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®
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© 2008 Cybernet Manufacturing, Inc. All rights reserved. The Cybernet logo is a trademark of Cybernet Manufacturing, Inc. Intel and Intel Core 2 Quad are trademarks of Intel Corporation,
or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Windows Vista is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. All other registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.
PC
voL. 28 no. 4 APRIL 2009

cove r s to ry

Ultimate Networking Guide

30
Chances are, you already have a home network. But does it run the way it
should? Is your router or laptop constantly dropping your Wi-Fi signal? Does
your network have the latest security protocol enabled? Can you stream
video and music effortlessly from one device to another? Our definitive guide
to networking takes you through the basics—as well as giving you some
power user tips on how to get the most out of your network.

first Looks
9 hardware
ASUS EeePC 1000HE
Pacific Image Electronics Memor-
ease Digital Film Converter
Western Digital My Book Studio
Edition II
Acer Aspire One (10-inch)
Plus Quick Looks at Dell Inspiron
Mini 12, iZ3D LCD, and more.
13 consumer electronics
Amazon Kindle 2
Samsung Memoir SGH-T929
Helio Ocean 2
Samsung LN46A850
Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1

The Future of
oPinions
Garmin nüvi 265T
3 first Word: Lance Ulanoff
Plus Quick Looks at the AT&T

Networking 26 John c. dvorak

27 inside track: John c. dvorak 19
Quickfire, Cowon S9, and more.
business

37
Now that 802.11n is the norm, 28 sascha segan Lenovo ThinkPad USB Portable
what’s next? We take an in- Secure Drive
depth look at where wireless 29 dan costa
Eizo ColorEdge CG222W
technology is headed, includ-
ing the much-anticipated soLUtions Quicken Home & Business 2009
802.11z standard. 40 staying safe on facebook Intacct for Small Business Fall 2008
W hat you need to know to protect Bill.com (Fall 2008)
your identity and privacy.
4 feedback QuickBase
42 at Work 22 software
front side 44 office Apple iLife ’09
5 I s Google’s Street View violating
46 security Skype 4.0
your privacy?; the future of tech-
nology at DEMO 09; the best of 48 tech tips Google Earth 5.0
our blogs; best free PC games; top Plus Quick Looks at Flower (for
photo apps for your vacation pics. 50 the best stUff PS3), PC Armor 2.2, and more.

PC Magazine Digital Edition, ISSN 0888-8507, is published monthly at $24.97 for one year. Ziff Davis Media Inc., 28 East 28th Street, New York NY 006-7940.

Cover illustrations by David Foster; illustration above by Otto Steininger APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 
 ®

Editor-in-ChiEf, pC magazinE nEtwork Lance Ulanoff

Editor Stephanie Chang www.pcmag.com

dirECtor of onLinE ContEnt, EXECUtiVE prodUCEr Vicki B. Jacobson

EXECUtiVE EditorS Dan Costa (reviews), Jeremy A. Kaplan (features)
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Copy ChiEf Elizabeth A. Parry Copy EditorS Margaret McVeigh, Ann Ovodow
pC LabS LEad anaLyStS Cisco Cheng (laptops), Tim Gideon (audio and video), Robert Heron (HDTV and home theater),
Mario Morejon (networking and small business), Michael Muchmore (software), Neil J. Rubenking (security), Joel Santo Domingo (desktops),
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®

A Tech-Free Vacation
Over the years, I’ve made jokes about using
old technology and living without technol-
ogy, but I’ve really never done either. Then,
a few weeks ago, I took a vacation. No, not
a staycation or a working vacation, but a
real, leave-the-country, exit-the-electron-
sphere kind of sojourn—one in which
phones don’t work and there is no Internet
connectivity.
Okay, that’s not entirely true. I could
have turned on my phone and even
accessed the Internet on this cruise, but
both acts would have emptied my bank
accounts within a few days. So, I turned
my Treo off and pulled out the battery. I
also left my laptop sequestered snugly in
my cabin.
It soon became apparent to me that
previously I had been using technology,
especially my Treo, to shield myself from
inactivity and boredom. Typically, when
I’m in a line or waiting, say, for people to
join me at a dinner table (or rejoin me
when they’ve perhaps taken a bathroom
break), I’ll pull out the phone and check
Google News, attack my steady stream of
e-mail or, more recently, check Twitter and
add an update or two. At home, my laptop
is ever present. I usually pop it open when
I get home at night and later leave it on an
end table so I can pick it up at any moment
and engage in all the aforementioned activ-
ities. Of course, there’s also ad hoc work.
I’ll jot down some column notes in a Word
file, go on TweetDeck, work on a budget
spreadsheet, or maybe just noodle around
on the Internet. My family often makes fun
of me and tells me I should have the thing
attached to my lap. That might be kind of
nifty, especially if the lid is spring-loaded
to pop open every time I sit down.
During my vacation, however, I had
no digital diversions. I’d be standing in
the salad-bar line and my hand would
reflexively reach for my pocket—search-
ing fruitlessly for the phone that wasn’t
there. I felt unmoored. On a typical day I’m
in contact with two dozen or so people in
FIRST WORD lance ulanOFF
my office and hundreds more around the
world (via e-mail, Twitter, and Facebook).
On this vacation it was me, my family, and
my fellow cruisers. Despite all the hun-
dreds of people, I was often alone with my
thoughts.
In that first day or two, I suffered mini
panic attacks. I felt as if I was living in a
bubble. I had no idea what was happening
at the office and received scant informa-
tion about world events. There were local
and national news programs on TV, but
since I rarely use those sources for local,
national, and international information on
all the topics I track, I felt as if I was try-
On a typical day I’d be in contact with two dozen or
so people in my office and hundreds more around the
world (via e-mail, Twitter, and Facebook). On this
vacation, it was me, my family, and my fellow cruisers.
ing to suck a potato through a straw. There
was no way I’d ever get the same informa-
tion blast from that narrow pipe.
It wasn’t until the anxiety attacks and
cold sweats stopped that I understood I
was going through digital detox. I hon-
estly didn’t know how to function without
instant access to a world of information
(personal and public). People around me
likely noticed my pallid, sweaty appear-
ance and darting eyes—surely that’s why
they cut a wide berth around me. However,
by the third day, I had stopped looking
down at my empty hands and wondering if
I could take out a small loan to pay for one
full day’s Internet access. I started to take in
my surroundings. My family looked upon
me as a welcome acquaintance whom they
hadn’t seen in a very long time.
I’ll admit that the anxiety would still
creep up every once in a while, and I’d
have to shake my head and stare at the bril-
liant blue ocean until the feeling subsided.
It always did, and I can remember long
stretches of time where I didn’t once think
about my phone, my computer, Twitter,
Facebook, or the Internet. In those times,
I read, drew, engaged with my family, and
lived a blissfully tech-free, 20th-century
lifestyle.
When the vacation ended and we
arrived back onto U.S. shores, I did what I
knew I would do and turned on my phone.
Within minutes it began gagging on a flood
of 500 or more e-mails. I stared down at
the screen in wonder. My thumbs fluttered
over the keys but did nothing. I just let the
mail arrive while I savored the final few
moments of my digital-free vacation.
Seventy-two hours later, my phone was
in my pocket, my computer was on my
lap, and I could hardly remember those
precious hours when I lived without 24/7
connectivity and interaction with a vast
population of technology elite, enthusiasts,
followers, and friends. I don’t know when
I’ll do that again, but I’m certainly glad for
the memory.
Digital Edition Update
In an effort to continue improving PC Mag
Digital Edition, we’ve taken your com-
ments and suggestions to heart. We’re in
the process of redesigning PC Mag Digital
to make it even easier to read and navigate.
Follow mE on TwiTTEr! Catch the
chief’s comments on the latest tech develop-
ments at twitter.com/LanceUlanoff.
APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 
Feed
Debate Over Digital Edition
I have tried, believe me, I have tried to
navigate through both the February and the
March digital issues of PC Magazine but
wind up being completely frustrated. It is
unfortunate enough, but understandable,
that you no longer publish a printed edi-
tion, and I’m willing to attempt to read the
magazine online, but only if it’s a rewarding
experience. My problem is that the navi-
gation is sorely lacking in ease of use, and
few of the shortcuts seem to work the way
that they are supposed to. Also, I am unable
to close the “Useful Keyboard Shortcuts”
window that pops open and will not leave.
And just to let you know, the March
issue took over a week to appear on my
Library page from the time that I received
your e-mail notification. My local news-
paper, the Detroit Free Press, recently con-
verted to a digital edition. At first I dreaded
going to the paper’s Web site, but soon I
discovered that it is really slick, intuitive,
and easy to navigate.
I would really like to continue enjoying
your magazine and will do so if it becomes
a pleasant experience rather than a case of
stressful frustration.—Carl Eggers
Carl, thanks for your comments. After
receiving lots of feedback—both positive
and negative—about the Digital Edition,
we’re in the process of a redesign that we
are confident will improve readability,
navigation, and other issues you address in
your letter. We take very seriously the input
of folks like you—not just as PCMag read-
ers but also as tech enthusiasts who clock
many hours using and interacting with
hardware, software, and Web sites and
services. If you’d like to check out a sneak
preview of a new and improved PCMag
Digital page, click here. (Note that this link
will take you to the sample page at PCMag
.com.)—Stephanie Chang, Editor
I just want to tell you that although I much
prefer PC Magazine in its former print
format, the Zinio option is a very good
alternative. I’m glad it still feels like a
magazine and not just another Web page.
I also find the embedded links valuable.
—Novel Hernandez
Thumbs-Up to Neil
I want to thank Neil Rubenking for his
insight in “Can’t Copy to Half-Full Thumb
Drive—Why?” This problem has been driv-
ing me crazy for a long while. I thought I
had only one thumb drive that I could back
up my Microsoft Money files to (which I
do just about daily). Your article has shown
me how to back up to any thumb drive
I want, as long as there’s enough room!
—Linda Erthal
HOW TO CONTACT US We welcome your com-
ments and suggestions. When sending e-mail
to Feedback, please state in the subject line
which article or column prompted your response.
E-mail pcmag@pcmag.com. All letters become
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editing. We regret that we cannot answer letters
individually.
Front
What’s New from the World of Tech
Are You on the Map?
Virtual mapping programs, such as Google’s Street View, have raised
questions about privacy and security.
Online mapping has come a long way since
the days of primary-colored, slow-to-load
MapQuest images. Google and Microsoft
have taken online mapping to a new level
of realism, thanks to satellite imagery and
multilens cameras mounted on the tops
of nondescript cars and vans trolling the
streets of a town near you. This virtual
mapping technology has appeared in ser-
vices such as Google Maps’ Street View
and Microsoft’s Live Search Maps, let-
ting users see a panoramic, photographic
view of a location, often with overlays of
navigational map data. For the cartographi-
cally challenged, virtual mapping has been
exceedingly helpful, letting them see what
destinations look like in real life.
But along with photographing streets
and buildings, the roving cameras are also
photographing people. In most cases, those
captured in a virtual mapping image are
simply going about their daily lives—stroll-
ing down the sidewalk or crossing an inter-
section. But the rooftop cameras have also
caught people engaging in embarrassing or
potentially criminal activities, including
walking into an adult bookstore, urinating
behind a parked car, and climbing the steel
gate of a house in what looks to be a break-
in attempt. Street View has a built-in fea-
ture to blur faces, but many say it does not
work consistently. And what about captur-
ing your license plate number, house num-
ber, or your kids playing in the front yard?
Some argue that virtual mapping is a viola-
tion of privacy, since those photographed
are unaware, and they are taking compa-
nies like Google and Microsoft to task.
Pittsburgh residents Aaron and Chris-
tine Boring sued Google in April 2008 for
privacy, trespassing, negligence, and unjust
enrichment after photographs of their
APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 
 frontside

