12 pc world june 07

6 W W W. P C W O R L D . I N J U N E 2 0 0 7

FEATURES

COVER STORY

CA M E RA P H O N ES

52 Best Camphones With fi ve megapixel sensors and DVD quality video recording, camphones have become objects of desire, we compare the latest camphones in the market to clear the cloud on which one should be on your shopping list.

F R E E ST U F F

68 51 Fantastic FreebiesIn our collection of the fi nest free offerings available, you will discover full-featured tools that can help you do just about anything.

N E T WO R K I N G

74 Easy Fixes for Network Problems

From disappearing Internet connections to poky downloads to incompatible hardware, we diagnose ailments and prescribe cures.

B U Y E R S G U I D E

82 Easy on the Eyes Practical advice for evaluating the alternatives

before you shop, and selecting the right LCD monitor for your needs.

xx

J U N E 2 0 0 7V O L U M E 1 2 ◆ N U M B E R 1 2

W W W . P C W O R L D . I N

ON THE COVER

32

74

52

xxx

58

52

58 Virus Stoppers The nefarious business of creating

computer viruses has grown increasingly sophisticated and lucrative, requiring antivirus software of equal sophistication. We tested eight packages to see which ones are up to the job.

58

7 J U N E 2 0 0 7 W W W. P C W O R L D . I N

REVIEWS & RANKINGS DEPARTMENTS

NEWS & TRENDS

HERE’S HOW

88 Network Storage Tips

Share fi les on a LAN via a NAS box.91 Windows Tips

Find fi les and folders in the easiest ways.92 Hardware Tips

Ease the transition to Windows Vista.93 Answer Line

Set your PC to fi lter cookies wisely.

16 Vista Security

New operating system may be safer— but take care.19 Hard Drives’ Failing Grade

Failure rates are higher than thought.20 Cool Gadgets

Latest products and gadgets in the global market.

22 Plugged In

iPhone , therefore I am; nicer Linux interface and second-gen UMPCs.

32 Processors

Six latest processors priced below 10K put to the grind.

36 Video Card

Budget DX 10 video cards from Asus and MSI compared

38 Camera

Kodak V100340 All-In-One

Canon MP45042 Music Phone

Sony W200i 48 Imaging Software

Adobe Dreamwaever CS349 UMPC

Asus R2HSee page 32 for a complete list of products reviewed.

11 Letters

Reactions to our Indian Web Awards.14 Up Front

Cellphones are morphing into devices that function as the best reflection of our wired identity.

24 Lateral View

Complement your knowledge search on the web with user generated content.

25 The Other Side

We can see our future through video games.26 Tech Tonic

Cutting edge technology does not necessarily call for copious amounts of money.

28 Bugs and Fixes

A Microsoft security component proves fl awed.30 Hassle Free-PC

Fight back against spyware hidden in your PC. 116 Full Disclosure

Drowning in updates from chatterbox software.

88

16

WHAT’S ON DVD

EssentialsPC World Super Suite

1.7GB of software including

Windows patches, codes,

multi-media players and

editing tools etc

Full Products

Ubuntu 7.04 ( for 32 bit

and 64 bit systems )

Kubuntu 7.04 ( for 32 bit

and 64 bit systems )

Tech Videos

10 Exclusive Tech Videos

Catch a sneak peek at products

and technology of today and

tomorrow with tech videos,

complete with a video review

of Sony’s T100 8.1MP camera.

Movies

The Scene : Season 2

Game Demo and Vids

Stonghold 2

CC3 - Behind the scenes

See page 102 for a completelist of software on DVD.

49

32

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PUBLISHER AND EDITOR : N. Bringi DevCHIEF OPERATING OFFICER: Louis D’Mello

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IDG Media Private Limited is an IDG (International Data Group) company.

EDITORIAL

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Vijay RamachandranASSOCIATE EDITOR

Soham RaningaTECHNICAL EDITOR

Geetaj ChanannaTECHNICAL ANALYST

Kailas ShastryCOPY EDITORS

Preeti Sen SarkarTapasya Kumar

EDITORIAL COORDINATORSowmya M.

GLOBAL EDITORS

Harry McCracken, Tom Mainelli, Yardena Arar, Anne Kandra, Eric Dahl, Laura Blackwell, Andrew Brandt, Steve Bass, Scott Dunn, Stuart J. Johnston, Stephen Manes, Scott Spanbauer, Lincoln Spector, Kirk Steers, Carla Thornton

ART AND DESIGN

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Jayan K. NarayananDESIGNERS

Binesh Sreedharan Vikas Kapoor Jinan K. VijayanAnil V.K.Unnikrishnan A.V.M.M. ShanithAnil T.P.C. AnoopSuresh NairPrasanth T.R.MULTIMEDIA DESIGNERS

Sani ManiGirish A.V.PHOTOGRAPHER

Srivatsa Shandilya

ADVERTISING SALES

VICE PRESIDENT — SALES

Sudhir Kamat

REGIONAL SALES MANAGER (NORTH)

Nitin WaliaASSISTANT MANAGERS SALESAveek BhoseNeeraj PuriAnandram B.Muneet Pal SinghSALES EXECUTIVE

Gaurav Mehta

REGIONAL SALES MANAGER (SOUTH)

Mahantesh GodiASSISTANT MANAGERS SALESSanthosh MalleshwaraAshish Kumar Kishore Venkat

REGIONAL MANAGER (WEST)

Parul SinghMANAGER SALESRishi KapoorASISTANT MANAGER SALESChetan T. RaiPradeep J.Nair

SALES SUPPORT

Moumita De, Vidhi Shetty, Prachi Gupta

INTERNATIONAL SALES

VICE PRESIDENT

Naveen Chand Singh

MARKETING

DEPUTY GENERAL MANAGER

Sudhir ArgulaASSISTANT MANAGER - MARKETING

Siddharth Singh

PRODUCTION

PRODUCTION MANAGER

T.K. KarunakaranDEPUTY MANAGER PRODUCTION

T.K. Jayadeep

CIRCULATION & SUBSCRIPTIONS

CIRCULATION MANAGERS

Ravishankar T.N. (South)Jai Prakash Singh (North & East) Vasant Patil (West)

FINANCE

FINANCIAL CONTROLLER

Ramesh RamachandranDEPUTY MANAGER ACCOUNTS

Ramachandra Gururaj

EVENTS

GENERAL MANAGER EVENTS

Rupesh SreedharanMANAGER EVENTS

Chetan Acharya

SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES

Tharuna PaulPraveen. MMAIL: PC World Subscription Services, 7th Floor, Vayudooth Chambers, 15-16 Mahatma Gandhi Road, Bangalore 560001Phone: 080-30530300 (Extn:309)

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Send materials electronically to the appro-priate online address listed below, or mail it to PC World. We reserve the right to edit letters. Editors cannot guarantee personal responses to all questions.ANSWER LINE: [email protected]

BUGS & FIXES: [email protected]

CONSUMER WATCH: [email protected]

NEW PRODUCT ANNOUNCEMENTS

PC World welcomes information about new product launches. Send press releases via e-mail to [email protected]

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REVIEWS | NEWS | FEATURES

ADVERTISER’S INDEX

Advertiser Page Number

APC 118

Cat Computer 94

Dell 8 & 9

Hitachi 5

IBM 12 & 13

Kingston 27

LG 1 & 2

Monster.com 29

Numeric 15

Simmtronics 96

Top Notch 97

Toshiba e-Studio 4

Trek 95

ViewSonic 23

Xerox 117

OVERWHELMING RESPONSE

i would like to appreciate your article on the Best Indian Websites of 2007. Our group runs IndiaProperty.com, BharatMat-rimony.com and Clickjobs, which have been extensively covered in your article. Such kind of benchmarking was very much needed as the DotCom industry is on the upswing. However, I would like to add on that an important category i.e Automobile has been seriously overlooked upon where-as there are almost half a dozen websites in this category . These include the likes of Indiaautomobile.com,carwale.com, drivein-side.com, carsalesindia.com and autoindia.com. This category is fast catching up and would see lots of excitement in the coming months. Hope to see this category covered in your next edition.

Gurjot Singh, Marketing Manager for

IndiaAutomobile.com, By E-mail

Editor’s Reply: We appreciate your feed-

back. We would like to share that Automo-

biles were considered as a sector for the

evaluation, but as mentioned by you too,

it may be very exciting in the coming few

months. We felt that the sector has not

matured as much, so as to be covered

in the rankings at the present moment.

As for the future, it is for anybody to

predict. We would defi nitely consider

it, if the sector is popular enough at

the time of our next ranking.

I really liked your cover story on the Best Indian Websites, I know some of the websites featured in the article but completely unaware of some like Tech2. The article is quite informative and I would like to see more Indian websites covered in your magazine. Also, as user and volunteer; I would like to suggest a website name CGIndia (http://www.cgindia.org/), which is about 3d Computer Graphics and CGToolbar, which they have created for connecting people in CG Community. Keep up the good work.

Tushar Chakraborty, By E-mail

This is with regards to the latest issue of P C World, in which you have produced a list of the Best Indian Websites. I would request you to consider adding a couple of new categories - Equity Research & Financial Planning. I hope you will consider this suggestion.

Rahul Goel, By e-mail

Editor’s Reply: We’re so glad that you both

saw value in our rating of Indian websites.

We’ll defi nitely keep your suggestions in mind,

when we assess sites the next year around.

QUERIES

i recently made up my mind to buy a 32-inch LCD TV. Can you please help me choose between Sony and Samsung? I am really confused about which is better.

Kush Shah, By E-mail

Editors Reply: Sony and Samsung are the

top 2 brands in LCD TV market in India.

Samsung has more range in the 32-inch

LCD TV segment as compared to Sony. If

you do not have any budget constraint you

can opt for the top end Sony model that

supports 1080P and offers HDMI connec-

tivity. If you have a budget constraint, the

Samsung LA32R81B priced at Rs 65,000 is

a good option.

Recently I bought a Samsung 160GB hard disk [SP1644N] and installed it on my Compaq Presario PC SR1530IL. Due to my carelessness I didn’t notice the capacity while the technician partitioned. Next day it showed up as 128GB. What could be the problem of the capacity barrier and please help me out of this situation as I have less knowledge of hardware.

Eddie, By E-mail

Editors Reply: The best option in your case

is to repartition the hard drive but if you

want to have only one partition, you can

resize the existing partition and claim the

lost space by using partition magic soft-

ware from (http://www.softpedia.com/get/

System/Hard-Disk-Utils/Partition-Magic.

shtml). We suggest you reformat and

repartition the hard drive with at least two

equal partitions, this will help you manage

your storage better.

ONLINE

LOG ONTO OUR WEBSITE

I would like to know if I can read any previous month’s issue from your website www.pcworld.in. Please let me know if it is possible.

Meenakshi, By e-mail

Editor’s Reply: There is no section as such where you can read the stories sorted by our

print issues. But all the stories that appear in our magazine are posted online, in different

sections. You can search for them easily on the website using the search box or browse

through the sections of the site for relevant articles.


APPRECIATION ONLINESOLUTIONS

LETTERS L E T T E R S @ P C W O R L D . I N


HARRY McCRACKENV I J AY R A M A C H A N D R A N

The New Swiss Army KnifeMobiles are morphing into devices that function as a refl ection of our wired identity.

A bit like using my dad’s 1967 Standard Herald to take on the Suzuki SX4, you might think.

While the Israeli ‘kosher phone’ was a response to orthodox religious require-ments, it seems anachro-nistic in a world where an increasing number of fea-tures are being squeezed into cellphones from longer last-ing batteries to good camera optics to music players and radios to GPS locators .

The cellphone’s future seems to be more about lots more. It’s also about chang-ing mobiles into the Swiss Army Knife of personal technol-ogy — devices that function as the best refl ection of our wired identity.

Accessing e-mail seems passé; the cellphone is getting transformed into a device that also delivers not only mobile video, but also TV programs with a slight delay in transmission. While the service is a tad nascent in the US, it’s already gained momentum in countries like South Korea. According to forecasts the Asian mobile video market will top $3 billion over the next three years!

But, if you think that craning your neck trying to take in a cricket match on a cell phone is stretching it, how would you react to using it in place of your wallet? Hold it close to a reader and voila, those

multiplex tickets are yours (Nokia, At&T, Citigroup and MasterCard are already in a pilot to do just this).

In a country like ours, with 60 lakh con-nections being added every month, this may mean a lot more than just new sleek-er and fancy handsets. It might mean that cellphones and not PCs may become the favorite way that our nation logs on to the Internet — we already have 20 times more cell phones than PCs with Net access.

Understandably, cell phones and PCs / laptops do very different things and that too at very different price points. However, given their proliferation, as cell bandwidth begins to approach those that we’re used to on PCs, things may start to change.

With WiMax touted to be the next big thing coming our way (and which might see us leap frog into high-throughput broadband), this might just fuel a cellphone revolution. There could even be a day when mobile war-riors give their aching backs a rest and

pack just a cell when on the move. Of course, I don’t see an executive try-ing to make sense of a spreadsheet on a mobile – to do that he’d have to be a wizard.

As ce l l phone pene t ra t ion increases in India a lot more things are going to change. This isn’t just wishful thinking. A recent McKinsey study found that raising wireless penetration by 10 percentage points can lead to an increase in a country’s gross domestic product of about 0.5

percent. That translates to over Rs 8,000 crore for the Indian economy.If you want to see the impact cell-

phones can have on a micro level take the fisherfolk of Kerala, who were among the early adopters a decade ago. In just three years since that point in time, their ability to figure out the best markets to land their catch, allowed them to cut waste to zero while increas-ing profits by 8 percent. Oh, and did I mention that consumer prices for fish dropped by about 4 percent during the same period?

Cellphones with cameras is what one of the shootouts in this issue is all about (2) . Let me know what you think about it.

Vijay Ramachandran is the Editor-in-Chief

of PC World. Send him your comments at

[email protected]

Some months ago, MIRS Communications, an Israeli mobile provider

launched a new cellphone. So what’s the big deal? Cellphones are

launched every other day. The interesting thing about MIRS’ handset was

that it did voice. Nothing else. No SMS. No ringtones. No games. Zip.

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NEWS & TRENDS

in late march, when securi-ty researchers stumbled upon drive-by download at tacks exploiting yet another serious Windows hole, they had an eye-opening surprise: The vul-nerability—caused by the way Windows handled animat-ed cursor (.ani) files—didn’t affect just Windows XP. It also hit Vista, Microsoft’s new security-centric OS.

Security experts still pro-claim Vista a major im -provement over previous Windows versions, and read-ily say that its important new safety features—including an improved fi rewall, a “Pro-tected Mode” for Internet Explorer, and User Account Control—make i t much more resistant to the most common forms of spyware and malware. But this latest

flaw (now fixed) is a major black eye for Microsoft; along with two other critical security patches issued for Vista in its fi rst three months

on shelves, the problem has tarnished Vista’s security sheen (see “Vista’s Vulnera-bi l i t ies” on page 17 for details). The new OS may be

safer, but its users must still be on their guard.

NAGGING DEFENSE

user account control (UAC) has the best of intentions behind it. Ac cording to Micro-soft’s own estimates, a whop-ping 95 percent of all pre-Vista Windows users perform eve-ryday tasks logged in with Administrator credentials that let them make any kind of system changes—but that also allow malicious hackers to hijack a PC easily. By default, UAC requires a pass-word for such tasks, keeping users—or malware—from haphazardly changing sensi-tive parts of the OS.

But UAC is its own worst enemy. Its frequent pop-up prompts seriously annoy many users, particularly dur-

Vista Security

19 HARD-DRIVE FAILURES SUR PRISINGLY FREQUENT

20 COOL GADGET

22 PLUGGED IN

INSIDE

W H AT ’ S N E W A N D W H AT ’ S N E X T I N T E C H N O L O GY

THOUGH WINDOWS VISTA MAY BE SAFER THAN XP, MICROSOFT’S FAR-FROM-IMPREGNABLE NEW

OPERATING SYSTEM IS ALREADY PROVING TO BE VULNERABLE. BY RYAN NARAINE

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NEWS & TRENDS

ing setup of a new machine. The prompts appear less often after about ten days of heavy use, but some early adopters have never made it that far.

“These alerts just kept pop-ping up constantly and unnec-essarily,” says Sergio E. Yáñez, a Vista user who works as a vice president at a New York bank. “I would try to move a fi le between folders and have to deal with these prompts. Very, very annoying.”

Like many other people, Yáñez responded by turning off UAC completely. In his case, he had to turn it back on to run

some older games that required additional user rights, but the fear within security circles is that many irritated users will disable UAC and leave it off, or else get into the habit of click-ing ‘Allow’ at every prompt, defeating the purpose entirely.

“The average user will be programmed to click ‘Allow’ for everything,” says Roger Thompson, chief technical officer for security vendor Exploit Prevention Labs.

Also, security researcher Joanna Rutkowska says that UAC has a design weakness in that it re quires giving all

program installations full system access whether they need i t or not . (Rutkowska’s re port is at http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2007/02/running-vista-every-day.html .) Microsoft says that i t inc luded the potential weakness to ensure a smooth user experience, and it has not announced any plans to change UAC’s design.

A second major addition to Vista’s security arsenal is Windows Defender, an

antispyware tool that is availa-ble at no cost for XP and is baked into Vista’s guts. Though not meant to be a full antivirus utility, it can easily scan for spyware applications that suck up system resources and bombard you with pop-up advertising. Defender also offers additional protection when you download files via Internet Explorer 7.

A great idea. But in inde-pendent tests performed by the AV-Test security lab (AV-Test.org), Defender detected only 65 percent of 14,517 ad -ware and spyware samples in

VISTA’S BUILT-IN ANTISPYWARE app, Windows Defender, offers daily

scans but missed a third of spyware and adware samples in tests.

RISKS

• Animated cursors: A fl aw in animated cur-

sor code used by Windows 2000 SP4 through

Vista. With a poisoned .ani, .cur, or .ico fi le,

re mote attackers can create a buffer over-

fl ow, overwhelming a program with more data

than it can handle and allowing takeover of a

victim’s PC. Fixed with Microsoft’s critical

MS07-017 patch (www.microsoft.com/tech-

net/security/Bulletin/MS07-017.mspx).

• Malware Protection Engine: A vulnerability

in all versions of Windows using the Microsoft

Malware Protection Engine, built into Vista’s

baked-in Windows Defender anti-spyware and the

Microsoft OneCare antivirus program. The fl aw

can force the engine to execute attack code when

it scans a hacked PDF fi le. Fixed in Microsoft’s

critical MS07-010 patch ( www.microsoft.com/

technet/security/Bulletin/MS07-010.mspx ).

• CSRSS privilege escalation: A fl aw in the

Windows Client/Server Runtime Server Sub-

system’s (CSRSS) error handling could allow

an attacker to make an end run around Vis-

ta’s UAC (User Account Control) protections.

Fixed in Microsoft’s critical MS07-021 patch

(www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulle-

tin/MS07-021.mspx

VISTA’S VULNERABILITIES

IN BRIEF

AD-AWARE UPGRADE:

Lavasoft says that a new

version of its popular Ad-

Aware antispyware program

due in June will feature

improved detection of ad -

ware and hidden malware, a

scanning engine that goes

easy on PC system resourc-

es, and an updated interface.

A personal-use version will

remain free, while the Rs.

1,800 Ad-Aware 2007 Pro

will include advanced fea-

tures such as Ad-Watch

TrackSweep, a tool that

clears the cache, cookies,

and history in Internet Ex -

plorer, Firefox, and Opera.

Product Pipeline

END OF XP: In early 2008

Microsoft will end shipment

of Windows XP to computer

makers and stop selling XP

retail licenses. According to

Dell, however, Windows XP

sales to small and medium-

size businesses are still

strong. The PC maker says

that it plans to offer “Cus-

tomized with XP” Dimension

desktops and Inspiron note-

books this summer for small

businesses that may want

extra time to contemplate a

possible switch to the Mac

OS or Linux.


NEWS & TRENDS

an on-demand scan. By com-parison, detection rates for eight antivirus programs with built-in antispyware ran between 73 and 99 percent for the same test sample.

“Windows Defender is not very good in my eyes. Most, if not all, stand-alone and inte-grated antispyware solutions are performing a lot better,” says Andreas Marx, CEO of AV-Test in Germany.

A BETTER FIREWALL

vista’s improved firewall is another story. It offers the abili-ty to block both in bound and outbound connections (XP’s fi rewall blocks only incoming traffic). Out-bound fi ltering provides a second layer of defense in blocking so phisticated forms of malware that make invisible connections from your system to remote hacker-controlled servers—but as with many forms of secondary protec-tion, deciding which apps should and shouldn’t be blocked takes some techni-cal know-how. For that rea-son, Microsoft turned it off by default. But even with-out outbound fi ltering, the firewall “is better than good enough,” says Ed Bott, coauthor of Windows Vista Inside Out.

“It blocks all unsolicited incoming connections and is almost invisible in operation,” he says. And advanced users can confi gure outbound fi lter-ing for additional protection, while nontechnical users—who would be just as likely to break something as to prevent an attack, Bott says—are not forced to set up any rules for outbound fi ltering.

The Vista firewall passed most tests in AV-Test’s analy-

sis. However, it was not able to fi lter incoming mail attach-ments, as some fi rewalls do. Also, it failed a large percent-age of so-called leaktests, which use a specially crafted program to see whether a fi re-wall will block outbound con-nection attempts.

Still, many security compa-nies and researchers, includ-ing AV-Test’s Marx, argue that since these programs are artificial (as op posed to the real malware thrown at anti-virus products), they may not provide accurate assessments of a fi rewall’s abilities.

The Vista fi rewall, along with many others, may do a good job at blocking outside attempts to infiltrate your computer. But Internet pro-grams must go through the fi rewall to browse a Web page, access your e-mail, or carry on an IM chat—and this itself creates an avenue for attack.

Because Internet Explorer opens up the door to your PC and has such a huge user base, the browser is con-stantly under attack. To improve IE 7’s defenses, the Windows Vista version of the

browser by default runs in Protected Mode, preventing IE—or any successful Inter-net attack that hijacks it—from changing sensitive parts of the operating sys-tem. This defense tactic has already been successful against current attacks that target holes such as the ani-mated cursor fl aw.

Besides these up-front de -fenses, Vista also includes a number of back-end protec-tions. PatchGuard attempts to block rootkits, which can hide virus infections. A technique called Address Space Layout

Randomizat ion makes i t harder for malware to find and infect running processes. Finally, several changes to the kernel, the heart of any oper-ating system, increase its re -sistance to hacker attacks.

HUMAN (IN)SECURITY

but while vista is safer than XP, experts expect online thugs to quickly look for ways to circumvent Vista’s protec-tions. One increasingly com-mon method is to use social-engineering tactics to target the person, not the PC.

“People will still execute that fi le to see Paris Hilton’s next video,” says Thompson of Exploit Prevention Labs. Social-engineering techniques that send malware in the guise of a game or a sexy video exploit people’s curiosity or ignorance to get them to click a tainted link or attachment. If someone clicks, the malware has already evaded half of their computer’s automated defenses, including the fire-wall. “Vista is an improve-ment,” says Thompson, “but it’s not the end of the malware industry. Not by a long shot.”

Another potential end run around Vista’s defenses is to attack programs rather than the operating system. Media players such as the Adobe Flash player and Apple’s QuickTime have suffered recent at tacks as hackers discover and exploit serious software vulnerabil-ities—with poisoned online movie fi les, for example. To keep your machine safe, patching your programs has be come just as impor-tant as fi xing the operating system they run on. “The applications are sit-ting on every desktop,

and they all have known vul-nerabilities,” says Andrew Jaquith, a security analyst in The Yankee Group’s Ena-bling Technologies Enter-prise division.

For PC users, the message is clear: Though Vista may make things more difficult for crooks, it is far from impregnable. You will still need to apply patches to close the inevitable holes. And you must still use the same t ype o f an t i v i rus protection that you needed with XP.

VISTA’S UPGRADED FIREWALL can block an unknown program’s attempts

to connect to the Internet, but that functionality is turned off by default.


NEWS & TRENDS

your hard drive may not be as reliable as manufacturers would like you to think. Recent studies by researchers at Carnegie Mellon and Google suggest that vendor Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) ratings for hard drives are a bit misleading.

The Carnegie Mel-lon study, conducted at several locations, found typical failure rates of 2 to 4 percent and a high of 13 per-cent, in contrast to the less than 1 percent you’d expect based on vendor MTTF ratings (see chart). Google’s study pegged the annual fail-ure rate at about 3 percent.

Both studies were based on observations of approximate-ly 100,000 drives, with Goog-le looking at its own farm of consumer-grade disks and Carnegie Mellon examining both consumer-grade drives and the ostensibly more reli-able enterprise variety; the latter have beefed-up actua-tor magnets, more-robust spindle motors, and advanced features such as rotational vibration safeguards.

DEFINING FAILURE

vendors attribute part

of the discrepancy between their ratings and the fi ndings in these reports to differing definitions of disk failure. For vendors, it’s when a drive fails on one read or write attempt within a set period—typically about 24 hours—on

the test bench. Vendors say that, by that criterion, nearly 40 percent of returned drives have not actually failed.

The two new studies, how-ever, consider failure to be any

symptom that causes a user—presumably, in both cases, experienced IT types—to replace the drive. Such symp-toms include software prob-lems, driver confl icts, and the like, as well as drive failure as defi ned by vendors.

Also, vendors base MTTF numbers on the past perform-ance of similar drives; no one

tries running a new model for years to prove it will last.

Surprisingly, Google’s study found no correlation between drive failure and elevated heat and activity levels. The largest

percentage of failures occurred on drives operat ing within a mild 77-to-88-degree range. However, desk-top PCs typically oper-ate at temperatures well over the maxi-mum of 125 degrees reported in the Google study, so the fi ndings do not support run-ning hard drives with-out adequate airflow to cool them.

Google found that failure rates varied significantly according to make and model, but the company declined to identify failure-prone models. Carnegie Mel-lon points out that bad man-ufacturing runs occur and that improvements over the past few years may be yield-ing more-reliable drives.

Google’s study relied in part on SMART (Self-Monitoring And Reporting Technology) data from drives that have this feature. But so many drives failed without any SMART warnings that Google con-cluded the feature was not helpful in predicting real-world failure patterns.

Google’s findings do sup-port one tip: If you encounter a scan error during a routine error check (by running Scan-disk, for example), your drive is 39 times more likely to fail within 60 days than drives that don’t show such errors. IT pros recommend replacing a drive with scan errors.

FEWER FIGURES

the most likely immedi-ate fallout from these reports is that vendors will stop tout-ing MTTF fi gures. In my on -line research, MTTF figures for consumer drives were already few and far between.

Corporate buyers might rethink purchasing plans in light of Carnegie Mellon’s fi nd-ing that fiber-channel and SCSI drives appear no more reliable than the cheaper SATA variety. But IDC analyst David Reinsel says fi ber-channel and SCSI drives are still worthwhile when performance matters.

For most of us, these reports simply reemphasize the need for smart practices. Keep your drives cool and, most impor-tant, backed up so that if fail-ure occurs, it’s merely an in -convenience and not a fi nancial or emotional disaster.

—Jon L. Jacobi

Hard-Drive Failures Surprisingly Frequent STORAGE

TWO RECENT STUDIES OBSERVE MORE DEVICE FAILURES THAN VENDOR ESTIMATES SUGGEST.

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Studies Challenge Claims

FAILURE RATES

BASED ON THE hard-disk industry’s Mean Time To Failure

estimates, you’d expect less than 1 percent of hard drives to

fail each year. But studies of facilities with many hard drives

found significantly higher failure rates.

Annual failure rate

Industry claims (based on MTTF of 1 million hours) 0.88 percent

Carnegie Mellon report (typical sites) 2–4 percent

Carnegie Mellon report (maximum observed) 13 percent

Google report 3 percent

CHART NOTE: By definition, MTTF is the average lifetime of a hard drive. A year has 8760 hours, so the probability of a hard drive failing in a given year, or the estimated annual failure rate, is 8760/MTTF.


NEWS & TRENDS

TECHNOLOGY TRENDS

LATEST PRODUCTS IN THE GLOBAL MARKET.

COOL GADGETSIt’s that time of the year when people get a chance to get out of the city for their fi rst big holiday with family. On the other hand, for many companies the holidays also mark the start of the build-up to the summer sales season.

—Martyn Williams

SONY MEMORY STICK CAMCORDER

Meet the HDR-CX7, Sony’s smallest high-defi nition camcorder to

date. The camera records 1080i high-defi nition video directly to a

MemoryStick Pro Duo card. Until now its camcorders have relied on

MiniDV tape, DVD discs or hard-disk drives to store video, but the

memory card slot and associated electronic take up less space and

mean a smaller, lighter camera. However, memory cards are quite

expensive, and users will be able to store only about 30 minutes of

video on a 4G-byte card in the camera’s highest quality mode.

Behind the lens is a 3-megapixel image sensor, and the camera can

also capture 6-megapixel still images. Other features include a 10x

optical zoom lens and a 2.7-inch wide-screen, touch-sensitive LCD

(liquid crystal display) monitor. The CX7 weighs 450 grams and

measures 69 millimeters by 67mm by 129mm.

NTT DOCOMO MOTION SENSITIVE CELL PHONE

Mix the Nintendo Wii and a cell phone and what do you get?

Something like NTT DoCoMo’s new line of motion-sensitive cell

phones. In a boxing game users can throw punches or duck, and

their movements are picked up by the phone’s camera. In another

game, the phone can be tilted in different directions to guide an

on-screen ball through a maze. To be sure, the cell phones aren’t

nearly as reactive as the Wii console. You need to make a motion,

such as a punch, then wait a second for the punch to get

registered on the phone screen, but it’s a start! The handsets

come from Mitsubishi Electric, Panasonic and Sharp.

TOSHIBA EXPANDABLE HDD RECORDER TV SET

Toshiba ‘s latest series of fl at-screen LCD televisions goes one better

than other hard-disk video recorders by offering the user room to

expand the storage space. Typically you’re stuck with the drive that

ships with the TV (or recorder) but the H3000 series sets sport an

eSATA (external serial ATA) connector on the back for plugging in an

external disk drive. The sets ship with an internal 300G-byte drive

and the expansion socket should work with any eSATA drive. They

are available now in sizes from 32-inches to 52-inches.


NEWS & TRENDS

SAMSUNG SYMBIAN SMARTPHONE

The latest Symbian OS-based smartphone from Samsung

Electronics has an uncluttered face so it doesn’t look like a

traditional all-buttons-and-switches smartphone but its Symbian-

base means it can be loaded up with applications to make it just

as powerful. A full Web browser comes pre-installed and there’s

Bluetooth, a 2-megapixel camera and stereo speakers. The GSM

(Global System for Mobile Communications) tri-band phone has a

2.3-inch display.

SHARP HDTV RECORDER

As consumers continue to snap-up high-defi nition TVs, Sharp continues to push out HD capable

hard-disk recorders. The latest, the DV-AVC52, combines a DVD drive and VHS deck with a 250G-

byte hard-disk recorder. The machine will copy your old VHS tapes onto DVD so you can fi nally

dump another relic of the 20th century and you’ll also be able to get up to 31 hours of HDTV on

the disks. But like almost all hard-disk recorders it remains stuck there. Pretty much the only

way to store HD content is on Blu-ray Disc or HD DVD but since this doesn’t have either you’ll

have to keep it on the disk — and thus lose some recording space — or transfer it to DVD at

standard defi nition and lose the high-defi nition picture.

SAMSUNG’S Q1 ULTRA ULTRAMOBILE

Ultramobile PCs have often been criticized as falling into a gap

between laptops and smartphones, but Samsung Electronics hopes

to change that perception with a reduced price and upgraded

performance for its Q1 Ultra. The Q1 Ultra has the same size 7-inch

display as its predecessor, the Q1, but adds a new split QWERTY

keypad for thumb-texting. It also has 802.11 wireless networking and

optional HSDPA (high speed downlink packet access) cellular

connectivity. It uses Intel’s new McCaslin A100 and A110 ultramobile

processors instead of the power-hungry Celeron and Pentium chips

used in the first-generation. Combined with an improved type of

lithium ion battery, the design extends battery life from a minimum of

1.5 hours to at least 4.5 hours. The company will sell four models of

the Q1 Ultra for a range of US$799 to U$1,499 (Rs. 35,955 to

Rs. 67,455 approximately).


E R I C D A H L

E R I C D A H L

1 TWITTER: Mega-

trendy social network

built around text-message

updates. twitter.com

2 XBOX 360 ELITE: Up -

dated model priced at

$479 adds HDMI, 1080p,

and a 120GB hard drive.

3 BO OTCA M P 2 .0 :

Beta of the pre-

Leopard dual-boot utility

for Macs now supports

Vista. www.apple.com/

macosx/bootcamp/

4 OCZ TRIFECTA: The

enthusiast memory

maker produces 1GB and

2GB MicroSD flash media

that also fits SD and

USB. www.ocztechnolo-

gy.com/products/flash_

d r i ves/o cz _ t r i fe c ta _

secure_digital-memory_cards

The Buzz: As the iPhone countdown continues, I

thought I’d chime in with my reflections on Apple’s uber-device and its rivals. I spent some quality time with an iPhone at Macworld Expo in January, and it truly is impres-sive. Its mobile Web browser alone is worth the price of admission —the touch-based pinch and stretch zoom con-trols are beautiful. The music, photo, and messaging features are cool as well. But the touch-based keyboard isn’t great for thumb typing, and Apple’s de -cision to ban third-party apps is a big disappointment.

Unfortunately, competition may not arrive for a while: LG’s Prada phone won’t be sold in the States; and Samsung’s neat F700, a touch-screen phone

with a slide-out keyboard, may not reach our shores either.

Bottom Line: Unless the iPhone can magically get an AT&T signal to my house, I’ll skip it. Too bad Apple locked out third-party solutions—I was all set to take Skype calls over the iPhone’s Wi-Fi.

The Buzz: If you’ve ever considered switching to

Linux, the user interface was probably pretty far down your list of reasons. But that could change this year, thanks to the Beryl Project, a hardware-accel-erated window manager to rival the visual fl ash of Vista and OS X. As of this writing, Beryl has barely reached its 0.2 release, but already it boasts some very cool features (see http://beryl-project.org/features.php ). It has transparent windows and title bars, a Mac OS Exposé–like task switcher that scales win-dows to thumbnails, and a 3D cube interface for switching between virtual desktops.

Bottom Line: Beryl could drive up Linux adoptions once it’s stable enough to be includ-ed in default Ubuntu installa-tions. Combine that with Dell’s expanded lineup of Linux PCs (check out www.dell.com/con-tent/topics/global.aspx/ideas-torm/ideasinaction?c=us&l=en&s=gen ), and this should be a good year for penguins.

REFOLDING ORIGAMI

The Buzz: Microsoft isn’t done with Origami yet.

The first generation of Ultra Mobile PCs were marred by high prices and limited hard-ware, but the latest ones aim to change that. Samsung’s nicely designed Q1 Ultra packs a split-

FUTURE TECH

HERE\NOW

iPhone, Therefore I Am PLUS: A (MUCH) NICER LINUX INTERFACE AND SECOND-GEN UMPCs.

