claims it finds 9500 new malicious sites a day. As in Bing, Yahoo, Facebook, iOS fan sites, and Apple.com? → Netflix tops Apple in online movie biz. Apple should have patented movie downloads when it had the chance. → McAfee reports a major spike in malware. In other news, Microsoft reports an upsurge in the need for new operating systems. → Orbitz pitches pricier hotels to Mac users, cheaper digs to PC users. We bet Linux users get ads for build-your-own pup tents.…

The Tablet Wars Windows 8 is far and away the most capable tablet OS; it’s based on the robust Windows NT kernel rather than stripped-down “crippleware.” It possesses a strong file system designed for security, and it integrates well with existing Windows devices. Microsoft will have a unified ecosystem across desktops/laptops, smartphones, and tablets, all with a similar interface and core OS. Harnessing the power of the cloud, all of your data, down to the layout of your tiles, will travel with you across devices. This seamless experience will cause many consumers to buy into the full Microsoft ecosystem. Even if Microsoft Surface is less than impressive in the consumer space, the corporate and educational markets will purchase it in droves. Instead of iPads and desktops, a school could just…

Apple Expands Its App Offerings With Podcasts Apple’s new Podcasts is a free universal app for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Its playback control/syncing features let you start listening on one device and pick up where you left off on another. Users can browse podcasts by medium (Audio or Video), and use the Sleep Timer to stop playing a podcast at a designated time. You can also share episodes via Twitter, Messages, and Mail. Tablets Will Outship Laptops by 2016 Tablet shipments will exceed laptop shipments by 2016, research firm NPD DisplaySearch says, because of consumers’ desire for portability. Laptop sales will grow from 208 million units this year to 393 million units by 2017, they say, while tablet shipments will increase from 121 million units this year to 416…

IN JUNE OF last year, Google introduced Google Takeout, a service designed to let you see what Google knows about you, with one click. Takeout is completely undocumented when you visit. You sign in at google.com/takeout, see an offer to ‘Download an archive of your data from’ various services, and that’s it. You can grab it all in one click (the easy approach) or choose specific services. Here’s most of what Takeout currently offers: • Lists of contacts from Google+ Circles and Gmail • Copies of all the Google Docs you’ve uploaded • Copies of any photos you’ve uploaded to Picasa • Basic info on the personal data in your Google+ Profile • Links to entries you’ve shared on your Google+ Stream • Your full Google Voice log, including Google’s…

IF YOU’RE IN the market for a new router for your small business, you might be tempted by the features, high speeds, and low cost of consumer-oriented routers. The latest models, based on the IEEE 802.11ac standard, look particularly attractive. But can a consumer router deliver everything your business needs? What distinguishes a consumer router from a business-class model, anyway? Glad you asked. Consumer Router Priorities and Features The prices of consumer-focused wireless routers ($100 or less) are appealing; the devices are compatible with the IEEE 802.11n wireless networking standard; and they come with a four-port ethernet switch, wireless encryption, a built-in firewall, and usually 2x2 antenna arrays that in theory can handle a total throughput of 300 megabits per second. Many lower-end consumer routers are dual-band models that can…

EVERY BACKUP SERVICE worth its salt uses encryption to keep your data safe from snoops, but SpiderOak (go.pcworld.com/spideroak) goes one step further by promising to keep your data private from its own employees. Although you still should use common sense in choosing what to upload to any service, I believe that SpiderOak is one of the best secure online backup options available. You may store up to 2GB on a free account; extra space costs $10 per month or $100 per year per 100GB (cheaper than Dropbox but a bit pricier than Mozy). You download an application (for Windows, Mac, or Linux) that coordinates which files and folders to back up, and runs in the background to sync your online backup with your PC. The password that you create never…