home showed up on Street View. By all indications, Google has

The photographs in question were cooperated with requests to take
taken at the foot of the Borings’ down or blur Street View photo-
driveway and show the couple’s graphs that others object to. But the
house, a pool area, and a detached company has no intention of remov-
garage. Despite the Borings’ claims, ing Street View. In the past year, it
Judge Amy Reynolds Hay of the U.S. has added more than 40 cities as
District Court for Western Penn- well as national parks and recreation
sylvania dismissed the suit, saying centers. Google has also rolled out
that in order to prove invasion of a crowdsourcing feature in which
privacy, the Borings must demon- users can post their own street
strate “mental suffering, shame, or photos. Believing the service’s ben-
humiliation.” efits far outweigh any potential risks
Along with privacy concerns, or privacy infringements, Google
there are those who believe virtual sTreeT visioN Anonymous cars specially outfitted with included its own reality check in its
mapping is a security risk. Repub- multilens cameras capture images for virtual maps. motion to dismiss the Borings’ suit.
lican California Assemblyman Joel “Complete privacy does not
Anderson recently crafted a bill mandat- terrorists in Israel and Mumbai used map- exist in this world except in a desert,” the
ing that virtual mapping programs blur out ping programs to help plot terror attacks. statement read, “and anyone who is not a
schools, places of worship, government “All I’m trying to do is stop terrorists,” hermit must expect and endure the ordi-
buildings, and medical facilities or face Anderson told the Associated Press. “I nary incidents of the community life of
hefty fines and possible jail time. Ander- don’t want California to be helping map out which he (or she) is a part.”
son wrote the bill after it was revealed that future targets for terrorists.” —Chloe Albanesius and Erik Rhey

Looking into the Future

An inside report on this year’s DEMO show.
For the past 18 years, the annual DEMO show has been
dedicated to start-up companies and brand-new prod-
ucts. Forward Thinking blogger and former PCMag
editor-in-chief Michael J. Miller was on the ground at
the spring DEMO ’09 show, last month in California.
Here’s his roundup of the show’s highlights.
Reflecting the changes in the economy, there are
fewer new products here than in any year in recent
memory, but I’m still expecting to see a variety of
new things, ranging from gadgets to consumer Web
services to enterprise software. I’m struck, however,
by the number of products designed for personal
productivity, an area that has been overshadowed in sNeAk Peek Among the products displayed at this year’s DEMO show were the
recent years. Always Innovating Touch Book with detachable screen (left), Coveroos customiz-
For example, I saw Symantec’s Project Guru, an able cell phone covers (center), and the Avaak Vue personal video system (right).
online tool that includes remote diagnostics, network
monitoring, and online remote access for tech-savvy users—you claims to turn server-based applications into cloud-based applica-
know, people like us—to offer tech support to friends and fam- tions. Three products at DEMO that are designed to improve Web
ily. This will be a closed pilot initially, and the company hasn’t searching are ensembli, Primal Fusion, and Xmarks.
announced pricing, but it’s a very interesting concept. Also at the On the hardware side, there were a few products that looked
show was Gwabbit, an inexpensive add-on for Microsoft Outlook particularly interesting, including the Touch Book, a portable
that finds and captures contacts from anywhere within an e-mail device that works as both a netbook and a touch-screen tablet, and
message, and then turns them into contact records in your address Qualcomm’s mirasol Display, which claims to use significantly less
book. There are a number of other e-mail–based tools slated to be energy than competing display screens. Another compelling dis-
introduced, including the Asurion Mobile AddressBook and Cc: play technology was the Avaak vue Personal video system, which
Betty, which is touted as a “personal email assistant.” the company describes as “a revolutionary wire-free video system
Xandros Presto ($19.95), from the Xandros Linux folks, prom- that allows remote viewing of anything from anywhere.” And it may
ises to cut any Windows machine’s start-up time by offering an not be a big technical advance, but Coveroos may entice people to
“instant on” feature. AppZero is another interesting product that customize their cell-phone covers.—Michael J. Miller