THE IPHONE COMETH

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style thumb keyboard and a 7-inch, 1024-by-600-pixel display. Asus and Gigabyte have key-board-equipped models com-ing, too. The Asus T83 swivels tablet-style to reveal a QWERTY keyboard under its LCD. Sam-sung’s and Gigabyte’s UMPCs should have arrived in May; Asus’s, later this year.

Bottom Line: This is a step in the right direction, but be -tween powerful smart phones and smaller subnotebooks, I still can’t see where UMPCs are going to fi t in.

LINUX GRAPHICS

SAY GOODBYE TO controller thumb and Nintendinitis—the latest

innovation in game controllers takes its orders directly from

your mind. Emotiv Systems and NeuroSky each use electrodes

positioned in a helmet or headset (Emotiv’s prototype looks a bit

like a deconstructed bike helmet—see below) to detect emotions

or brain patterns and translate that data into actions in games

or software apps. By concentrating on a

word or emotion, your mind can actu-

ally interact with a game. Both compa-

nies hope that games tailored to their

technology will arrive in 2008.


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The New UGC

okay I am not talking about the Uni-versities Grants Commission here; that had exceedingly boring programs on Doordarshan in the afternoons. This on the other hand is User Generated Content. It is the latest phenomenon sweeping across the Internet, which is giving most media companies the creeps and has got Google and Mur-doch interested enough to invest their precious billions.

But, we have to remember that they are just enablers as Google recently said, it does not want to own any content (apparently they just want to store your per-sonal information so that they can show you the ad for the right sized blazer). They are provid-ing a platform for users of the Internet to make their views public. Which, for most parts, is interesting, especially if you are the person who is penning, or rather keyboarding, your views. Give this a thought; when do you really feel like expressing your views the most?

It generally happens when, either you are totally exhila-rated with your experience or you are totally disappointed. This makes blogs and wikies, which make the most of user generated content, a bit too opinionated and biased. Its best to take whatever is said on both with a pinch of salt. All the controversy around Wikipe-dia further exemplifi es the point. True, non-infl uenced information is a bit dif-fi cult to fi nd. So how do we get the right mix of information and user opinion?

I have been looking to buy a new car, and have been searching the internet

for any kind of reviews, scoops or infor-mation that I may get on my dream machine. Once the car was launched I was able to get to some reviews on personals blogs, which were not only highly biased but at times factually incorrect. If I had not cross checked this point with other sources, I may have been mislead. And, I would have lost on a good car.

My guide at this time were my regu-lar visits to a car forum website (www.team-bhp.com) and from my subscrip-tion to a google alerts. The similar-ity between forums and blogs ends at both of them being written by users who are not necessarily experts. But, forums have the edge for authentic information since they are moderated and attract counter views.

Wrong information is most often than not spotted and countered well.

For instance, in my case a wrongly reported feature in the car was flogged by counter views and was corrected promptly by the person who had post-ed it. This balanced view to the infor-mation is at times better than what you may get from single person reviews, which may not be factually correct. But, you still need to filter the forum posts manually to dig out the informa-

tion. Thus, like a talk show on television, the forum is as good as its moderators. Also, as you differentiate between a news-cast and a talk show, blogs and articles are passive. You can comment on blogs, but it is simply not as interactive and intuitive as forums.

Google news alerts were also a saviour here, since they pro-vided me with the latest news on what was happening with the car, thus balancing out the user views being thrown at me from all direc-tions. You can easily set a Google alert for a term to be searched in most news reports fi led. An email is sent with a link to those news reports to your e-mail ID.I feel that as consumers we are

kings in this situation. Using a bouquet of complementing magazine websites, blogs and forums, we can benefi t no end. We should not get infl uenced by just one of these but make sure that they comple-ment each other for our benefi t.

Using published content and user generated content for knowledge search.

LATERAL VIEWLATERAL VIEWG E E TA J C H A N N A N A

What do you think about user generated

content? Write to me and let me know

at [email protected].

WRITE BACK


that what we do today has a direct impact on what we (or our children) face tomor-row. You could, theoretically, escape into your online alter egos via Second Life or any of the MMORPGs that dot the Web today. Yet, when we get out of our chairs and move away from our LCD monitors, what’s happening is as real as the unreal-ism that we tend to take solace in.

And so it is with Fracture. It is unreal realism, if you would want to put a oxy-moronic explanation to it.

In Lucas’ masterpiece series Star Wars, the stories tended to be outlandish; how-ever, the themes were real, and the char-acters were just like us. There were good people, and there were terrible villains who wouldn’t think twice to kill their own children. There were families that were separated, and there were friends who were united. There were great teachers and greater students who could get lured into the dark side. To cut a long story short, Star Wars was about us, but in a more mythological sort of way. Fracture is also about us, but in a real way.

I would have never imagined the day when a video game would actually interest players in making sense of the

world we live in, nor had I thought that we would, one day, step into the real world to escape the realism of a video game. But then, Lucas’ Fracture could do just that to all of us. Forget the groundbreaking technology, for-get the new weaponry in the game and forget the custom software that was built to create this game... Frac-ture could well have us thinking. A video game that does that – not a bad idea, huh?

The Future in a Video GameWho would have thought that fi lmmaker George Lucas could double up

as the Nostradamus for the 21st century? A raconteur with tales of

mythological overtones? Defi nitely. A whiz at creating fi ctional alterna-

tive worlds across the universe? Of course. But a crystal ball gazer whose

fl oods and tornadoes. Also, as a direct result of our research today, the future is divided between those who believe in genetic engineering and those who don’t. It seems to be the perfect rec-ipe for disaster, and an inevitable war between those on either side of such beliefs — the American East (the con-servative lot that has banned genetic engineering) and the West (a more lib-eral area that welcomes disgraced sci-entists from East with open arms).

As Lucas himself says, “Technology without a story can be pretty boring.” But, with this story, Lucas has put a mir-ror in front of us – to refl ect on the notion

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I would never have imagined a day when a video game would

have made sense

ideas in a video game are so realistic and plausible that they almost frighten you? Perhaps not.

That’s exactly what happened when I saw Lucas’ video game company LucasArts unveil a preview of Fracture (to be released in 2008 for PS3 and Xbox 360). Admittedly, the realism of the game was as much an experience of shock and fear of what the future holds for us as the excitement of watching a great game unfold in front of you. To be sure, the game’s scenarios may just not come true. Yet, you just cannot stop thinking about them. Combine the game with former US Vice-President Al Gore’s brilliant documentary An Inconvenient Truth, the debate over stem cell research and clon-ing, and the current crises around the world, especially in the Middle East, and you’d know what I mean.

Fracture is set in 2161 – just about 150 years from now – and is a chilling reminder (or a forebear) of humani-ty’s ugly side. It seems like fantasy, but it could well be real. Even though it is essentially a story set in the Unit-ed States, but like several mytholo-gies you hear around the world, you could easily extrapolate its themes to any other region, and into our lives.

The game’s fundamental premise is the same as any other – confl ict. But herein lies the rub: the confl ict happens as a direct consequence of our actions today. Pollution causes global warming which in turn results in natural catastrophes including earthquakes, hurricanes,

Sachin Kalbag is the Washington,

DC, correspondent of Daily News and

Analysis, a Mumbai-based newspaper.

THE OTHER SIDETHE OTHER SIDES A C H I N K A L B A G


S O H A M R A N I N G A

TECH TONICTECH TONIC

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Ultraportables under 20K, Quite Possible!

a notebook weighing 1.3 kg with a bright 7-inch display, 4 hour battery life, wireless connectivity, rugged construction running on Windows XP. Isn’t this what you wished for when you were on that business trip or vacationing in Goa and needed a light, compact com-puter just to check your mails and be in touch with your world? The problem is that you will have to spend close to a lakh to own one and not everybody has that kind of money at their disposal. What if it was offered to you for Rs. 20,000? Chances are you would jump to it! Intel is offering the same, pack-aged as the “Classmate PC” for school students and is meant for the emerging markets worldwide. Its approximate pricing is about 300$ and would end up roughly with a price tag of Rs 15,000 in India. Some cos-metic changes along with minor compo-nent upgrades can actually transform the Classmate PC into a valuable ultraport-able notebook that will bring mobility to the masses.

Intel’s Classmate PC is not a power-house by any stretch of imagination, but it’s got just the right amount of power under its hood to run your offi ce appli-cations, let you browse the web and stay connected with your friends and family through instant messaging. Most of the ultraportables in the market are meant for these applications and hence I dared to compare the Classmate PC to the ultraportables at the application level and not core performance capabilities. What works for the Classmate PC is the fact that it already incorporates some of the latest technologies which haven’t made

their way into the notebook segment yet. Armed with a solid state fl ash memory based hard drive (gives faster boot times and more rigidity when compared to reg-ular notebook hard drives) and an OLED backlight (saves power and has better brightness levels over the conventional CFL based backlighting) based 7-inch screen, the Classmate PC is relatively more rugged and battery effi cient than any of your regular ultraportable note-books in the market. Its modest weight (1.3Kg) and a 4-hour battery life come as a bonus. The drawbacks of limited graphics capabilities, limited storage and cramped keyboard might bother you initially but when you compare the fact that it is still a better solution compared to any PDAs that are twice as expensive and almost competes head-on with the UMPC (Ultra-mobile PC) that costs close to a lakh , the Classmate PC is truly perfect for its price. The missing optical drive option does not

Intel’s Classmate PC has the right ingredients for a mainstream solution.

bother me much when I compare it to the Lenovo X60, a top rated ultraportable notebook that offers

a USB based IDE drive option; the same is possible with the Classmate PC.

Intel plans to roll out two more versions of the Class-mate PC by 2008 and these will be even more capable, sporting Intel’s latest mobile platforms. If the pricing for these offerings follows a linear curve, one can expect even better versions of Classmate PC to retail under the Rs 25,000 range. A perfect case of bringing mobility to the masses in the true sense, just what reliance did a few years back by crashing the cell phone market and intro-

ducing handsets priced 5 times lower than the existing ones in the market. Satyajit Singh who leads the Classmate PC project in India said they are cur-rently focused on the school children as their primary consumers for the Class-mate PC but also acknowledged the potential that the Classmate PC had for other mature markets. From the busi-ness point of view, Intel obviously is not too encouraged to get into the sub 20K ultraportable category for obvious rea-sons. It will not go down well with the likes of HP, Dell and almost all major laptop vendors who are Intel’s key cus-tomers and are selling ultraportables for a lot more.

Share your views on the Intel Class-

mate PC, Write to me at feedback@

pcworld.in.

WRITE BACK


BUGS & FIXESBUGS & FIXES

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Critical Attack Slams IE 6 and 7, Outlook Plus: An IE 7 phishing risk, QuickTime holes, and Vista compatibility updates.

An animated-cursor attack

allows PC hijackings.

or at www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms07-017.mspx .

IE 7’s troubles continue with a proof-of-concept phishing exploit published by security researcher Aviv Raff. Using it, an attacker could fool you and IE with an e-mail or Web link to a doctored error page that, when refreshed as directed, would send you to a phishing site disguised as a legitimate

just as microsoft’s secu-rity mavens celebrated a rare m o n t h o f n o p a t c h e s , cyberthugs took the wind out of their sails by hitting a seri-ous Windows hole in Vista and XP. Attackers could hijack your PC if you simply viewed a Web site or read an HTML e-mail laced with a poisoned animated-cursor fi le (.ani).

The flaw can be targeted through browsers, including Internet Explorer (6 and 7) and Firefox, as well as via Outlook versions 2002 SP3 and later, on Windows XP SP2 and Vista systems. Microsoft says that the risk with IE 7 under Vista is mitigated be cause of IE’s pro-tected mode, and that Outlook 2007 is safe because it uses Word to display HTML e-mail.

What galls me is that Micro-soft knew about the hole three months before the attacks be -gan. You can get the patch over Microsoft Automatic Updates

destination. The impostor site would show the real site’s URL in the address bar, potentially tricking even careful surfers.

As always your best bet is never to click an e-mail link to access your bank or other financial ac count, even if you’re sure that the e-mail is legit. Instead, type in the address yourself or use a bookmark. For more, includ-ing a vulnerability test, see http://secunia.com/Inter-net_Explorer_7_navcancl.htm_Cross-Site_Scripting_Vulnerability/# .

CARING TOO MUCH

microsoft has patched a problem with the way its One-Care antivirus application was handling Outlook (.pst) and Outlook Express (.dbx) e-mail files. Instead of pulling out one suspect e-mail, OneCare quarantined the entire mes-sage fi le, making all the user’s e-mail seem to vanish.

Versions 1.1.2306.0 and later have the fi x, sent through an automatic OneCare update. To get further details, scroll down at http://windowsonecare.spaces.live.com/?_c11_blog-part_blogpart=blogview&_c=blogpart&partqs=amonth%3d3%26ayear%3d2007 .

On a more positive note, Microsoft is shipping anoth-er patch batch that improves Vista compatibility for a range of programs, includ-

FOUND A HARDWARE or

software bug? Tell us about it

by sending an e-mail message

to [email protected].

BUGGED?

Stuart J. Johnston is a

contributing editor to PC World .

S T U A R T J . J O H N S T O N

MORE SERIOUS QUICKTIME FLAWS APPLE RELEASED YET another update to fi x multiple danger-

ous holes in its QuickTime media player software for both Mac

and Windows (affecting XP, 2000, and Vista).

The patch closes eight critical vulnerabilities in how the play-

er handles a variety of media fi les—and annoyingly it will put

QuickTime on your desktop and in your system tray whether

you want it there or not. An attacker exploiting any of the fl aws

could hit you with a drive-by download if you visit a rigged site

or click on an e-mail link to a poisoned movie, so make sure that

you have version 7.1.5 or later (grab it from www.apple.com/

quicktime/download/win.html ). Learn more at http://docs.info.

apple.com/article.html?artnum=305149

IN BRIEF

APPLE PATCHED 45 bugs

in OS X, including several

crit ical security flaws. The

new, corrected version is

Mac OS X 10.4.9 with Secu-

rity Update 2007-003. Get

the update at http://docs.

info.app le.com/art ic le.

html?artnum=305214 .

So Long, Firefox 1.5 TWO RECENT PATCHES cor-

rect critical security holes in

Firefox 2.0 and 1.5 (the fi xed

versions are 2.0.0.3 and

1.5.0.11). But Mozilla stopped

supporting (and fi xing) ver-

sion 1.5 as of April 24, so if

you haven’t yet upgrad ed to

version 2, do it now. Find the

upgrade at getfirefox.com .

Apple OS X Bugs

ing Trend Micro Internet Security 2007 and Microsoft Money 2006. For the patch and a list of af-fected apps, see http://support.micro-soft .com/?kbid=932246 . Expect such fixes to be a regular thing.


HASSLE-FREE PC

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Top Tricks for Safe, Smart Downloads

are you ready to download a fi le? Don’t—until you’ve read this col-umn. I’ll tell you how to download fi les effi ciently and safely, and share a trick for transferring download-resistant videos onto your PC.

The Hassle: I download lots of free software, but I’m worried about pick-ing up adware. What do you suggest?

The Fix: Fire up your standard de -fensive shields (fi rewall, antivirus, and antispyware); then add an extra coat of armor. I recommend giving Cyberhawk Basic ( www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,64144-order,1-page,1/descrip-tion.html ) a try. Unlike antivirus software that checks for virus signa-tures, Cyberhawk watches for and blocks suspicious behavior as it occurs.

But Cyberhawk doesn’t play well with all computers, so I have two alternatives that thwart malware by running your browser, e-mail, and instant messaging apps in a protected sandbox. That way, you can end a session and easily reverse potential damage to your system. GreenBorder Pro with SafeFiles ( http://

pcworld. in/downloads/index. jsp/dsecId=1468/dsubSecId=1474 ) throws a border around your browser and puts downloaded fi les into a special folder, so that you can run them in a protected session. At Rs, 1,350 per year, it’s not dirt cheap, but you do get a 15-day free trial. Or try Sandboxie (http://pcworld.in/downloads/index.jsp/dsecId=1468/dsubSecId=1474 ), a free but complicated tool that quarantines downloads and their

in stallation routines in a sandbox until you decide they’re not harmful. Warning: Be sure to try each program separately.

The Hassle: I’m an avid down-loader, but I hate downloading fi les one at a time.

The Fix: You need a download manager. FlashGet ( http://pcworld.in/downloads/index.jsp/dsecId=1468/dsubSecId=1474 ) is a remarkable free tool. Click a link to download a fi le, or just copy the link into the clipboard, and Flash-Get pops up to perform the down-load. Even handier: Drag and drop multiple links onto the program’s

floating dropzone. The default setting can download ten files simultaneously and resumes the transfer if it’s disrupted midstream by, say, a browser or unlikely (ha!) PC crash. If you have a manager but it won’t work with Firefox, use FlashGot ( http://pcworld.in/downloads/index.jsp/dsecId=1468/dsubSecId=1474 ).

The Hassle: Is there a good way to down-load YouTube or Google video fi les?

The Fix: Many sites contain Flash-based streaming videos that are yours for the taking. Just use the Web-based too ls a t KeepVid .com or Video-Download.com. Both sites have links you can add to your browser’s toolbar to handle drag-and-drop video download-ing. For multiple YouTube videos, download TubeMe. To watch the fi les, use VLC or FLV Player—or convert the videos into AVI fi les at the Online FLV Converter site. All of these tools are at http://pcworld.in/downloads/index.jsp/dsecId=1477/dsubSecId=1491 .

Plus: Download and play videos, and unclutter your machine’s system tray.

— Steve Bass

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REVIEWS & RANKINGS

indication of the CPU’s ability to handle various jobs such as multimedia and multi-tasking. Gaming tests were conducted with DOOM 3 and F.E.A.R. to note the frames delivered by each CPU for the same resolution and quality setting. The results of these tests can be seen on the graphs and you can compare the performance of the different CPUs yourself.

The tests were conducted using a 10,000 rpm WD Rap-

‘which is better?

AMD or Intel?” is something we folks at the test labs keep getting asked by pretty much everyone. There are several CPUs out there by both Intel and AMD, but there is no single best CPU. The answer to the ‘bet-ter CPU’ question depends on your budget and needs.

We tested six CPUs, three each from Intel and AMD to figure out who offered

the best buy under Rs. 8,000. This covers the best CPU if you are on a budget (Rs. 3,500), or seek better performance for a slightly higher price (Rs. 5,000) and of course, the best CPU that Rs. 8,000 can fetch you.

It’s old news that AMD lost the performance ground to Intel when the latter launched the Core 2 Duo CPUs last year at about the same time. AMD was forced to lower prices of its CPUs

C P U S

AGGRESSIVE PRICING BRINGS MAKES PERFORMANCE DUAL CORE CPUS AFFORDABLE

D U M O U R E D I T E D BY K A L PA N A E T T E N S O N & R A M O N

to retain market share, and in turn Intel came out with lower priced models based on the Core 2 architecture. All of this translates into good news for buyers as faster CPUs are available at lesser cost.

HOW WE TESTED

we used CPU intensive tests from PCWorld’s WorldBench 5.0 and also ran PCMark05’s system sui te and CPU test. These tests give an

Dual Cores Get Cheaper And Better

36 GEFORCE 8500GT VIDEO

CARDS FROM ASUS AND MSI

38 SONY DCR-HC96 CAMCORDER

38 KODAK V1003 10MP DIGITAL

CAMERA

39 OPEN OFFICE 2.2

40 CANON MP460 ALL-IN-ONE

41 LH 20A1S LITE-ON 20X SATA

OPTICAL DRIVE

41 MICROSOFT NOTEBOOK

PRESENTER MOUSE 8000

42 SONY ERICSSON W200I

MUSIC PHONE

32

RREVIVIEWSWS & &RANKINGSANKINGS

REVIEWS

LAB-TESTED AND HANDS-ON EVALUATIONS OF THE LATEST PRODUCTS


REVIEWS & RANKINGS

tor 150GB hard disk; Kings-ton HyperX DDR2 1150 1GB x 2 modules with latencies set default (5 5 5 15, 2T); Asus 7900GT graphic card and the motherboards used were the Asus M2N32 SLI for AMD processors and the Intel D975XBX beta mother-board for the Intel CPUs.

When Budget Calls the Shots:

We feel Rs. 3,500 ought to be a fair amount to spend on a CPU if you wish to use your PC for anything more than MS Office, Inter-net and music playback. At this price point we have the AMD’s entry level dual core, the Athlon 64 X2 3600+ and its counterpart from Intel the D820. The X2 3600+ costs about Rs. 3,400 while the D820 is costlier by Rs. 100 or so.

The D820, though an older architecture, is made attractive by its pricing. However when you take into account similarly priced X2 3600+, the D820 pales in comparison. In all tests, the X2 3600+, clocked at 1.9GHz and a 1 MB cache was clearly ahead of the Intel dual core. In gaming tests for example, we saw up to 33 percent bet-

ter frame rates on the X2, though the Intel boasts of a higher clock and L2 cache.

Another significant factor in favor of the X2 in the bud-get category is the availabil-ity of motherboards that have onboard GeForce 6150 or 6200

is available for Rs. 2,800. Even this single core CPU delivered better performance than the D820 except in multimedia applications, in which the latter’s dual core advantage showed. If you are cash strapped, the Athlon 64

video chipsets. These deliver better performance than the current Intel GMA solutions which will aid gaming in case you don’t wish to spend on a separate video card.

We also tested the single core Athlon 64 3200+ which

44 MICROSOFT WIRELESS LASER DESKTOP 6000

44 DRAGON VOICE RECOGNITION SOFTWARE

45 CANON POWERSHOT A570 IS DIGITAL CAMERA

46 RIM BLACKBERRY 8800 SMART PHONE

47 D-LINK DWL 142 USB WIRELESS ADAPTER

47 KINGSTON DATA TRAVELER 2GB PEN DRIVE

48 ADOBE SYSTEMS DREAMWEAVER CS3

GRAPHIC SOFTWARE

49 ASUS R2H UMPC

49 STYLETAP PLATFORM FOR WINDOWS

SMARTPHONE MOBILE COMPUTING

50 SOCIAL NETWORKING SOFTWARE

40 47

WIRELESS ACCESS POINT PCW Rating Performance Features

1AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Price: Rs. 8,200

• WorldBench 5.0 Multi-tasking: Very Good

• PCMark05 CPU Test: Excellent

• Gaming Performance: Excellent

• Operating Frequency: 2.7GHz

• Total L2 Cache: 1MB

• Manufacturing Process: 65nm

2Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Price: Rs. 8,000

• WorldBench 5.0 Multi-tasking: Very Good

• PCMark05 CPU Test: Very Good

• Gaming Performance: Very Good




3Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 Price: Rs. 5,000

• WorldBench 5.0 Multi-tasking: Good

• PCMark05 CPU Test: Good

• Gaming Performance: Good




4AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+Price: Rs. 5,000



• Gaming Performance: Very Good




5AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+Price: Rs. 3,400



• Gaming Performance: Good




6Intel Pentium D820Price: Rs. 3,500

• WorldBench 5.0 Multi-tasking: Fair


• Gaming Performance: Fair




3 Bottom line: If Rs 8000 is all that you want to spend, this is the best CPU out there currently.

85Very Good

BestBUY

3 Bottom line: AMD’s price cut has relegated this competitive CPU to second place. A good choice if you prefer the Intel platform.

3 Bottom line: This toned down Core 2 Duo with more cache than the X2 4000+ makes for a good choice at the Rs 5,000 mark.

3 Bottom line: Has a slight edge over the E4300 in some games, but otherwise equal. Lesser cache makes it the second choice in this budget.

83Very Good

82Very Good

3 Bottom line: Great pricing and performance makes the 3200+ the best budget CPU for cash strapped gamers.

78Good

CHART NOTE: The prices mentioned are street prices as on 17/05/2007 and are subject to change.

65Fair

3 Bottom line: Intel’s entry level dual core fails to impress - not recommended, especially for gamers.

88 Very Good


REVIEWS & RANKINGS

3200+ or even its younger sibling, the 3000+ (cheaper by Rs 500) will make a for good choice.

The Price-Power Balance: We scouted for the best offerings at Rs 5,000 from both manufacturers and finally picked the Athlon 64 X2 4000+ and the new Intel Core 2 Duo E4300. The E4300 is a cheaper and mellowed Core 2 running at 1.8GHz and having an FSB of 800MHz (the E6300 runs at 1.86GHz and has a 1066MHz FSB). The X2 4000+ exists in two flavors

– a 90nm 2.0GHz, 2MB L2 cache and a newer 65nm 2.1GHz, 1MB L2 cache which we received.

The Intel E4300 and the AMD X2 4000+ are matched evenly overall in the perfor-mance charts. And, they are priced identically as well. This leaves us looking up the fea-tures table to see which of these will be more future proof. With a total of 2MB cache, the E4300 is the winner here, but with only the slightest of margins. The X2 4000+ , with a cache handicap made up by only 300MHz lags one point behind in the fi nal score.

Another point going against the X2 is that it cannot make full use of the memory band-width. This 65nm 4000+ can only do DDR2 700 speeds instead of the full DDR2 800 speed that the 90nm version could manage.

Best CPU at Rs 8000: AMD’s recent price cuts have placed their higher end CPUs at what was once the mid-range price point. An example of this is the winner, the Athlon 64 X2 5200+, that retails currently at just a little over Rs. 8000. When set against the Intel E6300, the Athlon

is a clear winner, with about 20 percent higher scores in almost every benchmark and game. This X2 is made using 65nm process similar to the E6300 and both of them are effi cient processors running cool and have a power dissipation of 65W.

THE MODEL NUMBER

PUZZLE

like many other AMD CPUs, the 5200+ exists in different versions. Initially there was a 5200+ rated CPU with 2MB L2 cache and 2.6GHz clock manufactured on the 90nm platform. With

0

200

Adobe Premier

Discreet 3ds max 5.1 (DirectX)

Discreet 3ds max 5.1 (OpenGL)

Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9.0

Multitasking: Mozilla and Windows Media Encoder

Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Core 2 E6300 Core 2 E4300 Athlon 64 X2 4000+ Athlon 64 X2 3600+ Pentium D820

400

600

800

PERFORMANCE

WorldBench 5.0

Tim

e i

n S

ec

on

ds

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REVIEWS & RANKINGS

AMD’s move to 65nm, the CPUs lost half their cache and gained some clock speed - the 5200+ that we received for review has only 1MB cache but a 2.7GHz clock. It is rather puzzling that AMD decided to increase the frequency by a meager 100MHz to compensate for half the cache that is missing (the X2 4000’s is also a similar case to note). An advantage of this approach is that the reduced production costs with less cache can be passed on to the consumer.

GAMING

PERFORMANCE

it is common to hear some-one say ‘the game does not work properly! But I have a 3GHz CPU…’ and not realize that it is the onboard video that is the culprit!

The X2 5200 delivered the highest frame rates. In DOOM3 it was 15 percent higher than the E6300 but with F.E.A.R., the advantage dropped to about 3 percent. It was a similar case between the X2 4000+ and the E4300.

In gaming performance, the less said about the Pen-tium D, the better. Even the single core Athlon 64 3200+ outperformed it despite a lower clock speed and cache.

It needs no saying that our budget segment winner, the X2 3600+ has impressive per-formance in gaming as well, with a 15-20 percent advan-tage over the Pentium D.

We also conducted a test with F.E.A.R. set at high graphic details and 1280 x 1024 resolution. The bud-get 3200+ delivered an aver-age of 68 fps while the X2 5200+ was only slightly bet-ter at 70 fps. Gaming tests indicate what a CPU can do provided the graphic card is up to the task.

If you look for gaming performance, you are better off with a faster video card than a high end CPU. For example, if you are think-ing of a Rs. E6300 CPU and a 7600GS graphic card, it would be wiser to get a E4300 and a Rs 7600GT or a 7900GT graphic card.

SAVE PRECIOUS

POWER

for most users, the full processing power of a CPU remains unutilized most of the time. For the usual browsing or documenta-tion work you don’t need your CPU to be running at 2 GHz. Intel and AMD both have auto under-clocking mechanisms which kick in

when the processor load is minimal.

The CPU speed is reduced in conjunction with a lower Vcore and a lower CPU fan speed (if Q-fan control is enabled). The benefi t is that you save on your power bill, reduce fan noise and increase the life of the CPU.

Intel calls its technique EIST (Enhanced Intel Speed-step Technology) while AMD terms it Cool’n’Quiet. For

these features to work, you need a motherboard that sup-ports the respective feature. You can enable them as fol-lows: Open Power Options in Control Panel and select the Minimal Power Manage-ment scheme. Now, your CPU will under-clock when it is idling. All CPUs that we have tested here except the Pentium D820 support power management.

— Kailas Shastry

PCMARK 2005

PERFORMANCE

Sc

ore

s

En

co

din

g k

Bp

s

PCMark Total Score PCMark CPU Score

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

70006478

56455858

55085505

4689 4523 4290 4300

3624

5226

3890

500

400

300

200

100

0

402

343320 320

188

288

PCMARK 2005 Video Encoding

Athlon 64 X2 5200+

Core 2 Duo E6300

Core 2 Duo E4300

Athlon 64 X2 4000+

Athlon 64 X2 3600+

Pentium D820

Athlon 64 X2 5200+

Core 2 Duo E6300

Core 2 Duo E4300

Athlon 64 X2 4000+

Athlon 64 X2 3600+

Pentium D820

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REVIEWS & RANKINGS

directX 10 cards have been in the market since almost six months now and Nvidia clearly leads the race with its 8800 series of GPUs catering to the high-end video card segment . But i t i s the mainstream and the entry l e v e l c a r d s t h a t b r i n g numbers, especially in the Indian market. We finally h a v e t h e e n t r y a n d mainstream range launched by Nvidia in the form of the Geforce 8500GT, Geforce 8600GT and the Geforce 8600GTS. We got our hands on the most economical of the lot; the Geforce 8500GT launched by Asus and MSI, two video card veterans.

The 8500GT is typically placed in the Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 6,000 price bracket, bringing DX 10 to the masses. While the Geforce 8500GT chipset is very much a value offering in terms of pure muscle power, it has a lot many features crammed in for a sub Rs. 5,000 card. With native support for rendering HD content using Nvidia’s PureVideo technology, these cards off load the pressure from the CPU to render those high definition movies and clips which otherwise require a beast of a

CPU to run smoothly. With the 8500GT, a PC with an entry level processor be i t a Celeron or Sempron, wi l l manage HD content fine. The reference 8500GT comes with 256MB D D R 2 m e m o r y running at 800MHz. The core houses 16 stream processors with 450MHz core clock and 900MHz shader clock speed. Both the cards that wetested stuck to reference specifications and offered same 256MB DDR2 memory.

While sporting reference specifi cations, the cards did v a r y i n t h e i r c o o l i n g approach. The MSI comes with a standard cooper cooler while the Asus card belongs to the “silent” category, employing passive cooling. Targeted at HTPC applica-tions, the card is cooled by a slab of heatsink that covers both the core as well as the memory chips. We ran our standard set of benchmarks comprising of3DMark 2006 and games like Doom3, F.E.A.R. and Half Life 2 Lost Coast. The graphs to the bot-tom clearly indicate that there

is very l i t t le to choose between the two; both the cards dish out identical per-formance across al l the benchmarks. At the chipset level, the Geforce 8500GT is strictly an entry level solution which can just about manage 30-40 FPS (frames per sec-ond) at medium details levels and a max of 1280x1024 reso-lution. Given the fact that the 8500GT is a DX 10 card, these cards might further fall short in pure muscle power in delivering playable experi-ence in the DX 10 titles which wi l l obviously be more demanding. Thus, we can safely conclude that the 8500GT isn’t anywhere close to being a gamer’s card, it’s just a step above the integrat-ed graphics solutions and a value proposition for users wanting a bare minimum DirectX 10 solution.

As far as the two cards are concerned, the MSI card impressed with a fair ly silent cooler and good clean design with a large cooper based cooler that keeps the card cool even under 100 percent load. The Asus card

while being absolutely silent with its passive cooling is a real scorcher with the heat-sink reaching alarming tem-peratures in no time. Ironi-cally while Asus markets the card as an ideal HTPC solu-tion, with the kind of heat generated, the card will cause ambient temperatures to r i se dras t ica l ly. The default package by both the vendors is basic and hence the cooling solution along with pricing is the two decid-ing factors amongst the two cards. The MSI card has s slight edge over the Asus card with its more efficient cooling and lower price tag.

—Soham Raninga

THE MSI NX 8500GT T2D256E uses a standard copper based cooler while the

Asus offers a silent card that uses passive cooling.

V I D E O C A R D

Value DirectX 10 Offerings from Asus and MSI

EN8500GT SilentAsus

PCW Rating

While being a silent solution, the

Asus isn’t thermally efficient

Price: Rs 6,200

70 Good

NX 8500GT-T2D256EMSI

PCW Rating

A good option to jump to DirectX

10 without spending a fortune.

Price: Rs 5,800

71 Good

Video Card 3DMark 2006 Game TestDOOM 3 *

Game TestF.E.A.R *

Asus 8500GT Silent 40 47

MSI 8500GT T2D256E 40 46

* DOOM 3 1280 x 1024 No AA - High Detail * F.E.A.R 1024 x 768 No AA - High Detail

2121

2119

Faster

Performance Comparison Table

COMPARISON


REVIEWS & RANKINGS

the Sony DCR-HC96 is with-out doubt a classy DV camcord-er, but the DCR-HC96 isn’t the cheapest camcorder around.

The Sony DCR-HC96 is Sony’s high-end MiniDV Handycam camcorder, and this is reflected in its price tag. It offers step-up features such as a higher-capacity battery, a charg-ing dock and the ability to cap-ture video at higher resolutions than other HC family members.

Although the Sony DCR-HC96 scored points for its still-image performance, its low-light video quality and battery life proved to be only average.

The Sony DCR-HC96 fea-tures a 2.7in widescreen LCD with touchscreen controls. Play, record and stop buttons are located below the screen, allowing you to keep your eye on the action while controlling the camera. Other Sony DCR-HC96 design niceties include a built-in lens cap and top-load-ing cassette mechanism. The colour accuracy and sharpness of the Sony DCR-HC96’s stills was impressive, as was its video quality. Assessed in both standard and low-light scenes, we were very pleased by the results. Add to this the Sony’s

ability to capture pleasingly clear audio and this counts as a top performer. The Sony DCR-HC96 has a night-vision feature that makes it possi-ble to record video in low-light conditions that would otherwise be impossible. How-ever, the results have a strange, otherworldly look to them – It’s probably best to use this only when absolute-ly necessary.

The Sony DCR-HC96 also has an electronic image stabi-lisation feature, which worked well, with no noticeable drop in quality. Our battery tests showed that the Sony DCR-HC96 was able to capture 85 minutes of

video before shutting down. That’s about average. The Sony DCR-HC96 performs well and provides impressive still-image quality. Nice features such as a touchscreen LCD and an acces-sory shoe make it more attrac-tive, but we expected better low-light video quality at the given price point.