THE NEXT TABLET battleground is for 7-inch tablets, as Google’s Nexus 7 and Toshiba’s slightly larger Excite 7.7 make their debut. Google Nexus 7 Available in 8GB ($199) and 16GB ($249) sizes, the Nexus 7 has a high-quality look and feel. The plastic bezel has a textured, rubberized finish on the back that feels comfortable but won’t attract dust. At 0.75 pound, the Nexus 7 is about 0.2 pound too heavy for no-thought-required one-handed operation; but even so, it’s very light for a tablet. It is 7.8 inches tall, 4.7 inches wide, and 0.4 inch thick. The Nexus 7’s power/sleep and volume buttons along the curved right-hand bezel are sturdy and easy to press. At the bottom bezel are the headphone jack and a MicroUSB port. Regrettably it has no…

PRICED AT $1400, the Sony VAIO L24 is a desktop and HDTV with a 2.5GHz Intel Core i5-3210M processor (which can accelerate to 3.1GHz with Intel’s Turbo Boost); 6GB of DDR3 RAM; a 1TB, 7200-rpm hard drive; integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 technology; and a Blu-ray Disc player. The 24-inch LED multitouch screen supports a native resolution of 1920 by 1080. On WorldBench 7, it earned a score of 85—not the worst mark, but still below our baseline of 100. Clearly this PC was designed more for digital entertainment, particularly video, where the focus is on the screen. Among the amenities are a 1.3-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and a TV tuner. Connectivity options include USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 connections (three each), an SD Card slot, and HDMI-in and -out.…

FOR SMARTPHONES, both Documents To Go ($10) and Quickoffice Pro ($15; a stripped-down iPhone-only version is $10) offer a full editing suite for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. The extra $5 for Quickoffice will be well worth it to some people, as that suite can sync documents with cloud hosting services such as Dropbox automatically. Quickoffice Pro vs. Documents To Go To get started with Quickoffice, tap the Accounts icon in the bottom-right corner of its start page and enter the credentials for the cloud service of your choice. You’ll need to log in only once. Then either choose an application (Quickword, Quicksheet, or Quickpoint) and a document (from your Dropbox folder or your phone’s storage), or skip the first step and use Browse or Search from the start page.…

HAS YOUR MONITOR developed color issues or gone blank? Your first step is to disconnect and reconnect the display’s cabling; after that, try using a different cable to see whether you can resolve the issue easily and inexpensively. If the cable isn’t to blame, look at the connector. If your graphics board or motherboard supports different types, try switching to one of the other connectors: DVI, HDMI, or DisplayPort. No change? Turn off the PC’s power, and unseat and reseat the graphics board (if applicable) to see if a loose PCI connection is causing your display woes. Funky colors on your monitor could mean the video card is overheating (or going bad). Check that the card’s fan (if applicable) is spinning freely; if it’s caked with dust, turn off the…

THOUGH ANDROID 4.1 (Jelly Bean) looks and behaves a lot like Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), it comes with numerous enhancements—including Google Now and a new voice recognition system. What is Google Now and how does it work? Google Now gives you information that it considers most relevant to you, based on the time and your current location. To reach the Google Now screen, you can swipe up on the lock screen or swipe up from the bottom of the screen from anywhere in Android. The Google Now screen will pop up and populate itself with “cards” related to your recent Google searches, Google Calendar appointments, local weather, nearby places of interest, and other potentially useful information. Google Now is both context sensitive and location aware; if you’ve looked up…

OLYMPUS HAS announced the MEG4.0, a prototype device that clips on to standard eyeglasses and projects a 320-by-240 QVGA display in front of your eyes. The MEG4.0 features an accelerometer, plus Bluetooth 2.1 for connecting to smartphones and other devices. The wearable display has a special optical system that shows information without obstructing your view of what’s around you. Olympus estimates the device’s maximum battery life at roughly 8 hours in intermittent display mode, in which the device provides information for 15 seconds every 3 minutes. MEG4.0 isn’t a commercially available product, and how much a device like this would cost is not at all clear. Olympus appears to be developing the prototype in hopes of eventually partnering with another company to create an actual product. Olympus didn’t say whether…