 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION APRIL 2009

Best of our Blogs
seCuritY WAtCH
Worm Targets
Facebookers
A new variant of the
Koobface worm is
making the rounds.
Facebook users need
to be aware of this
and other attempts
to use clever social
engineering related
to Facebook to trick
them into installing
malware. Like the ear-
geArlog lier versions of Koob-
isimple Tranzit Connects iPods to FM Car face, this one starts
stereos out as a Facebook goodCleAnteCH
iSimple has unveiled the TranzIt, a universal message from a friend Green Gadget for Hackers
interface that allows iPod and iPhone owners to that includes a link to At the Greener Gadgets 2009 conference in
connect their devices to their car stereos via an a Web site with some- New York, there was a competition to find the
antenna bypass. thing enticing like “a best green gadget—and it’s not at all what you’d
This device claims to offer static-free listening video of you.” As with expect. In fact, it’s not even really a gadget. Heck,
through any FM car stereo. You set the radio pre- the old ones, in order it’s an anti-gadget. Tweetawatt uses a modified
set as an iPod channel (such as 87.9 or 88.3 FM), to view the video you Kill A Watt device to monitor and update your
plug in the iPod, and turn on the Tranzit. Once have to apply what power usage, automatically and wirelessly, for all
connected, you can browse and select tracks purports to be an of your friends and followers to view on Twitter.
using the iPod directly. An iPhone owner could update to your Adobe The theory goes, if everyone knows your power
conceivably stream Internet radio via Pandora Flash player but is in consumption, you’ll behave better. That’s all well
Mobile, AOL Radio, or Last.fm as well. The con- fact the malware. and good, but I like the side benefit: It makes
nection also offers battery charging while the —Larry Seltzer Twitter useful. The device was designed by Limor
iPod or iPhone is docked.—Jamie Lendino Fried of Adafruit Industries and Philip Torrone of
MAKE Magazine.—Jeremy Kaplan
@WorK
New Business switches Netgear announced a new line of Prosafe FSM Layer 2 Fast Ethernet switches for small and midsize com-
panies. The FSM72E, FSM722RS, and FSM720RS are stackable switches that are designed for edge-of-network connectivity
in small IT shops. The SMB switches come with many enterprise features, including support for 802.1x port-based authentication,
ACL (access control lists), QoS with VoIP prioritization with Layer 2 through Layer 4 support, and IGMP feature for video surveil-
lance. The FSM72E is priced at $299.99, the FSM722RS at $399.99, and the FSM720RS at $79.99.—Mario Morejon

e x tr e m e teC H

The Best Free PC Games

The crew at ExtremeTech uncover some of the best gratis games.

Puzzle Pirates Freeciv F.E.A.R. Combat

One of the more popular free
games on the Net, Puzzle
Pirates is a persistent MMO with
a very casual bent. You create a
cute pirate that looks like a Play-
mobil figure and sail the seas in
search of pieces of eight. The
catch is, each activity (and there
are many, like manning the guns,
repairing the ship, and bailing
out bilgewater) is performed
with a simple puzzle game.
Click here for more.
It’s Civilization, and it’s free!
Okay, so maybe this free and
open-source strategy game
“inspired by” the beloved Civ
doesn’t have all the nice UI
features or pretty graphics of
Civilization IV. But once you get
the hang of the keyboard com-
mands, it’s really addictive.
Click here for more.
Chalk As you get ready for the PC
Joakim Sandberg’s Chalk is
release of F.E.A.R. 2: Project Ori-
good for a couple hours of free gin, why not brush up on your
fun. The premise is simple—you
skills with the free multiplayer
guide your character around a component of the original
chalkboard by right-clicking, and
F.E.A.R.? The graphics hold up
draw chalk lines with a left-click. great—F.E.A.R. Combat is one of
Use your chalk lines to deflect
the best-looking free games on
bullets from enemies, remove
obstacles, etc. The catchy tunes the Net.—Jason Cross
and sound effects help bring it Click here for more.
all together into a nice, polished,
scrolling “draw-er” of sorts.
Click here for more.

APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 7

 frontside

Co n n eC te d tr Av e l e r

Best
of the Internet Create Great Travel Pics—Free!
Make the most of your point-and-shooter’s output with these free tools
for editing, managing, and sharing your digital images.

yourFoNTs
This cool, free font
generator lets you
transform your hand-
writing into custom
hand-lettered type. Just
print, fill in, and scan the
template, then upload
it to YourFonts.com to
preview, download, and
install.—Jen Trolio

PluQ
This social planning tool
allows you to engage
your friends or cowork-
ers in scheduling a
party, lunch, or major
event, free. It gives you
a calendar on which you
can mark certain days
with different colors to
indicate to your friends
whether they’re good
days, preferred days, or
bad days.—Alan Henry
DoorFly
DoorFly is a service that
lets you build a profile
of what you’re looking
for in a home and watch
real estate agents bid
against one another to
work with you on your
housing search. Each
DoorFly agent can cre-
ate a custom profile
page.—AH
For more cool Web sites
and handy utilities and
apps, visit PC Mag’s
blog AppScout (www
.appscout.com).
If you’re a PCMag reader, it’s a good bet you own a
digital camera that you use heavily on vacation or
business travel. You may not be a digital darkroom
junkie who spends hours tweaking adjustment
layers in Adobe Photoshop, but you want your pic-
tures to look good, and you want an easy and invit-
ing way to share them with friends, family, and
colleagues. Luckily, there’s a good selection of free
software out there these days that can do many of
the things Photoshop can.
When choosing one of these free apps, here are
a couple things to consider: How easily does the
photo editor let you transfer pictures from your
digital camera to your computer? How effective
and simple are its tools for editing your photos?
And how easy does it make sharing photos online?
Speaking of putting photos online, Picasa
3 (beta) (top left, l l l l h ) is one of the best
choices out there. This new version keeps what’s
good about the old and adds some new killer capa-
bilities, such as retouching, face recognition, and
movie editing. The installed software works seam-
lessly with your Picasa online galleries, and the
two can even be synced automatically. It makes
working with scanners, webcams, and screen cap-
tures simpler, too.
To organize your pics, Windows live Photo
Gallery (Wave 3) (top right, not rated) has a unique
people-tagging feature and the ability to upload to
Flickr and other services. You can group pictures
based on folders created for each import session
and virtual albums of pictures selected from these.
From there you can organize them by date or tags.
If you want an online-only option, check out
Picnik (bottom left, l l l l m ) . This quirky editor
has some super-cool features, such as a button to
automatically fix the blue- or red-eye in pet pho-
tos. Not even Adobe Photoshop Elements can do
that automatically. It also integrates with your
favorite social networking sites like MySpace,
Flickr, and Facebook.
Mac users, of course, have the old reliable,
iPhoto ’08 (bottom right, l l l l m ). It is still one of
the best consumer photo-editing options around.
In addition to the blemish remover, flexible sharp-
ness feature, and noise-reduction filters, this ver-
sion has a new “straighten” command that lets you
rotate a photo freely until it’s right. Its division of
your photos into Events also works well. If you
want to share your pictures on Web galleries with
iPhoto, however, you’ll need to spring for the $100-
a-year MobileMe service.—Michael Muchmore

8 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION APRIL 2009

First
our rATIngs kEy: lllll EXCELLENT l l l l l m VERY GOOD l l l l m m GOOD l l l m m m FAIR l l m m m m POOR

ASUS EeePC 1000HE

$400 street
Ll l l h

Pros Effectively concealed

six-cell battery. Excellent
battery life. Uses the newest
Intel Atom processor. Price
is as competitive as that of
the Acer Aspire One. New keyboard
design. Gesture touchpad.
Cons No real performance benefits
over the N270 processor.
Click here for more.

ASUS EEEPC 1000HE

A Winning Netbook
ASUS is well into the double digits in the number N270 CPU found in its rivals, but on our benchmark
of netbook variants it has launched, and this sea- tests I saw little speed difference. The new CPU InsIDE
soning has finally paid off with its best one yet. The allows for a bigger battery, however, and the 1000HE
1000HE dethrones the MSI Wind as the leader of the did excel on battery life, turning in a score of 6 hours 9 Hardware
pack of pint-size laptops. What puts it on top is not 36 minutes and 7:26 with the Power Saving settings. 13 Consumer
its revamped keyboard, its elegantly tucked-away All of these enhancements wouldn’t mean a thing Electronics
six-cell battery, or its Intel Atom N280 processor if the price weren’t right. The 1000HE makes fewer
19 Business
(an industry first)—although these do help. The compromises than other netbooks, and the value you
1000HE earns an Editors’ Choice because it delivers get with design, typing experience, and battery life is 22 Software
all of these things at a low price. tough to beat.—Cisco Cheng
The EeePC 1000HE resembles the vast majority Specs: 1.66-GHz Intel Atom N280; 1GB DDR2 SDRAM;
of netbooks, though a closer examination will reveal 160GB, 5,400-rpm hard drive; Intel Graphics Media
some design tweaks. In line with its rivals from MSI, Accelerator 950; 10.1-inch, 1,024-by-600 LED widescreen;
Acer, and Samsung, the 1000HE offers only two color 3.2 pounds; three USB ports; 63-Wh, 8.6-Ah, lithium ion
choices, solid black and navy blue. At 3.2 pounds, the battery; Windows XP Home Edition.
1000HE is heavier than most of its competition. The
frame is designed around the six-cell, 63-Wh battery, PErForMAnCE TEsTs MULTiMeDia
L High scores are best. MoBiLeMark
so the awkward protrusion you see on the backs of M Low scores are best. 2007 L SYSMark 2007 WinDoWS MeDia
Bold type denotes first place. hr:min overaLL L encoDer M min:sec
others are eliminated. Other design improvements
ASUS EeePC 1000HE 6:36 35 4:24
include mouse buttons that are substantially larger
Acer Aspire One (10-inch) 8:46 n/a 4:34
than those of the Aspire One and MSI Wind and a
gesture-based touchpad (a netbook first). MSI Wind 2:24 40 5:00

The 1000HE’s 1.66-GHz Intel Atom N280 proces- Samsung NC10-14GB 5:50 41 5:02

sor is rated slightly faster than the 1.6-GHz Intel Atom reD denotes editors’ choice. n/a: not applicable—The product could not complete the test, or the test was not compatible.

APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 9

 first looks HArDWArE

rather than someone who worries about things like

Pacific Image
Electronics
Memor-ease Digital
Film Converter
$129.99 direct
ll h m m
Pros fast film scans
(slides and negatives).
scanning is simple and
fully automatic.
Cons Relatively low res-
olution for film. no con-
trol over scan settings.
Click here for more.
PAcIfIc ImAge eLectRonIcs memoR-ease
DIgItAL fILm conveRteR
Fast Film Scanning
If you’re like most people, you probably have some
boxes sitting around filled with photos from your
pre-digital life. Well, if the photos in those boxes
are on 35mm slides and negatives, the Memor-ease
Digital Film Converter could be right up your alley.
Though it’s speedy and simple, the device is clearly
designed for the kind of casual photographer who
approaches photos primarily as captured memories,
composition and photo quality.
The Memor-ease is just 3.7 by 4.3 by 6.7 inches
(HWD) and weighs less than 3 ounces, so find-
ing room for it won’t be a problem. It comes with a
USB cable, Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0, and the
scanner’s Twain driver for Windows XP and Vista.
You also get a film holder for up to four 35mm slides
and another for one 35mm strip of film with up to
six frames. The Memor-ease is a converter rather
than a scanner, so it operates like a camera, with a
5-megapixel sensor that captures the entire image at
once. The final result is an 1,800-pixel-per-inch (ppi)
image, indistinguishable from an 1,800-ppi scan.
And thanks to its sensor, the Memor-ease delivers
that image at an impressively fast speed.
Unfortunately, the Memor-ease doesn’t score as
well on image quality as on speed. The relatively low
resolution doesn’t hurt the image much for printing
at 4 by 6 inches, but it will make a noticeable differ-
ence at larger sizes. Though I can’t recommend the
Memor-ease unequivocally, for now it’s a good solu-
tion for casual photographers who are happy with
snapshot quality.—M. David Stone

WesteRn DIgItAL my Book stuDIo eDItIon II

Zippy, Voluminous
External Storage
I really liked the Western Digital My Book Mirror
Edition, which yokes two 1TB hard drives together
to provide a terabyte of mirrored (RAID 1) storage. Western Digital
My Book Studio
Think of the Western Digital My Book Studio Edi- Edition II
tion II as the Mirror Edition’s fraternal twin. But $429.99 list
while the Mirror Edition emphasizes protected Llllh

storage, the Studio Edition II is all about speed and Pros capacious
capacity. It’s just the thing for video-heavy creative storage. speedy.
Low power con-
types who would enjoy having 2TB of transportable
sumption. Quiet.
storage by their desktops. It’s Mac-friendly out of the easy to replace
box, though it will work with Windows PCs, too. In internal hard
terms of dollars per GB, this is more expensive than a drives. capacity
indicator.
single-mechanism drive, but it’s cheaper than a por-
Cons A little
table drive. The Studio Edition II proved speedy on our test
pricey on a dol-
Within its case, the Studio Edition II has the same MacBook, taking only 49 seconds to copy our 1.2GB lar-per-gB basis. Install
pair of Green Power 1TB hard drives as the Mirror test folder via USB, 38 seconds via FireWire 400, and disc contains crapware.
Edition, and as with that product, the user can replace 32 seconds with FireWire 800. If all you need is a capacity indicator
requires software instal-
one of the Studio Edition II’s drives if it fails. The Stu- secure, protected place to store your backups, then
lation. Backup is data
dio Edition II comes formatted for HFS+ (Mac for- get the (slightly) cheaper Mirror Edition. But if you oriented, not disaster-
mat) and with RAID 0. (You can reformat to FAT32 have a home business or other small business or are recovery oriented. esAtA
or NTFS if you like.) This means it can fully support a graphics professional, the Studio Edition II should cable not included.
the faster FireWire 800 and eSATA interfaces. float to the top of your buy list.—Joel Santo Domingo Click here for more.

10 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION APRIL 2009

 first looks HArDWArE

Six-cell battery
sticks out from
the base

Acer Aspire One

(10-inch)
$350 street
AceR AsPIRe One (10-Inch) Llllm

Acer’s Recession-Busting Netbook

PROS Phenomenal
battery life. six-cell
battery is standard with
the price. still the most
affordable netbook
By late last year, the Acer Aspire One had beaten In performance, the Aspire One was on a par with around. Ten-inch wide-
out ASUS’s combined offerings to become the top- its competition, but battery life was mysteriously screen and mouse but-
selling netbook—or so market research firm Display- impressive. Although its six-cell battery capacity (59 tons are consistent with
everyone else’s.
Search concluded. The One reached this pinnacle Wh) is less than that of the ASUS 1000HE (63 Wh),
CONS Its 89 percent
because of its low price—despite a smaller-than- the Aspire One somehow produced 8 hours 46 min- keyboard has some
average (8.9-inch) screen and a pair of awkwardly utes of battery life, compared with 6:36 for the ASUS. catching up to do.
placed mouse buttons. This Aspire One is the long- If you don’t mind the keyboard and navigation issues, Mouse buttons were dif-
overdue update, and as its name implies, the screen and price is of the uppermost concern, the Aspire ficult to use.
size has finally grown to the more-popular 10 inches. One is worth a look. Otherwise, spend the extra $50 Click here for more.
Also, the mouse buttons have been relocated. It’s not for our EC, the ASUS EeePC 1000HE.—Cisco Cheng
as well equipped as the ASUS EeePC 1000HE (see
Specs: 1.6-GHz Intel Atom N270; 1GB DDR2 SDRAM;
page 9), but the price is still right.
160GB, 5,400-rpm hard drive; 128MB Intel Graphics
Design isn’t one of the One’s strengths. It’s a bit Media Accelerator 950; 10.1-inch, 1,024-by-600 display;
thicker, bigger, and heavier than most of its rivals (in 2.9 pounds (3.5 pounds travel); three USB ports; 59-Wh,
part owing to the six-cell battery sticking out an extra 5.8-Ah lithium ion battery; Windows XP Home Edition.
inch), and its case is not as flashy as theirs. Although
the mouse buttons are better placed than in the pre- PERFORMANCE TESTS MULTiMeDia
L High scores are best. MoBiLeMark
vious version, they are still tiny and difficult to press. M Low scores are best. 2007 L SYSMark 2007 WinDoWS MeDia
overaLL L
The One’s keyboard, at 89 percent of full size, hasn’t Bold type denotes first place. hr:min encoDer M min:sec

yet caught up with those of its peers. Not much has Acer Aspire One (10-inch) 8:46 n/a 4:34

changed in the feature set: You get three USB ports, ASUS EeePC 1000HE 6:36 35 4:24

VGA-out, an Ethernet port, a 1.3-megapixel webcam, Lenovo IdeaPad S10 2:27 39 4:38
802.11g Wi-Fi, and a 4-in-1 card reader. The hard drive MSI Wind 2:24 40 5:00
has been bumped up to 160GB, however. reD denotes editors’ choice. n/a—not applicable: The product could not complete the test, or the test was not compatible.

APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 11

 first looks hardware

Quick looks
Visit pcmag.com for the full reviews of these and scores of other hardware products.