—James Galbraith

Sony Upgrades its MiniDV Line-upC A M C O R D E R

THE SONY DCR-HC96 has a 2.7-inch

widescreen LCD with touch screen controls.

Sony Sony DCR-HC96

PCW Rating

While sporting an upgraded feature

set and giving good still-image

quality, the Sony DCR-HC96 could

improve on its low-light performance.

Price: Rs. 29,990

76 Good

THE KODAK V1003 is quite a looker, but those looks are deceptive.

the EasyShare V1003 will overwhelm you with its 10MP label and a petite frame; it boasts of features like digital anti-blur and offers a “perfect touch” mode that enhances images on the fly. Aimed at the compact lifestyle digital

camera segment, the V1003 surely has the looks and style that will please most. Offer-ing a bright 2.5-inch LCD screen the V1003 comes with 32MB internal memory and uses SD/MMC cards for stor-ing images. Being a point and shoot camera, it offers tons of

preset modes to ensure you get the best results in varied shooting conditions.

In our image quality tests, Kodak was just about average in overall image quality. The images at 10MP were fairly noisy and the low-light per-formance wasn’t impressive as well. With an evident shutter lag, the camera needs ideal con-ditions to perform at its best. The rather awkward controls make it almost impossible for the user to operate the camera with a single hand. The digital anti-blur is hardly effective and is no comparison to the optical image stabilization offered in the latest Canon and Panasonic cameras. On the positive side, the abundant preset modes come in handy for beginners

and casual users, the perfect touch feature enhances bright-ness and contrast to make the picture vibrant. While it might not be the most natural way of correcting pictures but it works for users wanting enhanced contrast levels without getting their hand dirty with photo editing applications.

Overall, it’s hard to recom-mend the V1003, it’s below average low-light performance combined with noisy images and hefty price tag translates into very little value.

—Soham Raninga

Kodak’s New 10MP Needs WorkD I G I T A L C A M E R A

V1003 Kodak

PCW Rating

Don’t get carried away with the 10MP

label, the V1003 doesn’t quite cut it

for its price tag and positioning.

Price: Rs. 17,990

64 Fair


REVIEWS & RANKINGS

while Microsoft’s Office

continues to dominate the gen-eral market, in recent years cor-porate desktops have begun to adopt either Star Offi ce 8.0 or OpenOffice. The latter alone accounts for more than 60 million downloads. It’s not hard to see the appeal of such alternatives. OpenOffice is, after all, free and has a com-prehensive feature set.

OpenOffi ce is available only via download. However, it’s now up to version 2.2, which offers a bunch of cosmetic changes to the interface.

The core applications of OpenOffi ce 2.2 are just as you would expect, comprising a word processor, spreadsheet, database, drawing application and a presentation package.

Writer, the OpenOffice 2.2 word processor, isn’t as snaz-zy as Microsoft Word 2007, but includes a few elements Microsoft has only just caught up with – such as the ability to save to PDF.

M o r e i m p o r t a n t t o most users is the fact that compatibility and performance have been greatly improved, with OpenOffice Writer capable of opening multiple fi le formats. OpenOffi ce can merge documents as e-mails, but the support for macros in StarOffice doesn’t extend to OpenOffi ce 2.2.

BEYOND THE BASICS

the OpenOffice spread-

sheet application, Calc, com-pares well to Excel, providing a range of functions and formu-

lae that’ll enable you to perform calculations quickly. Users can create multiple worksheets and analyze data using a DataPilot (the equivalent of Excel’s Pivot Tables). The only area in which Calc suffers is in the range of charts and graphs that can be created, but these are more than suffi cient for most users.

Impress is a perfectly adequate presentation package. If this is important to you, however, it’s best to opt for the StarOffice rather than OpenOffi ce as more templates are included. These are inferior to those included with PowerPoint, but if you’re willing to put in a little extra work then you can still create decent presentation.

M o r e i m p o r t a n t l y , OpenOffi ce Impress provides you with plenty of help in terms of structuring your ideas. It can export presentations as Flash fi les, too.

The database tool, Base, is a complex relational database, which will be fairly forbidding to the casual user but offers sophisticated tools for creating forms and reports that can work with several database engines. The drawing component,

Draw, is a charting component (akin to Visio).

OpenOffice also includes Math, with which you can create complex equations for your documents.

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

in terms of features, there’s little difference between the two applications, but StarOf-fice includes the Sun Java Runtime Environment. Java is required for both suites, although OpenOffi ce will run with free Java software and the Sun implementation isn’t essential. More important will be support, which is where StarOffi ce may have the edge.

VERDICT

openOffice 2.2 provides a superb, very stable offi ce suite, that offers a challenge to Micro-soft Offi ce. Free doesn’t mean sub-standard.

—Jason Whittaker

Free Alternative to MS Office RocksS O F T W A R E

Open Office 2.2 Open Office

PCW Rating

Open Office is truely an excellent

free alternative to MS Office.

Free

BEHIND THE SIMPLE and effective interface lies a host of features

and tools that will satisfy the most demanding of users.

86 Very Good

LAPTOP SCREENS TRADITIONALLY have been lit by fl uores-

cent lamp technology, but several new notebook models

are offering a superior display technology: light-emitting-

diode (LED) backlighting.

Compared with standard fl uo-

rescent displays, LED-backlit

alternatives tout up to 30 per-

cent greater brightness (better

for use outdoors), lower power

consumption, and greater uni-

formity of the image throughout

the screen. Equally important,

the technology lets manufactur-

ers build thinner laptop lids.

Three ultraportables (Toshiba’s

Portégé R400, Asus’s U1F, and Fujitsu’s LifeBook P7230)

use LED-backlit displays—we found them noticeably brighter

and easier to read. Sony also has LED-backlit models, and

Apple and HP are expected to follow suit soon.

Brighter Laptop Screens

TECH TREND

—Danny Allen


REVIEWS & RANKINGS

the PIXMA MP460 from Canon is the successor to the MP450 and has much of the latter’s impressive per-formance and features. The MP460, at the Rs 10,000 mark is slightly faster and bigger than the MP450 but otherwise maintains the same print and scanning quality traits.

A printer targeted at a users looking for more than just basic printing has to fulfill two duties – print in above average quality and do that fast enough. The max print resolution of 4,800 x 1,200 is hardly startling, while the optical scanner resolution is easily matched by the HP Photosmart C3188. The Canon can hold up to 100 sheets of paper, but while the output tray works fairly effectively, it lacks the polished looks of the rest of the MP460.

As a text printer, the Canon works very effectively. Basic speed is good, and although

Canon’s New MFD is a Potent All-rounderthe print is rather faint at the lowest quality settings, it’s always legible. On the middle setting it can generate very pleasing text prints while the slowest setting offers sharp character defi nition. We noted somewhat longer spool times which delayed the fi rst page. The best time we saw for fi rst page print at normal quality text was 17 seconds, which went as high as 28 seconds on few occasions. There after, full A4 page text printing in normal quality took 12 seconds, a good figure for a MFD in this category.

Colour printing is good for a MFD in this category but the printed photos appeared somewhat over saturated, especia l ly skin tones – something can be easily set right by reducing saturation levels in your image viewing software. Faint horizontal lines were seen but hardly and pixelation was observed. Ink consumption is rated at

120 prints of 4 x 6 borderless photo printing.

We found that the ink and printing on the MP 460 seems optimised for thick gauge papers – when we took test prints on ordinary copier paper, text showed some smudginess. Using the much thicker Executive Bond paper this issue was solved almost completely.

Printing a full A4 colour in best quality took over two minutes – not quite the fastest we have seen.

Scanning i s impressive in both speed and quality. Preview takes a blazing 6 seconds and at 600dpi scanning the MP460 takes 2 0 s e c o n d s .

Quality is more than suffi cient to convert your paintings or old photographs into digital form. Copying works up to expectations, and like most Canons, resizing can be done from 25 percent to 400 percent of the original, set up to 99 copies and also do auto exposure. But beware

that the ink consumption is the same as that of regular printing. For bulk copying, your neighborhood photo-copy shop is the best bet!

The Pixma is also bang up to date in terms of features. Digital camera enthusiasts are well catered for with a PictBridge port and a full complement of memory slots. It has a 1.9 inch display with which you can preview photos before you print them. You can also make the MP460 bluetooth capable by purchasing an optional Bluetooth adapter.

Fully featured and sleek, the Canon certainly looks the part, and its text printing and scanning facilities are very competent. However, it lags behind the cheaper HP Photosmart C3180 when it comes to colour graphics reproduction.

— Kailas Shastry

THE MP460 DOES A4 borderless printing and boasts of a 1.9 inch

LCD, Pictbridge, IrDA connectivity and media card slots.

MP460Canon

PCW Rating

Good overall performance and

features – a recommended buy.

Price: Rs 10,000

76 Good

A L L - I N - O N E

THE PANEL OF the MP460 has a 1.9 inch LCD that allows you to

preview photos before printing.


REVIEWS & RANKINGS

we generally are all praise for Lite-On products – they burn discs fast and are competitively priced. But this time around with Lite-On’s 20x SATA drive, when we put the drive to DVD RW burning test, we were sur-prised by its inability to burn common media (the primary reason for a low PC World score). The drive refused to write to the Moser Baer and HP DVD + RW media. It is rather surpris-ing that a drive launched in

Lite-On’s SATA Drive Throws TantrumsIndia does not support one of the most commonly available media here. Finally, we got a Sony DVD+RW with which the drive was happy.

Now, moving on to things that this drive can do, it is as fast as its IDE companion (that we reviewed in the April 2007 issue) in most tests, taking a lit-tle over 5 minutes to burn 4.1 GB of data at 20x on 16x rated Moser Baer media. Burning a dual layer disk (Verbatim media) took 27 minutes – the only area in which we have seen Lite-On drive get slower than others. CD Writing was brisk at 160 seconds for burning a 700MB ISO file and is one of the fastest times we have seen. When we fi nally did manage to get a DVD+RW written, it was

again on par with the 20x IDE version, at 7 minutes for a 4.1 GB burn.

The SATA version of the fast 20x writer makes great sense if you are buying an Intel mother-board that does not have IDE ports, or if you have a slim cabi-net in which cable clutter is an issue. Or, for someone whose board has only one IDE chan-

nel which is already occupied, a SATA optical drive is a good buy (provided the incompatibility issue is resolved or if you can stock Sony’s RWs!). For any-body else, the extra money you pay for it is not justifi able as performance wise there is little to tell between the 20x IDE and SATA versions.

—Kailas Shastry

O P T I C A L D R I V E

LH 20A1SLite-On

PCW Rating

SATA interface is handy for those

who use motherboards that don’t

have IDE ports.

Price: Rs 2,350

LITE-ON’S BRINGS A 20x SATA based DVD RW drive with the 20A1S.

68 Fair

offering excellent ver-

satility in a portable pack-age, the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 gives users of notebooks a variety of functionality pri-marily for the purpose of giv-ing presentations.

Comprised of the mouse itself and a USB dongle that acts as a Bluetooth 2.0 receiv-

Versatile Notebook Mouse from Microsofter, the Presenter Mouse 8000 works as both a mouse and a remote control of sorts. In Mouse Mode the left and right mouse buttons work like nor-mal and a third button on the left of the mouse works like a Back button. A further two buttons make things a little more interesting. The button on the far right brings up a magnifier and holding this button down allows you to

increase the magnifica-tion and also the size

of the viewing glass. This is an excel-lent feature if you wish to highlight

something on a shared screen for many people in a large room - all in a pinch.

The button in the centre, behind the mouse wheel, switches the device into Pre-senter/Media Mode. Once in this mode you can pick up the mouse and fl ip it over. There, on the bottom, are a whole collection of new controls including play/pause, skip track and volume controls. The obvious use for this is during playback of a movie or audio track, but when in pro-grams such as Microsoft Pow-erPoint it can also be used to skip between slides with ease. Also found amongst the media controls is a laser pointer button, which acti-vates a laser pointer that

comes from the tip of the mouse.

On the down side, the mouse is a tad on the heavier side and the smooth surface doesn’t provide the most secure grip. The biggest draw-back is of course the price, at Rs 5,250; it is more than twice the price of a regular wireless notebook mouse available in the market.

—Jesse Sutton

I N P U T D E V I C E

Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000Microsoft

PCW Rating

If money is not a constraint,

this notebook presenter offers

very unique functionality in a

tiny package.

Price: Rs 5,250

76 Good

A GOOD OPTION for presentation

purposes comes at a price.


REVIEWS & RANKINGS

even as mobile phones converge take on the function-ality of an increasing manifest of devices, there is still a need for the basics and Sony Erics-son has come to the party with the release of their W200i. The W200i is a standard GSM handset, without the bells and whistles. Though it still offers the popular Walkman func-tion, an FM radio and digital camera, the lack of Bluetooth is a real negative.

FEATURES

the best feature of the W200i is the Walkman func-tion, although it isn’t the newer 2.0 version of this soft-ware. A press of the orange ‘W’ button on the left side of the phone takes you straight into the music application, which is both simple and effective in its design. The

W200i includes menus for Now Playing, Artists, Tracks, Playlists and Videos. Any tracks loaded onto the device are automatically sorted into these folders, which makes searching for a specific file simple and easy. You can cre-ate playlists by searching through your fi les and mark-ing which tracks you want to add to that particular list. Unfortunately the W200i doesn’t allow users to rename music files from within the device. This has to be done using the PC Suite software (which doesn’t support Mac).

You can also send fi les to another phone or computer directly from the Walkman application via e-mail, infra-red or as a picture message. The omission of Bluetooth is disappointing, despite this handset’s low-end placement in the market so infrared and USB are the only con-nectivity options. The W200i also includes an FM radio with 10 presets and features RDS (Radio Data System) which displays station broad-cast information. Sony Erics-son hasn’t installed a 3.5mm headphone jack on the W200i, but they have boxed a headphone adapter with the unit that allows connec-tion of any standard 3.5mm headphones. Like most Walkman phones, the sound quality of the W200i is pretty impressive and the included headphones are of a surpris-ingly good standard. Also included in the Walkman application is a fi ve-channel equalizer that you can adjust

manually, as well as four pre-sets including Sony’s propri-etary Mega Bass.

The W200i includes a digit-al VGA camera with 4x digital zoom, but naturally, the qual-ity of VGA cameras means it’s barely good enough for a few happy snaps. A more notable feature is push e-mail, which is a welcome surprise on a handset with such a low RRP. In addition to push e-mail, the W200i supports standard SMS and MMS messaging with T9 predictive text input. Other features include a loud and clear hands-free speaker-phone, sound recorder and a host of personal information manager (PIM) features including an alarm clock, cal-culator, calendar, notes, stop-watch and a timer.

DESIGN

t h e W 2 0 0 i m e a sur e s

101mm x 44mm x 18mm and weighs a very light 85g. The

design is solid, if unspectacu-lar and the unit is fi nished in a matte black plastic with orange trim, thanks to the Walkman branded design. The biggest let down in design is the display, which has outdated specifications and lacks clarity and crisp-ness. The smaller-sized 120 x 160 pixel resolution means the screen can’t emit as bight an image as we would have

liked. Thankfully, the keypad is comfortable and the raised keys are

well spaced, so typing long messages or e-mails is

a breeze. Controls are fairly standard, consisting of a fi ve-way navigational joystick, two selection buttons, and dedi-cated keys for back and clear. The navigation stick is a hit and miss affair as it is too short and small and will cause discomfort for anyone with large fingers. A power button on the top of the handset and a volume control on the right side of the unit round out the controls.

Sony Ericsson rates the W200i battery life at up to seven hours of talk time and 300 hours standby time. We averaged two days of moder-ate use before we had to charge the phone, which is done via either the included USB cable or the AC adapter.

—Ross Catanzariti

Thump is Here ?M U S I C P H O N E S

Sony Ericsson W200i Sony Ericsson

PCW Rating

The W200i is a solid budget

mobile phone, but the lack of

Bluetooth may be enough for

some to give it a miss.

Price: Rs. 7,300

76 Good

THE 3.5MM ADAPTER and

excellent ear phones compliment

the Walkman phone.

THE WALKMAN BUTTON

launches the music player and

the volume can be controlled with

the dedicated keys on the right.


REVIEWS & RANKINGS

speech to text has been a huge gray area when it comes to computing. The right accents, noise, slurring, eve-rything has an impact on the way the software interprets your version of slang.

Dragon Naturally Speak-ing has been improving itself

with each version that it has come out. Though, it may still be quite a while before the computers understand what you say, right away. With these efforts you are deemed to think that the day is not too far. For instance, this version has an option for Indian English, that attempts at understanding the Indian accent which is substan-tially different from the Ameri-can or British way of speaking. With a simple 15-20 minute tutorial, the software was easily able to learn my style of speak-ing and we were ready to go.

Though with this version, Nuance (the publishers of DNS 9) have made it quite easy to use the software, negating the use of the keyboard wherever possi-ble, you would still have to work

towards getting used to the software itself. As you have com-mands on the keyboard, that you may need to remember while using a software, you would need to use similar commands here. Though, easily under-stood, they still present a learn-ing curve. Thankfully, this curve is not too diffi cult to master.

It understood most of the words that I said. The ones that are not in the vocabulary can be easily added, all with caps in the beginning, with a simple voice command. And it is quite easy to correct your mistake using a series of easy to master commands. And when you compare the kind of errors you make while touch typing with dictation; it clearly shows that it’s faster to dictate than to type.

The software also learns with time and it is advisable to run the acoustic optimizer one in a while to make that learning even better.

But, speech recognition itself has its pitfalls too. For instance you may not want to use it in offi ce as it may present privacy issues and there is bound to be too much noise in the office that will impact the perform-ance of the software. But, if you have a quiet workplace, without any close neighbors, the latest update can prove to be a releif for your wrists.

—Geetaj Channana

Talk to Your Computer with DragonVO I C E R E C O G N I T I O N

Nuance Dragon Naturally Speaking 9

PCW Rating

This improvised version works

well but requires patience

Price:9,000

76 Good

THE LATEST VERSION

IMPROVISES ON SOME key

areas but isnt perfect.

it is not just Windows and Office that Microsoft makes. The company is also regarded as a maker of some fi ne input devices. While the world seems to be going wire-less, keyboards and mice are also trying to shrug off their cords, giving you a desktop with less clutter.

The Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop 6000 is a wire-less keyboard and mouse set that comes with a host of fea-tures. The Desktop 6000 is

ergonomically designed, but it may be hard to say if this is the ‘best’ design out there. However, the Desktop 6000 is a lot more comfortable than the sub Rs 500 models from unknown brands.

The mouse is bigger than the average one and ‘fill’s your hand. The recesses for the thumb and the ring fi nger enable you to grip the mouse

more naturally, and causes far lesser stress after a long day’s work. The keyboard on its part lets you place your wrist at slight angles that are more comfortable and there is also a padded support for the wrists. The keys are very soft to press and make minimal noise. If you prefer tactile feedback over a soft press, you will not take to this keyboard.

The mouse uses a laser track-er but one cannot immediately tell the difference between this and an ordinary optical mouse. The advantage becomes notice-able only for very minute movements. The mouse wheel can also move sideways giving you a 4-way navigation – some-thing that is of great use when working with spreadsheets. It includes customizable keys and a magnifi er. Extra keys on the keyboard include a Gadg-ets button for Vista, a Windows Live call button, magnifi er and more. The standard multime-dia keys are present as well.

This Desktop 6000 must help in reducing the aches associ-ated with keyboard and mouse use. But at Rs 5,750 it is a tad bit too pricy, which is the rea-son for its relatively low score.

—Kailas Shastry

Comfort Comes at a PriceI N P U T D E V I C E S

THIS KEYBOARD HAS more keys than an average user would require,

the sideways scrolling of the mouse is a handy addition.

Wireless Laser Desktop 6000 Microsoft

PCW Rating

A bunch of extra keys and good

layout come at a steep price.

Price: Rs. 5,750

70 Good


REVIEWS & RANKINGS

canon’s PowerShot line

of cameras usually impresses, and the A570IS i s no different. A nice return to form for the camera giant, after the rather lackluster , the A570IS is one of the best mid-range, advanced cameras on the market. It combines the usual Canon functionality with superb image quality and Canon’s relatively new face detect focus mode, making a brilliant all-purpose consumer camera.

Traditionally, Canon cam-eras have been renowned for their image quality and in this regard the A570IS certainly impressed. When we opened up our prelimi-nary test shots we were greeted by clean, smooth edges and great detail. The pictures were consistently sharp and crisp, showing that not only is the sensor excellent, but the image sta-bilisation technology works very well. Normally our out-doors tests return several blurry shots in amongst the clearer pictures, but we encountered none when using the A570IS. For those who find hand shake a

problem, the image stabili-sation (IS) on this model is an ideal solution.

In our image noise tests, the A570IS per formed slightly worse than in the other areas, but it was still about average and was roughly on par with most other units we’ve looked at lately. There was some minor, extremely fine speckling across our shots, but it wasn’t large enough to really detract from their overall look and won’t have an impact at smaller magnifi cations.

As this is an advanced model, you’d expect it to have a bevy of features and as usual Canon has packed

in a fairly strong array of them. As mentioned, ISO sensitivities e x t e n d u p t o 1600 . Shut t e r speeds from 15 s e c o n d s t o 1/2000th of a second are on offer, along with apertures of f/2.6 to f/8. The burst m o d e s n a p s

shots are a little over 2.5 frames a second and all the standard white balance pre-sets are included, along with a custom mode.

The real gem in the fea-tures list is the new face-detect technology, which Canon has just begun to pack into their new compact and advanced models. At the touch of a button you can tell the camera to detect any faces in the picture and make them the focus point. It is extremely effective. In our testing, it successfully differentiated between a tiger’s face and a person’s face, and furthermore, as y o u m o v e t h e c a m e r a around, the little focus cross-hair actually moves with you, following the face. This is a bri l l iant inclusion. The majority of photos taken by t h e a v e r a g e c o n s u m e r involve people, and by not only making sure they are always the focus of the shots but also allowing users to s e e t h e t r a c k i n g i n action, Canon has created a b r i l l i a n t , c o n s u m e r friendly technology.

In our speed tests , the A570IS performed fairly well. Its shutter speed of .08 of a second was about aver-age, but its 1.9 second power up time was quite impres-sive. With a delay of just 1.1 seconds between shots, the A570IS will be more than speedy enough for most peo-ple’s needs.

The A570IS follows the standard PowerShot design, with a slightly chunky, jutting hand grip and a silver plastic body. It isn’t the sturdiest unit we’ve seen, as there is l i t t l e m e t a l i n t h e construction, but it should s u r v i v e s o m e r o u g h treatment. The controls and interface will be familiar for regular Canon users, with a fi ve-way directional pad used to navigate the two separate menus; one for picture options (ISO, white balance etc) and one for everything else (format, reset etc). The controls are a little cramped for our l iking, but they shouldn’t pose too many p r o b l e m s . M e a s u r i n g 89.5mm x 64.3mm x 42.8mm and weighing 175g, the A570IS is a little smaller than some previous PowerShot models. At Rs 16995, the A570 is a good option for someone who wants a well balanced package.

— Andrew Kliem

Canon’s 7MP Cam Offers Face Detection D I G I T A L C A M E R A

Powershot A570 IS Canon

PCW Rating

The A570 IS from Canon scores

with good image quality, ample

resolution and image stabilization.

Price: Rs. 16,995

83 Very Good

IN-LINE WITH THE PowerShot series, the A570IS sports the same

classic looks but adds a little bulk to its frame.

THE BACKSIDE HOLDS the 2.5-inch LCD

along with controls and a built-in speaker.


REVIEWS & RANKINGS

blackBerry has long been synonymous with business and substance, but with the release of the 8800, its clear RIM has decided that busi-ness and substance can also be achieved in style. At just 14mm the 8800 is the thin-n e s t B l a c k B e r r y e v e r released and offers all the functionality of previous units, but adds built-in GPS to an already impressive array of features.

FEATURES

despite the design over-haul and addition of a number of entertainment functions, the 8800 is fore-most an e-mail device, and it supports the standard RIM push e-mail technolo-gy that BlackBerry handsets are well known for. It allows access of up to ten e-mail accounts simultaneously and supports many popular ISP e-mail accounts as well as Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Domino.

The e-mail application of the 8800 is similar to previ-ous units, and each mailbox is automatically synchro-nized whenever you read, send or delete e-mails on the handset itself. Unfortu-

nately, e-mails are still date stamped with the time they are downloaded to your handset, rather than the time they were actually sent. For personal e-mail, such as POP3 accounts, setup is a simple process of entering your e-mail address and password and letting the 8800 do the rest. The 8800 also supports instant messaging clients such as AOL, ICQ, MSN, Google Talk and Yahoo!.

As a mobile phone, the 8800 is a well equipped device, offering voice activat-ed dialling, conference call-ing, speed dialling and call forwarding. For voice calls, the 8800 was clear, though not as crisp or loud as some regular mobile phones. The hands free speakerphone function also worked quite well in our tests, but back-ground noise was an issue, and again, volume could have been louder.

RIM has also included some PDA-like functions; a calendar, address book, alarm clock and to-do list are all included as standard applica-tions. The lack of a stylus and touch screen may limit the 8800’s use as an organizer, but the QWERTY keyboard

and intuitive trackball should be fine for most users. Like most smart phones, 8800 users can synchronize their calendar, address book, e-mail and task lists between a desktop PC and the phone using the bundled BlackBerry desktop

software. The 8800 also has Bluetooth 2.0.

The 8800 includes a media player that supports most common file formats includ-ing MP3 and AAC audio and MPEG4 and H.263 video. Unfortunately, the headphone jack is 2.5mm rather than the standard 3.5mm. Video isn’t anything to write home about, as the small screen makes it less than ideal. Photos on the other hand looked quite sharp and vibrant. Oddly enough, the 8800 doesn’t include a dig-ital camera like the BlackBerry Pearl 8100. Content is stored on either the 64MB of flash memory, or a microSD card (not included). The latter is easily accessible underneath the rear cover and convenient-ly users don’t have to remove the battery to swap the micro-SD card.

DESIGN

the candy bar style 8800 shares many design fea-

tures with its baby brother, the BlackBerry Pearl 8100. It has the same attractive, shiny black and silver fin-ish, as well as the incan-descent pearl-white track-ball for navigation. Once again, we’re not sure how the trackball will hold up after a few months of use. It doesn’t feel strong or sturdy and accuracy is an issue. The phone meas-ures 114mm x 66mm x 14mm and weighs a com-fortable 134g.

The improvement in design does have one com-promise; the 8800’s QWER-TY keyboard is much small-er than previous models, so typing does take some time to grasp. We weren’t able to achieve speeds as fast as we did on the BlackBerry Pearl 8100, or the , both of which have more space between the keys.

The 8800 inc ludes a 1400mAhr Lithium-Ion battery and it provides up to 528 hours of standby time and five hours of talk time, according to RIM fig-ures. With medium usage, we managed to squeeze about three days out of the 8800, which is a fairly good result. The 8800 is charged via a standard mini-USB cable , or the inc luded AC adapter.

—Ross Catanzariti

A Smart WorkhorseS M A R T P H O N E

BlackBerry 8800 RIM

PCW Rating

The 8800 adds built-in GPS to a

device already packed with

features. Combined with the

design overhaul, this sleek and

stylish BlackBerry is a class act.

Price: Rs. 31,990

82 Very Good

WITH A FULL Qwerty keypad the

phone still manages to stay slim

and compact.

THE INNOVATIVE TRACKBALL can be too

sensitive for some users.


REVIEWS & RANKINGS

a pen drive is turning out to be a PC accessory that everyone wants – thanks to its obvious usability and, of course, lower prices and higher capacities that we have seen in the last 6-12 months. We did a 4GB flash drive comparison in February this year – but if a smaller capac-ity is enough for you and you don’t want to spend any more money than necessary, a 2GB drive such as this Kingston Data Traveler will be a nice choice.

Priced at about Rs 1,100 this is a no frills drive that simply does its job of storing data. In Everest 2006 Ultimate’s disk benchmark test, the Data Trave-ler scored a measly 2.3 MBps in random write test – 1 MBps less

Affordable But Slow Storage

than the second slowest drive in our earlier 4GB round up. Lin-ear Write was thankfully more acceptable at 5.4 MBps, in line with the Transcend JetFlash V10 (the winner of the earlier comparison). Read speeds are again just about average at 13MBps for linear read and 14MBps for random read.

In a real world scenario, this drive will be slow to write assorted fi les when it has data

already scattered across (say, up to 1GB). But, if you are trans-ferring large fi les (like videos) when the drive is mostly empty, the transfer speed will be high-er and hence you will notice a lesser delay. Reading data from the drive is again going to present only average delays.

There is no syncing or pass-word protection available with this drive. You may also need to note that this drive is not Vista

Ready Boost certifi ed, so, get a faster drive if you want to use it with Vista for improving system performance. If you desire high-er speeds (for office environ-ments or Vista Ready Boost for example), you can try the Data Traveler II series from Kingston, but be ready to shell out more money for them. At the same price point (Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,200 for 2GB) you can also look at the Transcend V10 which is not only faster, but also offers syncing facility through its software.

—Kailas Shastry

Data Traveler 2GB Kingston

PCW Rating

Good build quality and modest

performance does not cost

too much.

Price: Rs 1,100

71 Very Good

THIS DATA TRAVELER from Kingston is an affordable pen drive

provided transfer speeds are not very important for you.

S T O R A G E

Wi r e le s s ne t wor k ing

adds the last touch to porta-ble computing – something that laptop users on Wi-Fi will vouch for. While this can work pretty much ‘out of the box’ between laptops, a desktop will need a Wi-Fi adaptor, much like a LAN card that you

Draft N for Your Desktopwould install before onboard LAN became common. The D-Link DWL 142 USB based adapter includes Draft N capa-bility which can speed up your Wi-Fi when connected to other Draft N devices. This is going to be one costly invest-ment for making your desk-top Wi-Fi capable, but then, with Draft N you will be rea-sonably future proof.

Installation was smooth and required no restart before the adapter showed up as a net-

work connection. D-Link has included a Connection Wizard and a Connection Manager to take care of setup and mainte-nance. We tested connectivity with a D-Link DWL 2100AP wireless access point. Draft N devices are designed to be backward compatible with a/b/g devices and the DWL 142 had no problems in talking to the access point. Being pow-ered by USB alone does not mean that signal strength is heavily compromised.

At close range (about 25 feet) there were no losses during pinging and at about 50 feet we saw some lost packets. When we took it outside our office and tried connecting to the access point placed in the lab, we saw signal strength drop well below 50 percent and at times vanish altogether. This

however will not be a problem for most users at homes where connection is mostly required between two rooms.

PCI based b/g adapters are available at around Rs. 3,000, but the extra money you pay for the D-Link gives you easy USB connectivity (meaning, you can shift it from one PC to another) and makes your investment somewhat future proof. If you are merely try-ing to connect your desktop to a non Draft N laptop wire-lessly, an ordinary adapter will do.

—Kailas Shastry

WI R E LE SS

DWL 142 D-Link

PCW Rating

Easy to install and configure, but

expensive.

Price: Rs 8,000 (approx)

70 Good

THIS SLEEK USB based Wi-Fi

adapter offers good performance

in b/g mode.


REVIEWS & RANKINGS

for web-design profes-sionals, Dreamweaver CS3’s integration into Adobe’s Creative Suite bundle of pro-grams is the ideal marriage of graphics applications. Fun-damental to the revamped Dreamweaver is its tight inte-gration with Photoshop.

Former Macromedia Studio users might take a while to adjust to seeing Photoshop open when they double-click an image on a Dreamweaver page (in the past, Macrome-dia’s Fireworks application would have handled such tasks). But Dreamweaver and Photoshop go together so well that we are betting it won’t be long before those same people are saying, “Firewha?”

We tested a shipping version of Dreamweaver CS3. Alone, it costs Rs. 17,955; alternatively, you can buy it as part of Crea-tive Suite 3 Design Premium (Rs. 80,955 or Rs. 26,955 as an

upgrade from CS2) or Creative Suite 3 Web Premium (Rs. 71,955, or Rs. 22,455 as an upgrade from CS2 or Macro-media Studio 8, Studio MX, or Studio MX 2004).

The bidirectional integra-tion between Dreamweaver and Photoshop works well: You can copy all or part of a Photoshop image and paste it directly into Dreamweaver; a dialog box lets you choose options for optimizing the image for the Web. Double-click the image in Dreamweav-er, and it opens in Photoshop with all of its original layers, masks, and other Photoshop fi le format attributes.

INTERACTIVITY

the progr am has two other noteworthy additions. Its Spry framework of Ajax-like interactive widgets lets you drag and drop links to XML data onto your pages. Enhanced Cascading Style Sheets management tools i n c l u d e t h e n e w C S S Advisor online re source for troubleshooting browser-compatibility issues.

The Spry JavaScript library includes XML-based tables, tabs, and form-fi eld validation, the appearance of which you can customize via CSS. Spry effects let you make elements fade in or out, grow smaller or larger, or move across the screen, all without scripting, and without requiring any serv-er components. Adobe says that the Spry code is 99 percent HTML, so it should be easy to customize to suit your needs.

The program also adds a Browser Compatibility Check that lists the problems your site may have in various ver-sions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape, and any other browsers that you want t o a d d ; m e a n w h i l e , Dreamweaver’s code view highlights potential CSS-relat-ed problems in green.

Current Dreamweaver users can upgrade to the new stan-dalone version for Rs. 8,955 and continue to use it with Fireworks and the other former Macromedia apps, but they will be missing out on the new version’s biggest produc-tivity booster: that is, its direct links to other tools in CS3. The tandem of Dreamweaver and Photoshop is greater than the sum of its parts.

—Dennis O’Reilly

Dreamweaver Now Integrates With Photoshop

Dreamweaver CS3Adobe Systems

PCW Rating

Integration with Adobe

Photoshop and other Creative

Suite apps will help save site-

design and publishing time.

Price: Rs. 17,955; Rs. 8,955

upgrade from Dreamweaver 8

and Studio MX; also part of the

various Creative Suite 3 bundles

82 Very Good

DREAMWEAVER CS3 BOASTS not only integration with Photoshop

CS3, but also enhanced Cascading Style Sheets management tools.

ANOTHER FORMER MACROMEDIA product now in Adobe’s

Creative Suite design and publishing tool set is Flash CS3

Professional (Rs. 31,455), the de facto standard vector-graphics

program for Web animation and navigation. Just as you

ca n n ow m ove

images between

Dreamweaver and

Photoshop, Flash’s

CS3 label means

that you can also

copy and paste

Photoshop (.psd)

a n d I l l u st ra to r

( . a i ) f i l es i n to

Flash projects. When

you import a .psd or .ai graphic, a dialog box appears so that

you can choose settings, including the layers to import.

We noticed minor changes to the interface, made to

modify Flash so that it looks more like the other Adobe

applications in the suite. Longtime Flash users may need a

slight adjustment period.

—Dennis O’Reilly

Flash Joins Adobe’s CS3

QUICK TAKE

G R APH I CS SO F T WAR E


REVIEWS & RANKINGS

UMPCs are starting to mature by offering features you can’t get in a notebook or desktop PC. In fact Asus R2H packs more features in its 9.25-by-5.25-by-1.25-inch box than you’ll find in many PCs. The jam-packed Asus device’s con-nectivity and security are hard to beat.