AFTER I RETURNED a Galaxy S II that required a two-year contract and a $30-per-month data plan, T-Mobile continued to charge my credit card for the data plan. I finally got the company to rescind the contract and reduce its charges from $71.22 to $65.58. But I believe I actually owe $47.11. The next month, I ported my phone number to another carrier. I was only two days into my new billing cycle, yet T-Mobile charged me for the entire month, and claimed I owed $109.69. I made several calls to T-Mobile to correct the overcharges. The company’s reps refused to work with me, so I disputed the charges through my credit card company. Then I received notice of a $50.00 “returned payment fee” from T-Mobile, presumably because of the…

THIS MONTH, WE look at fixes that Mozilla issued to prevent its programs from leaking personal information. Apple and Adobe released a number of patches for their respective software offerings as well. Mozilla advisories: Mozilla released eight advisories for Firefox, Thunderbird, and SeaMonkey. Five are rated critical, two are high, and one is moderate. Researchers found two critical holes in the Mozilla updater service, introduced in Firefox 12 for Windows. Attackers could trick the updater into loading a malicious DLL file and allowing an unelevated process to run code as elevated, giving the DLL file system privileges; the attacker’s file could do anything to your PC at that point. Another flaw, rated high, could let a hacker harvest personal data from your PC. To get the fixes, update to Firefox…

THE $1999 DELL XPS One 27 is fast, and delivers a great picture on its 27-inch PLS screen. Much of its speed can be traced to its use of an Intel Ivy Bridge processor, the 3.1GHz Core i7-3770S. On WorldBench 7, it nailed an overall score of 143. To put that score in perspective, note that the far more expensive HP Z1 Workstation hit a mark of 159 equipped with a 3.5GHz Intel Xeon E31280, double the memory (16GB), a 600GB SSD (versus the 2TB hard drive in Dell’s all-in-one), and an Nvidia Quadro 4000M graphics card (in contrast to the integrated Kepler chip on the XPS One, an Nvidia GT 640M). Dell’s PC has six USB 3.0 ports, gigabit ethernet and built-in 802.11n, HDMI-in and -out, optical S/PDIF, and…

What Is Surface? IF TABLETS ARE the rising stars of personal computing, then Apple’s iPad burns most brightly. But now, Microsoft is preparing to crash the party in spectacular fashion with a pair of tablets that represent its first-ever Windows hardware. At a splashy June launch event that took cues from Apple’s playbook, Microsoft wowed the tech-savvy audience, including me, with its introduction of Surface for Windows RT and Surface for Windows 8 Pro tablets. (For brevity, I’ll refer to them hereafter as Surface RT and Surface Pro.) The folks in Redmond have spared no detail in reconsidering what a tablet can, and should, be. What caught our collective attention was Microsoft’s end-to-end vision, as seen in its design choices. This wasn’t just another humdrum tablet that Microsoft happened to…

HERE’S HOW TO stop your social networks from distracting you, so you can get your working life back on track. Silence Your Smartphone The process for turning off push notifications varies slightly from OS to OS, but usually it isn’t too complicated. Android: Open the offending app, press the Menu key, locate the messaging settings under that menu, and select the apps for which you want to halt notifications. You must turn off notifications manually for each app. iOS 5: Navigate to Settings ▸Notifications to make the modifications. Select an app and set the ‘Alert Style’ to None. Once again, you’ll need to go app by app to turn off all alerts; but they’re all in one menu, which helps. Mute Your Inbox Facebook: To turn off its email notifications,…

FROM OUR READERS But It’s Great With CDs! WHEN JOHN KUHN of Shawnee, Kansas, inserts certain DVDs into his laptop’s player, he gets this error message—and a good laugh. Dubious Dialog Boxes WELCOME TO THE endless loop: Enter the wrong customer number at ING, as Kevin McComber of Phoenix did, and you’re told to answer your security questions...in order to see your security questions. Meanwhile, Ron Wilcox of Medford, Oregon, was amused by an upgrade offer from DownVerter, a YouTube utility. Gotta give them points for candor. Good Math, Bad Logic PHILADELPHIA’S WAI YUNG spotted a real deal at LogicBuy.com: Plunk down a fortune on a 3D TV, and save minus 7087 percent. Wow! Have an idea for The Back Page? Send your suggestions to TheBackPage@pcworld.com.…