PROS CONS BOTTOM LINE SPECS

DESKTOPS

ASUS Eee • Compact all-in-one PC • Only 1GB of RAM The Top 1602 is the first truly 1.6-GHz Intel Atom n270 proces-
Top 1602 • Runs Windows • Smallish mouse lacks back integrated all-in-one nettop. It sor; 1GB DDR2 SDRAM; 160GB,
$599 list • Nice styling button may create a new category—an 5,400-rpm SATA hard drive;
ll l h m • Touch screen • Weak 3D graphics Internet terminal that replaces 128MB Intel GMA 950 integrated
• Screen is single-touch only your desktop. graphics; Windows XP Home.

iBuypower • Quad-core power and speedy • Loud fans The Video Pro is a system that 2.83-GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
Video Pro memory for video editing • Lacks eSATA is at the tipping point between processor; 8GB 800-MHz DDR2
$1,799 direct • Blu-ray burner • A little pricey compared with fairly priced and overpriced. If SDRAM; two 500GB, 7,200-rpm
Ll l m m • Decent expansion possibilities similar hardware you plan to upgrade components, SATA hard drives (RAID 0); 512MB
• Comes with VHS-to-DVD the Video Pro will work for you. ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics
converter and Adobe Premiere If you’re still starting out, try a card; DVD±RW drive; Blu-ray
Elements cheaper alternative. burner; Vista Home Premium.

LAPTOPS

Gateway • Well designed • Too heavy for a 13-inch form The UC7807u’s basement price Intel Core 2 Duo T6400 (2.0
UC7807u • Attractive price factor and desirable design can make GHz); 3GB DDR2 SDRAM; 250GB,
$800 street • HDMI port included • Mouse buttons are too resistant customers, especially online 5,400-rpm hard drive; 32MB Intel
ll l h m • Slot-loading DVD drive is a • Trails the competition in shoppers, look past its overfed graphics; 13.3-inch, 1,280-by-800
nice touch performance frame. CCFL screen; 5.3 pounds (6.0
• Full-size keyboard is responsive pounds travel); 49-Wh battery;
Vista Home Premium.

Dell Latitude • Color options • SSDs make it pricey The E4300 is a powerful business 2.4-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SP9400;
E4300 • Huge hard drive selection • Stiff pointing stick ultraportable that lets you choose 2GB DDR2 SDRAM; 128GB SSD;
$2,789 direct • Very good performance from a trio of fashionable colors, 64MB Intel Graphics Media
ll l l m • Very good battery life and its 13-inch widescreen is a Accelerator 4500MHD; 13.3-inch,
• Rugged first in the Latitude line. 1,280-by-800 display; 3.9 pounds
• Excellent keyboard (4.8 pounds travel); 60-Wh
battery; Vista Business.

Dell Inspiron • Big 12-inch screen • Slow, 4,200-rpm hard drive Sure, the Mini 12 costs more than Intel Atom Z530 (1.6-GHz); 1GB
Mini 12 • Good resolution • Expensive for a netbook other netbooks, but it’s the only DDR2; 60GB; 4,200-rpm hard
$524 direct • Very thin one with a 12-inch screen. drive; Intel Graphics Media
ll l l m • As light as its 10-inch netbook Accelerator 500; 12.1-inch, 1,280-
peers by-800 LCD widescreen; 2.7
• Top-notch Ubuntu Linux OS pounds (3.2 pounds travel); 24-
• Multiple battery options Wh battery; Ubuntu Linux 8.04.1.

HP EliteBook • Standard and extended battery
2530p together yield over 20 hours of
$2,099 direct battery life
ll l l m • Built-in optical drive
• Very good keyboard
• Dual pointing devices
• Multiple wireless technologies
• VGA is the only video-out port
• Weak speakers
• Battery life without the ex-
tended battery is unimpressive
If battery life ranks high on your
list of business needs, the Elite-
Book 2530p won’t disappoint.
1.86-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo L9400;
3GB DDR2 SDRAM; 80GB SSD;
64MB Intel Graphics Media
Accelerator 4500MHD; 12.1-inch,
1,280-by-800 LCD; 3.7 pounds (4.6
pounds travel); 55-Wh battery;
Vista Business.

Toshiba Qosmio • Runs an Intel quad-core • Resolution should have been While the Qosmio X305-Q725’s 2.0-GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q9000;
X305-Q725 processor higher at this price fiery design may not appeal to 4GB DDR3; 384GB (320GB, 7,200-
$2,699 direct • Fierce Nvidia 9800M GTX graph- • Could use a higher-capacity everyone, its quad-core processor rpm hard drive and 64GB SSD);
ll l h m ics card battery and an Nvidia GTX graphics card 1GB Nvidia GeForce 9800M GTX;
• Integrates both spinning and are parts that extreme gamers 17-inch, 1,680-by-1,050 LCD, 9.2
solid-state drives yearn for. pounds (11.4 pounds travel); 58-
• Excellent gaming scores Wh battery; Vista Ultimate 64-bit.

DISPLAYS

iZ3D 22-inch • Very good 3D effects • Weak light grayscale perfor- The iZ3D does a super job of 22-inch LCD; 1,680-by-1,050
LCD Monitor • Wide viewing angles mance displaying 3D images and works native resolution; DVI-D and
$399 list • Limited image adjustments with many of today’s gaming analog VGA inputs.
ll l m m • Lacks multimedia/entertain- titles, but you don’t get much
ment features in the way of connectivity and
image adjustment options.

Gateway FHD2401 • Great color and text reproduc- • Narrow viewing angles This monitor delivers bold colors 24-inch LCD; 1,920-by-1,200
$469.99 list tion • Lacks multimedia ports and very good text readability, native resolution; HDMI, DVI-D,
ll l m m • Good motion handling • Tilt-only stand features but its grayscale and viewing and analog VGA inputs; 16:10
• Stylish design angle performance are subpar. aspect ratio.

12 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION APRIL 2009

 first looks CoNsUMEr ElECtroNiCs

Amazon Kindle 2
$359 direct
Ll l l h

PROS Super-thin.
Improved screen.
Better button layout.
2GB capacity (1,500
books). Free integrated
cellular modem. Text-to-speech
capability. Buying new titles is
dead simple. Wide selection of
books, magazines, and blogs.
CONS Still no touch screen.
No native PDF or DOC support.
Reads only proprietary e-book
format. Interface could be more
intuitive.
Click here for more.

Handy 2-in-1 charge cable

AmAzON KINDLe 2 Only 0.3 inch thick

A Darn Good Read

With a new look, an enhanced screen, text-to-
speech capability, and a host of additional design
improvements, Amazon’s Kindle 2 offers everything
that made the original Kindle a best-seller—and
more. The price remains high, but avid readers will
make back some of that cash on discounted e-books.
Although I would love to see a more open file for-
mat, the Kindle 2 is still the best e-book reader you
can buy. With an ever-increasing catalog of maga-
zines and blogs coming to the platform (see the side-
bar), the Kindle 2’s appeal will extend far beyond the
bookstore.
This version shares the original’s general form
factor, but it’s slimmer and lighter, and it features
an improved keypad arrangement. The Kindle
2 weighs 10.3 ounces and measures 8 by 5.3 by 0.4
inches (HWD), which is much thinner than a paper-
back book and about half the thickness of the first
Kindle. Although it still has the same white plastic
frame, the rubberized back has been replaced with
brushed aluminum. This Kindle feels more solid
than its predecessor, but the Sony Reader PRS-700’s
mostly metal construction still feels more durable
than either Kindle iteration.
The Kindle’s proprietary roller wheel has been
replaced with a more useful five-way joystick. Also
gone are the too-large page-turn buttons, replaced by
new, smaller Next Page buttons that are still situated
on both sides of the device. The QWERTY keyboard
sets the Kindle apart from other e-book readers, but
it’s mainly intended for searching keywords, making
notes, and occasionally entering a URL. Perhaps the

APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 13

 first looks CoNsUMEr ElECtroNiCs

Kindle 2 Alternatives
Amazon’s Kindle sequel may be the shiniest new e-book reader on the block,
but it’s not the only game in town. Here are some alternatives.—Corinne Iozzio

eReader 1.3 for iPhone
Free
ll l h m
The eReader does a decent job of
presenting books on your iPhone,
but acquiring reading material
needs to be made easier, and the
software should support more file
formats.
Click here for more.
Stanza for iPhone
Free
llllm
With support for a broad
range of content, Stanza
is the most versatile
e-book application for
the iPhone.
Click here for more.
Sony Portable Reader
System (PRS-500)
$250 street
lllhm
When we first saw the PRS-500,
we dubbed it the “best e-book
reader that has ever been made.”
While it’s still among the leaders
of the pack, it’s been eclipsed by
the newer PRS-700. Regardless,
it’s still a solid reader—and you’d
be hard pressed to beat its new
street price.
Click here for more.
Sony Reader Digital Book
(PRS-700)
$399.99 direct
l lllm
The Sony Reader PRS-700 is an
elegantly designed, easy-to-use
device for e-book fans. As long as
you can deal with the steep price
and the lack of wireless book buy-
ing, it provides a good reading
experience.
Click here for more.

biggest upgrade is the new 6-inch, 600-by-800 elec- than HAL—but it works. Options let you control the
tronic paper display, which shows 16 shades of gray tempo of the reading and choose a male or female
instead of just 4. Amazon claims the new display is voice. This feature doesn’t really compete with the
also 20 percent faster, but I wasn’t able to detect any fluid, emphatic storytelling of audiobooks, which the
significant difference. As cool as this display is, it’s Kindle 2 also supports, but it’s nice nonetheless.
still not a touch screen. Although the Kindle 2 costs the same as the
One genuinely new feature is text-to-speech original, it has eight times the storage. There is no
functionality. Select any book or magazine, and the memory card slot, but the company claims you can
Kindle 2 will read that selection aloud to you. The store more than 1,500 books on its 2GB of internal
voice is pretty robotic—more Stephen Hawking flash memory (1.4GB is available to the user). And all
your book and magazine purchases are also backed
up online. The Kindle 2’s design does not let us per-
BEYOND BOOKS form a battery rundown, but during informal testing
even though the Kindle 2 is referred to as an e-book reader, it lets you I ran it for a week with the wireless radio on before
access a lot more than just your favorite paperbacks. Currently, you can the battery drained completely. In terms of file for-
subscribe to more than 31 newspapers and magazines via the Kindle. mat support, it supports AZW, TXT, Audible, MP3,
Thanks to its wireless capability, each new issue will load automatically
Unprotected MOBI, and PRC (natively), and DOC,
when you’re in Wi-Fi range. Also, there are a selection of blogs that you
can access via the Kindle—for a fee of $1 to $2 a month to port the con- JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP (through conversion).
tent to the Kindle platform. Here’s a few of the choices: The notable missing letters there are “PDF.”
All in all, the Amazon Kindle 2 looks like a wor-
Newspapers Magazines Blogs
thy follow up to its popular predecessor. The quirky
•Le monde •Fortune •BoingBoing
design choices of the original have been ironed out,
•The Independent •The Atlantic •Gawker
and the device has been made easier to use and
•The New York Times •The New Yorker •Huffington Post read. It’s still on the expensive side, and I would
•The Wall Street •Time •Slashdot love to see a touch screen, a more elegant interface,
Journal •U.S. News & World •TechCrunch and support for an open publishing platform (like
•USA Today Report
ePub), but I'm confident that those things will come
in time.—Dan Costa

14 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION APRIL 2009

 first looks consumer electronics

SaMSung MeMoir SgH-T929 (T-Mobile)

The Best Camera Phone

In the U.S.A.
The Samsung Memoir SGH-T929 (T-Mobile) may be
the phone that gets you to leave your digital camera
at home. This 8-megapixel shooter is full of surprises,
including support for two decent Web browsers, a
fun widget-based interface, and 640-by-480 video
recording. The Memoir is expensive compared with
other T-Mobile feature and camera phones, but if
price is no object, this Samsung can’t be beat. sound a bit muddy on the other end, and a lot of
The Memoir, which measures 4.7 by 2.1 by 0.6 background noise tends to come through, although
Samsung Memoir inches (HWD) and weighs 4.4 ounces, resembles a there’s remarkably little in-ear feedback of your own
SGH-T929 (T-Mobile) Samsung Behold mated with a point-and-shoot digi- voice. The Memoir’s battery life, at 5 hours of talk
$299 list and up with
cam. The face has a 3-inch, 240-by-400-pixel touch time, is passable.
two-year contract
Ll l l m screen with Send, End, and Back buttons sitting in The big deal with this phone, of course, is the
a row below it. The back looks a lot like a digital camera, which is better than that of any other
Pros best cam-
era-and-video camera, with a protruding autofocus lens, flash, and carrier-subsidized phone in the U.S.—both for
phone in the u.S. slightly textured grip. photos and for video. It’s not on a par with top
excellent video As a phone, the Memoir is adequate. Reception dedicated still cameras like the Editors’ Choice
player. lots of
on T-Mobile’s 2G and 3G networks is very good; the Canon PowerShot A1000 IS, but it competes
features. Fun to use.
phone also works on 2G and 3G networks in other with lesser cameras like the Casio Exilim z250.
Cons Web browser is a
bit sluggish. bad shutter countries, though it can’t access AT&T’s 3G network Even though the Memoir doesn’t have full smart-
lag. buggy on a couple anywhere. Earpiece and speakerphone volume are phone capabilities, its superior ability as a cam-
of tasks. expensive. both decent, though the earpiece tends to distort at era phone lead us to award it an Editors’ Choice.
Click here for more. top volume. Transmissions through the microphone —Sascha Segan and PJ Jacobowitz

Helio ocean 2 (Virgin Mobile)

The Pre Palm Pre?

One of the coolest elements of Palm’s highly antici-
pated Pre has arrived early: Contact synergy comes
to the masses in the form of Virgin Mobile’s Helio
Ocean 2. This new feature merges address books
from several different sources to let you e-mail, text,
or instant message all of your friends quickly and
easily. Synergy on the Ocean doesn’t go as far as it
does on the Pre, but it’s here now, it’s inexpensive,
Helio Ocean 2
(Virgin Mobile) and it’s a pretty cool device for messaging friends.
$149.99 list with There’s no getting around the fact that the
two-year contract Ocean is huge. At 5.9 ounces and 4.7 by 2.3 by 0.8
ll l l m
inches (HWD), this is no slim-and-light hand-
Pros Push e-mail. set. The phone opens two ways: You can slide the bine all your contacts from a free 100MB Helio web-
brings together con- screen up to get a traditional phone keypad or slide mail account, AOL, Microsoft Exchange, and Yahoo
tacts, iMs, and e-mail
messages from multiple it sideways to get a full QWERTY keyboard. Navi- into one master address book. E-mail and IM run in
accounts. gPS. Plenty of gating is done by means of a four-way rocker with a the background and automatically push messages
additional features and trendy optical sensor in the middle. You also get a to you as soon as they arrive (except for messages
apps. 2-megapixel camera and 2.6-inch, 320-by-240 LCD. from generic POP/IMAP accounts). The one bump
Cons Very bulky.
Battery life came in at 6 hours 44 minutes of con- in the road is that the Ocean 2’s Web browser is pain-
Default Web browser
is slow. requires a tinuous talk time. fully slow. Though it is not as sleek as the upcom-
two-year Virgin Mobile Sure, the Ocean 2 is a fine voice phone, but really, ing Palm Pre, the Ocean 2 is worth a look for heavy
contract. you’re not buying a warship like this to talk on—it’s messagers who are willing to jump to Virgin
Click here for more. all about the messaging. The phone lets you com- Mobile.—Sascha Segan

aPril 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 15

 first looks CoNsUMEr ElECtroNiCs

Samsung LN46A850
$2,599.99 list
ll l l m

Pros Excellent SAmSUNg LN46A850

picture contrast.