The R2H has 802.11g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless built in, and USB 2.0 ports are located on either side and on the top of the device. A fi ngerprint scan-ner built into the front-left side of the R2H offers an extra level of security (the included soft-ware captures two fi nger scans in case the fi rst one can’t be rec-ognized). The few times that we logged on with this scanner, it

Feature Packed Ultra Mobile from Asusrecognized the user without hesitation. The 2-pound R2H also includes an SD Card slot, an ethernet port, an AV-out con-nector, an earphone port, a built-in microphone, and a combination expansion port and VGA analog monitor con-nector. Just above the screen is a built-in 1.3-megapixel video camera. To top it off, the machine has a SiRF III GPS transceiver to use along with the bundled copy of Microsoft Streets & Trips 2006; we found this combination a workable GPS solution, though it can’t match the accuracy of a dedi-cated GPS device.

We were pleasantly sur-prised to fi nd a real-live Win-dows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 DVD provided with the

package. As with other UMPCs, you have to furnish your own USB 2.0-connected external DVD drive to run the disc. The R2H’s one drawback is its short battery life, the unit ran out of juice after only 2 hours, 10 minutes of use. The sheer functionality and fl exibil-ity of the Asus handheld, and its plethora of built-in features,

make the R2H a potent option in the UMPC category.

—Thomas Jungbluth

U M P C

R2H Asus

PCW Rating

The R2H from Asus is a well

priced UMPC offering an

attractive feature set.

Price: Rs 77990

83 Very Good

THE R2H FROM Asus looks more like a portable media player but it

offers an exhaustive set of connectivity options for the road warriors.

you’ve invested in a fair number of Palm applications over the years, but now you fi nd yourself coveting a skin-ny Windows Mobile–based handset. StyleTap’s epony-mous software may ease your

transit ion to Microsoft : StyleTap runs Palm apps on a Windows Mobile device—even if the device doesn’t have a touch screen.

We tried a preview version of StyleTap Platform for Windows Smartphone on a Samsung BlackJack. Unlike previous ver-sions of StyleTap, which could support only Pocket PCs with touch screens, the latest version works with newer display for-mats (for instance, the Black-Jack’s small, wide-aspect-ratio screen) and doesn’t require the device to have a touch screen.

Getting started with StyleTap is easy: We installed the as -sociated desktop software—a 1.2MB download. (Windows Vista users must have the lat-est version of Windows Mobile

Device Center) StyleTap’s icon appeared on the BlackJack after our next desktop syn-chronization. On subsequent sync sessions, StyleTap installed the Palm programs and fi les we chose.

Whenever we ran a Palm app, StyleTap created a cursor that functioned like a stylus: To move it, you use the smart phone’s directional control (a four-way wheel on the Black-Jack), pressing either the ‘select’ or ‘OK’ button in lieu of tap-ping. By default, the cursor moves one pixel at a time when you press the wheel; a cursor setting lets you increase the number of pixels the cursor moves on each wheel press.

Differences in screen resolu-tion make programs look a little

funky. For ex ample, we had trou-ble telling spades from clubs in a Palm card game on the Black-Jack. And some pieces of soft-ware won’t run at all: Another appli cation caused the Black-Jack’s screen to go white until we re booted the phone.

StyleTap may not be perfect, but it could help you make the move to one of the increasingly popular Microsoft Windows Mobile–based handsets.

—Yardena Arar

StyleTap Platform for Windows SmartphoneStyleTap

PCW Rating

Useful software lets you run

many Palm apps (awkwardly)

on Windows Mobile devices.

Price : Rs. 2,250

STYLETAP’S NEW VERSION

puts Palm apps to work on the

Windows Mobile OS.

Run Palm Apps on Windows Smart Phones

80 Very Good

M O B I L E C O M P U T I N G


REVIEWS & RANKINGS

sites like myspace and Face-book have popularized social networking via the Web. The next step: social networks that you start yourself, away from the spam and adoles-cent silliness that can accom-pany the big sites. Ning and Nexo’s eponymous, compet-ing services let anyone create, at no cost, a site for their bowling club, theater com-pany, or other group.

In many ways, Ning and Nexo aren’t that different from services like Home-stead, which for years have helped people create per-sona l Web pages . Bo th services offer a variety of design templates and let you point and click to add elements to the page (no need to download an appli-cation, as site creation is entirely Web-based). Both wi l l provide you with a URL within their domain. And both let you put blogs, d iscussion forums, and

video modules on your site so that visitors can inter-ac t wi th you—and wi th one another.

MAKE YOUR SITE

YOUR WAY

we found both Ning and Nexo easy to use: If you have all the materials you need (photos, logos, and such), you could have your site up in half an hour. Of the two, we prefer the look of Ning’s templates and the basic organization of the Web sites it creates. And if you know what you’re doing, Ning—which was cofounded by Net scape pioneer Marc Andreessen—is a tweaker’s paradise. You can easily adjust everything, from the font used for body text to the background color of the title bar.

If you know Cascading Style Sheets, the editing pos-sibilities are endless. Ning has opened the site’s source code, so programmers can build small apps to perform whatever function they need

and embed them on sites. Largely spoiling the look of free Ning sites, however, are the Google text ads that take up most of one of the four columns on the page. (For Rs. 900 a month, you can remove the ads.)

Nexo, which was in a pub-lic beta when we tested it, doesn’t allow as much flexi-bility as Ning. But for now Nexo has one great advan-tage: No ads appear on your site. Nexo CEO Craig Jora-sch says the company plans to include ads on most pages, probably in the last quarter of this year. You’ll be ab le to pay a nomina l monthly fee (price to be determined) to prevent advertisements.

Nexo does offer more pre-programmed modules, how-ever, so you can show product

information pul led from Amazon.com, say, or post a one-question poll. We didn’t like the default organization of Nexo sites, though: The fi rst page of a site shows just a b o r i n g l i s t o f t h e site’s pages.

Ning has another advan-tage over Nexo: Its blog and forum creation tools are a bit more sophisticated than those of the other service. Ning lets you thread forum posts, and blog entries have f o r m a t t i n g t h a t m a k e s them look more substantial than Nexo’s.

If you want a Web site that can be heavily customized, and you have the skills to make changes, Ning is a great choice. But if all you want is a simple site, go with Nexo, especially while it’s ad-free.

—Edward N. Albro

NingNing

PCW Rating

Ads mar the looks of this service

for creating Web communities.

Free (Rs. 900 per month without

advertisements)

NING LETS YOU customize a Web page for any interest, but the highly

visible ads from Google mar the otherwise attractive looks.

S O C I A L N ET WO R K I N G

Ning and Nexo: Do-It-Yourself Social Networks

79 Good

SHOULD I ALWAYS leave the lithium ion

battery in my notebook or should I take it

out until I need it?

Even if you use your laptop primarily

when it is plugged in, removing the bat-

tery is not a very good idea.

Your battery will function better and last longer if you

keep it in the ma chine. However, if the battery is unused

for a long time, it can lose its ability to hold a full charge.

To use your battery optimally, make sure you charge it up

all the way when you fi rst buy your notebook. You should

then discharge it all the way down, and then charge it up

again. This procedure calibrates the battery and enables it

to run for more cycles.

Laptop Battery Life

ASK OUR EXPERTS

NexoNexo Systems

Beta site; not rated

Service lets you easily set up a Web

page with lots of module options

and no ads—for now.

Free

CAMERA PHONES

BY GEETAJ CHANNANAP H OTO G RA P H Y: S R I VA STA S H A N D I LYA

I M AG I N G BY P C A N O O P

Around the world, more cameras are sold in phones than as stand alone products, making

Nokia and not Canon or Nikon the largest camera maker and seller. We put eight of the

best imaging phones in the market to the test.

53


CAMERA PHONES

Yes, most cameras in phones are not

even a spec on even an entry level

camera’s quality. To compare an oft

used but mis-interpreted spec, entry

level cameras are 4-6 mega-pixels

(MP) as compared to the top end

camera phones that are 5 MP.

But, phone makers have plucked the chord of instant gratifi cation in human beings at the right note. They provide the thrill of capturing a moment anywhere, anytime without carrying an additional device. But sometimes, it comes at the cost of the battery life, or size. In this comparison, we keep the cost factor low, the thrill factor high, see which camera phone gives the best experience of the lot . Where i t compromises on features and where on performance.

STILL

PHOTOGRAPHY

this is the nerve centre of every camera phone, all devices in

this category strive to outdo the other in this criteria. What the consumer has

to understand is that the megapixel value is not the end of the world here. It’s like cubic capacity in engines, or PMPO in music. Often hyped up but mostly useless.

In this set of phones, the Samsung D900 has a 3 MP camera that is not even as good as the 2 MP camera sported by Sony Ericsson (S/E) K750i in quality. Not only that, another important feature here is the autofocus in all these cameras. Some are faster than the others in focusing, resulting in faster cap-ture of images and preventing the “loss of moment”. The S/E K790i and the Nokia N95/ N93i were par-ticularly good in this. But the N95 was not able to auto focus objects at a distance. On the other hand, the S/E K550i was just a bit slower than the other S/E phones. Where it excelled was in the camera startup time. As advertised the S/E K550i was one of the fastest to get the camera going.

How often do you take only one shot? Typically, it’s about 2-3 shots at a time. The important aspect that comes into

play here is the time taken between shots. It includes the number of button clicks required as well as the time the phone takes in saving the file on the memory. Most of the time it is a multi-ple of the load on the phone at particu-lar time, the capacity of the card, free avai lable memory and the basic processing speed of the phone. The Samsung D900 and the Nokia N73 were the slowest in this regard, taking for-ever to save pictures.

Whatever the shortcomings, these phones offer a lot of digital camera fea-tures. The Cybershot and N series phones exemplify this point with the kind of fea-tures that are on offer. You can have expo-sure compensation, choose from automat-ic scene modes like landscape, portrait, beach and snow, shoot in burst mode or even set a timer so that you can feature in the shot with your friends and family.

One of the features that we really liked though was the panorama mode in the S/E phones. Using this mode you can click three photographs in a row and stitch them together to form an extremely wide angle panorama shot. This is helpful when you are taking a picture of a huge bunch of people or a

great looking landscape that cannot be captured in one frame. If shot proper-ly using the small image guide , which appears before taking every photo-graph, the photos can turn out to be really great.

Coming down to actual picture quality, we found that the S/E K790i per-formed the best, despite

its lesser MP rating as compared to the Nokia N95 in outdoors, with bright light conditions. The photographs were phe-nomenally clear, devoid of any noise as compared to the Nokia N95 which was just a bit noisy. Comparing it to the other 3 MP phones, the Nokia N93i does not even stand a chance. The photos produced are a bit too noisy for comfort and not as good as the S/E K790i.

WITH A 5 MP sensor and Carl Zeiss optics,

the N95 from nokia is the best imaging

phone that money can buy today.

THE N73 TAKES good stills but the sluggish

response is a dampner.

WITH CYBERSHOT BRANDING the

Sony Ericsson K790i takes great stills


CAMERA PHONES

MULTIMEDIA PHONE PCW Score Features and Specifications Performance Bottom line

1 Nokia N95 Price: Rs. 34,872

• Camera Resolution: 5 megapixel

• Style: Slider (both side)

• Memory card type: Micro SD

• Auto Focus: Yes

• Still Camera performance(out of 10): 6

• Features (out of 100): 92

• Design and usability score (out of 100): 81

A truck load of features, the highest camera resolu-tion, great video capture quality, dedicated music playback buttons, an intuitive new interface are some of the things that make this one a winner. But for the speed of the phone, Nokia has got it right this time.

2 Sony Ericsson K790iPrice: Rs. 17314

• Camera Resolution: 3.2 megapixel

• Style: Candybar

• Memory card type: Memory Stick Duo

• Auto Focus: Yes




The best performer when it comes to still pho-tography, there is no other phone to look at if you want just a camera in a phone. Not as feature rich as the N95, it does the job of a camera phone wihout any frills.

3 Nokia N73 - Music EditionPrice: Rs. 22870


• Style: Candybar


• Auto Focus: Yes




A potential killer phone by Nokia, that comes bun-dled with a 2GB memory card. But it is a bit of a let down to use. The phone is too slow, but the camera is quite usable, and so are the music features.



• Style: Candybar


• Auto Focus: Yes




If you are on a budget for a camera phone, then there is nothing better than the K750i. A good 2 MP camera, with music features, EDGE and a radio at less than 10K is a killer deal.

5 Nokia N93iPrice: Rs. 32699


• Style: Clamshell - Swivel


• Auto Focus: Yes




A bit of a dissapointment in the performance, the phone lost out mainly because of its size and the sub standard still photographs. The video though was something to marvel at.



• Style: Candybar


• Auto Focus: Yes




The latest from the Sony Ericsson stable, it replaces the joy stick with a D-pad, making it more durable. Had good camera startup time, but takes a bit of time to focus in low light conditions.

7 Samsung SGH-D900Price: Rs. 23499


• Style: Slider


• Auto Focus: Yes




The blonde in all the phones here, it looks the best of the lot, with exceptionally good indus-trial design and a slim form factor. Compared to the others, the camera is best used sparingly.

8 Motorola RIZR Z3Price: Rs. 9899


• Style: Slider


• Auto Focus: Yes




The RIZR is a disspointment compared to the oth-ers here. The picture quality is not too happening, and nor the styling. It’s high time that the RIZR, rises up to the competition.

CHART NOTE: * Prices mentioned above are indicative market prices as on 10-05-2007

FEATURES COMPARISON

IMAGING PHONESTHE N95 FROM Nokia is the king of video while the Sony Erisson K790i captures crisp stills with its 3.2 MP sensor.

74Good

71Good

71Good

71Good

70Good

67Fair

61Fair

57Poor

BestBUY

In low light conditions though the results of the Nokia N95 and the S/E K790i were quite comparable, both with and without fl ash. The Nokia N73 per-formed quite well, but the N93i was a huge disappointment again. The blue-ish fl ash distorted the colors in the pho-tos in low light conditions, beyond repair. And, the flash throw was not good enough. As a matter of fact, we found that the flash of the K790i was the best of the lot.

SHOOTING

VIDEOS

though the phones

may be comparable when it comes down to shooting still photo-graphs, they are miles apart when it comes down to shooting videos. The Nokia N9x series soars above the others here. These phones are the most accomplished of the lot when it comes to moving pictures. The N93i form factor, though bulky and odd, it is absolutely apt for shooting video.

THE SONY ERICSSON K750I offers fast

focussing and good overall image quality.


CAMERA PHONES

The fl ip-and-swivel action that it has is quite similar to a lot of digital camcord-ers. It has a really good grip and prevents the photograph from shaking while tak-ing the video. The large record button is extremely easy to use, along with the zoom options. Along with all these options you can shoot videos in TV reso-lution (640x480) at 30 frames-per-second. Which is similar to any good digital cam-era’s feature sets. But, do not look for absolute clarity here as the images are still a bit pixilated, but easily useful to satisfy that urge for instant gratifi cation.

Some adventurous documentary makers have even made documentaries using their N series phones. As men-tioned all the others phones record measly 320x240 (max) .3gp videos good enough to be watched on the bonsai mobile phone screen. Yes they may give you an option of a TV out, but don’t even think of taking all except Nokia to the television, since you will be highly disappointed.

AUDIO/ VIDEO

PLAYBACK

this is one big grey area when it comes to camera

phones. Different vendors have varied takes on this. While the Nokia view is to cram it all in the N series devices, the

Sony Ericsson uses bo th i t s camera and digi-tal music player brands in phones, namely the Cyber Shot for camera p h o n e s a n d Walkman for Music phones. Nokia does manage to provide decent performance in its do-it-all phones, but the phones perilously come close to halting. They are so slow at times, that you feel that all they lack is the Windows blue screen. On the other hand, the Sony Ericsson phones, do one job and do it well, while still providing the functionality for the other. The Walkman phones have usable cameras and the Cybershot phones have a handy music player built in.

But, the N95 here defies convention, when it comes to Nokia phones. This phone is not too bad when it comes to the usual Series 60 culprits like the N73 and

builds in a more than handy music player with an even better camera. All the Nokia phones here also sport visual radio, which is still at an experimental stage with most radio channels.

USABILITY

w h at w e ne ed t o remember, wi thout get t ing too carr ied

away, is that these devices are predom-inantly phones and not cameras or music players.

Ones that look most phone like here are the Motorola and the Samsung D900. Both are sliders, but unlike the Motorola,

STACKING THEM UP WHILE CAMERA PHONES aren’t exactly slim and sleek, the Nokia N95 is surprisingly small for its feature set.

COMPARISON

NOKIA N95

SONY ERICSSON K750i

SAMSUNG SGH-D900

SONY ERICSSON K550i

MOTOROLA RIZR

NOKIA N93i

SONY ERICSSON K790i

NOKIA N73

WITH HANDYCAM-LIKE styling, the N93i from Nokia does a good job

with video capture but the still images were average at best.


CAMERA PHONES

The Samsung D900 defi nes slim and style. Its an extremely good looking phone, and defi nitely one to own if you are looking for style with something better than the usual camera functionality. But the Motorola RIZR is a total disappointment. It comes across as a product that is too late for its time and too dated.

The next devices are the Sony Ericsson phones, that take the shape you want. When you want to use them as a phone they are the absolute phone like, but as soon as you want to use them like a camera just tilt them on the top and open the cover at the back. The phone instantly changes into a proper camera with well placed cam-era shutter and zoom buttons. All of them are in the absolutely right places. An abso-lutely neat design job by the engineers at S/E. The device looks and works like a phone when you need to and a camera when you want to be the shutter bug.

All the Nokia phones on the other hand follow individual approaches to design. The N73 is similar to the Sony Ericsson, but is extremely slow to use. You may be able to take a power nap while shuttling between modes, especially when you are using the big 2 GB card fi lled to the brim with music.

The N93i on the other hand, though as slow as the N73, gives a lot better feel while using the camera, especially as the camcorder. The grip is steady, but the buttons on the phone disappoint no end. They are big but sticky and rub-bery. They Simply do not deserve to be on the phone of this class.

But the N95, deserves a special men-tion here for the phenomenal design. Though the phone is a bit slow again, if you can get past that, a whole barrage of goodies open up using a new intui-tive series 60 interface. The phone has everything and the kitchen sink thrown in as goodies. GPS, Wi-Fi, a 5 MP cam-era, 640x480 30 FPS video recording, a media player, visual radio, Did I men-tion it’s a pretty capable phone too? Yes, it comes at a price, but compare that to the number of devices that it replaces, and it’s really something.

NOTABLE

FEATURES

the most notable

feature for me here was the GPS in N95. It is the fi rst phone in this category to have GPS functionality, and works pretty well. And so does the new interface. One of the most important and commendable feature of this phone is the use of standard ports. Finally, Nokia has risen to the challenge and given a standard USB mini and 3.5mm audio port. No diffi cult fl at cables to manage. And you can use your favorite head-phones too.

The Nokia N93i’s swivel and shoot model is also good, but not implemented properly, and leaves a lot to desire. If it were just for camera phones the S/E K790i has the best size, and implementa-tion. The easy to use phone’s only prob-lem is the joystick, which gives away after a while in S/E phones. They have started the change with the K550i, using a D-pad. We hope it continues in the future.

CONCLUSION

all the phones have one USP or the other, but one of them, the Nokia N95 shines far and above the rest when it comes to design, and performance and the sheer number of

features on offer. It is the first phone to score above 90 in our features chart. A job well done to say the least. But Nokia does need to get over its nagging speed issues that can sometimes leave a bad after-taste. The N93i is a bit stuck in no-mans land after the launch of N95 and the N73i – Music Edition and needs to spruce up its sluggish software to get back in the race.

On the other hand, the Sony Ericsson K790i needs to be commended for its excellent still

camera. Not even the 5MP N95 camera comes close to being as good as the K790i when it comes to still shots. Yes the video recording is a bit sub-par and needs to improve. If you just want a still camera and phone, this is the one to buy. The K750i and K550i are good budget options in camera phones, but both have some tradeoffs because of the price.

Samsung and Motorola need to catch up fast here. Though the Sam-sung retains the premium position-ing because of its looks, it acts more like a blonde. If you want a Paris Hilton of phones, you have it in the Samsung. The Motorola on the other hand is stuck with its four-letter pseu-donyms that seize to have an effect after the RAZR. The RIZR simply does not rise up to the challenge.

PERFORMING SIMILARLY tO K750i the

Sony Ericsson K550i is slimmer and gives

EDGE connectivity.

THE D900 FROM SAMSUNG is a stylish slider but its

imaging capabilities are off the mark by a long way.

58 w w w. P C w O R L D . C O m j u n e 2 0 0 7

antivirus

antivirus

Twenty years after the first one appeared, PC virus-es are more diabolical than ever. How do you keep them off your system? Read on for the results of

our rigorous lab tests of the top antivirus programs.

STOPPERS

BY rYa n n a r a i n e i L L U S T R AT i O n S B Y U n n i K R i S H n A n

trojan horses. rootkits. botnets. keyloggers. These terms might not mean

much to the average computer user, but to the average computer they’re the equivalent of

the bird fl u and Ebola viruses. With money serving as the main motive, tech crooks have

turned these one-time playthings of maladjusted geeks into a serious business.

antivirus

To see which programs offer today’s best protec-tion, we tested eight stand-alone antivirus apps: Alwil’s Avast 4 Antivirus Professional Edition, BitDefender’s Antivirus 10, Eset’s NOD32, Gri-soft’s AVG 7.5 Anti-Virus Professional Edition, Kaspersky’s Anti-Virus 6, Panda’s Antivirus 2007, Symantec’s Norton AntiVirus 2007, and Trend Micro’s AntiVirus plus AntiSpyware 2007. These apps allow users to pick and choose their other security software (such as firewalls), and they cost less than security suites. All include antispyware protection, and many have antirootkit components to defend against devious attempts to hide malware deep within a sys-tem. To protect against unknown viruses, all of the apps we tested come with some form of proactive protection to supplement more-traditional signature-based ap proaches, which must match in coming threats against a database of known threats in order to block them. After rigorous analysis, we awarded Kas-persky’s well-designed Anti-Virus 6 the Best Buy. It ended up in a virtual dead heat with the entries from Symantec and BitDefender for best malware detection honors, and it also did the best job of cleaning malware infections. At Rs. 2,250, however, it’s relatively expensive.

In partnership with security research company AV-Test.org, we tested the programs under Micro-soft Vista Ultimate; all eight have a Windows XP version as well. By far the most impor-tant tests that AV-Test conducted pit-ted each app against a “zoo”—a collec-tion of nearly 900,000 viruses, Trojan horses, bots, and other forms of mal-ware. After this, each app had to try to detect current threats using one- and two-month-old signature fi les to simu-late how well it could block un known malware. Our three best-rated apps were, not surprisingly, those that per-formed best in these critical tests.

We also rated each program on its design and ease of use, including whether the application installed with an appropriate default confi gura-tion. We then factored in performance, support policies, and whether the app had features such as Web-traffic scanning. Finally we rated cost. To

choose our contenders, we selected from Vista-ready popular sellers and best-of-breed programs. Alwil and Grisoft offer feature-limited free ver-sions of their programs—but to compare apples to apples, we selected their paid versions. Wondering why McAfee isn’t on the list? The company no lon-

ger sells a stand-alone antivirus app (its Virus Scan Plus programs include a firewall). Another no-show is F-Secure, whose popular app wasn’t Vista-ready in time for inclusion in our testing.

1 Kaspersky our best buy antivirus pro-

gram, Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6 de -livered top-notch success rates for malware detection (96 percent) and disinfection performance (86 per-cent of all items). It was fastest at

producing new signatures, too, with a response time of 0 to 2 hours.

You’ll pay for this stellar performance, however. At Rs. 2,250 for the downloaded product, Anti-Virus 6 is the most expensive program we tested, though the renewal cost drops to Rs. 1,575 per year. In addition, its proactive protection was only middling, catching approximately half of the 200 new malware samples it was exposed to when tested using a one-month-old signature database.

Anti-Virus 6’s polished interface makes it easy for users to schedule scans. And clearly labeled, one-click drill-down options make fi nding and set-ting up various advanced features a breeze.

In dealing with e-mail and news traffi c, the program scans incom-ing and outgoing data over the POP3, SMTP, IMAP, and NNTP protocols. It monitors HTTP traffi c for Web-borne threats, too. It doesn’t set up a de fault scheduled scan, however—you’ll need to set one up yourself.

Built-in antiphishing protection can block scam e-mail, and Kasper-sky’s “proactive defense” module

looks for the hidden processes and Regis-try changes that can signal malware hid-den with a rootkit.

If you buy this program, do so online—the download costs Rs. 450 less than the retail box. If you want to get the Vista-

60 w w w. P C w O R L D . i n j u n e 2 0 0 7

BEST BUY KASPERSKY

Excellent virus detection

and speedy signature

delivery make it the tops.

BestBUY

nORTOn The Protection

Center affords a useful

at-a-glance summary of

system security status.

We also rated each program on its design and ease of use, including whether the application installed with an appropriate default confi gura-tion. We then factored in performance, support policies, and whether the app had features such as Web-traffic scanning. Finally we rated cost. To

61 j u n e 2 0 0 7 w w w. P C w O R L D . i n

antivirus

compatible flavor, you’ll have to download the pro-gram anyway. Just be sure to download the right version; it’s easy to click the wrong link among the many offered on the downloads page.

2 Symantecsymantec norton antivirus 2007 is a

solid performer, with an overall virus detection rate of 96 percent, placing it firmly in the upper echelon of the test group. Like the other top-rated products, it has an attractive and easy-to-use inter-

face. It was the slowest to respond to virus out-breaks, however, taking 10 to 12 hours on average to deliver new signatures. And like Kaspersky’s, its proactive protection was only middling, catching about half of the unknown threats in our test.

At Rs.1,800, Norton Antivirus 2007 costs less than Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6, but Symantec offers only a paltry Rs. 45 discount for yearly renewals, making it one of the more expensive antivirus options in the long term. Tech support is simi-larly costly:

Norton Antivirus is

a solid performer, but support

calls come at a price.

features comparison

KASPeRSKY’S fiRSt-RAte but pricey program offers a smooth, easy-to-use design and excellent protection against malware.

AntiViRuS SoftwARe PCW RatingDesign

and ease of use

Malware-detection

rate 1

Proactive detection

of unknown threats 2

False-positive

detections 3

System slowdown 4

Outbreak-response time

(hours) 5Bottom line

1Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6

Rs. 2,250 (Rs. 1,575 renewal) 85

Very Good

Superior 96% 51% 6 10% 0 to 2

This effective but expensive program has solid malware detection and the fastest outbreak-response time among currently tested competitors.

2Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2007Rs. 1,800 (Rs. 1,755 renewal)

84Very Good

Superior 96% 49% 3 10% 10 to 12

Symantec’s solid program wins top marks for antivirus detection and cleanup, but its renewal and support costs are high.

3BitDefender Antivirus 10Rs. 1,350 (Rs. 990 renewal) 84

Very Good

Superior 96% 61% 14 124% 4 to 6

BitDefender has excellent malware detection and a good price, but it causes a noticeable (though not show-stopping) system slowdown.

4Eset NOD32Rs. 1,755 (Rs. 1,215 renewal) 84

Very Good

Very Good

90% 79% 6 5% 4 to 6

NOD32 provides the best proactive protection by far, but its overall mal-ware detection is second-tier, and it has an overly technical interface.

5Panda Antivirus 2007Rs. 1,350 (Rs. 1,350 renewal) 79

Good

Very Good

90% 56% 3 4% 6 to 8

This competitively priced option offers good proactive protection, average overall malware detection, and a poor disinfection rate.

6Alwil Avast 4 Antivirus Professional EditionRs. 1,800 (Rs. 1,260 renewal)

78Good

Good 92% 37% 5 4% 6 to 8 This program has decent overall mal-ware detection, but poor proactive protection, and an awkward design.

7Grisoft AVG 7.5 Anti-Virus Professional EditionRs. 1,350 (Rs. 675 renewal)

77Good

Good 91% 34% 1 2% 6 to 8

The least-expensive program we tested, AVG has average overall mal-ware detection, the worst proactive protection, and a clunky interface.

8Trend Micro AntiVirus plus AntiSpyware 2007Rs. 1,800 (Rs. 1,800 renewal)

71Good

Very Good

82% 43% 0 9% 6 to 8

Trend Micro’s poor performance at detecting malicious software (overall and proactive) put it at the bottom of the barrel in our ranking.

FOOTNOTES: 1 Tests conducted using AV-Test.org’s collection of 884,164 malware samples. 2 Tested using one-month-old signature files. 3 The number of harmless files incorrectly identified as suspect, out of 20,000. 4 The amount of slowdown seen on a computer running Microsoft Office with the antivirus software installed, compared to the same computer without the software. 5 The number of hours, on average, that the company took to deliver signatures for new malware during the first part of 2007. CHART NOTES: Street prices are as of 3/31/07. The PCW Rating is based on the program’s malware detection rate (overall and proactive), performance (including scan speed and system slowdown tests), price, specs, and product design.

Top Antivirus Performers


antivirus


antivirusantivirus


antivirus

Norton performed well in our disinfection tests, fi nishing second only to Kaspersky. It cleaned up 18 of 22 possible items, missing just one of the two changes to the Hosts network settings fi le and three less-important Registry items.

Symantec has incorporated the new SONAR behavioral analysis technology for proactive protection. The program scans e-mail and Web traffi c, cov-ering the POP3, SMTP, and HTTP protocols. In addition, it ties into the MSN, Yahoo, and AOL instant messaging programs (though it protects only MSN by default).

During our tests of Norton Anti-Virus’s de sign and ease of use under Windows Vista Ultimate, the program turned off the built-in Windows Defender antispyware utility without notice. This is not because the two utilities confl ict, according to the company, but because Symantec feels that “Windows Defender offers no value beyond what Norton of fers.” BitDefender was the only other program that disabled Defender when it installed.

Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2007 was also the only program that triggered multiple UAC (User Account Control) alerts when we changed settings; that behavior could easily annoy power users who might want to customize the app.

3 BitDefender bitdefender antivirus 10 nearly

took top honors overall. It did a fi ne job of detecting malware, with a 96 percent catch rate. And it ranked second in our proactive-detection tests (behind Eset’s NOD32) when relying on one-month-old signature files, nabbing 61 percent of new malware samples. And at Rs. 1,350, with a Rs.990 renewal fee, it’s one of the least-expensive apps we tested.

The program was badly hamstrung by serious slowdowns in our application per-formance tests, however. One Firefox test, for example, which loads a large number of different Web pages, took three times long-er with BitDefender than with any other program we tested. The company attributes the slowdown to a known bug in the Vista version and says that a future BitDefender update will fi x it.

Though it excelled at detection, BitDefender was less adept at disinfection. It successfully cleaned just 13 of 22 items, missing one malware fi le and both of the changes to the Hosts fi le.

BitDefender also turned in the highest false-posi-tive rate, mislabeling 14 harmless fi les (out of a total

of 20,000 in the test) as malware. On the plus side, BitDefender has a

well-designed interface, with a slider bar in the main window that lets you easily modify protection levels, and clearly marked icons for launching full scans or setting up custom scans. It was also the only product to offer free 24/7 phone support, with easy-to-locate phone numbers and support e-mail addresses listed in the app’s Help section.

By default, the program runs a full-system scan daily. It monitors e-mail traffi c on the POP3 and SMTP protocols, and integrates nicely with Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, and Win-dows Mail (on Vista) for antispam fi ltering. BitDe-fender provides a basic level of instant messaging protection, but unfortunately it doesn’t scan HTTP traffi c by default to identify Web-borne threats—you’ll have to turn that capability on yourself.

A unique “privacy guard” feature detects when personal information—such as a credit card num-ber or Social Security number—is being stolen from a computer, without your fi rst having to tell the program what those numbers are. On the other hand, BitDefender was one of only two programs we tested that automatically disabled Vista’s built-in Windows Defender antispyware utility, however.

4 Eset when it comes to proactive protection,

Eset’s NOD32 clearly wins. In our tests it caught 79 percent of unknown malware samples when using one-month-old signature fi les. The next-closest app, BitDefender, was a distant second at 61 percent.

NOD32’s overall malware detection rate wasn’t stellar, however. Pitted against the huge AV-Test.

org zoo of Trojan horses, viruses, and other malware, NOD32 spotted only 90 percent of the baddies, compared to the top performers’ 96 percent rate. It fared surprisingly poorly with 32-bit Windows viruses (which account for approximately 1 of every 11 samples in the zoo), catching only about 75 percent of these. In disin-

stellar, however. Pitted against the huge AV-Test.

During our tests of Norton Anti-Virus’s de sign and ease of use under Windows Vista Ultimate, the program turned off the built-in Windows Defender antispyware utility without notice. This is not because the two utilities confl ict, according to the company, but because Symantec feels that “Windows Defender offers no value beyond what Norton of fers.” BitDefender was the only other program that disabled Defender

BiTDEFEnDER Glitches

with the Vista version’s

performance sabotaged

the product’s ranking.

ESET nOD32 The

company plans to revamp

its difficult-to-decipher

program interface.


antivirusantivirus

fection tests, NOD32 cleaned up all malware fi les but missed any resulting changes to the Hosts net-work settings fi le and most Registry changes, for a disappointing 55 percent success rate.

The program installed without a hitch, and the default settings were almost ideal for the average customer. One annoyance: NOD32 doesn’t enable the full-system scan by default; you have to sched-ule it yourself. And when you try to set that up or want to change other settings, you may be turned off by an overly technical interface. For instance, you’ll need to open up the ‘DMON’ interface module to fi gure out that it’s responsible for scanning Microsoft Offi ce documents. Also, if you do need help, the program offers no guideposts for finding support; you must go to the com-pany’s Web site.

The program ties into Out-look and Outlook Ex press for e-mail scanning, though i t doesn’t directly integrate with any IM applica-tions for scanning sent links or files. In addition, it offers integrated virus, spy-ware, and adware scanning, where other programs require two separate scans, one for antivirus and one for antispy-ware. The multithreat engine can also detect malware-hiding rootkits.

At Rs. 1,755 for a single-user license and Rs. 1,215 for yearly renewals, Eset NOD32’s pricing is about average for the group. E-mail and phone support is free.

5 Panda panda antivirus 2007’s middle-of-the-

road detection re sults, inadequate default set-tings, and uninspired disinfection performance

offset its strong features to pro-duce an unimpressive fi fth-place ranking in our tests.

The application discovered 90 percent of AV-Test.org’s malware samples, a detection rate that was dragged down by a relatively poor showing at catching Trojan horses (87 percent) and back-door pro-grams (86 percent), two increas-ingly common types of malware. It turned in the third-best showing for proactive detection, however,

catching 56 percent of new samples with one-month-old signatures.

