Table of contents for Oct-12 in PCWorld

THAT IRRESISTIBLE WORD free? To borrow a line from one of my favorite movies, The Princess Bride, “I do not think it means what you think it means.” Anyone who imagines that free means “not requiring payment” should prepare for sticker shock. Consider the experience of Executive Editor Tom Spring (see “The Truth About Free Trials,” page 79), who let himself be lured into dozens of purportedly free online offers, and then struggled to extricate himself without having to cough up any cash. As he found, once some of these sites have your credit card info—a requirement for most free trial offers—you may end up paying something, even if you had never intended to. Free trials are lures. “You can subscribe in under 2 minutes with 2 clicks,” Spring says,…

IN JULY, MICROSOFT previewed a webmail service —called Outlook.com—to replace Hotmail. Hotmail has fallen far: Nearly a decade ago, it was sitting on top of the webmail heap. Then, as rivals such as Gmail surged, it seemed to lose its way; it even went through at least one rebranding, as Windows Live. Outlook.com is Microsoft’s attempt to gain that mojo back. The Metro interface appears, and with it comes a much cleaner presentation. The result is a 30 percent increase in the number of viewable messages, according to Microsoft. In addition, the company is doing away with large display ads. Another major feature of Outlook.com is social networking integration. Instead of the standard email inbox, users will be able to view status updates and content from Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and…

BUILDING A WEBSITE has always been a challenge. You have complete control over your content, but virtually no control over who’s consuming it. Thanks to a handful of well-honed Web-analytics services, however, you can draw deep insights about your website’s visitors: Where do they live, when do they come to your site, how long do they spend there, and, critically, how many of them are coming every day? Following is a quick look at the leading analytics services. First, a word of caution: Remember that analytics are just a snapshot of your site at a point in time (or a range of times). Don’t start second-guessing yourself, trying to figure out why one page did well and another performed badly. The power of social media can turn a quick blog…

CLOUD-BASED STORAGE AND synchronization services, like Dropbox and Apple’s iCloud, offer convenience for those of us who are on the go, have an Net connection, and need or want access to our data. But they also introduce significant risks. Cloud storage accounts typically rely on a very weak link: a single password that prevents intruders from accessing your account. If someone gets hold of your password (and thus of your account), your personal data is there for the taking. It doesn’t have to be that way—you can own the keys to your virtual castle. Here’s what you should know about how cloud storage services keep your data safe, and some ways to make sure that your data doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. How Most Current Systems Protect Your Data…

WEBCAMS ARE GOOD for holding video chats. They’re also great at snapping a few shots when they detect motion, and emailing the photos to you. For thorough monitoring and protection, however, turn to IP (Internet Protocol) video cameras. The main advantages of such specialized cameras: They can handle low-light situations better than webcams can, and they let you easily record happenings at your home or office via your local area network and then review the video footage from wherever you may be. Network cameras are a cost-effective crime deterrent; even if a thief ignores them, they can provide evidence that should help a law-enforcement investigation. You can add some cameras to home automation and alarm systems, too. Better-quality models carry a two-digit IP rating (in this case, the initialism stands…

ASUS DELIVERS a complete package with the Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 Android tablet. It maintains the slim, stylish, multipurpose tradition of its predecessor, the Transformer Prime, but adds an improved Nvidia Tegra 3 processor and a 1920-by-1200-pixel display. Except in battery life, it’s the best-performing Android tablet we’ve seen to date. The 32GB version of the Infinity also offers double the memory of the third-generation 16GB Apple iPad, at the same price, $499. The 64GB version of the Infinity costs $599, or $100 less than the 64GB iPad. At 10.4 by 7.1 by 0.3 inches and 1.31 pounds, the Infinity is one of the lightest and slimmest Android tablets. Apple’s iPad measures 9.5 by 7.3 by 0.4 inches, and weighs 1.44 pounds. I found the Infinity more comfortable to hold…

ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE Home 2012 supports imaging, file backup, online backup, synchronization (local, online, and remote) and even continuous backup. And the user interface is well organized and well thought out. True Image Home 2012 includes Secure Zone, a hidden partition for restoring your PC without using boot media; a boot manager that adds images to the boot sequence if you’re using Windows 7 Enterprise or Ultimate; a driver for greater than 2.2TB support in Windows XP; a file shredder, a disk wiper; and a CCleaner-like system cleanup utility. True Image Home 2012 lacks support for Microsoft’s dynamic disks (which won’t affect most home users) and restoration to dissimilar hardware. Acronis’s $30 Plus Pack offers both features. All of True Image Home 2012’s local functionality worked quite well for me,…