design.
Network multi-
media streaming.
Thin cabinet Slim and (Mostly) Sublime
Cons Poor picture uni- At a mere 1.9 inches, the 46-inch Samsung LN46A850 Using calibrated picture settings, I found that the
formity compared with is the company’s thinnest HDTV yet. What’s more, LN46A850’s average picture contrast was an impres-
other Samsung models. the LN46A850’s colors are brilliantly accurate, sive 3,487:1. This result is one of the best I’ve seen
Incorrect scaling on
some test video files. its video black inky-dark, and its reproduction of among fluorescent-backlit LCDs, second only to
standard- and high-definition sources admirably the LN52A750’s contrast result of 3,725:1. A picture-
Click here for more.
detailed. And the LN46A850 is loaded with useful related issue I found with the LN46A850 unit I tested
extras, including support for network streaming of was poor bright and dark uniformity. But I wouldn’t
multimedia content. All in all, it’s a tempting—and say this issue is representative, necessarily, of the
competitively priced—slim-cabinet television. entire series; it’s likely a defect on the unit I received.
The stylish glossy black frame surrounding The fast, 120-Hz refresh rate technology featured
PORTS INCLUDED the LN46A850’s screen is enhanced with a subtle in the LN46A850 is configured by default to smooth
CableCARD 0
reddish-amber line along the outer edges (Sam- out video motion to enhance picture detail. With
Component 2
sung calls it a “Touch of Color”). The LN46A850’s the set’s film detection enabled, its ability to upcon-
Composite 2
swivel-action table stand is constructed from a vert standard-definition video (480i) to the screen’s
rectangular-shaped sheet of tempered glass that 1080p format was exceptional. HD satellite TV as
DVI 0
nicely complements the TV’s frame. A good, styl- well as Blu-ray movies and test material (a mix of
Ethernet 1
ish TV deserves a quality remote control, and the 1080i and 1080p24) were as detailed as I’ve seen on
FireWire 0
LN46A850 includes two—a standard model with any LCD television.
HDMI 4
backlit keys and a mini remote. An Ethernet port Premium plasma and LCD flat-panel televisions
RF 1
lets you stream video and audio from a DLNA- will continue to push the limits of cabinet thinness,
RS-232C 0
compliant server or Windows PC (via the included picture quality, and energy efficiency—and the
S-Video 1
Samsung PC Share Manager software). I streamed LN46A850 sets the current benchmark for what
USB 1
DVD video files successfully, except that the aspect you should expect from an affordable, ultrathin
VGA 1 ratio of the video was incorrect. HDTV.—Robert Heron

16 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION APRIL 2009

 first looks consumer electronics

Panasonic Lumix Dmc-G1

A Pioneer, but Not

Panasonic Lumix
DMC-G1
$799.95 list
ll l m m
Pros uses new micro
Four Thirds standard,
which allows for a
smaller body and lens
than comparable entry-
level D-sLRs. solid im-
age quality at iso 100-
800. Large, articulating
3-inch LcD. HDmi-out.
Cons not much smaller
than a D-sLR. no optical
viewfinder. Excessive
noise at higher isos.
Longer shutter lag
than traditional D-sLRs.
no video-recording
capability.
Click here for more.
a Game Changer
Dreaming of the day when you can have the perfor-
mance of a D-SLR in the body of a compact camera?
It may be closer than you think. The 12.1-megapixel
DMC-G1 is the first camera to incorporate the Micro
Four Thirds standard, which shrinks the lens diam-
eter and forgoes the mirror box you’ll find in a tra-
ditional D-SLR, making it more compact. While
the DMC-G1 delivers good image quality, the com-
petitively priced Canon EOS Rebel XSi ($799.99 list)
gives you sharper images with less noise for about
the same price—and the G1 isn’t that much smaller.
Panasonic says it didn’t shrink the body of the
DMC-G1—at 13.6 ounces—as much as it could have,
for fear of scaring off anyone shopping for an SLR-
quality camera. As a result, there’s a great deal of
dead space inside. Still, the DMC-G1’s overall build is
quite nice. It’s available in black or blue, but our test
camera was a fiery red. It features ergonomic curves
for a solid grip, and its dials have raised bumps for
easy control. All of the camera’s controls are right at
your fingertips, which allows for quick access to the
many features.
What D-SLR users will miss most on the DMC-
G1—and other upcoming Micro Four Thirds cam-
eras, for that matter—is a true optical viewfinder.
Since the new standard loses the mirror box that
reflects the image through the lens, it has to simu-
late one. The DMC-G1 achieves this with a tiny LCD
where the viewfinder would normally be. It works
okay for displaying photo information like ISO and
shutter speed, but I found motion blur to be particu-
larly distracting.
Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-G1 is a solid first stab
at a Micro Four Thirds camera, but you’ll probably
want to wait for the second generation of products,
or simply go with a traditional entry-level SLR like
the Canon EOS Rebel XSi.—PJ Jacobowitz

GaRmin nüvi 265T

The Garmin Experience

at a Bargain Price
Given the current state of the economy, not every-
one has the budget to spring for a GPS device. Fortu-
nately, the 265T, one of Garmin’s entry-level nüvis,
offers an amazing amount of bang for the buck.
The 265T measures 2.8 by 3.8 by 0.8 inches
(HWD) and features a 3.5-inch, 320-by-240-pixel
screen. For an additional $50, you can opt for the
nüvi 265WT, which has a 4.3-inch, WQVGA 480-by-
272-pixel screen.
Both the 265T and 265WT feature Garmin’s Garmin nüvi 265T
familiar “Where to” and “View Map” user interface $249.99 List
and have the same destination input options as on llllm

the midrange and even the premium 800 series. Pros includes
Input options include: Address; Go Home; Points of clock, a simple calculator, and a unit converter.A free maps for the
u.s. and canada.
Interest (16 categories); Recently Found; Favorites; upgrade called ecoRoute calculates your estimated
Text-to-speech.
Intersections; Extras; Cities; Browse Map, and Coor- fuel cost for each trip and provides you with fuel and Lifetime free
dinates. mileage reports; it even adds a “Less Fuel” option to traffic. ecoRoute feature
The 200 series doesn’t have Garmin Locate, a fea- your Route Preference choices. can save you money on
gasoline.
ture that remembers your last-known location when Though it lacks some of the bells and whistles of
Cons no multisegment
you remove the device from the bracket. The series Garmin’s top-shelf products, the 265T still delivers
routing or Lane assist.
also lacks players for MP3s and audiobooks, as well the Garmin navigation experience, with a complete Bluetooth interface
as an FM transmitter to send voice prompts to your set of maps, text-to-speech, free lifetime traffic, pic- didn’t read contacts/call
car’s FM radio. Still, the 265T and its siblings do have ture navigation, and ecoRoute to boot. And you just history.
the “Where Am I” feature, a picture viewer, a world can’t beat the price.—Craig Ellison Click here for more.

aPRiL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 17

 first looks Consumer eleCtroniCs

Quick looks
Visit pcmag.com for the full reviews of these and other consumer electronics products.

RED denotes Editors’ Choice PROS CONS BOTTOM LINE SPECS

SMARTPHONES

AT&T Quickfire • Comfortable QWERTY keyboard • Finicky touch screen The Quickfire misses the mark GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA data
$99 direct (with • Roomy LCD • Weak reception as a music phone, though it’s an networks; 2.8-inch, 240-by-320
two-year contract, • Includes Web browser, IM, and • Lacks a standard 3.5mm head- effective Sidekick clone for those TFT LCD; 1.3MP camera; 4.3
after rebates) e-mail clients phone jack with AT&T. by 2.2 by 0.7 inches (HWD); 4.8
ll l m m • Solid multitasker ounces.

T-Mobile Shadow • Attractive • Poor Web browsing and video T-Mobile has smoothed over Windows Mobile Pocket PC;
(2009) • Free calls via UMA-based Wi-Fi playback some of the rough edges of the GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA data
$150 street (with • Comfy hybrid QWERTY • Some UI-related snafus original Shadow, but it’s still networks; 2.2-inch, 240-by-320
2-year contract, keyboard • Useless video-recording mode tough to recommend this device. LCD; 2MP camera; 4.1 by 2.1 by
after rebates) 0.6 inches (HWD); 5.3 ounces.
ll l m m

DIGITAL CAMERAS

Pentax K2000 • Takes sharp pictures • Images can be noisy at or above Although the Editors’ Choice 10.2MP resolution; 2.7-inch LCD;
$599.95 direct • Fast operation and autofocus ISO 800 Canon EOS Rebel XSi produces accepts SD flash memory; 3.6
ll l l m • Help button provides useful • Camera recycle times slow better shots in low light, the by 4.8 by 2.7 inches (HWD); 1.7
information down after a few shots in a row Pentax K2000 has comparable pounds.
• Includes additional flash • LCD can’t be used as a speed and image sharpness—and
accessory viewfinder it costs a hundred bucks less.