Unfortunately, several important protective features of Panda Antivirus 2007 are turned off by default. You’ll need to enable e-mail scanning yourself in a complicated process that sends you to the Windows Control Panel. Protection against “potentially dangerous fi les”—a euphe-mism for adware and other annoying junk

proactive Defense

one PRoACtiVe APPRoACH

uses a method called heu-

ristics to examine a virus’s

programming for suspect

commands or segments of

code. often this method can

catch a new variant of some

existing malware—one of

the many Storm worms, for

example—by recognizing

commonalities with previ-

ously analyzed variants.

the heuristics approach

looks inside a potential piece

of malware, but behavioral

analysis, another proactive-

protection technique, looks

at it from the outside to see

how it runs. if a fi le be haves

suspiciously, such as by exe-

cuting from a temp directo-

ry, antivirus programs may

fl ag it as potential malware.

Some newer, advanced

types of behavioral meth-

ods create what’s called a

sandbox, in which part or all

of a suspect program can

be analyzed in a protected

virtual environment. the top

two performers in our pro-

active tests, which subject

PCs protected by month-old

signatures to new malware

to simulate future un known

threats, rely on the sandbox

approach. eset’s noD32

program intercepted 79

percent of malware, and

BitDefender Antivirus 10

stopped 61 percent. on the

other hand, Grisoft AVG fi n-

ished last, at 34 percent, de-

spite using a sandbox.

these numbers demon-

strate that though proactive

protections are important

supplements, they are not

yet ready to replace tradi-

tional signatures altogether.

to see how effectively our

tested programs handled

proactive scanning, consult

the “Proactive detection of

unknown threats” column in

the chart on page 105.

When a Signature Isn’t Enough

PAnDA So-so malware

detection translated

into a middle-of-the-

pack ranking for Panda

Antivirus 2007.


antivirus

that normally gets caught by antispyware in the course of its standard operations—is also turned off, and you’ll need to schedule your own full-system scan.

Once you switch these features on, however, Panda Antivirus scans will cover a good range of e-mail and news protocols—POP3, SMTP, IMAP4, N N T P — a l o n g w i t h We b t r a f f i c . I t flags suspected phishing e-mail sent over POP3 and SMTP, and integrates with Yahoo, MSN, and AOL IM applications.

Panda Antivirus 2007 s c o r e d p o o r l y i n o u r disinfection tests. It missed one existing infection en tirely, and failed to clean up another’s changes to the Hosts and Registry fi les. Including Registry changes, it scrubbed up just 41 percent of all in fections. And after we uninstalled it, Panda left behind a stray .dll fi le that some other antivirus programs then fl agged as potentially dangerous.

At Rs. 1,350 for two PCs (there is no single-license rate), Panda Antivirus 2007 is among the most affordable programs we tested, but unlike with most apps, you receive no renewal discount.

6 Alwil the paid version of Alwil’s software, Avast 4

Professional Edition, fi nished a disappointing sixth, despite a decent, 92 percent success rate at detecting

malware. It spotted only 37 percent of the malware in our proactive tests, the second-worst showing.

In our disinfection tests Avast was about aver-age, cleaning all infected fi les but missing changes to the Hosts network settings fi le and some Regis-try entries. Its catch rate was 78 percent.

The program installed smoothly, with appropri-ate default settings for the average person. It offers

two interface options: a dis-tinct, media player–type control panel that makes it easy to figure out how to launch a scan or set a manu-al boot-time scan; and an “enhanced interface” that permits you to access and

fi ne-tune more settings, but that seems far less user-friendly than the fi rst option.

After installation, Avast runs one full-sys-tem startup scan. But in the awkward advanced interface, we could not fi nd a place to set up a regularly scheduled scan. One option enables scans whenever the screen saver is running, but again, this program setting was diffi cult to locate.

The program scans a good range of e-mail and news protocols, including POP3, SMTP, IMAP, and NNTP. It also scans all Web traffi c. And Avast 4’s comprehensive instant messaging protection fully supports a number of the most popular IM clients—AIM, ICQ, MSN, Skype, Trillian, and Yahoo Messenger—and even several lesser-

AVAST The basic layout

option is easy to use

but hides advanced

configuration settings.

proactive Defense

we ALReADY MentioneD

the reason for leaving McA-

fee and f-Secure out of the

list.there are a couple of

indian programs that we

could not include in the

comparison. unlike the cur-

rent participants in the

comparison, they offer

standalone antivirus pro-

tection, eScan from Microw-

orld and Quick Heal both

offer security suites that

offer overall protection.

Here is a brief preview of

what the two of them offer.

escan internet

security suite

the eScan internet Security

Suite from Microworld

offers Antivirus, Anti Spam,

Parental Control and Priva-

cy Protection for your com-

puter. we will be evaluating

eScan when we conduct a

security suite comparison.

Microworld also offers a

free antivirus toolkit utility.

Download it from http://

www.mwti.net/products/

mwav/mwav.asp the toolkit

offers basic scanning and

does not come with mail

protection or virus shields.

Quick Heal antivirus 2007

Quick Heal offers Antivi-

rus, Antispyware and fire-

wall as a total solution.

Priced at Rs 1,350 it is one

of the cheapest security

suites that is available

today. the latest version

offers some additional fea-

tures like “emergency CD”

that lets you create your

own bootable recovery CD

to clean and revive badly

infected PCs, which cannot

be fixed at the operating

system level.

Security Suites by Indian Players


antivirusantivirus

known chat tools, such as Gaim, Miranda, and Pal Talk Messenger.

At installation, Avast 4 places on your PC a use-ful, built-in Virus Recovery Database, which you can theoretically use to repair infected program (.exe) fi les (we didn’t test this functionality).

The paid Professional version of Avast 4 costs Rs. 1,800, with a Rs. 1,260 yearly renewal fee. A free Home version lacks some features such as the ability to run scheduled scans and view previous scan results.

7 Grisoft grisoft avg 7.5 Anti-Virus

Professional Edition was the least-expensive option of the eight pro-grams we tested, and its 91 percent malware detection rate put it in the middle of the pack in that critical category. Unfortunately, the soft-ware’s last-place proactive protection performance and clunky interface dropped it to seventh place in our rankings.

AVG did a fi ne job in the disinfection tests, revers-ing more than 80 percent of all changes made by malware. It was the only program that removed every malware fi le and reversed both changes to the Hosts network settings fi le, though like every other app it missed some Registry changes.

But in proactive protection, AVG ranked last, failing to detect two out of every three new malware samples. Also, the pro-gram puts the user in charge of too many decisions that require advanced know-how. To schedule a scan, for example, you have to wade through a “test manager” and fi g-ure out what the differences are be -tween a complete test, a detailed test, a detailed user test, and a sim-ple user test. Grisoft intends to revamp the interface, but we found this one hard to manage.

Grisoft’s AVG integrates nicely with Eudora and Microsoft Outlook to quaran-tine suspect e-mail messages, and it scans all programs’ e-mail traffi c over POP3 and SMTP protocols. However, it was only one of two programs (Trend Micro being the other) that don’t scan Web traffic, and it doesn’t directly support any specifi c IM clients either. The

paid Professional version is Rs. 1,350, and renewal costs only a scant Rs. 675 per year thereafter.

8 TrendMicro the last-place ranking of Trend Micro

Antivirus plus Anti Spyware 2007 was primarily determined by its lackluster perfor-mance at detecting malware samples. The program missed almost one in every fi ve samples, for an entirely dis-appointing catch rate of 82 percent.

Trend Micro did somewhat bet-ter at proactively detecting unknown malware, but even here it had the third-worst showing. It caught 43 percent of threats when tested with a one-month-old scan-ner. Weighed down by a relatively expensive Rs. 1,800 price tag and the lack of a renewal discount, Trend Micro’s antivirus product left much to be desired.

On the plus side, the program installed smoothly, was easy to

use, and includes good default settings—such as an automatically scheduled full-system scan—for the average person. It provides a user-confi gurable scheduled scan, and it checks for definition updates every 3 hours. These defaults are a snap to change via an intuitive and smooth interface that will appeal to even the most nontechnical user.

One particularly useful feature scans for known Microsoft prod-uct vulnerabilities. If a machine is missing an important security patch, for example, the applica-tion guides the user to Microsoft’s Windows Update site to down-load and apply the appropriate updates and patches.

Trend Micro’s AntiVirus scans e-mail traffi c over the POP3 and SMTP protocols, but unlike practi-cally every other program we test-

ed (except for Grisoft’s AVG), it does not scan HTML traffi c. Also, it stands alone in being un able to launch a manual fi le scan when you right-click within Win-dows Explorer, a weakness in the Vista version that the company says it will remedy in future up dates. And fi nally, the application’s antispyware protection has an annoying habit of labeling tracking cookies as dangerous spyware.

TREnD miCRO The worst

overall malware detection

rate all but guaranteed

this package last place.

Grisoft’s AVG integrates nicely with Eudora and Microsoft Outlook to quaran-tine suspect e-mail messages, and it scans all programs’ e-mail traffi c over POP3 and SMTP protocols. However, it was only one of two programs (Trend Micro being the

AVG This low-cost but

clunky app per formed

poorly in our pro active-

protection tests.

ware’s last-place proactive protection performance and clunky interface dropped it to seventh place in

AVG did a fi ne job in the disinfection tests, revers-ing more than 80 percent of all changes made by malware. It was the only program that removed

appointing catch rate of 82 percent. Trend Micro did somewhat bet-

ter at proactively detecting unknown malware, but even here it had the third-worst showing. It caught 43 percent of threats when tested with a one-month-old scan-ner. Weighed down by a relatively expensive Rs. 1,800 price tag and the lack of a renewal discount, Trend Micro’s antivirus product left much to be desired.

On the plus side, the program installed smoothly, was easy to

use, and includes good default settings—such as an automatically scheduled full-system scan—for the average person. It provides a user-confi gurable

FREE STUFF

5050PLUS


Want to make your PC more productive, secure, informative, and entertaining? These software do the trick—and they don’t cost a rupee

BY PRESTON GRALLA ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANIL T

FANTASTIC FANTASTIC

Once upon a time you actually had to pay for great software or use

illegal cracked versions. Luckily, we no longer live in that world.

Want to tune up your PC, keep it safe, create graphics, or back up

your system with gobs of free storage space? You can fi nd free

software to do all that, and plenty more. We revved up our cable

modem and searched for the most intriguing free offerings out

there. Here are our hand picked goodies for all your tasks.

FREEBIESFREEBIES


FREE STUFF

TWEAKING WINDOWS XP

Fresh UI: Fresh UI is a tweaker’s heaven: With it you can change scores of settings in XP, many of which you probably never knew existed. Want to alter any aspect of the Windows interface? Go ahead. Cus-tomize the Start menu? No problem. Change global menu settings and dozens of network and Internet settings? You can do them all, and a whole lot more.Microsoft Power Toys for Windows XP:

Who says Microsoft can’t write great software? These easy-to-use tweaking tools allow you to customize XP in countless ways.Tweak and Tune: This freebie doesn’t have as many options and tools as Fresh UI does, but it’s simple to use and well laid-out. It is extremely simple to use for any-one who wants a straightforward approach to tweaking.

TWEAKING WINDOWS VISTA

TweakVI Basic: If you want to do some serious Windows Vista tweaking, you need this utility. Microsoft seems to have gone out of its way to make Vista unfriendly to power users. But this great freebie gives you hundreds of ways to adjust the operating system, tasks that otherwise would be extremely diffi cult to do. Whether you want to, say, hack the Start menu, put an image on Internet Explorer’s toolbar, or optimize your CPU’s cache, this program has some-thing for you.VistaBootPRO: Want to change how Windows Vista boots? Ordinarily you’d have to learn the ins and outs of the incom-prehensible BCDEdit command-line tool. But this simple, graphical program lets you mas-ter Vista’s boot-up and startup without ever touching the dreaded BCDEdit.EasyBCD: Another BCD editor, this one is great for setting up a machine with Vista and other operating systems, such as Linux or XP. Setting up and confi g-uring Windows boot entries is simple, and there is no easier way to quickly boot right into Linux, Mac OS X, or BSD straight from the Windows Vista bootloader - on the fl y.

SECURITY TOOLS

Ad-Aware SE Personal: Lavasoft’s free Ad-Aware Personal 1.06 does a good job of protecting you against adware and spy-ware that have already made the trip to your PC, but it lacks the preventative pro-tection features that are available only in Lavasoft’s paid products.Avast: In a world fi lled with high-priced subscription-based antivirus programs that bog down your PC while protecting it, Avast stands out. This program is one of the few free antivirus applications that do as good a job as any of the big boys. Avast includes more than seven different varieties of shields, safe-surf-

ing tools, and real-time virus protection for your OS, as well as for Outlook. The program downloads and installs updates automatically, and Avast works with both Windows Vista and XP. Given all this, why pay?ZoneAlarm: This free firewall still beats anything Microsoft puts into Windows, including the features in Windows Vista. To further limit your exposure to attack, specify which applications can access the Internet. The program lets you stop e-mail-borne Visual Basic Script worms, too.AVG Anti-Virus Free: Protecting against viruses and hackers, this application works with both Windows Vista and ear-lier versions. For home users AVG allows unlimited use and unlimited updates.SMAC: This utility lets you change the MAC address (the unique ID) of a wireless adapter. Use it to perform vulnerability test-ing, or to keep your identity private. FRESH UI GIVES you the tools to mold Windows XP to look and act just as you want it.

SYSTEM UTILITIES

AVAST CAN STOP viruses threatening your inbox and chat client.


FREE STUFF

Microsoft Windows Defender: Though not everyone is a fan of Microsoft’s antispy-ware program, we love some of its tools. We’re particularly fond of the Software Explorer feature, which lets you disable programs that launch on Windows startup.Spybot Search and Destroy: We still adore this perennial favorite. But remember — since no single antispyware program can detect and kill all spyware, Spybot should be just one piece of your security arsenal.

REGISTRY CLEANERS

TweakNow RegCleaner Standard: The reg-istry is a scary place and TweakNow Reg-Cleaner Standard is your virtual Virgil, a guide into the depths of the registry. It automatically scans your registry and reveals problems. After you examine the changes and tell the software to do its magic, it cleans the registry for you.Clean My Registry:This Registry cleaner will not show you quite as much informa-tion as TweakNow does, but it is fast and it does a good job of sweeping away the junk.

SYSTEM INFORMATION

Belarc Advisor: If you’re looking for an exquisitely detailed audit of your hard-ware, this is the download you need. The program starts with the basics, such as the computer manufacturer, installed RAM, hard-disk size, and processor type and speed. But it also shows you the motherboard maker, hard-disk manufac-turer, chassis serial number, PC service tag, bus type and speed, multimedia devices...the list goes on.

SpeedFan: This must-have for serious over-clockers touts itself as a monitor for your system’s temperature and fan speed. The real reason it’s worthwhile is that it lets you easily overclock your PC and adjust the fan speed so it doesn’t overheat.M2 Information: This program performs a quick scan of your computer and lists details such as the processor type and speed, the amount of RAM, and disk information.

E-MAIL CLIENTS

Thunderbird: This e-mail client has a nice, simple interface, spam filtering, antiphishing features, RSS news-feed functions, quick search, and a spelling checker. It’s from the folks who brought you the Firefox Web browser. Eudora: Sure, this freebie e-mail favorite has been around for quite some time. But there’s a good reason for that: Eudora includes features like Mood Watch (which rates messages on a mood meter) that no other tool has. People who suffer from e-mail overload (and that’s everyone, isn’t

it?) will treasure the program’s unique f o l d e r s - b a s e d approach to message organization. Spamato : Tired of wading through the spam clogging your inbox? This add-on for Outlook, Thunderbird, and Mozilla Mail does everything it can to eradicate the junk.

FILE SHARING

AllPeers: Need to share fi les? AllPeers, which works from within Firefox (an Internet Explorer version is planned, but not yet available), lets you set up folders for fi le sharing. You can specify who has access to those files, and you can send messages to those people to alert them when fi les are ready. In addition, you can share Web pages or images from Web pages, and you can view any media fi les you receive from other people right inside Firefox. It’s the easiest way to share fi les of any kind with anyone. Pando: This peer-to-peer software lets you easily send and receive large fi les through e-mail or instant messaging clients. The utility is particularly helpful because most ISPs have size limitations for send-ing or receiving e-mail fi le attachments. uTorrent: uTorrent is a standalone app and is extremely small in size. But that does not compromise on features.Skype: Phone other Skype members for free, enjoy video calls, and make cheap international calls. Yahoo Messenger: One of the earlier IM services, this software has gotten more

attractive with group videoconferencing, emoticons, and sounds. Trillian: Like Meebo, Trillian lets you log into multiple instant messaging systems simultaneously. The difference is that it’s a download, not a Web site. Windows GAIM:This Windows version of the open-source client lets you log into and

WITH BELARC YOU can quickly take an inventory of your PC’s

installed hardware and software.

ALLPEERS LETS YOU share pictures, music,

and videos within Firefox.

INTERNET UTILITIES


FREE STUFF

complete suite, it provides a word proc-essor, a spreadsheet, a presentation program, a database — and, for über-geeks, a “mathematical function calcu-lator” (but if you have to ask what it is, you don’t need it).Backpack: Juggling multiple projects has never been so easy. For every project you create a separate page, each of which can include to-do lists, freeform text, notes, links, fi les, images, and reminders. Back-pack also has a calendar, and if you use Apple iCal, Mozilla Calendar, or any pro-gram that supports the iCalendar format, your reminders will be automatically added to your Backpack calendar. You can even have reminders sent to you via e-mail or to your cell phone.Sticky Notes: This program does exactly what its name says: It allows you to create virtual sticky reminder notes that you place right on your computer’s desktop.Easy To-Do: With this small, simple download, you can quickly create and track to-do lists.NoteTab Light: This utility improves on Windows’ Notepad in so many ways, it’s hard to count them. Start with the basics: You can open multiple fi les, not just one, as you must in Notepad. Each file runs in its own tab, so switching between them is easy. The program comes with all kinds of nifty built-in tools, too, such as a feature that strips HTML out of a document, a Paste Board that saves text clips automatically, mac-ros, and plenty more.Crimson Editor

Do you need a geeked-out Notepad replace-ment? Look no further. This text editor for

programmers includes syntax highlighting for HTML, C/C++, Perl, and Java.EditPad Lite: This text editor opens mul-tiple fi les (each in its own tab), opens fi les of any size, and allows you unlimited undo and redo — in other words, it has everything that Notepad doesn’t.

BACKUP AND FILE

SYNCHRONIZATION

Microsoft SyncToy: This great Microsoft freebie permits you to keep folders on different machines automatically syn-chronized — so it’s perfect for synchro-nizing folders on a laptop and a desktop.

Everyday Auto Backup: If you’re looking for a simple, no-frills download that will back up your data, this is the tool to try.Microsoft Foldershare: Use this tool to synchronize files with multiple desk-tops — including Apple machines — over the Internet.

communicate on multiple IM networks, including AIM, ICQ, IRC, Jabber, MSN Messenger, Yahoo, and more. Google Talk: Though Google Talk doesn’t have the big installed base of other instant messaging systems, its clean, simple interface and voice features make it a good choice. Microsoft Windows Live Messenger: Windows Live Messenger’s easy fi le and video sharing is a big plus.

DESKTOP SEARCH

Google Desktop: Google has done more than just conquer the Internet — with Google Desktop, it has conquered your PC as well. The program brings the same kind of fast, accurate searching to your desktop that Google does to the Web. It searches as you type, and displays the results in your browser. One nice touch: When the pro-gram is installed and you search via the Google Web site, the results will also include those from your computer.Copernic Desktop Search: With an interface designed for your PC rather than for the Web, this search tool may be the easiest to use.Windows Desktop Search: One big benefi t of Microsoft’s desktop search program is its integration with both Microsoft Out-look and Outlook Express e-mail.

OFFICE SUITES AND WORD

PROCESSORS

OpenOffice.org: OpenOffice.org, the free competitor to Microsoft Offi ce is a

GOOGLE’S DESKTOP SEARCH brings the familiar interface of Google Web search to items on

your PC, including files and browsers.

PRODUCTIVITY AND OFFICE APPS

NOTETAB LIGHT CAN open many documents

at once and strip the HTML; it has lots of

editing utilities, too.


FREE STUFF

VIDEO

VLC Media Player: If you play a lot of video and use Windows Media Player, you’ve prob-ably come across a number of fi les that you can’t play — you’re told you need to have a codec to handle them. Good luck fi nding that codec. Instead, try the VLC media player. This software plays pretty much every media type you can think of — and likely a few you haven’t imagined. Not only will it play audio and video formats, but it will also play DVDs, VCDs, and many streaming protocols.iTunes Foobar2000: This straightfor-ward audio player won’t take up much RAM or system resources, and plays a wide variety of audio formats.

IMAGE

Google Picasa Snapfire: Snapfi re juggles all your image editing, management, and sharing tasks with ease.

Irfanview: Yes, we know this one has been around a while. But it’s still one of the best free image viewers for just about any file type, showing detailed information about images, helping you create slide shows, and performing tasks like eliminating red-eye.StudioLine Photo Basic: Here’s a great program for archiving photos and for organizing your collection. Microsoft Photo Info: This useful freebie, which integrates directly into Windows Explorer, lets you preview an image and embed metadata into it by right-clicking it.FastStone MaxView: This petite (1.3MB) image edi tor is small enough to store on an old floppy disk! Don’t let its size fool you, though: FastStone MaxView sports l o t s o f p h o t o m a n i p u l a t i o n tools, such as those for rotating, flip-p ing , res iz ing , and blurring.GIMP — GNU Image

Manipulation Pro-

gram: This program is a favorite of open-source software fans everywhere. No, it isn’t the easiest to use, but it’s nearly as powerful as Photoshop.Paint.Net: This surprisingly powerful image editing and manipulation pro-

gram includes unlim-ited undos and spe-cial effects, and even provides the ability to work in layers.

AUDIO

A O L N u l l s o f t

Winamp: There are lots of MP3 players available, but this popular program is one of the best belov-ed. Winamp saves playlits and equalizer settings, and the spe-

cial skins and dozens of color schemes keep it looking good.iTunes: Amonst other things, iTunes offers MP3 and pristine-quality AAC-encoding from audio CDs, smart playlists, burning custom playlists to CDs and MP3 CDs and of couse, transfer music to your iPod.Audacity: If you want to create media, not just consume it, try this program, which includes audio recording tools and sophisti-cated editing functions. You can even create audio soundscapes from scratch. You can add any of several dozen effects, use a sound mixer...in short, the app has everything you

need. While you don’t have to be well-versed in sound editing to use it, people with some experience will particularly enjoy its power.Free iPod Video Converter: This tool does precisely what its name says: It converts videos from a variety of formats so that you can watch them on your iPod’s screen.PSP Video 9: Sony’s PlayStation Portable handheld makes a terrific video player. The PSP Video 9 program converts PC video fi les (.avi, .mpg, DivX, etc.) into the PSP video format for playback.DVD Shrink: If you have ever attempted to make a backup copy of a DVD movie to a DVD-R, you’ve probably discovered that you can’t do it because DVD movie discs are dual-layer and have more data than can fi t on a recordable disc. DVD Shrink solves the problem by compressing the DVD data, letting you make the copy fi t on a DVD. GOOGLE PICASA MAKES organizing and editing photos easier.

MULTIMEDIA APPLICATIONS

AUDACITY AUDIO EDITOR lets you record, play, convert, and edit

various audio files.


NETWORKING


NETWORKING

BY BECKY WARING

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MM SHANITH

EASY FIXES

Networks are dandy when they hum along behind the scenes, but all too often they fail.

When your printer goes AWOL or your Skype calls break up every time your spouse starts

watching YouTube, it’s time to get your geek on and learn what makes your network tick.

Here are some tried-and-true strategies — and some new tricks — to help you make your

network behave.

Here’s help for real-world hassles, from dead spotsto security threats to streaming-media hiccups.

Network ProblemsFOR YOURFOR YOUR


NETWORKING

Nail the Basicshands down, the most common net-work problems are disappearing Internet connections, printers, and PCs.

Lost connections: Usually these can be solved by rebooting your broadband modem, network router, and/or computer. But if you have to do this repeatedly, your router and PC settings are likely culprits.

Start by extending your router’s DHCP lease time (the amount of time the router reserves an IP address for a device on the network) to a period of at least a week. You can access this setting through your router’s browser-based fi rmware.

If disconnects are affecting a laptop, check the power management setting for its network adapter. In Windows XP, go to the Device Manager’s Network Adapters area, fi nd your adapter, and select Proper-ties. Under the Power Management tab, uncheck the box that turns off the adapter when power saving kicks in. Your battery may run down a little quicker, but you’ll have a stable network connection.

Domain-name s y s t e m ( D N S ) services are anoth-er possible factor that can contribute to lost connec-tions. DNS servers are the PCs on which your ISP stores the databas-es that it uses to translate individu-al URLs (like www.pcworld.in) into their corresponding numerical IP addresses on the Internet. If you receive messages informing you that Web pages can’t be found or that e-mail can’t be retrieved, try using the DNS servers at OpenDNS.com in place of those at your ISP. Start by accessing the wide-area network (WAN) settings in your router’s browser-based firmware; then change the IP addresses for DNS to 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.222.220. OpenDNS is free, and it blocks known phishing sites.

DISAPPEARING PRINTERS

if your shared USB printer seems to come and go with a mind of its own, make sure the computer it is attached to isn’t hibernating. If possible, connect your printer to a desktop PC (as opposed to a notebook), and leave it on. (To cut back power consumption, allow the dis-play —rather than the PC —to go into sleep mode.)

In Windows XP, also verify that ‘File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Net-works’ is installed for all network adapt-ers so that switching between wired and wireless networks doesn’t kill printer sharing. In XP, go to Control Panel, Net-work Connections, and (for each network adapter) right-click the device and select Properties. If you don’t see File and Print-er Sharing for Microsoft Networks in the window that appears, click the Install but-ton to add it.

Better yet, set up a print server so that you don’t have to worry about working through a host PC. Some routers have built-in USB printer ports; stand-alone print servers plug into your router. If you use a multifunction device for printing, look for a print server that also supports scanning, such as D-Link’s USB Range-Booster G Multifunction Print Server.

INVISIBLE PCS

in many cases, network file-sharing problems stem from improper work-group and PC naming.

Make sure that each computer has a unique name; multiple PCs identifi ed as

YOU BROUGHT YOUR corporate notebook home, but now you fi nd that you can’t

print on your home network—or over a VPN connection to a printer in your offi ce.

What to do? IP printing, which most newer networkable printers support, is your

best bet. You’ll need the printer’s IP address (get it from your IT staff, or check with

your printer vendor on how to fi nd it—by printing a test page, for example). Then

run the Add Printer wizard in XP’s ‘Printers and Faxes’ window. Check Local Printer,

and under ‘Se lect a Printer Port’, choose Create a New Port and Standard TCP/IP

Port in the drop-

down menus. Enter

the printer’s IP ad -

dress, click Next,

and you will initiate

the usual printer in -

stallation routine,

where you can pick

a driver (either Win-

dows’ default driver

or the vendor’s driv-

er, if you have it).

Print Across Networks and the Net

D-LINK’S USB RANGEBOOSTER G

Multifunction Print Server supports

scanning as well as printing over a Wi-Fi

or ethernet network.

IP PRINTING


NETWORKING

‘Desktop’ or ‘Dell’ can cause mixups. Don’t use spaces in names (Windows ME and earlier Windows OSs don’t support it), and don’t create names of more than 15 characters. Also, confirm that all PCs use the same workgroup name. The default name in Windows XP Home is ‘MSHome’; in older versions of Windows and in Windows Vista, it’s ‘Workgroup’. To change either the workgroup or the computer name in XP, click Start, Control Panel, System, and choose the Computer Name tab.

THE VISTA DIFFERENCE

still having major unresolved shar-ing issues? It’s time to consider upgrad-ing to Windows Vista. The new operating system’s Networking and Sharing Center lets you know which sharing features are enabled and makes configuring them easy. Vista’s Link Layer Topology Discov-ery automatically detects network devices and allows you to see their locations on a Network Map.

BREAKTHROUGH FIREWALLS

vista’s firewall is smart enough to permit sharing within a workgroup. But if that’s a problem with XP’s fi rewall, try a free third-party utility. ZoneAlarm’s Trusted Zone feature lets workgroup computers communicate.

Or sidestep XP’s fi le and printer shar-ing complexities altogether by adopting a program such as Network Magic . Like Windows Vista, Network Magic puts all sharing and networking functions in one place, and it simplifies sharing folders and printers. A special mode even pro-tects shared folders when your laptop is connected at a Wi-Fi hotspot, a major security concern. A free version of Net-work Magic provides Internet connection repair and wireless network protection, but only the paid version supports printer and fi le sharing as well.

Beef up securitythe only way to guarantee the security of your network is to barricade it from the outside world —no Web, no e-mail, nada. But you need not adopt NSA-appropriate tactics to keep your data rea-sonably safe.

PUT UP WALLS

the road to a secure home network begins with a hardware firewall. Most routers have one, but those built into some inexpensive routers rely on NAT

(network address transla-tion) alone rather than using SPI (stateful packet inspec-tion) technology — a supe-rior approach designed to ensure that your computers receive only data they have specifically requested. Be sure, however, to change your router’s default pass-word when you set it up, and periodically thereafter.

Establish a second line of defense at each computer by turning on automatic Win-dows Updates, and installing

antivirus, antispyware, and personal fi re-wall software. Either buy a security suite or use individual best-of-breed utilities like Webroot Spy Sweeper, BitDefender antivi-rus, and ZoneAlarm firewall software from Check Point (in its basic form, ZoneAlarm is free).

Whichever approach you take, don’t rely on Windows XP’s Windows Firewall for your protection, because it can fi lter incoming data only. ZoneAlarm and other third-party firewalls are bidirec-tional, protecting both incoming and outgoing information. Windows Vista’s

THE VIEW FROM VISTA: Windows Vista’s Network and Sharing Center

shows you what’s connected and simplifies configuration.

SECURITY

Add a Second Network for SafetyIF YOUR KIDS open lots of ports on your router for games and video chats, or if you

want to run a home Web server or public Wi-Fi network, consider setting up a sec-

ond router to isolate these risky activities from the rest of your network. In a nut-

shell, you plug one router into the other, and assign each a different starting IP

address (such as 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.2.1). Then you attach your servers—or the

at-risk PCs—to the router that’s directly connected to your broadband modem, and

all your other computers to the second router. Internet traffi c to and from the

unsafe area will not reach your secure subnetwork at all.

Router directly connected to Internet

Router indirectly connected to Internet

Devices with open ports

Protected networked devices

Internet(WAN)


NETWORKING

fi rewall is bidirectional, too, but you have to confi gure outgoing fi ltering yourself in a screen that you reach by typing wf.msc at a command prompt. Vista also comes with Windows Defender antispyware, but not anti-virus software.

Keep things simple by using the same utilities on all your PCs (look for economical “family packs”). Then install them while signed in on an administrator account, or — if appro-priate — work with the parental con-trols found in many packages (and in Windows Vista). Keep your password secret: Remember, your network is only as secure as its weakest link.

COVER THE AIRWAVES

firewalls and security suites are futile against packet sniffers that capture wireless traffi c on a given frequency. Use the strongest encryption standard your Wi-Fi equipment supports: From stron-gest to weakest, the options are WPA2, WPA, and WEP.

Intruders armed with readily available software can break into WEP in minutes, rendering it virtually worthless except as a method to prevent bandwidth hogging by your neighbors. We recommend that you invest in new adapters if necessary to ensure that you can make the switch to WPA. To provide both your old and your new adapters with maximum security, choose a router that offers a simultane-ous WPA+WPA2 mode.

Regardless of anything you may have heard to the contrary, neither using MAC

(Media Access Control, a unique hard-ware identifier) address filtering nor turning off SSID (service set identifier — basically your Wi-Fi network’s name) broadcasting is an effective security measure. Both are easier to bypass than WEP, and they can create connection and administration hassles.

MAC address fi ltering, for example, requires you to enter a device’s MAC address into your router’s fi rmware to authorize it to connect to your network. But anyone listening in can spoof your authorized MAC addresses on their own equipment. Similarly, sniffers can detect even nonbroadcast SSIDs, so turning off broadcasting only makes it harder for legitimate users to connect to your network.

SAFE TRAVELS

open hotspots

are notorious sourc-es of infection. For true security on pub-lic networks, use a virtual private net-work to encrypt all Internet t ra f fi c between your com-puter and an inter-mediate server. Com-

panies often run their own VPN servers for employees; or you can sign up for a VPN service such as WiTopia Per-

sonalVPN or JiWire Hotspot Helper.

Next, in your Wi-Fi settings, turn off ad hoc (computer-to-computer) net-working and pre-vent automatic connections to

non-preferred networks. In XP, you can change both of these settings by clicking the Wi-Fi icon in the system tray and selecting Change advanced settings. Under the Wireless Net-works tab, click Advanced, followed by Access point (infrastructure) net-works only. Also, uncheck Automati-

cally Connect to Non-Preferred Networks. In Windows Vista, turn off the Vista

Network Discovery feature (which allows other computers to see you on a network) when you’re at hotspots. Vista will switch it off automatically if you designate a con-nection as ‘Public’, but alternatively you can disable it manually in the ‘View Net-work Status and Tasks’ control panel.

Speed up transfers if your Wi-Fi downloads take forever, network backups bog you down, or your Slingbox won’t sling, give these tips a try.

USE WIRES WHENEVER

POSSIBLE

a wired network (ideally one based on wired ethernet) is inherently more reliable and usually much faster than the open air-waves. There’s generally no reason for you to locate a network storage drive at a dis-tance from your router, so instead plug it in to an available ethernet port. The same goes for a network printer.

GET GIGABIT

most recent PCs have built-in gigabit ethernet, which means that they can transfer data at a whopping 1000 Mbps

YOUR ODDS OF picking up malware decrease if you

deny automatic connections to unknown networks.

THE D-LINK DWA 142 USB

router gives an easy

solution to creat wireless

network at home.


NETWORKING

— but only if your router also possesses a gigabit switch. For network backups, the extra throughput can mean the difference between an all-night operation, and one that completes itself in a fairly short amount of time.

BUY MATCHING WI-FI GEAR

to achieve the top speeds promised by the latest Wi-Fi standard, draft-802.11n, every wireless device on your network must have a draft-n adapter. Be sure to update the fi rmware on any draft-802.11n devices regularly, as vendors are now bringing the first products into compli-ance with the second draft of the standard, and this should help with interoperability.

CHANGE THE CHANNEL

the biggest obstacle to good Wi-Fi reception is no longer distance (since most MIMO and draft-n routers provide whole-house coverage), but interference resulting from nearby networks: In any urban area, you’ll probably see a long list of available networks. And because the

2.4-GHz band that 802.11b, g, and most new n gear operates within has only three nonoverlapping channe ls , ne t -works neighbor-ing yours are likely to degrade your throughput. In fact , the latest 8 0 2 . 1 1 n d r a f t effectively man-dates a 50 percent reduction in per-formance when your network is in the presence of other active Wi-Fi networks.

To minimize interference, install and run a utility such as the free NetStumbler to determine the signal strength and channel of each available network; then set your router to the channel that is far-thest from those of the strongest nearby networks. (A router’s automatic channel selection feature does this for you).