POGOPLUG LETS YOU turn any USB-attached drive into a network-accessible drive. Pogoplug’s Series 4 is a vast improvement over previous models, starting with the upgrade of the USB ports to the 3.0 standard. In addition, Series 4 offers a SATA/USM slot on the top of the unit and an SD Card slot. Pogoplug makes establishing your own remotely accessible storage easy. Power up the unit, attach it to your network router or switch, and step through a simple online setup procedure using your browser—you then can access the unit (as well as any attached drives) from anywhere you have an Internet connection. You don’t even have to enter a unit ID, as in the past. The Pogoplug website portal where you upload, download, share, and view files is capable enough…

CANCELING MY 14-DAY free-trial membership to Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary online took only three clicks, allowing me to avoid the $30 annual fee that the service would have charged to my credit card had the trial period expired. My experience in canceling Merriam-Webster’s free trial was excellent, and stood in sharp contrast to the dozen sites that made cancellation feel like a hunt for a piece of cheese in a maze. Despite the hair pulling that free trials put me through, eight services—AdaptedMind, Ancestry.com, Britannica Online, Dr. Laura, Hulu Plus, Merriam-Webster, SugarSync, and The Weather Channel—proved that it is possible to make parting ways a breeze. What did those sites have in common? Intuitive navigation, clear instructions, and no gotchas after you click the Cancel button. Once I cut ties, these…

IF YOU’RE CONSIDERING carrying a tablet instead of your laptop, you’re most likely concerned about sacrificing the functionality of a PC—especially the office software that lets you view and edit documents. Fortunately, you can find excellent apps that duplicate the features of editing software such as Microsoft Office. Although tablet users can try any of the editing apps created for phones (see page 89 in our September issue), one application is designed with tablets in mind: Quickoffice Pro HD ($20, www.quickoffice.com). It’s filled with tools for working with documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, and it lets you sync documents automatically with cloud hosting services such as Dropbox. Setting Up Quickoffice To get started with syncing in Quickoffice, simply tap the ‘+’ icon in the bottom-left corner of the iPad screen or…

HOW DO YOU bookmark a website? Most users venture into the Bookmarks menu and click ‘Add to Favorites’ (or something similar). That can add up to a lot of clicking. Here’s a faster, smarter way: In Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, or Safari, press <Ctrl>D to bookmark the current page. (Why not <Ctrl>-B, for bookmark? That shortcut is almost universally reserved for the bold command.) In some browsers, you can do a bit more. For example, in Chrome, pressing <Ctrl>-<Shift>-D lets you bookmark a page and edit the details. In Firefox, that same combination bookmarks all currently open tabs. Even if you don’t get fancy with it, <Ctrl>-D is a shortcut that’s definitely worth learning, regardless of which browser you use.…

HERE AT GEEKTECH, we feature all sorts of inventive projects—everything from cardboard robots to music made by scanning barcodes. The people who make these sorts of creations possess incredible imagination and ingenuity. However, not knowing everything about coding or engineering shouldn’t prevent you from making something cool. In fact, doing your own hacks is a great way to teach yourself some valuable new skills. One person who has done this more than a few times is Tom Scott (tomscott.com)—a self-described “maker of things.” With his impressive history of hacks, Tom is used to working in unfamiliar territory. He tells GeekTech, “Most of the skills I’ve learned have come from the things I’ve made. Rather than learning for the sake of it, I learn because I need to.” Any tech project…

MOVING FROM OUTLOOK (or another mail client) to Gmail can be jarring. It means giving up the folder system you’ve used for years, getting accustomed to a new interface, and so on. Here’s some advice. Enable Preview Pane: One aspect of Gmail you might dislike is that you have to click a message to read it, since Gmail lacks a preview pane. In fact, Gmail has one, but it’s a Google Labs experiment. The aptly named Preview Pane makes Gmail decidedly more Outlook-like, giving you a three-column view with an instant preview of any message you click. It’s my single favorite Gmail tweak ever, since it makes the service a lot easier to tolerate. For more details, see go.pcworld.com/gmailpreview. Learn to use labels and filters: As someone who has lived…

NTI ECHO 3 is a simple and effective utility for cloning hard drives and partitions. Echo 3 can copy data from a single partition, from an entire drive, and from both while filtering out file types you define. You can also have the program dynamically resize partitions to fit a new drive. If a partition took up 33 percent of a 250GB drive, for instance, you can have it take up the same percentage of a 500GB drive. I do have two minor complaints. First, although Echo 3 warns you that it will overwrite any data on the destination drive, the warning comes only after you’ve chosen a disk from a drop-down list. Best practice would be to show the drives and detail exactly what’s on them. Second, Echo 3…

VERSION 10 OF Anthropics’ Portrait Professional includes a few nice changes to the interface and controls, but it continues to provide a good platform for improving photo subjects’ attractiveness. Like Portrait Professional version 9, version 10 lets you create minimal to sweeping changes to a face to make it more appealing. Once you upload an image, you mark five spots on it—outside corners of the eyes, tip of the nose, and corners of the mouth. Then you adjust the points on the image to correspond to the features of the face, and click. In seconds, the software changes the face’s features in accordance with predetermined beautifying algorithms. The result: a new face. After Portrait Professional is finished, you can make changes using the sliders at the right side of the…

The simple, cloud-based service SaneBox brings order to your email inbox for $5 per month. When you enter your email address at the SaneBox site and give the service permission to access your IMAP-based email account, it analyzes your inbox’s contents. Connect social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to give SaneBox additional information to base its decisions on. In about 15 minutes, SaneBox whittled my Gmail account down from 32,000 messages (1000 of them unread) to 1200 messages (100 of them unread). It moved the other messages to newly created folders with names such as SaneLater. Instead of hundreds of messages a day, I was receiving two dozen, and my unread messages were in the single digits. On the few occasions when SaneBox stumbled—delivering billing statements or personal…

BEST POCKET MEGAZOOM If you want an excellent blend of zoom range, shooting modes, and image/video quality, the 20X- optical-zoom (25mm to 500mm) Canon PowerShot SX260 HS delivers on all fronts—and fits in your pocket. At $350, the SX260 HS offers a 10-frames-per-second burst mode, manual controls, and options for low-light shots. It has some weak spots, however: no RAW mode, middling battery life, and a maximum aperture of F3.5. go.pcworld.com/canonsx260hs BEST PREMIUM POCKET CAMERA Camera makers have struggled for a long time to create the ultimate pocket camera, but Sony may have succeeded with the Cyber-shot DSC-RX100. This high-end point-and-shoot camera comes with specs to match: a much bigger sensor than most cameras in its class, a fast F1.8 lens, manual controls for stills and video, and versatile shooting…

FEW UPGRADES CAN improve productivity as much as multiple displays can. In Windows 8, Microsoft is introducing multimonitor-related enhancements, some of which will help you use your screens more efficiently. Whether you have integrated graphics hardware (such as the Intel HD 4000 series) or a discrete graphics card, setting up multiple monitors is easy in the new OS. Intel HD 4000: With integrated graphics, simply connect a second monitor; the OS should recognize it. Bring up the desktop, right-click the background, and choose Personalize from the menu. (Alternatively, open the Start menu and enter Display Settings in the search field.) Click the Display link, followed by Change Display Settings. Click and drag the virtual monitors to mimic your physical setup. Click OK. Nvidia graphics cards: The Windows 8 Release Preview…

RUNNING BENCHMARKS on a PC helps you assess its performance, identify bottlenecks, and choose upgrades. Some benchmarks evaluate the effectiveness of one component, while others measure total system performance. As a total system benchmark, the basic Windows Experience Index built into Windows 7 and Vista is a poor choice, owing to the rudimentary nature of the tests and the lack of granularity in the results. Instead, we recommend using a suite such as Futuremark’s PCMark 7. The benchmarking tool is available in a free basic edition, and you can run it with a click. (We used it to test our quiet, power-efficient gaming PC; see page 86.) PCMark 7 (go.pcworld.com/pcmark7) taxes the CPU, GPU, memory, and hard disk; it then generates scores, with higher scores indicating better performance. It emphasizes…

WHY ARE SO many car interfaces so darn bad? I’m not referring to the basic driving components. I’m talking about all the bells and whistles: the navigation systems and multi-CD-changer/satellite radio/media interface/DVD-player entertainment centers. Sit down in a rental, a Zip-car, or a friend’s vehicle, and typically you’re confronted by an obtuse set of dials, knobs, sliders, and—worst of all—a touchscreen. The poor usability of the electronics and media system in my new Volkswagen GTI stand in stark contrast to the rest of the car, which is otherwise well designed. But the audio system lacks the same level of quality. Fair warning: This article is based on my personal experiences, largely with my GTI. Bad Touch I firmly believe that whoever first thought it was a good idea to put…