In addition, you might consider get-ting a dual-band draft-n router, such as the Buffalo Nfiniti Dual Band Router, which supports draft-n traffic on both 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz bands. This lets you keep older 802.11b/g devices on the rela-tively crowded 2.4-GHz band, while

using the uncluttered 5-GHz band (consisting of some 20 non-over-lapping channels) for your high-bandwidth apps such as video streaming, as new 5-GHz draft-n products arrive.

Get media-readywhen it comes to smooth video play-back and voice-over-IP phone calls, speed alone isn’t always enough.

TRY POWERLINE

if you can’t install ethernet, consider adopting powerline (rather than Wi-Fi) gear. Several powerline technologies support near-ethernet speeds; in our tests with streaming high-definition

video, HomePlug AV was the least susceptible to interference from other electrical devices.

Products such as Linksys’s Power-Line AV Ethernet Kit, move data over your home’s electrical wiring. Adapters plug into standard wall outlets; to set up the network, begin by connecting one adapter to an available ethernet port on your router. Then add other devices by running cables from their ethernet ports to other plugged-in adapters. You will not have to worry about overloading your wireless net-work with high-defini t ion v ideo streams, and performance will be far more reliable than on a wireless net-work, especially in a large home.

UPGRADE YOUR WI-FI

if you still want to use wireless for streaming media, make sure that you get draft-802.11n gear: Not only is it fast, but it has so-called quality-of-service (QoS) tech-nology that prioritizes media streams, VoIP phone calls, online game play, and other particularly time-sensitive applications. And don’t forget to upgrade your fi rmware to Draft 2.0 of the standard; practically all of the biggest Wi-Fi vendors are expected to be posting free fi rmware upgrades to Draft 2.0 by the time you see this.

INVEST IN A GAMING ROUTER

does World of Warcraft rule your house? For advanced gaming, a spe-

BACKUP

IF YOU HAVE several PCs run-

ning different operating

systems that you plan

to back up on one net-

work drive, you may

run into a problem with

file names that work

fi ne on one system but are

illegal on another. If you trun-

cate or change the names when you

back up the fi les, the backups won’t

be useful. So instead of using USB-

attached storage devices, which usu-

ally can be formatted only as Win-

dows drives, purchase a NAS drive

that offers specifi c support for each

platform you use; afterward you can

designate shares as appropriate (for

instance, Windows or Mac).

Multiplatform Network Backups

LINKSYS’S

WIRELESS-N Gigabit

Gaming Router

prioritizes time-

sensitive multimedia

and VoIP data.


NETWORKING

cialized router helps deliver maximum performance for both Internet and local multiplayer game play; this is especially important if several users access the net-work in your household simultaneously. Gaming routers have QoS prioritization, are tuned to reduce network latency, and usually have faster processors, all of which increase the responsiveness of PCs on the network. Linksys’s Wireless-N Gigabit Gaming Router supports draft-802.11n Wi-Fi, gigabit ethernet, and game tuning.

Make better backupstoo often, people plan to use a net-work drive for regular hard disk back-ups, but never actually do so. Maybe the network share isn’t mounted (visible to your backup program) when backup time rolls around (add it to My Network Places to avoid this situation). Or the system to be backed up is turned off, asleep, or on the road. Or the backup is interrupted. Here’s how to increase your odds of success.

CHOOSE NETWORK DRIVES

CAREFULLY

shared network storage drives come in two basic types: regular external

USB drives designed to attach either directly to the USB storage port included on some routers or via an ethernet adapt-er such as D-Link’s Express EtherNet-work DNS-120 Network Storage Adapter ; and network-attached storage (NAS) drives that have built-in ethernet.

If you go with a USB drive, you can usually detach it from your router and plug it into a PC (say, at another loca-tion) if you like. USB drives tend to be easier to set up, and you may use an old USB hard drive you already have as your storage device.

True network drives, in contrast, have their own processor and OS, and can be attached only to your network. They gen-erally have many more features, and they normally allow setup of private user accounts (“shares”) as well as public areas of universal access. The models topping our Network-Attached Storage Devices chart are the Infrant ReadyNAS NV and the Maxtor Shared Storage II .

For best security and performance, use a NAS drive that has gigabit ethernet (buy a gigabit router if you don’t have one) and RAID 1 or 5 redundancy. Don’t risk losing a 500GB music collection stored on a NAS drive without any backup; the best way to maintain a copy of your NAS drive is to mir-

ror it using a RAID array.Whichever type of drive you

choose, make sure that it’s large enough to accommodate future growth. Backups often fail because the backup drive is full. We recommend setting aside 1.5 to 2 times the storage capacity of your current net-work for your backup drive; double that if you intend to mirror your network drive.

PERFORM NCREMENTAL

BACKUPS

by copying only files that have changed since the most recent previous backup, you’ll vastly reduce the load on your network, and the length of time it takes to do a backup.

Cobian Backup (free) can perform full or incremental backups with or with-out compression, and can encrypt your data for better security on shared net-work drives.

KEEP YOUR PC AWAKE

the need to ensure that your PC is up and running at backup time may seem obvious, but offl ine computers are the most common cause of failed backups. Don’t turn off your computer at night — just let it hibernate. And make sure that your backup software can wake up your computer. If it can’t, use XP’s Scheduled Tasks wizard (under Pro-grams, Accessories, System Tools) to wake it up at backup time; for more on how to set this up, see “ Schedule Your System to Start Automatically .”

Add a Macokay, you’ve networked your Win-dows PCs. But now a new Mac is in the family. How will it fit in? Will it work with your printer? Will you be able to share fi les with it the way you can with your PCs?

In most cases the Mac OS X operating system provides everything you need to connect your Mac to your Windows net-work and share files and printers. You can plug your new Mac into your wired network or access your wireless router,

THE MAC OPERATING system carries all the

software it needs to join a Windows network

and use a network-connected printer.

THE BUFFALO LINKSTATION PRO LS 250GL isn’t scary to set

up, and is much cheaper and reliable network storage option.


NETWORKING

Online resourcesare you looking for help with a net-working problem? Chances are you’ll fi nd the advice or instructions you need at one of these sites.

PRACTICALLY NETWORKED

the leading home and small-busi-ness networking site, with tips and tutori-als on everything from setting up file sharing to using dynamic DNS services. The troubleshooting guides are invalu-able, and an active peer-help forum is another great resource.

WI-FI PLANET

the place to go for truly deep wireless tutorials and testing. Don’t miss the site’s articles discussing SSID spoofi ng and the use of VPNs at public hotspots . Has an active discussion area, too.

CERT HOME NETWORK

SECURITY

a comprehensive and unbiased guide to home network security, main-tained by the Carnegie Mellon-based Computer Emergency Response Team, a federally funded Internet security research and development center. The guide also serves as a fantastic primer on networking terms and technology.

It’s required reading for the network administrator in your home.

SECURITYNOW

great network security resource, with transcripts of Steve Gibson’s and Leo Laporte’s weekly SecurityNow podcasts, which translate complex security issues into plain language for a broad spectrum of visitors.

SHIELDS UP

also from Steve Gibson, a very popu-lar free Internet security test site. Go here to find out about holes (such as open ports) in your network that potential hack-ers could exploit, as well as useful tips on how to close them.

PORT FORWARD

need help removing roadblocks obstructing desirable traffi c to and from your network? At this site you can exam-ine a comprehensive list of ports used by Internet games, streaming video, and other applications, with port-forwarding setup guides for most popular routers.

MACWINDOWS

your best resource for cross-platform problem solving, including details on how to connect Macs to Windows servers and vice versa.

SECURITY

SECURITY CHECKLISTUSE A HARDWARE router, even if you have only one computer. Change your rout-

er’s default password to ensure that intruders can’t fi ddle with your settings. Use

a bidirectional personal fi rewall, such as ZoneAlarm. Turn on automatic updates to

keep your Windows OS secure. Use both antivirus and antispyware utilities, and

make sure that you keep them up-to-date. Confi gure fi le sharing carefully if you’re

sure you need it — and if you don’t need it, turn it off. Use the

strongest Wi-Fi encryption scheme that all of your wireless

equipment supports. Turn off ad-hoc Wi-Fi networking

and automatic connections to networks you’re unfamil-

iar with. Install a second router to isolate at-risk PCs on

your network (for details, see “Add a Second Network

for Safety”). Use a VPN when traveling, to avoid picking

up a virus that could otherwise spread to other PCs on

your network when you get home.

just as you would with a new PC, by selecting your SSID from a list of availa-ble Wi-Fi nets and then entering your wireless encryption key. All recent Macs support WEP, WPA, and WPA2.

In order to share files and printers, the Mac cleverly assumes the guise of a PC. It does so by implementing the SMB/CIFS Windows fi le -sharing s t a n d a r d a n d u s i n g Wi n d o w s workgroup naming. The defaul t workgroup name for any Mac is Workgroup; however, you can change this name to MSHOME, for example, by running the Mac’s Directory Access ut i l i ty, which also supports the Windows Active Directory (used by corporate servers).

Next, turn on ‘Windows Sharing’ in the Mac’s Sharing Preference Pane and ena-ble each of the user accounts that you’d like to be able to share. The new Mac should appear as a member of your work-group when you browse your network.

After selecting it and entering your user name and password, you’ll be able to navigate the Mac drive and copy or upload files by dragging and dropping. This works in both XP and Vista.

Similarly, you can print from your Mac to shared Windows printers via SMB, though the setup process is not obvious. In the Mac’s Printer Setup Utility, click Add. If your Windows printer does not show up in the result-ing list of available printers, choose the More Printers button, which brings up the Printer Browser.

Now select Windows Printing and Network Neighborhood from the drop-down menus. Your local workgroup will appear in the window; when you select it, you’ll see a list of shared printers to choose from. Thereafter, the Windows printer will appear in the Mac’s Print dialog box.

If all of this sounds like too much of a hassle, consider buying Pure Networks’ Network Magic for Mac. A preview version is available for download. It promises to do for the Macs on your network what its Windows counterpart does for PCs.


everyone needs a good moni-tor to get the most out of a PC. But which monitor you need depends on several factors— what applications you use, how much room you have on your desk, how much space you need on a virtual desktop, and of course how much you want to spend. From standard-issue 19-inchers to 24-inch monsters, here’s how to sort out what you need.

T H E B I G P I C T U R E

if you’ve replaced an old PC in the last few years, you may have kept your old moni-tor to use with the new machine. That’s okay if it’s in good shape—most monitors have a life span of about fi ve years—but if it’s a worn-out 15-inch CRT that produces barely legible text at 800 by

600 pixels, you’re hobbling your productivity.

Most monitor manufactur-ers offer entry-level LCD mod-els that combine very low prices with pared-down fea-tures. These monitors work well enough for Web surfi ng, e-mail , and other office tasks—as long as they provide adequate resolution and screen adjustment controls for brightness, color, and other settings. Midrange and profes-sional lines often provide bet-ter image quality and exten-sive features, such as superior image-adjusting controls, USB ports (make sure you get a monitor with USB 2.0 ports—some models with USB 1.1 hubs are still on the market), a larger set of ergo-nomic options (such as height adjustment), and higher reso-

lutions. Some professional-level monitors include asset control—to help IS managers keep track of their company’s property via a LAN—and hard-ware calibration, which adjusts the monitor and/or graphics card to ensure precise hues. (Third-party calibration pack-ages are also available.)CRT vs. LCD

historically, graphics pro-

fessionals have preferred CRT monitors because they support a greater range of res-olutions (including very high resolutions) and show truer colors and greater nuance in color. However, manufactur-ers ceased making the aper-ture-grille models—generally agreed to be the top-perform-ing type of CRT for photos and general graphics work—in 2005. Many pros now use

h i g h - e n d L C D s , w h i c h approach the color quality of CRTs yet consume half as much power or less. The development of color-calibrat-ing hardware and software specifi cally designed for LCDs has helped persuade many professionals to make the switch to fl at panels. Promises of improvements in black level (perfect black—which is tradi-tionally somewhat soft or grayed in LCDs) and a wider color gamut should make this transition still easier in the near future. Another bonus: The greater brightness of LCDs also frees graphics pros from the confines of their darkened studios.

People who work mostly with text have always gravitated toward LCDs because pixels on an LCD have well-defi ned

P R A C T I C A L A D V I C E B E F O R E YO U S H O P

Easy OnThe EyesOUR GUIDE WILL HELP YOU PICK THE RIGHT LCD MONITOR FOR YOUR NEEDS.

SMART BUYERSMART BUYERBIG PICTURE SHOPPING TIPSSPECS EXPLAINED

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edges, resulting in sharply focused letters. Some gamers still prefer CRTs because LCDs redraw their screens more slowly, which can produce blurring and motion artifacts in moving images. However, response time—the spec that governs image motion in LCDs—continues to drop, minimizing the ill effects. Modern LCDs can refresh quickly enough to make them game-worthy for most users.

Budget restrictions may still drive some buyers to CRTs, which usually cost less than LCDs that have a comparably sized viewable screen area. As LCD prices fall, though, more

users and companies are going for the slim form and low power usage of the LCD. So from this point on, this guide will discuss LCDs only.Key Features

N a t i v e r e s o l u t i o n :

Because an LCD uses a matrix of pixels to dis-play its image, it has a fi xed (or native) resolu-tion at which the display looks best. A 15-inch LCD has a native resolution of 1024 by 768, while most 17-, 18-, or 19-inch models use a 1280 by 1024 native resolution. Wide-screen 23- and 24-inch wide-screen models usually have a native resolution of 1920 by

1200, and 30-inch wide-screens have a resolution of 2560 by 1600. If you are using Windows XP or earlier and set the monitor to a lower-than-native resolution—to upsize very small text, for instance—the image will almost certainly be less defined, because the

display will use only a por-tion of the pixels it con-tains and will scale up the resulting image to fi ll the screen. Keep in mind that you can never exceed the native resolution of an LCD monitor. So, for example, you will not be able to display 1600-by-1200 resolution on an LCD with a native resolu-

tion of 1280 by 1024.Though scaling technolo-

gies have improved in recent years, you’re still likely to be disappointed with their results. On Windows XP and earlier, text most readily shows pronounced jaggedness at nonnative resolutions. Win-dows Vista may reduce this effect with its vector graphics, but it’s still advisable to use a monitor at its native resolu-tion. So a particular LCD is a good choice if its native reso-lution is one you are comfort-able using for all applications. In the PC World Test Center, all monitors are tested at native resolution.Aspect ratio: Most LCDs have a screen aspect ratio of about 3:4, much like a regular-format TV. However, wide-screen moni-tors have an aspect ratio closer to the 16:9 aspect ratio of HDTVs. The wide-screen for-mat becomes useful for work-ing in large spreadsheets or in programs that contain many toolbars or palettes. It’s great for watching DVDs as well, although the image quality may not be as good as on a TV. Many users see a wide-screen monitor as an upgrade from smaller dual monitors. A dual-monitor setup is usually the less expensive proposition.One important thing to keep in

mind: The screen size is mea-sured diagonally, and the area

SMART BUYER

SPEC TABLE

AS WITH MOST PC peripherals, monitors introduce you to a ton of unfamiliar specs. While price

or specifi cations alone shouldn’t determine what you buy—what you’ll use it for is important as

well, and image quality is the most important thing to most users—here are some things to look

for to narrow your search

FEATURE Low end Recommended High End

Native resolution

1280 by 1024 1280 by 1024 to 1680 by 1050 1680 by 1050 to 1920 by 1200

An important consideration. Images look best when displayed at an LCD’s native resolution. You can go lower (and in some cases higher), but the image will appear blurry. Some models are better than others at handling non-native resolutions. If you need to change your monitor resolution frequently, you’re probably better off with a CRT monitor.

Panel size

17 inches 17 to 20 inches 20 to 24 inches

An important consideration. Unlike CRT tube size, LCD panel size indicates viewable size as well. As with CRTs, the measurement is made diagonally from one corner of the screen to the opposite corner.

Contrast ratio

300:1 to 400:1 400:1 to 500:1 500:1 to 1000:1

Somewhat important. Contrast ratio can help you determine how rich the color will be in on-screen images. A higher ratio is better, but vendor specifications are not always accurate.

Viewing angle (horizon-tal/vertical)

120/100 to 140/120 degrees 140/120 to 170/170 degrees 160/160 to 170/170 degrees

Somewhat important. Indicates how far you can move to the side of (or above and below) the center of the screen and still see what’s displayed. This is important when you use the LCD to make presentations, or when you work with another person. Vendors use different methods to measure viewing angles, so make the final judgment yourself by visual comparison.

Response time

12ms rise-and-fall 12ms to 8ms rise-and-fall 6ms or lower rise-and-fall

A minor consideration. Indicates the time required for a pixel to change from black to white (rise) and back to black (fall). A low figure in milliseconds should indicate a screen that will not display motion artifacts in moving images during games or video. Gray-to-gray response time does not have a standard definition, and is a less reliable indicator.

Brightness250 to 300 cd/m 2 300 to 350 cd/m 2 350 to 500 cd/m 2

Somewhat important. All LCDs generally provide more than enough brightness.

Physical adjustments

Tilt only Tilt and height Tilt, height, pivot, swivel

An important consideration. Height adjustment lets you adjust your monitor to a comfortable physical level. Swivel is useful for sharing your work, and pivot is handy for viewing applications that are taller than they are wide.

THE OSD (on screen display) for LCD monitors

is similar to CRT monitors, allowing you to

adjust image quality.


SMART BUYER

of a wide-screen monitor’s display is smaller than that of a regular-format display of the same size. In other words, a 21-inch wide-screen monitor shows about as many pixels as you’d expect from a regu-lar-format 19-inch monitor. In the days of CRT monitors, vendors would state a tube size, say 21-inch, but the diag-onal of the viewable screen would be from one to two inches less. With LCDs, the stated diagonal is always the true measurement from the viewable screen.Viewing angle: Measured in degrees, an LCD’s viewing angle indicates how far you can move to the side (or above, or below) from the center of the display before the image quality deteriorates to unacceptable levels. No matter what size monitor you use, a wide view-ing angle becomes increasingly important the more you care about getting accurate, consis-tent colors for design work or for tweaking digital photos. Each vendor determines its own criteria for this, as no industry-standard method has been established for measuring

viewing angle. As a result, the numbers may not be compara-ble from one vendor to another, but they can indicate relative performance among models from the same company.

The best way to judge view-ing angle is to see the monitor for yourself, but you can elim-inate some models from con-sideration if their vendor-reported viewing angles are below a certain value. The larger the monitor, the more important a wide viewing angle is. On monitors measur-ing 17 inches or more, the edge of the screen is at a great-er angle to someone sitting directly in front of its center, and people are more likely to be able to share the monitor when working or giving a group presentation. A viewing angle of at least 150 degrees is advisable for these monitors.

The choice of panel technol-ogy affects the viewable angle. Some LCDs use twisted nem-atic panels, which have small viewing angles. On a TN screen, brightness drops and colors change as you move to the side or up and down. This can mean that your work will

look different if you adjust your chair or your posture. It also makes it diffi cult to share your work with someone who sits next to you (although a physical swivel adjustment can help with this). A few years ago, TN panels appeared to be on their way out, but recent interest in TN’s fast pixel-response times has brought more new models to the mar-ket. Other panel types, such as in-plane switching, multi-domain vertical alignment, and patterned vertical align-ment, have wider angles of view than TN panels can offer.Contrast ratio: This term refers to the difference in light intensity between the bright-est white and the darkest black that an LCD can pro-duce. Look for a contrast ratio of 400:1 or better—with any-thing lower, colors may wash out when you turn up the brightness and may disappear when you turn it down. How-ever, higher is only better up to a point. Contrast ratios over 600:1 are unlikely to provide any advantage, and monitor vendors are likely using “fuzzy math” to calculate those values, anyway.Brightness: Expressed as can-delas per square meter (cd/m2) or nits, this specifi cation measures the greatest amount of light that comes from a screen displaying pure white. Nearly all LCDs have a bright-ness level of 250cd/m2 or greater, which should be more than sufficient. (In compari-son, CRT monitors typically average about 100 cd/m2—though you might see some high-brightness CRTs.) Ven-dors usually set the brightness level to maximum on new monitors to impress custom-

ers. High brightness can be eye-catching for video and graphics, but it can be uncom-fortable over time, particularly for text viewing—and it may cause certain photographic nuances to wash out. After using the monitor for a while, you will likely want to turn the brightness down a bit to spare your eyes. Many monitors offer screen modes that change the brightness (and sometimes color and other characteristics) to make certain types of con-tent look best.Digital versus analog: If you have a graphics card with digi-tal video-out—and if your computer is less than two years old, you probably do—choose an LCD that has DVI digital input. The image won’t have to convert from analog to digital and back again, so it will be clearer. Even if you don’t have a DVI port on your system, choosing a digital LCD makes sense, because your next desktop PC proba-bly will have a DVI port—and most digital-capable monitors also have a VGA (analog) con-SOME MONITORS LET you tuck away cables out of sight.

WHILE BUILT-IN SPEAKERS save

space, the sound quality may suffer.


SMART BUYER

nection. Digital inputs tend to be found on more-expensive LCDs. Very few notebook PCs come with digital outputs for external monitors. However, some notebooks can gain a DVI connection when they attach to a docking station or port replicator. (Note that there are two types of DVI connections found on typical LCD monitors: DVI-D and DVI-I. DVI-D is a digital-only port; DVD-I can accept either an analog or a digital input. You’ll need a special connec-tor to hook up to your PC’s VGA analog port, however.) DVI-I obviously provides greater fl exibility.Special inputs: As users do more video and photo editing at their PCs—and as more watch DVDs on them—more moni-tors offer inputs we used to see only on TVs or peripherals. Photographers and videogra-phers may be interested in S-Video ports and memory card

SIZE

A 17-inch monitor is ade-

quate for most users. Look

for a widescreen.

INPUTS

While analog inputs are

common, DVI is better.

ADJUSTMENT

Check if the monitor has

tilt, swivel and height

adjustments. Some can also

be pivoted.

RESPONSE TIME

Models with a response time

of more than 12ms will

exhibit ghosting with motion

video. Lower is better.

4 CHECK POINTS

IN BRIEFslots; DVD aficionados may want to keep their eyes peeled for monitors with component and/or composite inputs.Response time: Pixel response time governs the time (mea-sured in mi l l i seconds) required for a pixel to change. In theory, a low response time signifies an LCD with mini-mal motion artifacts in mov-ing images. This spec is espe-cially important to video watchers and gamers.

There are two main types of LCD response time. Rise-and-fall response time measures the time it takes a pixel to turn from black to white (rise) and back to black (fall). Gray-to-gray response time measures the time it takes for a pixel to change from one shade of gray to another. Each type has its uses.

Rise-and-fall response time has been clearly defined and has been the industry standard for years. As of yet, no such definition for gray-to-gray response time exists. In theory, gray-to-gray response time could be a useful spec, since it can measure the time required to switch between shades (as opposed to black and white). This should make it useful for indicating how an LCD will look showing the subtle shades of movies and games. However, the lack of an agreed-upon defi -nition means vendors may use different ways of determining the spec. In short, response time specs are not always com-parable from vendor to vendor. Size: Though it may seem obvious, bear in mind the size of your workspace when deciding on the type of moni-tor to buy. A huge monitor may look appealing, but you want to make sure your desk is deep enough to let you view

it from a comfortable dis-tance. Just as you would with a television, you want to sit at a distance of about two times the diagonal measurement from the screen.Physical adjustments: Almost all monitors come with tilt adjustment. If you spend a great deal of time in front of your monitor, you may want to fi nd one that lets you adjust the height of the screen as well. You may find that it’s worth a few extra money to get a monitor that will keep the screen at a comfortable height instead of making your neck do all the work. A monitor with side-to-side swivel adjustment makes it easier to show your screen to a nearby customer or cowork-er. Finally, if you need to see view anything that’s longer than it is tall—a full-page document, a long Web page, or a screen full of e-mail—you could get a lot of use out of a screen pivot function. Just bear in mind that not every monitor with a pivoting screen includes image pivot-ing software; you’ll need that to make your screen adjust to portrait mode.

THE SPECS EXPLAINED

as with most PC peripherals, monitors introduce you to a ton of unfamiliar specs. While price or specifications alone shouldn’t determine what you buy—what you’ll use it for is important as well, and image quality is the most important thing to most users—here are some things to look for to nar-row your search.Flat-Panel LCD Displays: Fea-

tures and Specifications Guide

Important: Native resolution.

Images look best when dis-

MODELS WITH TILT

and swivel capabilities

allow you to adjust the

monitor to suit

your needs.

played at an LCD’s native resolution. You can go lower (and in some cases higher), but the image may appear blurry. The vector graphics of Windows Vista may lessen this, but native resolution will always look sharpest. Some models are better than others at handling non-native reso-lutions. (Remember that with LCDs the native resolution is the maximum resolution you can display.) Important: Panel size. Unlike CRT (which indicates both tube-size and viewable-screen diagonals, LCD panel size indicates viewable size as well. As with CRTs, the mea-surement is made diagonally from one corner of the screen to the opposite corner. Too small a panel, and you’ll have trouble cramming everything you need to see on your screen; too large, and may have to crane your neck.


SMART BUYER

Important: Physical adjust-

ments. Height adjustment lets you adjust your monitor to a comfortable physical level. Swivel is useful for sharing your work, and pivot is handy for viewing applications that are taller than they are wide. Somewhat important: Contrast

ratio. Contrast ratio can help you determine how rich the color will be in on-screen images. A higher ratio is bet-ter, but vendor specifi cations are not always accurate. Somewhat important: Viewing

angle. Indicates how far you can move to the side of (or above and below) the center of the screen and still see what’s displayed. This is important when you use the LCD to make presentations, or when you work with anoth-er person. Vendors use differ-ent methods to measure viewing angles, so make the final judgment yourself by visual comparison.Somewhat important: Bright-

ness. All LCDs generally pro-vide more than enough brightness. In fact, most users find they have to turn the monitor’s brightness down after purchasing. Minor: Response time. Rise-and-fall response time Iindi-cates the time required for a pixel to change from black to white (rise) and back to black (fall). A low fi gure in millisec-onds should indicate a screen that will not display only min-imal motion artifacts in mov-ing images during games or video. Gray-to-gray response time does not have a standard definition, and is a less reli-able indicator. General Monitor Buying Tips

■ Try before you buy. When it comes to choosing the moni-

tor you will be staring at for the next few years, only your eyes can tell you if a moni-tor’s image quality, resolu-tion, and size are right for you. Checking out models in a store can be helpful, but keep in mind that they are often hooked up to low-qual-ity video signals and placed under different lighting from what you have in your offi ce or home. If possible, try to find a vendor with a liberal return policy, so you can try the monitor in your own set-ting before committing to the purchase.■ Check screen real estate.

Make sure you have enough screen for what you need to do. Remember that the view-able area of a wide-screen monitor is generally compa-rable to the viewable area of a regular-format monitor that’s 2 inches smaller.

Similarly, the viewable size of a CRT is an inch or two smaller than the advertised tube size—so if you’re switch-ing from a CRT to an LCD, you may not need as big a monitor as you think. Also bear in mind that if you’re

switching from an LCD with a regular aspect ratio to a wide-screen one, the wide-screen will have less real estate at the same diagonal measurement. A 19-inch wide-screen is comparable to a 17-inch regular-format LCD. The current sweet spots for display size are the 19-inch regular-format LCD and the 20-to-22-inch wide-screen LCD, both of which provide plenty of desktop space for most users. ■ Gain more screen space by

using two monitors. Consider using multiple smaller moni-tors instead of one big one. With the right video card, you can run both simultaneously off the same PC. A pair of 17-inch LCDs will let you do video or image editing in one window, and word processing or Web brows-ing in the other. This can be a great way to get more use out of old monitors. If the double foot-print gives you pause, consider mounting two small LCDs on a stand. Look for monitors with good screen quality and the VESA Flat Panel Mounting Interface and an FPMI-compat-ible stand.

■ Consider USB ports. Univer-sal Serial Bus connections are designed for quick and easy attachment of numer-ous peripherals. When USB debuted, the physical acces-sibility of a monitor made it a natural choice for housing a number of the new, smart, h o t - p l u g g a b l e p o r t s (although the inclusion of USB adds to a monitor’s cost). The number of ports provided varies with differ-ent models, as does the number of ports that are up front versus on the back. Current monitors are likely to include USB 2.0 hubs. USB 1.1 is fast enough for hooking up lower-perfor-mance devices, such as key-boards, mice, and even broadband modems. USB 2.0 devices, such as CD-RW drives and hard drives, will work with USB 1.1 ports, but at lower speeds than with USB 2.0 ports.■ Decide whether you want

speakers. The inclusion of speakers in a monitor can be a nice way to save space on your desktop. But despite recent advances, their sound will rarely satisfy the discerning ear. If you’re picky about sound quality, save the money for a nice set of speakers with a subwoofer.Donate or Recycle Your Old

Monitor: Never, ever send your old monitor to the dump. Recycling is very good for the environment. CRTs contain lead plus other toxic materials that could leach into the soil and water in minute quanti-ties if not properly disposed of. At this point, most LCDs contain lead and nearly all contain mercury.

—PC World Team

THE DELL E228WEP, reviwed in the April 2007 issue of PC World, is a

good option for a value large screen display.


if you’re tired of leaving your PC on continuously so that other machines in your house can access the fi les you store on it, you’re ready to step up to network-attached storage. As you might guess from the name, NAS devices connect via ethernet directly to your router.

Your network storage device can be a stand-alone unit designed specifically for centralized storage, or you can con-vert an old PC into a fi le-sharing device. Either way, you’ll have a 24/7 data repos-itory for backups and for sharing docu-ments, images, videos, and other fi les.

A NAS device should be isolated in a safe, cool, dry, out-of-the-way place to make it less vulnerable to bumps, spills, and other physical dangers. (Plus, hiding your storage device keeps

(see FIGURE 1 ). The quoted prices aver-age about 70 and 78 cents, respectively, per gigabyte, versus 50 to 60 cents per gigabyte for general-purpose external hard drives.

Nearly every PC under four years old supports gigabit-per-second ether-net. If yours doesn’t, spending Rs. 900 or so for a gigabit ethernet adapt-er is a good idea. With gigabit ether-net, a movie streamed from a PC or NAS box looks as smooth as silk, large files transfer at blazing speed, and backups are far faster than with older 10/100 ethernet cards, which are lim-ited to 100 megabits per second (note that these are theoretical speed limits; real-world speeds are slower). That said, my old reliable 10/100 500GB Maxtor Shared Storage Drive still manages the small-scale backups for my office network.

Gigabit ethernet is not a perfect solu-tion, however. Router vendors have been fo cusing on boosting the speed and reli-ability of their wireless networking gear. Only a few pricier wireless routers—such as the Rs. 6,750 D-Link DGL-4300, D-Link’s Rs. 8,100 DIR-655, Netgear’s WNR854T, and Buffalo’s WZRAG-300NH—include a gigabit-capable eth-ernet switch. Some NAS boxes can con-nect wirelessly, but they transfer data at a considerably slower pace than a cabled connection does.

Linksys’s WRT350N pre-N wireless router has a quartet of gigabit-ethernet ports, as well as other features that make it an alternative to a dedicated NAS box. The WRT350N sports a USB 2.0 port to which you can attach a nor-mal USB hard drive, effectively turning the router itself into a NAS controller

it safer from theft.) Though off site is the safest destination for your backups, NAS can be the next best thing—bar-ring tornadoes, tsunamis, and other acts of nature.

NAS boxes are isolated from most of the software dangers that networked PCs fall prey to, as well: Even if the fi les stored on a NAS device get infected, the box’s operating system resides in its firmware (unless you’re using a retasked PC), and is therefore very dif-fi cult to attack.

DEDICATED TO STORAGE

the easiest way to add NAS to your network is to buy a box designed for that task. I kicked the tires on two units: the Rs. 31,455 Maxtor Shared Storage II 1TB, and the Iomega StorCenter 500

Easy, Low-Cost Network Storage for Everyday Use

HERE’S HERE’S HOWHOWHERE’S HOWE X P E R T A D V I C E O N H A R D WA R E , S O F T WA R E , A N D T H E W E B

S T O R A G E T I P S

ILL

US

TR

AT

ION

: M

ICK

WIG

GIN

S


91 WINDOWS TIPSSave time by placing a shortcuts to your most used files and folders to keep them close at hand.

92 INTERNET TIPSProtect your site’s domain name from would-be interlopers; Whois tools tell you who owns that site.

93 ANSWER LINEKeep the helpful Web cookies around, but give the syping ones the boot; disable your Windows key; back up your Registry.

(see FIGURE 2 ). USB 2.0’s real-world transfer rate of about 200 megabits per second can’t match gigabit-ethernet speeds, but it’s faster than standard eth-ernet and most wireless connections.

The WRT350N, like the Iomega Stor-Center and Maxtor Shared Storage II, also functions as a Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) server to stream photos, MP3 fi les, and movies to your PC, TV, stereo, portable player, or other playback device equipped with a UPnP media adapter. Like gigabit ethernet, UPnP is an important feature to have if you’re planning a home multimedia network.

For even more flexibility, get a NAS box with USB ports for attaching a printer that you can share across the network or for ex panding the network’s storage capacity via standard USB hard drives. With a high-end NAS box, you can back up your network storage by attaching a backup device directly to the box, rather than having to go through your PC. Most people, however, will store the backup of their NAS box on DVDs, or on a hard drive or tape drive attached to their computer.

Another option: Buy a NAS enclosure that lets you plug in your own hard drive to build a NAS box with as little or as much storage as you can get on a drive (or two, for enclo-sures that support multiple drives). Tritton’s TRI-NSS001 NAS Enclosure works with any 3.5-inch ATA drive and supports up to 400GB.

REPURPOSE AN

OLD PC

instead of donating your old system when you upgrade to a new model, retask it as a NAS box. Its ether-net connection makes converting it into a storage device easy. Don’t worry about its slow processor or lack of RAM: CPU speed and memory are less important when you’re just sending fi les. The net-work’s limited bandwidth is more of an inhibiting factor than even a ten-year-old PC’s processor speed.

Turn the old machine off, unplug its power cord, open its case (ground yourself by touching a piece of metal fi rst), and remove all extraneous hard-ware (such as a sound card or a TV tuner card, but not the network adapter, if the ethernet port isn’t on the system board). Next, close the case, turn the system on, and enter its PC Setup pro-gram (look on the screen for the appro-priate key to press before Windows starts loading).

Once you’re in the BIOS, disable any unnecessary features: If you won’t be attaching a parallel printer, for instance, d isable the para l le l por t . Other candidates for deactivation are audio devices, serial ports, secondary ATA

channels, and un used USB controllers. You can expand your NAS PC’s storage or back it up easily via USB, FireWire, and eSATA ports, so you might want to keep those. But less hardware means fewer potential driver conflicts and better reliability.

I don’t recommend this, but you could add wireless to your pseudo-NAS box via an add-in card or a USB adapter. Data transfer won’t be nearly as fast as across a wired connection, and this se tup won’ t work very we l l for streaming multimedia. But it’s a viable alternative in places where cable is difficult to run.