MICROSOFT RECENTLY announced new keyboards and mice optimized for tablets and laptops running the Windows 8 operating system. The new devices are lighter and more mobile than their predecessors, and will work with tablets running Windows 8 (due for release on October 26). They are wireless and use Bluetooth, cutting dependence on USB ports. Microsoft’s new mice and keyboards will debut around the time of the Windows 8 launch, Microsoft said in a statement. The company will release its Surface tablet with Windows at approximately the same time. The $80 Microsoft Wedge Mobile Keyboard is a full-size keyboard designed for tablet users (for more, see Staff Picks, page 23). The $50 Microsoft Sculpt Mobile Keyboard builds in a 6-degree curve, much like Microsoft’s ergonomic keyboards. It has a number of…

Samsung ES9000 This impressive LED HDTV from Samsung sports a whopping 75-inch screen with a bezel that’s just 0.31 inch thick. The ES9000 is controllable by voice and gesture, and even has a built-in Skype camera. These stellar qualities don’t come cheap, however. It costs $10,000. go.pcworld.com/samsunges9000 Sony Reader PRS-T2 Sony’s newest ebook reader has a 6-inch touchscreen, easily downloads ebooks from your public library, and won’t run out of battery power for seven weeks, according to Sony. The $129 reader also includes features from Facebook and from Evernote Clearly, which makes Internet content easier to read. go.pcworld.com/sonyreaderprs-t2 Roku Streaming Stick Roku’s Streaming Stick provides all the features of a full-size Roku media streamer in a package the size of a USB thumb drive. Sounds great, but, to use it,…

DVD SLIDESHOW Builder Deluxe helps you build slideshows that you can burn to DVDs for playing back on a TV. In addition, you can save the slideshows as video files compatible with mobile devices and Web services. After you add photos, you can easily rearrange, delete, or tweak them with the built-in (but basic) editing tools. Once the photos are set, you can apply a style and other customizations to the slideshow. The software can be a bit much if you just want to create a basic slideshow; but if you’re willing to put time and effort into using DVD Slideshow Builder Deluxe, you’ll find plenty of features. You can add music, clip art, credits, and other elements. Microsoft’s free Windows Movie Maker, included with most Windows PCs, provides some…

IF YOU LOSE track of a file or folder, don’t panic: You have a pretty good chance of getting it back. (However, be sure to avoid using the computer for anything else until you have either recovered the file or given up.) To find out whether you moved the file accidentally, use Windows’ search function to look for the filename, or for a distinctive word or phrase in the file. In Windows 7 or Vista, use the Search field in the upper-right corner of any Windows Explorer window. In Windows XP, select Start u Search. If that doesn’t pan out, look in the Recycle Bin. No luck? Check your backup—assuming, of course, that you back up your files. Lacking a good backup, you’ll have to try a portable file-recovery program…

How do I password-protect a flash drive? —Enddylopez IF A FLASH drive contains sensitive data, you should password-protect at least those files, if not the whole drive. You can use encryption software, or you can buy an encrypted flash drive. Recently my colleague Jon L. Jacobi named the Imation Defender F200 as the top encrypted flash drive among five contenders (go.pcworld.com/encryptedflash). He prefers an encrypted drive to encryption software: “[A] chip is harder to hack, and to reach it means actually tampering with the drive, which is easy to detect.” Not everyone agrees. Security guru Bruce Schneier thinks it’s best to separate the encryption algorithm from the hardware. “I use random flash drives with PGP Disk for security,” Schneier says. The current version of PGP Disk costs money and is…

IF YOU WANT to bring your own iPad to the office for work purposes, you should think about how to secure the device against tampering, on the off chance that you’ll lose the tablet or allow it to slip into the wrong hands. Encryption can keep your data secure. Apple says that its devices have hardware encryption out of the box—protection that the user can’t disable. This is a good thing, since it makes the company’s “Fast Erase” functionality possible: If you lose your iPad or iPhone, you can remotely wipe the device in seconds, if the feature is enabled. Unfortunately, the hardware encryption has a weakness: If your device is jailbroken, all bets are off. Jailbreaking an Apple device bypasses the security code, so if someone steals your iPad,…

MOST COMPUTER USERS do most of their clicking on the left side of the mouse. Many make good use of the right button too. But only a handful take advantage of the middle button. You might be thinking, “My mouse doesn’t have a middle button, just a scrollwheel.” But that wheel doubles as a button; try pressing it. (Admittedly, on a few older models the wheel really is just a wheel.) You can click and hold that button, and then move the mouse back and forth to scroll in a Web browser. If you want more versatility, though, check out the free X-Mouse Button Control (go.pcworld.com/xmouse), a utility that modifies mouse button behavior. For example, you can program your mouse’s middle button to go back a page in the browser,…