With your hardware pared down, it’s time to clean out your unnecessary software. First, create one last backup in case you need to recover a vital bit of data. Then reformat the PC’s hard

93

FIGURE 2: USE YOUR WIRELESS router as a

network storage device via its USB port, such

as the one on the Linksys WRT350N.

FIGURE 1: IOMEGA’S STORCENTER 500 (left) and

Maxtor’s Shared Storage II offer 500GB and 1TB, re -

spectively, of storage for your network’s PCs to share.

PH

OT

OG

RA

PH

S:

MA

RC

SIM

ON


drive, or the drive partition that holds the operating system. Repartition the drive to create a partition solely for the operating system; set the size at the minimum amount the OS requires, plus 1GB or so for a safety margin. Since you won’t be installing many apps, this partition won’t need much extra storage. Rule of thumb: 10GB is fine for Windows XP or Linux; 20GB will work for Windows Vista. Partition the rest of your drive as you see fit for storing the actual shared data.

After you’ve finished repartitioning the drive, reinstall the operating system, enabling as few options as possible. Then remove the unnecessary apps and services running in the background that you couldn’t opt out of during the instal-lation, such as Windows Messenger. This will save you some CPU cycles. If you uninstall the wrong app, you can

reinstall it via your Windows disc, but it’s a good idea to be cautious about removing Windows utilities.

Adventurous and/or tech-nical ly profic ient users should consider a minimal Linux in stallation. Using Linux to serve files to a Windows network ensures that your do-it-yourself NAS box won’t fall prey to a Win-d o w s - s p e c i f i c m a l w a r e attack. I like Xubuntu for i ts smal l footpr int and friendly installation.

After you connect your NAS box to your router with an ethernet cable, you’ll want to confi g-ure the unit via the HTML setup appli-cation in its fi rmware, which opens in your PC’s browser. Most NAS boxes

HERE’S HOW STORAGE TIPS

provide software utilities that walk you through the setup process—or you can administer the unit directly. To do so, open your browser, type 192.168.0.1 into the address bar ( 192.168.1.1 for some Linksys routers, and 192.168.2.1 for others), and press <Enter> . If you’re not sure of the IP address to use, open your router’s setup page and look in its quick-start guide for the correct address. Log in, locate your router’s DHCP table, and note the address of your NAS box (it may be similar to ‘192.168.0.120’; see FIGURE 3 ). The entry name will likely give you a clue as to which device you’re looking for. (Hint: It’s the new device on the net-work!) When in doubt, turn the device off, look at the table, turn it back on, and look for the new address in the table.

Next, type the address of your NAS box into your browser’s address field and press <Enter> . You may be greeted by a log-in screen demanding your user name and password, which you’ll find in your manual. More likely, you’ll have to create a password. Use the configu-ration utility to handle such options as formatting and partitioning the device’s drives, adding or deleting users who can access the drive, making folders public or private to individuals or groups of users, joining a workgroup, and setting RAID levels.

—Jon L. Jacobi

FIGURE 3: ENTER YOUR ROUTER’S configuration program

to set up your network storage device.

IF YOU PLAN to convert a PC for your

NAS device, you must reconfi gure it and

defi ne an area to store fi les in. It will need

a keyboard, a mouse, and a display, which

may not be practical to attach and use in

a closet or other out-of-the-way location.

Windows XP’s Remote Desktop Connec-

tion lets you configure and administer

the machine remotely, so you can skip

the peripherals—though the BIOS in some

PCs requires that a keyboard be attached

unless you change this setting manually.

Remote Desktop Connection works with

Windows 95 through 2000 as well; go to

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/

details.aspx?FamilyID=80111f21-d48d-

426e-96c2-08aa2bd23a49&DisplayLan

g=en for the free download.

If you installed your OS on a small par-

tition and created one or more other

partitions for data, XP lets you share

fi les by simply right-clicking a drive icon,

choosing Properties•Sharing , and check-

ing Share this folder (see FIGURE 4 ; the

option on some systems is Share this

folder on the network ). (The context

menu’s ‘Sharing and Secu-

rity’ option invokes an un -

related Windows utility.)

Most routers use the de -

fault Win dows group,

named ‘MSHome’ or ‘Work-

group’. If you have re named

yours, you must reset it: In

XP right-click My Computer

and se lect Properties ; in

Vista right-click Computer

and click Remote settings .

In both versions, se lect

Computer Name• Change

and enter the workgroup

and computer names.

GET YOUR PC-BASED NAS BOX READY TO SHARE

FIGURE 4: SET YOUR NAS DEVICE to share its files by

enabling this option in its Properties dialog box.


HERE’S HOW

there you are, rummaging in an ‘Open’ or ‘Save As’ dialog box, navigat-ing furiously through a maze of fi les and folders in search of the one you need. Isn’t there a better way? Glad you asked. These tips will get you where you’re going faster.

Places Bar: Array the two or three fold-ers that you access most often on the Places Bar on the left side of the dialog box. (Windows’ Places Bar is separate from the Places Bar in Offi ce apps, so changes to one won’t affect the other.)

Another option: Put shortcuts to the folders and documents you frequently use in a separate folder, and then add a shortcut to this folder o’ shortcuts on the Places Bar. You’ll have to click at least once more to se lect the one you want, but it’s still faster than digging through layers of folders.

In Vista, the Places Bar is called Favorite Links and is located both in Explorer and in most fi le dialog boxes

(applications not designed for Vista being a notable exception). To customize this list, locate the folder you want in the Folders pane (below Favorite Links) on the left, or select a folder or fi le in the

main file window in the center of the dialog box; then drag the item into Favorite Links until a line appears between two existing items (see FIGURE 1 ). Release the mouse button to create

The Fast Track to Your Favorite Files and Folders

W I N D O W S T I P S

the new shortcut. For a bigger view, click the down arrow next to Folders to col-lapse the pane. Drag and drop to rear-range items. To eliminate or rename a link, right-click it and choose Remove Link or Rename Link (or simply Rename ). Some links (including Desktop and Computer) aren’t removable, but you can customize links in the file list by clicking Links in the Folders tree that

appears below Favorite Links. My Recent Documents: Most fi le dia-

log boxes have a History (Windows 2000), My Recent Documents (XP), or Recent Places (Vista) shortcut in the Places Bar. Click it to see a l i s t of recent ly accessed fi les and folders. In Windows 2000 and XP,

you can fi lter the types of fi les in this list via the ‘Files of type’ drop-down menu at the bottom. In Vista, you can remove the current batch of shortcuts in Recent Places by right-

clicking the icon and choosing Clear Recent Items List .

‘File name’ drop-down: A shorter list of recently used fi les lies in the ‘File name’ drop-down menu near the bottom of the dialog box. Click the arrow to the right to see the path of recently accessed fi les. To fi lter this list by fi le type, se lect the type from the ‘Files of type’ drop-down list (2000 and XP) or from the pop-up menu located to the right of the ‘File name’ box (Vista).

To open a recently used folder rather than a file, in Windows 2000 and XP, use the ‘File name’ drop-down menu to select a file located in the folder you need, press the right arrow key once to deselect the text in the ‘File name’ box, and press <Backspace> as many times as necessary to delete the file name, leaving only the path. Finally, press <Enter> . The file list above switches to the desired folder. In Vista, the drop-down list at the top of Explorer and most file dialog boxes displays the full path to recently used folders and Web addresses. To return to one of those locations, just select the desired path and away you go.

—Scott Dunn

FIGURE 1: CUSTOMIZE your favorite links in Vista

dialog boxes instantly with a simple drag and drop.

VISTA LETS YOU press the <Windows>

key, type a few letters until a match to

your application of choice appears, and

then press <Enter> for a quick launch. If

you aren’t yet ready to move to Vista

(or if you use Vista’s Classic Start

menu), try Launchy, a free, open-source

tool from Josh Karlin. Press <Alt>-<Space> (or another hot-key combina-

tion of your choice) to pop open a com-

mand-line window; type a few letters,

and Launchy anticipates your target

file, displaying it (and other alterna-

tives). When the file that you want

appears in the window, press <Enter> . Launchy enables you to customize the

directories it searches and the fi le types

it shows, so you can use it to open pic-

ture or music files as well as to run

applications. Download Launchy at

http://pcworld.in/downloads/index.jsp/

dsecId=1494/dsubSecId=1499 . There is

also other helpful downloads like Acro-

bat Reader 8.0. Surprisingly, consider-

ing every manual and many marketing

brochures are distributed this way,

there’s no PDF reader built-in to Vista.

Thankfully, Adobe has already made its

Vista version of the free Acrobat Reader

8.0 available for download. One of those

invaluable applications you’re bound to

need. www.adobe.com

On the other hand, One of the main

ways Microsoft will be pushing Vista is

with its strengthened security setup. At

the core of its Security Center is Windows

Defender, a two-way fi rewall that provides

antivirus protection and squishes both

spam and spyware. Download a free copy

for Windows XP at tinyurl.com/dyvaw.

Open Your Favorite Apps and Files Faster With Launchy

WINDOWS TOOLBOX


HERE’S HOW

when windows xp launched, some PCs and peripherals wouldn’t work with the new OS because device drivers had not yet been written. The same is true for Vista. Whether you plan to install Vista on your current PC, or to buy a Vista-equipped system to use with your existing peripherals, these tips will help smooth the transition.

Study up beforehand: To run the bare-bones Vista Home Basic, Microsoft rec-ommends a CPU running at 1 GHz or faster, plus 512MB of RAM and 15GB of hard-drive space. Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate editions with the new Aero environment require at least 1GB of RAM, and for systems without integrated graphics, a DirectX 9–capable graphics processor with 128MB of its own RAM, DirectX 9, and a few other features. Go to www.micro-soft.com/windows/products/windows-vista/editions/systemrequirements.mspx to read Microsoft’s Vista System Requirements.

Microsoft’s Vista Upgrade Advisor ( www.microsoft.com/windows/prod-ucts/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/upgradeadvisor.mspx ) scans your PC to determine which editions of Vista will run on it, and which of its hardware components are incompatible with Vista. When I ran Upgrade Advisor on my year-old machine, the program found no compatibility problems—but it did list ten components for which it had no data, including the PC’s USB port.

Minimize Your Vista-Related Hardware Hassles

H A R D W A R E T I P S You can also check Microsoft’s Hard-ware Compatibility List (http://winqual.microsoft.com/hcl/), or the Vista hard-ware list on IeXwiki ( www.iexbeta.com/wiki/index.php/Windows_Vista_Hard-ware_Compatibility_List ). Need to iden-tify what components are in your sys-tem? The free Belarc Advisor utility ( http://pcworld.in/downloads/index.jsp/dsecId=1494/dsubSecId=1497/type=M ) will quickly scan your PC and identify all its hardware.

If Vista doesn’t support one of your PC’s components, look for updated Vista driv-ers on the vendor’s Web site. If you can’t find them, the drivers may still be in

development—so ask the company about it. RadarSync, a device driver update service, has created a list of links to Vista drivers at http://www.radarsync.com/vista/ .

After you have identified which driv-ers lack Vista equivalents, copy the XP versions to a CD or anyplace you can easily access them once you’ve installed Vista. Make sure you have your net-work drivers handy so you can go online and download other device driv-ers and updates.

Be prepared for trouble: Back up your old XP installation to a second hard drive or to a different partition on your main drive so you can revert to XP if something goes wrong with Vista. (What can go wrong? One possibility: A PC World editor found that, after install-ing Vista on his home PC, he could no longer log in to the offi ce network be -cause no Vista version of the Cisco VPN client existed.) As an alternative to

doing a complete backup on a separate hard drive, use a drive-image pro-

gram such as the Rs. 1,800 Acronis True Image 10 ( http://www.pcworld.c o m / p r o d u c t / p r i c i n g / p r t -prdid,33724817-sortby,retailer/pricing.html ) to burn an image of your XP installation onto recordable DVDs.

Browse to http://lifehacker.com/soft-ware/top/windows-vista-beta-how-to-dual-boot-windows-xp-and-windows-vista-179906.php for instructions on installing both versions of Windows on a PC set to dual-boot.

Once you’ve installed Vista, open De -vice Manager to check for problems: Right-click the Computer icon and choose Manage•Device Manager . Non-functioning devices are fl agged with an exclamation point in a yellow triangle (see FIGURE 1 ).

If Windows can’t find a driver, it may list the device as ‘Unknown Device’ under ‘Other devices’. HunterSoft’s free Un known Device Identifier utility helps you find the name of the mystery hardware ( http://www.zhangduo.com/udi.html ).

— Kirk Steers

HELP YOUR COMPUTER BEAT THE SUMMER’S HEAT

DOES THE SUMMER sun leave your sys-

tem a little hot under the collar? Antec’s

Rs. 900 SpotCool ( http://www.antec.

c o m / u s / p r o d u c t D e t a i l s .

php?ProdID=75018 ) may be just what

your machine needs to keep cool and

quiet. SpotCool’s three-speed fan is less

than 3 inches in diameter; it attaches to

any motherboard mounting hole and

draws power from an open three-pin

connector on your board. The fan’s fl ex-

ible arm lets you focus its cooling air

current on your CPU, graphics card, or

other internal component.

FIGURE 1: CHECK VISTA’S DEVICE Manager

for peripherals or devices the OS considers

problematic—they’ll be flagged as shown.


Firefox 2 can accept, and regularly wipe away, any cookie you haven’t explicitly told it to keep: Click Tools•Options•Privacy , check Accept cookies from sites , and in the ‘Keep until’ drop-down box, select I close Firefox . To keep cookies from a few trust-ed sites, click Exceptions , and in the dia-log box, enter the URLs of the sites whose fi rst-party cookies you wish to keep in the ‘Address of web site’ fi eld. Click Allow for each, and when you’re done, click Close and OK . If you’re using Firefox 1.5, click Tools•Options•Privacy•Cookies , check

Allow sites to set cookies , and choose for the originating site only .

Many security programs, includ-ing Norton Internet Security, PC-Cillin, and Ad-Aware, also identify and destroy known spying cookies.

DISABLE THE

WINDOWS KEY

I’M A COMPUTER gamer. Acci-

dentally hitting the Windows

key in the middle of a game

is a disaster. Can I disable it?

you can with a little Registry tweaking. But back up the Registry fi rst; see the boxed item at lower left for details. Once the Registry is backed up, select Start•Run (just Start in Vista), type regedit , and press <Enter> . In the left pane, navigate to and select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Current-ControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout (this is not to be confused with the ‘Keyboard Layouts’ option just beneath it). Click Edit•New•Binary Value , name the new value Scancode Map , and then double-click it. Enter the code below, which will wrap automatically as shown here: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 00 00 5B E0 00 00 5C E0 00 00 00 00 Click OK , close the Registry Editor, and reboot Windows. Your Windows key will be no more. If you want to disable the Windows key only for specific applica-tions, try the free WinKey Killer utility ( http://www.majorgeeks.com/down-load304.html ).

IS THERE A way to tell which of

the cookies on my PC are help-

ing, and which ones are spying?

a cookie is merely a small fi le that a Web site puts on your PC to identify you, or to store information about you or your com-puter, such as your IP address. The good ones save you the trouble of logging on to the site on return visits, a big help if you use subscription news services such as that of the New York Times ( nytimes.com ).

The bad cookies are placed by ad companies that pay for the right to place advertising on the sites’ pages (some sites also leave their own ad cookies). These fi les track your visits to pages that display their clients’ ads (or their own), and they may tailor the ads you see to your browsing his-tory. Over time, cookies can reveal your brows ing habits, though standard ad cookies, like those that DoubleClick uses, can’t attach a name to a specific surfi ng trail.

That means, if you wipe out your cook-ies as soon as you close your browser, the

ad networks never get a chance to track your surfi ng from session to session.

Internet Explorer 6 and 7 and Firefox 1. x and 2 have good cookie-handling pro-cedures. IE lets you keep fi rst-party cook-ies (left by the site you’re visiting) but block those from third parties: Select Tools•Internet Options•Privacy • Advanced .

In the Advanced Privacy Settings dialog box, check Override automatic cookie han-dling (see FIGURE 1 ). Under ‘First-party Cookies’, select Accept ; under ‘Third-party Cookies’, choose Block . Ignore the session cookies option. Click OK twice.

Block Spying Cookies, But Keep the Helpful Ones

A N S W E R L I N E

Answer Line is anchored by contributing

editor Lincoln Spector. Send in your queries

to [email protected] .

HERE’S HOW

FIGURE 1: SET INTERNET EXPLORER to allow first-

party cookies but block all third-party cookies.

Dual core CPUs are twice as fast as single core CPUs

MYTH BUSTER

REALITY: DUAL CORE CPU does not necessarily mean double the performance

over a single-core. Benefi ts from a dual core can be seen only with applications

that support it. Today you can expect multimedia creation software to be faster

by up to 50 percent compared to similarly clocked single cores. Note that the

benefi t is restricted to audio/video encoding and decoding and certain games.

However, office suites, browsers, media-players (for non HD playback)

will hardly make use of the second processor. Hence for most general use

as of today, a single core CPU should suffice. With multi-core support in

the latest operating systems like Windows Vista, dual cores will yield smoother

multitasking as the OS itself will split tasks to the two cores. If you are upgrading

from an old platform or building a new system altogether, dual core is the

way to go.

However, if you already have a single core CPU that is only about a year old or

so, an upgrade to a similar clocked dual core will not double your performance

overnight.

—Soham Raninga


just like your body, or for that matter your car, your PC also requires care to ensure that it works reliably and springs no unpleasant sur-prises when your work is dependent on it. On every PC World DVD we include software in the PC World Super Suite that can be used for tasks collectively called system maintenance – secu-rity software, registry clean-ers, defragmenting tools, patches, etc. This month, our Fantastic Freebies collection also has many system soft-ware. Here is a preview of just some of those utilities.Ad-Aware and Spybot-S&D:

These are the two most famous spyware removal tools that we include in our PC World Super Suite. The Internet is getting increasingly plagued by spyware and trojans which can harm your computer by merely tracking your surfing habits

INSIDE

For a Healthy PC...USE THESE FREE SOFTWARE BUNDLED IN THE DVD FOR SYSTEM MAINTENANCE.

and popping up annoying ads, to slowing down your PC and even crashing it. The fact that damages from spyware are incidental rather than intentional unlike viruses does not make them any bit more desirable! We recommend using both these tools to scan

your PC and keep it clean, as one of them might catch a malicious file that the other missed out on.

Although we try and include updates on a regular basis, we suggest you upgrade them on a weekly basis or enable auto-update on them. Also, note

that using anti-spyware must be in conjunction with an anti-virus tool.Cobian Backup: It is a multi-threaded program that can be used to schedule and backup your fi les and directo-ries from their original loca-tion to other directories or drives in the same computer or another in your network. If you are wondering why a backup utility is discussed here, let us tell you that any system is prone to failure and taking adequate precautions with security and other tools can only reduce chances of failure and not eliminate it. Thus it is a smart idea to

backup important data to a sec-ondary hard disk, another PC on the network, a pen drive or even the Internet (a FTP site can be very handy)

Cobian supports FTP backup in both directions (download and upload). The program uses

D U M M Y E D I T E D BY K A L PA N A E T T E N S O N & R A M O NH A N D P I C K E D G O O D I E S F R O M T H E D V D

SOFTWARE SOFTWARE REVIEWSREVIEWS

ILL

US

TR

AT

ION

: A

NIL

T

99 PREVIEW

■ Tech Videos ■ Ubuntu and Kubuntu Linux 102 WHAT’S ON DVD 8GB of fun, freebies and

power tools


very few resources and can be running on the background on your system, checking your backup schedule and executing your backups when necessary. Cobian Backup supports several methods of compression and strong encryption.KillProcess: You would have come across an application that simply refuses to close, forcing you to use the Ctrl+Alt+Del option. Sometimes you see names of running processes that you dont recognize and wonder if it belongs to a legitimate application or if it is a malware. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could google it up in one straight step? KillProcess is an application which can do that, and a lot more. You can even create lists of processes that you want to keep or delete. If you understand

Windows better and are willing to risk an abrupt restart, you can even shut down system services.TweakVI: Microsoft’s TweakUI for Windows XP was and is still a hit with users who wanted to fi ne tune the operating system including some perform-ance related settings. And now a similar tool exists for Vista users in the name of, well, TweakVI, the V presumably standing for Vista. This time however the software is made not by Microsoft, but a company called Totalidea. Amongst sev-eral other things, you can cre-ate a RAM drive, clean up the registry and optimise RAM, etc. The main application and a set of 13 plugins are available

for free while extra plugins can be purchased. This is a recom-mended software for serious Vista tweakers.TweakNow RegCleaner Stand-

ard and Clean My Registry: These are two registry clean-

ing software that are included on the DVD. Most applications use the registry to store c o n f i g u r a t i o n a n d other important data. When you install an application, new regis-try entries will be cre-ated and not all of them get removed when you uninstall the applica-tion. In due course, your registry will be left with a lot of unneces-sary data which increas-es the registry size and

results in a slower PC. Use these free registry cleaners to remove invalid registry entries. With either of the applications, make sure you back up your registry before doing anything else.

SOFTWARE FREE STUFF

SPYBOT S&D SCANS your system for malware

and removes them after your confirmation.

every month, PC World br ings exc lusive v ideos p r o d u c e d b y t h e I D G network , inc lud ing PC World teams from across the globe. These videos include reviews, product launches, t e c h n o l o g y p r e v i e w s , coverage of international meets like CeBIT and even how-to’s. This month, we treat you to 10 tech videos that let you have a glimpse of today and tomorrow’s technology.Video Review of Sony’s T100 camera: The 8.1MP compact digital camera has a 3 inch display which when coupled with the brush aluminum exterior lends the camera a nice look.

Microsoft Forefront line of software is designed to integrate into existing IT infrastructure and increase security in businesses and enable secure access to resources on a network. The product has been under testing for a year now and is expected to be available by end of June. Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft talks

about the entry of the company into the Security business.Tutorial : Safely wipe data off your hard drive: Most people do not bother to permanently remove sensitive fi les from hard disks and other storage devices before disposing or giving them away. It is possible that this data could fall into wrong hands.

PC World Exclusive Tech VideosT E C H R E V I E W S

You don’t need to spend too much time wiping data off, and here is a tutorial that tells you exactly how to do it.Games for Windows Live:

Microsoft plans to create a gaming platform to bring together the Xbox and the PC. Also glimpse game play from Shadowrun from Microsoft’s game studios. Optimus Keyboard: The much awaited Optimus keyboard that can be user customized and has OLED display to show functions of each key. The creator, Artemy Lebedev speaks on his creation. UMPCs still need to come of age: Battery life, graphic capabilities and connectivity all have to improve for Ultra Mobile PCs to be a bigger hit. Acer president speaks about the future for UMPCs.

FIND THE VIDEO review of the Sony T100 in PCW World’s Tech Videos.


FREE STUFF SOFTWARE

ubuntu needs no introduc-tion unless you are a complete Linux newbie. Ubuntu is one of the most easy to install and use Linux distributions around. If you are consider-ing moving to or dual booting with Linux, Ubuntu is a great way to start. The June PC World DVD is bootable with Ubuntu for 32 bit systems. The DVD also contains ISO (CD image) fi les of the 64bit version as well as Kubuntu for 32 bit and 64 bit versions. These ISO fi les can be found in the \Data\Full Products folder on the DVD.

ABOUT UBUNTU

ubuntu is an African word meaning ‘Humanity to others’. Its makers, Canonical claim they want to bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world and will continue to offer Ubuntu for free. A desktop and server release is scheduled every six months with the latest being the 7.04 version.

Ubuntu integrates the GNOME desktop environment

and for KDE fans, there is a fl avor called Kubuntu. There is also the Xubuntu that uses the Ubuntu base and the Xfce deskop environment which is typically a lightweight desktop environment suitable for lower-end systems.

LIVE CD AND

INSTALLATION

to install Ubuntu (32 bit) just place the DVD in your drive and boot the PC with the first boot device set as DVD drive. From then on it is pretty much intuitive – the live CD allows you to sample the operating system and then installer guides you through the installation process. Like all other Linux distros, this one too does not kill your existing Windows (unless you ask it to or acci-dentally delete the Windows partition yourself!) and will enable you to have a multi-boot system. For greatest ease of installation, move clear an an existing partition by moving data elsewhere. Then, you can simply ask Ubuntu installer to format and use this free space for

itself. You also need to set aside a smaller (about 1.5GB) partition for a swap parti-tion. With this preparation, the installation will be pretty much straightforward.

MIGRATING

FROM WINDOWS

a handy tool in this release is the inclusion of a Migra-tion Tool on the Live CD that can import your Windows XP’s Documents and Settings (documents, email, desktop, settings) for use in Ubuntu. This means, you can more or less ‘continue’ working with Ubuntu after switching from Windows, rather than spend time setting up your account from scratch.

WORKING

WITH UBUNTU

ubuntu’s navigation will

not leave the first timer user lost. At the top left of the screen you will find the menus for Application, Plac-es and System. Under these, you have sub-menus or items leading to various tasks. For example, if you want to use OpenOffice that is bundled with Ubuntu, you will fi nd it under Applications > Offi ce.

UbuntuL I N U X

Similarly, the GIMP for image editing can be found under Applications > Graphics.

SOME APPLICATIONS

IN UBUNTU

just like Windows XP can run only those applications that are written for it, so also is the case with Linux- you need applications that are written to work under Linux. Thankfully, this is hardly a problem as there are literally 1000s of software available for download. By default, the OpenOffi ce suite is installed (Kubuntu installs Koffice) and you can choose to install other applications like Abi-word, Scribus (a page layout software) GnuCash (person-al money management soft-ware), etc.

For multimedia playback Ubuntu insta l ls Totem, the official movie player of GNOME, Sound Juicer (a CD ripping tool), and Serpentine (a CD burning tool). On Kubuntu, you get AmarocK for music playback and Kaffeine for video; K3b for CD and DVD authoring – these apart you can manually choose to insta l l o ther software like VLC Media Player as well.

This is a only brief intro-duction to a worthy Win-dows alternative. Offi cial as well as community docu-mentation can be found at help.ubuntu.com

FEATURE PACKED AND easy

to install, Ubuntu is a must

try if you want a Windows

alternative.

System Requirements:

■ Live CD requires at least

256MB RAM, Insta l l

requires 2GB disk space.

Installation Details

Bring out the shutter bug in you! Every month we carry on the

DVD wallpapers contributed by readers as well as some in-

house creations. If you think your photography or illustration

can adorn others’ desktop, do send us a sample of your work

to [email protected].

Photographs can have any subject except persons or

children (silhouette shots are OK). You may send us the photo

as shot by you or crop it to 1024 x 768 resolution. Adjusting

levels or applying fi lters is also permitted, but do let us know

of the post-processing done.

WINNERS CAN EXPECT GOODIES INCLUDING FREE SUBSCRIPTIONS!

WALLPAPER CONTEST


LINUX

50+ Fantastic FreebiesThis is a collection of some of the most loved free software out there today. From anti-virus to browsers to offi ce suites, there is everything that you need for fun and utility.

FREEWARE

J U N E 2 0 0 7

TECH VIDOES

10 Exclusive Tech VideosCatch a sneak peek at products and technology of today and tomorrow with tech videos, complete with a video review of Sony’s T100 8.1MP camera.

The Scene : Season 2All 19 episodes of The Scene, a show that is distributed on the Internet. The story is about a group of ‘sceaners’ whose interest lies in acquiring movies and music before their release and then distributing them freely on the net.

Game Demo and VidsThe Secrets of Da Vinci: The Forbidden Manuscript Uncover the secrets hidden in the Master’s last residence.

Stonghold 2A RTS game set in the medieval age.

CC3 - Behind the scenesSome behind the scene footage of Command + Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars (you can fi nd the game demo on the April 2007 DVD).

ENTERTAINMENT

Ubuntu ( for 32 bit and 64 bit systems )Kubuntu ( for 32 bit and 64 bit systems )Ubuntu is a great way to start off a tryst with Linux. The PC World June 2007 DVD is bootable with Ubuntu 32 bit edition while ISO (image) fi les for Ubuntu 64 bit and the KDE fl avor – Kubuntu (32 and 64 bit) are found in the DVD.

ESSENTIALS

PC World Super Suite1.7GB of software including Windows patches, codes, multi-media players and editing tools etc...

FULL PRODUCT

MacWorldThe current and complete edition of MacWorld in PDF. For all you Apple fan

LEISURE

PC World WallpapersImages contributed by readers as well as in-house creations. Let creative fl ow on your desktop

103 M A R C H 2 0 0 7 W W W. P C W O R L D . I N


CONTENTSJune 2007In

corp

ora

ting

Mac

Use

r

On the CoverPhotograph by Peter Belanger

From the Editor’s DeskI’ve been waiting for a device like the Apple TV foryears. Now that it’s here, here’s what I think.

FeedbackReaders respond.

Inside the Apple StoresWhat’s behind six years of retail success?

EMI Offers DRM-Free Musicon iTunesHigher-quality tracks come with a higher price tag.

Wilkes University Moves to MacsPennsylvania school dumps PCs in favor ofIntel Macs.

Hot StuffCheck out the cool products we’re into right now.

Spam FightersWhat can you do about the junk e-mail that clogsyour inbox? We go out on a quest for softwarethat helps you fight the good fight.

macworld.com/reviewsWe’re constantly reviewing the latest Mac hardwareand software on Macworld.com. Here are quicksummaries of this month’s online exclusives.

Top ProductsLooking for a new printer, monitor, digitalcamera, or other hardware? Check out ourcurrent favorites, as well as a complete listingof all current Macs and iPods.

Mac GemsPut some serious style in your text, easily followup on sent e-mail messages, connect almost anydrive via USB, and silence your Mac’s startupsounds.

OPINION

MAC BEAT

ON THE

DVD

ON THE

DVD

REVIEWSON THE

DVD

www.macworld.com | May 2007

It’s a Mac!

$6.99 U.S./$7.99 CANADA

Run OS X and Windows Together

Build the PerfectHome OfficeWhy Mac Users Shouldn’t Fear Microsoft

ADD MORE STORAGE TO ANY MAC p. 60

The Ultimate PCThe Mac Experts

PLUS:

Adobe CS3 | AirPort Extreme


ON THE

DVD

ON THE

DVD

ON THE

DVD

ON THE

DVD

Apple TV: Ready for Prime Time? With its new entertainment hub, Apple is hoping tochange the way you watchTV. We’ll show you howto set it up and tell you if it’s worth the effort.

FEATURES

State of the MacHow reliable are Macs? How happy are their owners?We surveyed Macworld readers about what theylike—and don’t like—about their Macs.

SECRETS

Working Mac Being energy efficient isn’t just good for theenvironment—it’s good for your wallet. Here’show to go green with your Mac.

Playlist Get in shape with Apple’s iPod and some greatfitness accessories.

Digital Photo Even if you’re not a high-end photographer, thesestrategies can help you benefit from the slickfeatures in Apple’s Aperture.

Mobile Mac Get rid of—and prevent—screen smudges,chipped paint, and other unsightly blemishes onyour portable Mac.

Geek Factor Put your Mac Pro’s four hard-drive slots to use bysetting up a RAID array and boosting performance.

HELP DESK

Mac OS X Hints Set Office zoom levels quickly, insert line breaksinto iTunes Comments field, privatize your PDFs,and customize OS X’s alert sounds.

Mac 911Clear out iPhoto’s trash, make Microsoft Wordmultilingual, remove Spotlight from the menu bar,and more.

BACK PAGE

SpotlightBetween Apple’s recent triumphs (the iPod, the Inteltransition, and the iPhone) and Microsoft’s stumbles(hello, Vista), Christopher Breen feels that there’sbeen a big shift in the way folks think about the Mac.

COVER STORY

CONTENTS June 2007

106

The top 5 stories on Macworld.com are:

1 France Bans Citizen Journalists from Reporting Violence The French Constitutional Council makes it a crime for

people other than professional journalists to film acts ofviolence (macworld.com/2677).

2Apple to Hold Special Event at NABApple announces plans to hold a special event at the National

Association of Broadcasters trade show (macworld.com/2678).

3 Apple Releases Mac OS X 10.4.9 Apple rolls out its latest OS update for PowerPC and Intel-based

Macs (macworld.com/2679).

4 Adobe to Release Two Versions of Photoshop CS3 Latest Photoshop update will come in two flavors: standard

and extended (macworld.com/2684).

5 PC World: Apple TV Just Plain Works Our colleagues at PC World take a look at the Apple TV and

find it easy to use (macworld.com/2680).

MACWORLD.COM’S TOP 5

(Ranking valid as of April 4, 2007.)

iGear!

Terminal C16

Terminal C16

MAC CLASS

Apple TV: Readyfor Prime Time?

State ofthe Mac

106 W W W. P C W O R L D . I N M A Y 2 0 0 7

Readyfor

PrimeTime

What you need to know about Apple’s new entertainment hub. Plus: the Macworld review.

In October 2005, Apple demonstrated its interest in selling video content

alongside its digital music offerings by adding TV shows to the iTunes

Store. Great as it might have been to watch these programs on a com-

puter or—in very small form—on an iPod, most people prefer viewing digi-

tal diversions from the comfort of a couch. When the company augmented

the store’s catalog in September 2006 with full-length movies, it became clear that

Apple’s interest in the video business was no mere fl irtation. That same day, Apple

committed to digital content with the unveiling of what’s now called the Apple TV,

a simple piece of hardware that gives your iTunes content— movies, TV shows,

music, photos, and podcasts—new life on your TV. Now that it’s fi nally here, we’ve

put the Apple TV through its paces to learn how you can make the most of this

intriguing digital device. Our hands-on guide walks you through setting up and

working with the Apple TV (and don’t miss the review on page XX).

By Christopher Breen P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y PETER BELANGER


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FEATURE Apple TV

Out of the BoxThe Apple TV box is a neat and tidy pack-age that includes the device itself, a power cord (the power supply is built into the device rather than part of an external power brick), a 47-page user’s guide, some fi ne-print documentation you probably won’t read, the customary white Apple stickers, and the same Apple Remote that ships with most current Macs. Not includ-ed with the Apple TV are cables for con-necting the device to your TV, so you’ll have to provide your own (see “What You Need” for more information on outfi tting your Apple TV with the necessary accou-trements). Given that Apple would have to bundle fi ve cables to satisfy the most com-mon connections— HDMI to HDMI, DVI to HDMI, component video, analog audio, and Toslink digital audio—this omission doesn’t surprise me.

At about 7.75-inches square and just over an inch tall, the Apple TV’s footprint is a bit larger than the Mac mini’s. Arrayed across the back are power, USB 2.0, Ethernet, HDMI, component video, analog audio, and optical digital audio ports (for help decipher-ing these and other terms common in the world of high defi nition video, see our glossa-ry in “Picking an HDTV”). The front of the device bears a single light that can shine or fl ash white or amber.

The purpose of all of these ports is pretty clear, barring the USB 2.0 port. Apple tells us that the USB port is not for users; rather, Apple will employ the port to conduct repairs on your Apple TV in the event it needs them. You can’t connect an iPod or a hard drive to the USB port. That’s the story—at least for now. But I wouldn’t be surprised if a future update to the Apple TV brings other capa-bilities to that port.

Getting StartedSetting up the Apple TV is almost child’s play. I plugged the power cord into the back of the Apple TV and into an outlet. I strung an HDMI cable between the appropriate port on the Apple TV and one of the HDMI ports on my Panasonic TH-42PX60U 42-inch plasma TV. (The Apple TV will output video to enhanced defi nition [ED] or high defi nition [HD] TVs at 1,080i 60/50Hz, 720p 60/50Hz, 576p 50Hz [PAL format], and 480p 60Hz. And while it isn’t listed among Apple’s specifi cations, the Apple TV also supports 480i—so it will work with standard defi nition [SD] TVs that sport component connectors.) Using the TV’s remote, I selected the proper input and, in short order, there appeared the white Apple logo on a black background. HDMI con-nections just work. But if you use compo-nent video, you’ll be prompted to select the video output format for your TV (depend-ing on your specifi c setup, you may have a few more steps to take than I did).

Much like when you install OS X, you’ll then see a Language screen where you pick from among 15 languages, using the Apple Remote. When you make selections and press the play/pause button, you hear the same cute “clunk” sound that Apple’s Front Row uses.

Connecting the Apple TV to your TV is only part of the setup—the device also needs to communicate with iTunes 7.1 or later on your Mac (or on a Windows PC). If you’ve plugged a cable into the 10/100Base-T Ether-net port on the back, the Apple TV will check there fi rst for a viable network connection. If it fi nds one, it’ll attach itself to the network and attempt to use DHCP. (If you manually assign IP addresses to your gear, you can do this as well.) Otherwise, the Apple TV then searches for wireless networks, using its built-in 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11n wire-less capabilities. The Apple TV lists every wireless access point it can fi nd. Just use the Apple Remote to select the one you want and then press the play/ pause button—you’re nearly ready to go. (You’ll also see an Other entry in the list of wireless access points. Select this, and you can confi gure wireless devices that are hidden from public discov-ery by using the on-screen keyboard to enter the name of the access point.)

Most wireless routers automatically assign IP addresses to your networked devices via DHCP. Choose Using DHCP in the Net-work Setup screen, and then press the play/

iTunes Interface You decide which content you want to sync to the Apple TV via six tabs in iTunes.

Streaming PIN

Connecting to the

Apple TV requires

you to enter a five-

digit code into

iTunes.


pause button. The router will establish a connection. If you need to enter an IP and subnet address manually, choose that option and a screen for doing so appears. You’ll see 12 blanks for the IP numbers: use the Apple Remote’s plus (+) and minus (–) buttons to change the selected number, and then use the forward button to select other blanks. Likewise, for secure networks, you’ll be asked to enter your password via an onscreen keyboard.

In my case, I have a wireless 802.11n network setup, using the latest AirPort Extreme Base Station. It found the base station in just seconds. The Apple TV displayed its name and the name of my older 802.11g AirPort Extreme Base Station. I selected the 802.11n network, and I was in business.

Talking to iTunesOnce you’ve made the connection to your network, it’s time for the Apple TV to speak with its partner, iTunes. The Apple TV initiates this process by displaying a screen with a 5-digit PIN. Your job is to go to the computer that you plan to use to sync content with the Apple TV, select the Apple TV entry in iTunes’ Source list, and enter the Apple TV’s PIN in the space allotted.

Syncing You’re allowed to sync an Apple TV’s internal 40GB hard drive (33GB of which is available to you) with one computer, so the computer isn’t necessary for playback.

Apple says that the Apple TV’s hard drive will hold as many as 50 hours of video (based on 1.5-Mbps H.264-encoded video at a resolution of 640 by 480, with 128-Kbps stereo audio), as many as 9,000 audio tracks (with an average of four minutes per song and AAC encoded at 128 Kbps), or as many as 25,000 pictures (JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, and PNG images are supported, but

TIP Power Down There’s no

power button on the Apple TV,

but if you want to give it a rest, you

don’t need to pull the plug. Instead,

press and hold the Apple Remote’s

play/pause button to put the Apple TV

into a power-saving standby mode.

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What You NeedFor $299, you can buy Apple’s cool new digital device, but you won’t fi nd many accessories in the box. Besides the Apple TV itself, you get a

power cable, the Apple Remote, and a user’s manual. So what else do you need to start using—and getting the most out of—it? Here’s a quick checklist.

Wide-Screen TV The Apple TV is meant to work with certain types of TVs— specifi cally, wide-

screen EDTVs or HDTVs capable of at least 480p resolution with HDMI, DVI, or component video

connections. So if you don’t have such a set, you may need a new TV (see “Picking an HDTV” for

advice and recommendations). Although Apple doesn’t really say so, you can use the Apple TV with

an SDTV (480i), as long as it has component video inputs. These TVs aren’t very common, but

several Macworld readers have reported that they own them.

Audio and Video Cables You’ll need either one or two cables, depending on your particular setup. If

your TV has a free HDMI port, an HDMI-to-HDMI cable will carry both digital video and digital audio

signals from the Apple TV to your TV. Otherwise, you can use an HDMI-to-

DVI cable if your TV has a DVI port, or component video cables (high-

quality analog cables that split into three parts, colored green, blue, and

red). The latter two options don’t carry audio, so you’ll need separate audio

connections. If your multimedia stereo system has an optical digital audio

port, use a Toslink cable. Otherwise, standard RCA-style red and white

analog audio cables will do the trick. Even people using HDMI may want to

use a Toslink audio cable to hear sound through a stereo (especially if they

don’t have an easy way to route sound from their TV to the stereo). Apple

has partnered with XtremeMac to sell each of these types of cables at very

reasonable prices ($20 for each cable except analog audio, which costs

$15). The cables are available from Apple’s brick-and-mortar and online

stores (see mac world.com/2690 for more on the XtremeMac cables).

HDMI Switchers Speaking of cables, many TVs that have the all-

digital HDMI connection usually have one or maybe two such ports. If

you’re already using your TV’s HDMI ports for other devices (a Series3

TiVo or Playstation 3, for example), you’re not out of luck. Products such

as XtremeMac’s $100 HDMI Switcher will let you connect several HDMI

devices to your TV and pick which one you want displayed at a given time.

Computer and Network You’ll also need a computer and a way of

connecting the Apple TV to your network in order to transfer and stream content. That means a

Mac running OS X 10.3.9 or later, or a PC running Windows XP Home or Professional with Service

Pack 2 (currently, Vista is not offi cially supported) and running iTunes 7.1 or later. Then you can

directly connect an Ethernet cable from a router or hub to the Apple TV’s 10/100Base-T Ethernet

port, or use its built-in wireless abilities (the Apple TV supports 802.11b, g, and n) to connect to a

wireless router such as an AirPort Extreme Base Station. For music streaming, 802.11b might be

OK, but 802.11g or 802.11n are better for video streaming. And of course, the speeds of transfer-

ring data to the Apple TV will depend greatly on your connection speed.

Compatible Content Finally, you’ll need content. Once you pair the Apple TV with your

computer, you should be able to play most things in your iTunes library. That includes music,

movies, TV shows, and podcasts downloaded from the iTunes Store. It will also work with AAC,

MP3, Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV fi les that you’ve imported yourself, as well as with MPEG-4

and H.264 video that you’ve encoded in QuickTime or similar programs, and that fall within the

supported parameters (see the Apple TV tech

specifi cations at macworld.com/2685for

complete details). —JONATHAN SEFF

The XtremeMac HDMI Switcher

Analog audio

Toslink digital audio

HDMI

DVI

Component video

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FEATURE Apple TV

not Raw). The Apple TV can play video encoded as MPEG-4 and H.264, and it supports the same audio formats that iTunes does (AIFF, WAV, MP3, AAC, and Apple Lossless).

Unlike with an iPod, you can’t manually drag items from your iTunes library to your Apple TV. You mustconfi gure everything via the Movies, TV Shows, Music, Podcasts, and Photos tabs in the Apple TV preferences within iTunes to determine how content makes its way to your Apple TV. (The Apple TV prioritizes your media, fi rst syncing mov-ies, then TV shows, music, podcasts, and, fi nally, photos.) You can ask the Apple TV to sync all your content or selected playl-ists, or to omit certain types (no movies, for example). For photos on a Mac, you can sync JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, and PNG fi les from iPhoto, your Pictures fold-er, or a folder of your choice. On a Win-

dows PC, you can sync photos from a sup-ported photo application such as Photoshop Elements, your My Pictures folder, or a folder of your choice. Note that when you connect to iTunes the fi rst time, the Apple TV will need to connect to the Internet to become authorized to play that account’s protected content (the Apple TV doesn’t count as one of the fi ve computers that can play such content, however).

To help manage your media fi les, iTunes provides shortcuts for choosing subsets of them. For example, you can choose to sync just TV shows, or request that only the most recent one, three, fi ve, or ten unwatched movies or TV shows sync with the device. In such a scenario, once the movie or show has played through, it’s bumped off the list and delet-ed from the Apple TV, and then iTunes adds the next unwatched video. Because the Apple TV and iTunes are in constant communication, there’s no need to press a sync button to make this happen. Sync-ing is fastest via Ethernet but will also work wirelessly (for more on syncing speeds, see “Staying in Sync”).

You can monitor syncing from the Apple TV’s Sources screen and select Apple TV. On the left of the screen, you’ll

see a picture of the Apple TV and a progress bar beneath. It will tell you what it’s copying and how much it has cop-ied—Copying 251 of 589, for example. If you move to the Apple TV’s main screen, you’ll see a turning gear icon next to the category of media it’s syncing— Movies or TV Shows, for example. You’ll see this same information when you choose Syncing from the Sources screen. iTunes will show you what it’s doing in the infor-mation pane at the top of the window.

Streaming As anyone with even a moderately sized iTunes library knows, 33GB isn’t a lot of space—especially when it comes to movies and TV shows (for information on upgrading your Apple TV’s hard drive, go to macworld.com/2686). Luckily, the Apple TV can also stream content from up to fi ve com-puters. You can always stream content from the Mac to which the Apple TV is already synced. But to set up streaming for a new Mac, navigate to the Sources menu on the Apple TV and select Con-nect To New iTunes. A new PIN appears on your TV. Enter this PIN into the

For more Apple TV coverage,visit macworld.com/ FI

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Ports Galore The Apple TV has all the ports you’d expect from a modern digital device: from left to right, you’ll find power, USB 2.0, Ethernet, HDMI,

component video, analog audio, and optical digital audio connections.

Movies Menu The Apple TV’s main interface starts with movies but gives you access to all your content.

TIP Gain Control Once you add an

Apple TV to your home

entertainment system, the Apple

Remote will probably join half a dozen

other remotes on your coffee table. To

cut the clutter, consider a programma-

ble remote such as those in Logitech’s

Harmony line (www.logitech.com). With

a little effort, you can program them to

use your Mac to control every device in

your TV cabinet—including the Apple TV.

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Picking an HDTVHDTVs use many different technolo-

gies to produce images. Tube HDTVs

use CRTs (cathode-ray tubes), as do

traditional TVs and computer monitors. Flat-

screen TVs use either LCD (liquid-crystal display)

technology (pixels in front of a light source) or

plasma technology (cells fi lled with gases

between two panels of glass). Rear-projection

TVs use CRT, LCD, digital light processing (DLP,

which uses thousands of tiny mirrors), or liquid

crystal on silicon (LCoS, which uses liquid

crystals instead of mirrors) technology.

HDTVs also come in many shapes, sizes, and

prices, and each type has its pros and cons. Tube

HDTVs have excellent picture quality and wide

viewing angles, and they’re relatively inexpensive.

But they’re bulkier and have smaller screens (34

inches or less) than other types of TVs. LCDs are

thin and light; they come in large sizes (up to 46

inches or so), and their prices have fallen. On the

downside, they don’t offer viewing angles as wide

as those of tube TVs. Plasma TVs are also thin

and light, come in large sizes (up to 60-plus

inches), and have good picture quality and wide

viewing angles, but they’re more expensive than

other types of HDTVs at the entry level and don’t

natively support the highest HD resolutions.

Projection TVs (CRT, DLP, and the like) have very

large screens (starting at around 42 inches and

going up to 65 inches), are relatively inexpensive,

and offer high resolutions; they can also be bulky,

and some technologies have viewing angle, color,

brightness, or uniformity problems.

To view HD content, a TV needs hardware

to convert the signal to something

your television can display. Some TVs have

HD tuners built in, which is useful for displaying

digital content received over an

antenna. But cable and satellite companies

provide their own hardware for decoding

their respective signals.

As far as content from your Mac goes, the

Apple TV is all you need to connect to an HDTV to

watch TV shows or movies downloaded from

iTunes. But note that Apple currently doesn’t sell

HD content in the iTunes Store. However, the

Apple TV will let you play HD broadcasts that

you’ve captured on your Mac using compatible

hardware, although you may need to re-encode

the show fi rst. And most (if not all) of the pictures

in your iPhoto library are high defi nition and

should look great on an HDTV.

With so many HDTVs out there, how do you

decide which is right for you? Once you have

an idea of what you’re willing to spend and how

big you want your viewing experience to be,

you’ll only be looking at a subset of the various

technologies. Then decide which features are

most important to you, and try to see a bunch

of TVs in action at a few different stores. (We’ve

got some recommendations listed in “TV

Picks”.) And if you don’t have a surround-

sound stereo system, it might be a good time to

check those out too.—JONATHAN SEFF

Read PC World’s latest HDTVreviews at macworld.com/FI

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TV PicksHere are a few top-rated TVs from the lab of our sister publication PC World. Thesuggested retail prices listed can often be higher than real-world prices.

LG Electronics

42PC1DA $2,500

This 42-inch plasma TV

has HDMI and component

inputs, a 10,000:1 contrast ratio,

an HD tuner, and a CableCard

slot. It supports 720p and 1,080i

video and has a 1,024-by- 768-

pixel resolution.

ViewSonic N3760w

$1,199

This 37-inch LCD TV has

excellent color and image

quality, a 1,000:1 contrast

ratio, a 1,366-by-768-pixel

resolution, an HDMI input,

and an HD tuner. It supports

720p and 1,080i video.

RCA Scenium

M50WH185 $2,099

This 50-inch DLP TV is

attractive and easy to

use, and it has good speakers. It

also sports two component

inputs and a 1,280-by-720-pixel

resolution. It supports

720p and 1,080i video.

Glossary4:3: The squarish

aspect ratio of SDTV broadcasts.

16:9: The wide aspect ratio of HDTV

broadcasts.

480i: An interlaced-scan video mode with

480 lines of vertical resolution and; this is the

traditional format used for SDTV broadcasts.

480p: A progressive video mode with 480

lines of vertical resolution and 704 or 720

pixels of horizontal resolution; this format is

used on standard defi nition DVDs and

for EDTV.

720p: A progressive-scan video mode with

720 lines of vertical resolution and 1,280

pixels of horizontal resolution; networks such

as ABC and Fox use this mode.

1,080i: An interlaced video mode with 1,080

lines of vertical resolution and 1,920 pixels of

horizontal resolution; networks such as CBS

and NBC use this mode.

1,080p: A progressive video mode with 1,080

lines of vertical resolution and 1,920 pixels of

horizontal resolution; this mode is currently

used only on Bluray and HD DVD movies.

Component Video: A high-quality analog

connector that uses three separate plugs for a

video signal.

EDTV: Enhanced defi nition television;

sometimes wide screen, EDTV can display at

a higher quality than SDTV, but not as high as

HDTV. EDTV is often used as a term to

describe TVs that are capable of 480p

resolution.

HDMI: A digital connector that carries a high

defi nition video signal and a multichannel

audio signal over the same cable. HDTV: High

defi nition television; HDTV is wide screen and

capable of displaying at least 720p.

Interlaced Scan: Used on most SDTVs and some

HDTVs, an interlaced scan refreshes all odd lines

of each frame and then starts over from the top

with even lines; this can produce fl icker.

Progressive Scan: This method displays the

lines of each frame sequentially, making for

smoother motion.

SDTV: Standard defi nition television; SDTV

has a classic 4:3 aspect ratio set at 480i

resolution.

Toslink audio: A digital connector that carries

a multichannel audio signal.

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FEATURE Apple TV

Apple TV’s preferences in iTunes on the new computer, and you can now stream content from that computer’s iTunes library to the Apple TV.

How quickly it streams depends on the speed of your network connection and the kind of content you’re streaming. If you have an 802.11g or 802.11n network, video should stream fairly well. And although Apple supports only music streaming over 802.11b, I’ve gotten video to stream from a Mac with an 802.11b wireless card inside. (Note that you can’t stream photos with the Apple TV.) Albums Abound Scroll through your music, complete with album-art previews.

Apple TV AlternativesWhat if instead of watching your Mac’s video on your TV, you’d rather watch TV on your Mac? Or what if you’ve already got a Mac connected to your TV and you want to use it as a DVR or to view your media fi les?

Elgato’s $200

EyeTV 250

( ; macworld

.com/2411) acts like a

computerbased TiVo;

using its built-in TV

tuner (or by connecting

the 250 to your cable box), you can record TV

shows for later viewing on your Mac or iPod. The

EyeTV software and recording features aren’t

quite as elegant as TiVo’s, but the EyeTV works

well and doesn’t require that you pay a monthly

fee. If you can pick up over-the-air HDTV in your

area, the $150 EyeTV Hybrid

( ; macworld .com/2317) lets you pull those

stations in and record them. Pinnacle’s TV for

Mac HD Stick ($130; www.pinnaclesys.com) is

similar to the EyeTV Hybrid; it lets you watch

over-the-air HDTV channels, as well as analog

TV, and uses Elgato’s EyeTV Lite software.

If you’re looking to watch content from your

TV on your computer, Sling Media’s Slingbox

(pictured right: Tuner, $180; AV, $180; Pro,

$250; www.slingbox.com) is a unique system

that connects to your TV, cable box, satellite

receiver, or TiVo and then streams video

and audio over your broadband

Internet connection to wherever

you happen to be in the world

(presumably with a broadband connection, as

well). Using the SlingPlayer software, you can

watch whatever is currently showing on your

home entertainment center on a Mac, Windows

PC, PDA, or other compatible device.

For a combination of TiVo and Slingbox,

there’s SageTV Media Center ($80; www

.sagetv.com) and SageTV Placeshifter ($30).

The Media Center connects your computer to

your cable line or box and lets you record your

favorite TV shows, in SD or HD, to your

computer. You can even record multiple shows

simultaneously, and then use Placeshifter to

watch Media Center–saved programs from any

networkor Internet-connected computer.

Unfortunately, although Placeshifter is

available for the Mac, you currently need a

Windows PC with a TV tuner card to use the

main Media Center software.

Another technology, known as UPnP

(Universal Plug and Play), lets computers and

other networked devices easily communicate

with one another. When it comes to home

entertainment, UPnP is being used to allow

media-center computers to stream content to

other devices around the home. Unfortunately,

there aren’t too many Mac products that support

UPnP. However, if you’ve got a media receiver

that supports UPnP, Elgato’s EyeConnect($50;

www .elgato.com) can stream many types of

media fi les—iTunes music and video, iPhoto

images, videos in your Movies folder, and even

EyeTV-recorded TV shows—from your Mac to

your UPnP-compatible system.

And fi nally, there’s always Apple’s Front

Row (www.apple.com), an attractive, easyto-

use interface for your photos, movies, music,

and DVDs. If you’ve got your Mac hooked up to

your TV, you can browse your media fi les—

including anything purchased from the iTunes

Store and even content shared by other Macs

on your local network— using the Apple

Remote. In fact, Front Row on a Mac looks a lot

like the interface of the Apple TV. It doesn’t let

you sync your media with another Mac, but a

Front Row–compatible Mac can double as a

DVD player and, of course, a computer. (For

feature stories on using the Mac mini and iMac

as media centers, see macworld .

com/2284 and

macworld .com/2285,

respectively).

—DAN FRAKES


Finding Your Way AroundIf you’ve used Apple’s Front Row or navi-gated an iPod’s screen, you’ll feel right at home with the Apple TV (for a video walk-through of the Apple TV interface, go to macworld.com/2688). Once you’ve con-fi gured the device, you’ll see the Apple TV’s main screen. In that screen, you’ll see entries for Movies, TV Shows, Music, Podcasts, Photos, Settings, and Sources. You glide around the interface by select-ing entries, pressing the Apple Remote’s play/pause button, and choosing options in the resulting screen. As with Front Row, you move back through the com-mand hierarchy by pressing the remote’s menu button.

You’ll also fi nd an iTunes Top Movies and Theatrical Trailers entry in the Movies screen. Just as in Front Row, you can watch movie trailers streamed from the Internet. And yes, just as in Front Row, they look wonderful and load quickly over a typical DSL or cable connection. Choose iTunes Top Movies, and you’ll see a list of the ten top-selling titles available from the iTunes Store. Select one, and a short description of the movie and a picture of its poster appear, and then you can play its preview.

Within TV Shows, you’ll fi nd an entry for iTunes Top TV Episodes with 30-second snippets of the programs. And the Music entry contains iTunes Top Songs and iTunes Top Music Videos entries, and it displays album covers when you select one. Again, you get a 30-second preview (there are no podcast previews or recommendations available through the Apple TV).

The Settings screen is where you control how the Apple TV behaves: here, you can control its screen saver (useful for preventing burn-in on some types of fl at-panel TVs), software update function, and settings for repeating music, Sound Check, sound effects, and HDMI brightness.

Watching It AllViewing (or in the case of music, listening to) content is what the Apple TV is all about, and it works well. As you might expect, if you hold down the Apple

Remote’s back or forward button while watching a movie or TV show, the Apple TV will move backward or forward, respec-tively, through the video at increased speed. During this fast playback, you can press the same button (back or forward) again to double the speed, and once more to further speed playback; to return to standard play-back, press the play/pause button. Alterna-tively, briefl y pressing the back or forward button will jump back or ahead, respective-ly, by chapter (for iTunes-purchased mov-ies) or by a specifi c amount of time. For the latter, the exact length of this time jump varies depending on the length of the video you’re watching. For example, for a video clip that’s only a few minutes long, each skip is ten seconds; for a feature-length movie, each click of the button jumps fi ve minutes. Apple TV is also clever about picking up where you left off. If you halt a movie midstream and later return to it after playing, say, a song, you’ll be asked if you’d like to play from the beginning of the

movie or take up where you last stopped (if only my DVD player kept track so well), whether the fi le is on the hard drive or streaming over your network. And because the Apple TV is in contact with iTunes, you can begin watching a movie on your TV, stop it, and then resume viewing it from your computer later, for example. It’s just as smart about video played on an iPod. Play part of a video on your iPod, sync it with iTunes, and your Apple TV will offer to play it from the point where you stopped watching it on the iPod.

The Last WordJust as Apple broke ground in the consumer electronics market with the iPod, it has entered the video market in elegant fashion with the Apple TV. This product gives iTunes and your TV the language they need to converse amiably, and the result is the liberation of your digital content from within the confi nes of your computer’s and iPod’s smaller screens.

Staying in SyncTo get an idea of how well the Apple TV would

handle syncing content, especially over a

wireless connection, I connected a Mac

running iTunes via Ethernet to an Ethernet hub, a new

802.11n AirPort Extreme Base Station, and an older

802.11g AirPort Extreme Base Station. I then tested how

long it took to transfer a movie, an episode of a TV

series, and a single album, all of which were purchased

from the iTunes Store—a total of 1.57GB.

In my tests, having the Apple TV connected via Ethernet

resulted in the fastest transfers, while transferring wirelessly

via the 802.11n base station was also quite fast. A switch to

the 802.11g AirPort Extreme router, however, led to a serious

slowdown; it took more than twice as long as transferring via the 802.11n router.

Since every network is different, it’s hard to extrapolate hard advice from this data. But here’s my take: If

you’ve got an Ethernet jack by your TV set, you’re living the good life. If you have an existing 802.11g network,

there’s a good chance that it will serve you well. Does a shiny new 802.11n base station speed things up? If your

802.11g network suffers from speed or interference problems, a new router might help you out.

At the same time, I had no problem playing back videos streamed over the network from my iTunes server,

using the 802.11g base station. Only when I tested an extremely high-bitrate, high-resolution video did I see any

stuttering, and that particular fi le had some pretty outrageous specifi cations. My point is, if you’ve got an 802.11g

wireless network, you may be able to stream video from another room without a lot of trouble. And since you can

sync overnight, the speed of your wireless network may not be a big issue anyway. —JASON SNELL

802.11g

802.11n

Ethernet

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3:40

2:37

Wi-Fi Transfer Speeds

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FEATURE Apple TV

As Apple’s missing link between the media fi les in your iTunes library and today’s modern tele-

visions, the Apple TV simplifi es the daunt-ing process of viewing computerbased content on a television. While limited in several ways, the device is a solid fi rst step in what I hope is a long line of increasing-ly capable Applebranded AV peripherals.

Setup and Sync

Confi guring an Apple TV is a relatively simple process. Audio and video cables (not included) connect it to your TV, and Ethernet or wireless networking links it to iTunes. Then iTunes serves as the gateway for syncing or streaming media fi les. Once you’ve established this rela-tionship between your computer and the Apple TV, you’ll encounter an interface within iTunes that’s very much like the

one you see when you attach a fi fthgen-eration (5G) iPod to your computer.

You can sync content from only one computer at a time, and you can’t add con-tent manually—for example, by dragging it from your iTunes library to the Apple TV icon on iTunes’ Source list, as you might do with an iPod. If you choose to sync with a different computer, all the data on the Apple TV will be replaced.

Ethernet syncing is fast and reliable— your best option if you have a network cable running to your TV area. Wireless syncing can be slow, particularly over an 802.11b or 802.11g network, but also on an 802.11n network. If you have a lot of content that you want to sync to the Apple TV, it makes sense to start the sync before you go to bed. Make the fi rst connection a wired one, then let iTunes update just the changes wirelessly.

Gently Down the Stream

If you have a moderate to large iTunes library, you’ll fi nd the Apple TV’s hard drive too cramped to hold much of your content. This would be a serious drawback if the device’s streaming capabilities weren’t as good as they are. It can stream video and audio from up to fi ve comput-ers— from both Macs and Windows PCs.

With content purchased from the iTunes Store, video streaming is quite good over 802.11g and 802.11n wireless networks, and over Ethernet networks. You can’t stream photos. Instead, on the computer synced with the Apple TV, iTunes formats the pic-

tures you select (from iPhoto albums or a folder of your choosing) and copies them to the Apple TV’s hard drive. Once they’re on the Apple TV, you can view a selected album or your entire photo library as a slide show. As with iPhoto, you can choose from a varie-ty of transitions, as well as determine the display time for each picture.

Playback of video fi les begins in a matter of seconds. When you press the Apple Remote’s forward button to fastforward or skip to the next chapter, there’s a delay of a few seconds while the Apple TV buffers the incoming content— a progress bar shows you how far along in the process it is.

If you’ve ripped your own video at high bit rates, streaming can be dicier. I ripped House of Flying Daggers at a resolution of 720 by 304, at 24 frames per second, encod-ed in H.264 format, and with an average data rate of 2,608 Kbps. Over my 802.11n network, with a strong signal streaming from the Mac Pro, the movie briefl y froze after playing for about 15 minutes. It did so again a couple of minutes later.

If 802.11b wireless is part of your network, glitches with high-bit-rate videos will become apparent even more readily. Apple says that the Apple TV requires an 802.11g or 802.11n wireless network or a wired Ethernet connec-tion to stream video. I was pleased to fi nd that I could successfully stream Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (pur-chased from the iTunes Store) from an iMac that contains an 802.11b AirPort wireless card over my 802.11n network. The Apple TV

Apple TVDigital device provides

solid link between

computer and iTunes

By Christopher Breen

REVIEW

APPLE TV

PROS: Streaming works remarkably well

over moderate-to-fast networks; easy to set

up and use; solid picture quality; beautiful

interface.

CONS: No support for 5.1-channel surround

sound in videos; supports a limited variety of

video formats.

OS X COMPATIBILITY: 10.3 (Panther),

10.4 (Tiger)

PRICE: $299

COMPANY: Apple Computer,

www.apple.com

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fared much worse on the iMac with a ripped version of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Worldencoded as an MPEG-4 movie, at a resolu-tion of 720 by 288, and with a total bit rate of 2,391 Kbps. Just eight minutes into the movie, the Apple TV paused and stopped to fi ll its buffer. It then continued playing, but a minute and a half later, it paused and refi lled again.

Around and About

Navigation via the Apple TV is easy. It’s responsive to the remote, and the screens look sharp on an HDTV. In typical Apple fashion, there are some lovely motion effects—icons smoothly rotate into place when you choose a new main-menu com-mand, and the screen fl ips every so often when you play audio fi les.

This screen fl ipping is more than cos-metic. Because screen burn-in is still a problem with some varieties of TVs, the Apple TV takes care not to leave static images on the screen for too long. The screen saver serves a similar purpose and is very attractive, displaying a swooping Apple logo, pictures from your photo library (or from the device’s internal bank of fl oral images, if there are no images synced to the device), or albumcovers from your iTunes library.

Watching TV

Movies purchased from the iTunes Store look quite good when played through the Apple TV—almost as good as most DVDs you’d play on your TV. True, Apple sells mov-ies at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480—which is well below the HD mark. But withhold judgment until you see for yourself how the movies and TV shows look on screen. I viewed Cars and both Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and while I saw some sub-tle artifacts in dark-to-gray passages, the mov-ies looked remarkably good. I ripped several movies, and they looked nearly as good as watching them from the original discs.

On the other hand, if you have video at low resolutions—for example, the 320-by-240 TV shows once sold through the iTunes Store—it’s going to look blocky on your TV.

While watching Neil Young: Heart of Gold, I particularly missed the kind of 5.1-channel surround sound you get from today’s DVDs. The Apple TV doesn’t currently support vide-os with 5.1-channel audio—only stereo Dolby Pro Logic II audio—but some people have been successful at getting DTS-encoded sur-round sound content to play through it. Apple clarifi ed that some formats encoded at certain bit rates may work as 5.1 fi les, but slip outside those specs and you and 5.1 part ways. Apple has chosen to say that generally, 5.1 audio is not supported.

What’s Missing

Although the Apple TV packs a punch at a desirable price, there are several things missing that could make it an even better product.

First, I’d like to be able to buy and rent content through the Apple TV. In the case of purchases, the device would need to be a two-way street so you could transfer that material to your computer and an iPod for playback and archiving.

Second, even though the iTunes Store’s H.264-encoded content looks good on my big-screen TV, I know it could look better if it was offered in true HD quality.

Third, MPEG-4 is a very popular video standard and H.264 looks great, but there is a lot of digital video fl ying around that uses neither. It would be lovely if Apple built a Convert For Apple TV command into iTunes’ Advanced menu, or, dare I say it, allowed the Apple TV to play addi-tional formats such as DivX, AVI, Flash, and Windows Media.

And fi nally, I’d dearly love to use the Apple TV’s USB 2.0 port. Specifi cally, I’d like to plug my 5G iPod into it so that not only could the Apple TV play content from the iPod but it could automatically sync purchased and rented media to my iPod. And if I feel cramped by the Apple TV’s 40GB drive, why not allow me to connect a 500GB hard drive to the USB port for additional storage?

Macworld’s Buying Advice

With its simple setup, superb streaming, ease of use, and quality output, the Apple TV is a great piece of gear, but it will have more-limited appeal than the iPod, largely because of the nature of digital rights management and video (in other words, you can’t rip your own DVDs the way you do CDs). Add to this the fact that DVDs offer advantages the Apple TV doesn’t—5.1-channel audio, higher resolution, and the kinds of extras that a movie purchase through the iTunes Store doesn’t pro-vide—and it’s clear that the Apple TV isn’t for everyone. However, if you prefer to enjoy nearly all your media fi les through your TV and AV gear rather than splitting time between the living room and the home offi ce, or if you have more media fi les in your iTunes library than you do DVDs on your bookshelf, moving to the Apple TV makes sense. You’ll certainly enjoy the quality of the experience.

Christopher Breen is a Macworld senior editor. He

writes often about using Macs as media centers.

Top TV Apple TV can stream previews of top shows directly from Apple.

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The Next Step for Search: Beyond Wordsi love search. It’s one of the things computers can do so much better

than we mere mortals can. I fi rst witnessed its magic back in 1989 when

desktop search utilities gave me a cutting-edge look at the contents of

my hard drive. And when search hit the Internet, it made all the differ-

ence between frustration and freedom.Today’s best search engines have

text-based information pretty much nailed. If the material is publicly available on the Net and not buried in some database, you generally fi nd it. There’s little left for search to do, except maybe simplify things for people who refuse to learn how to make more-relevant requests.

But lots of innovating remains to be done. Phones are one promising plat-form. For bringing up phone numbers, Google Mobile already works better than dedicated online directories and the phone companies’ pricey directory assist-ance, but it’s not much good if you’re try-ing to keep your eyes on the road.

Next up (and no doubt one reason that Microsoft just bought voice pioneer Tellme Networks): phone-based search you control by speaking, rather than with keypresses. I remain dubious, however. Ad-supported services are likely to waste your time with commer-cials before de livering help. And even with a screen, how can you scan quickly through the multiple results you’ll receive when the system doesn’t quite understand you?

Whether you talk or type, text search works with what’s there: Nobody has to categorize something before you can fi nd it. The next great search frontier in -volves things that aren’t text, like pic-

tures, audio, and video. When search en -gines assume that the text near an image de scribes the picture, they’re sometimes right—but by no means always.

Type ‘dahlia’ into Google Image Search, for instance, and you’ll see pretty pictures of fl owers and a couple of odd nonfl oral illustrations from Japanese Web sites. Try

it on Microsoft’s Live Search (www.live.com), and 18 of the fi rst 20 images relate to the Black Dahlia murder case.

Hey, if I want ‘black dahlia’, I’ll say so—and when I do, Google comes back with the gruesome images and movie posters I expect. This difference in accu-racy is one reason why, in real life, I use Google constantly and Live never. It also helps explain why Microsoft reportedly has offered businesses a bounty if their employees use its third-rate offering.

Even Google often veers wildly off base with images. Again and again when I look for a photo of some nonfamous person, I get images of their book covers or some PowerPoint they presented somewhere. Sorry, but that’s not what I had in mind.

For now the fallback for nontext search is usually tagging—as seen on sites such as Flickr—whereby humans assign keywords to photos and the like. It mostly works, but if the categoriza-tion is wrong or missing, you won’t get good results.

Still, companies are trying out plenty of clever ideas. Podzinger (www.podz-inger.com), for instance, converts pod-casts into text, then indexes their full content. And some services analyze TV clips by indexing their built-in closed captions. But un til someone develops algorithms to spot “Dorky guy dancing around to Strauss’s Blue Danube” from the video and audio alone, searching text will likely continue to provide the richest rewards.

Search is superb at fi nding text. How

about everything else?

Stephen Manes is cohost of a popular US televi-

sion series and a columnist for Forbes. E-mail

him at [email protected] .