PORTABLE MEDIA PLAYERS

Cowon S9 • Strong audio file support • Touch screen is not very The S9 is designed to resemble 16GB flash memory; 3.3-inch
8GB, $199.99 list; • Touch screen sensitive the iPod touch, but the player screen; 480-by-272 maximum
16GB, $239.99 • Built-in accelerometer • User interface can be difficult lacks the grace and Wi-Fi connec- resolution; supports FLAC, MP3,
ll l m m • Video output to navigate tivity necessary to be a true rival. OGG, WMA, and WAV audio
• Line-in, FM, and voice recording • Volume controls are disabled in formats; 4.2 by 2.2 by 0.5 inches
• Excellent battery life some screens (HWD); 2.7 ounces.

SanDisk Sansa • Compact design • Monochrome display If modern radio hits are your microSD card included; 1.5-inch
slotRadio player • Easy to use • Can’t skip backward thing, the tiny Sansa slotRadio screen; MP3 and WMA audio
$99.99 direct • No PC needed • No auto-off when no earphones player is a great value—1,000 formats supported; 1.9 by 1.9 by
Ll l m m • Comes with a microSD card are plugged in songs (plus the device) for $100. 0.6 inches (HWD); 1.3 ounces.
with 1,000 songs from Billboard Just be prepared for a no-frills
charts listening experience.

SPEAKERS

Altec Lansing • Affordable • Distortion at high volumes The FX2020 speakers are by no Computer speakers; two chan-
Expressionist • Upward-angled for desktop • No remote control means powerful, and you don’t nels; 7.5 watts RMS per channel;
Classic FX2020 listening • Speakers are hardwired to one get a lot of bass. But a cool 5 by 5 by 6.5 inches (HWD).
$79.95 list • Intriguing, attractive design another design and a low price make them
ll l m m ideal for the office.

BLU-RAY PLAYER

LG BD300 • Fast disc load times • BD-Live functionality requires The BD300 is the fastest Blu-ray Composite, component, and
Network Blu-ray • Solid DVD upconversion external USB-based storage player we’ve tested, and its sup- HDMI video outputs; Toslink
Disc Player • Supports Netflix instant device port for Netflix instant streaming and coaxial, HDMI, and stereo
$349.95 list streaming • Some on-player controls are is a nice bonus that comes with RCA audio; Ethernet port; 2.3 by
Ll l h m difficult to operate this solid value. 16.9 by 10.9 inches (HWD); 6.8
pounds.

GPS

TomTom One • Maps for U.S. and Canada • Mounting bracket is a bit TomTom’s new entry-level GPS Supports Secure Digital and
130-S • Easy to use awkward to use offers a lot of bang for the buck MultiMediaCard flash memory;
$249.95 list • Text-to-speech • Low speaker volume from a navigation leader. 3.5-inch touch-screen display;
ll l h m • Live traffic updates • No SD card slot for map 3.8 by 3.2 by 1.0 inches (HWD);
expansion 7.2 ounces.

MEDIA EXTENDERS

Blockbuster • Supports HD files, HDMI-out • Limited selection of titles Despite some limitations, the Remote control; 8GB internal
2Wire MediaPoint • Easy setup • Downloads take a long time MediaPoint makes a nice comple- flash memory; 802.11g Wi-Fi;
$99 direct • Intuitive, simple user interface • No WPA2 wireless ment to Blockbuster’s DVD and two USB ports; composite,
ll l m m • Wi-Fi compatible online offerings. component, HDMI, and RCA
• Useful remote outputs; Ethernet port; 1.0 by
8.0 by 8.0 inches (HWD).

18 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION APRIL 2009

 first looks BUsiNEss

Lenovo ThinkPad USB PorTaBLe

SecUre drive

Lockable, Portable
Hard Drive
Drive security is getting to be a hot-button issue; wit-
ness the recent story about a lost MP3 player with
military data on it being resold in a pawn shop. The
problem with so-called “secure” hard drives has tra- Lenovo ThinkPad
ditionally been that they have too many limitations. USB Portable Secure
Drive (320GB)
This Lenovo external drive transcends those limita-
$319 list
tions by internalizing its security—it looks just like Llllh
a plain old hard drive to Windows or Mac OS X. It’s Pros dead-
hardware-encrypted (with 128-bit AES) and easy to simple security.
use—what more could you ask for? Supports up to
At first glance, the 0.5-by-3.5-by-4.5-inch (HWD), ten users. no
software install
320GB Secure Drive looks like a USB numeric key- needed. Mac compat-
pad. An LED indicator tells you the drive’s status, ible. nice keypad feel.
and the casing is clad in the same rubberized coating Permanently attached
that gives Lenovo’s ThinkPad notebooks their dis- eSATA drives have the potential to be faster, but the USB cable. intelligently
designed carrying
tinctive and sturdy feel. You can add up to ten users Secure Drive pays no performance penalties for its pouch.
(in addition to the administrator), each with a unique security. At about $0.68/GB, the drive is a bit pricey. Cons Pricey on a dollar-
access code. That way, the drive can be passed from You can get a nonprotected 500GB drive for the per-GB basis. no soft-
person to person while remaining secure, with each same total price as the Secure Drive (about $0.44/ ware included. needs
user having access to all the data on it. GB). But for its target audience, the extra security included USB auxiliary
power cable for heavy
In testing, the Secure Drive scored very well is worth the money. If you’re a businessperson who write sessions. Some se-
on PCMark05, turning in 3,126—exceptional for an needs to pass sensitive data physically from one curity experts may con-
external storage drive. It was also fast in simple drag- computer to another, or if you want to back up your sider its numerical code
and-drop copying, taking only 52 seconds to trans- files with another layer of security, the Secure Drive system too simplistic.
fer our 1.2GB test folder. To be sure, FireWire and is a perfect choice.—Joel Santo Domingo Click here for more.

eiZo coLoredGe cG222W

A 22-inch Display for

Imaging Pros
The CG222W is not your typical 22-inch desktop
monitor, nor does it claim to be. Instead, this dis-
play is aimed at photographers, graphics artists, and
designers who demand consistent and accurate per-
formance and are willing to pay a premium for it.
The CG222W uses a 22-inch, wide-gamut S-PVA
(Super Patterned Vertical Alignment) panel with EIZO ColorEdge
a maximum resolution of 1,680-by-1,050 and a 16- CG222W
$1,499 list
millisecond pixel response rate (black-to-white).
lllhm
In testing, the display delivered as promised. Color
Pros very good
swatches from our DisplayMate tests were vivid and color quality. Great light
bright and appeared uniform across the color scale. grayscale reproduction.
Unfortunately, this monitor does not offer HDMI tion. This monitor uses the more accurate (and more color calibration capa-
connectivity, but you do get dual DVI-I ports, as costly) ColorEdge technology, which calibrates by bilities. Fully adjustable
stand.
well as three USB ports. I was also very impressed programming the monitor’s internal circuitry to
Cons Lacks hdMi input.
with the CG222W’s viewing-angle prowess. Images change the way colors are reproduced on the screen. expensive. does not
remained clear and bright from all sides (horizon- To take advantage of this, however, you’ll need support auto-rotation.
tally and vertically) out to around 175 degrees. EIZO’s proprietary Color Navigator software and a dark grayscale perfor-
The main difference between the CG222W and colorimeter. Although expensive, the CG222W is a mance could be better.
mainstream displays has to do with color calibra- boon to imaging professionals.—John R. Delaney Click here for more.

aPriL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 19

 first looks business

Quicken Home & Business 2009

Easier to Use than Ever

When Intuit’s Quicken was first introduced, it was Quicken Home &
built around a familiar graphical paradigm: the Business 2009
$79.99 direct
checkbook. You can still find checkbook imag-
Llllh
ery built into Quicken Home & Business 2009, but
Pros covers all
now it’s just a small part of what has grown to be a
major elements
comprehensive financial management program. of personal
Although the company has worked hard to bump up finance. interface
the ease of use on this version, Quicken still isn’t for simplifies use.
Helps prepare for taxes.
everyone. Those without a home business to worry
manages home-based
about will do better to choose Quicken Starter Edi- businesses. downloads
tion, Quicken Deluxe, or Quicken Online. But to financial data.
track personal finances as well as those of your home Cons too big for basic
or small business, you can’t beat this edition. of the program automatically flow into here, so you users. Bill section can be
You see the changes to the new Quicken right see simple, effective windows that display totals confusing.
away, thanks to a new Setup tab. Other new features for money coming in, money going out, and what’s Click here for more.
include improvements to the Add Account workflow left. You can create and track numerous types of
and to bill management and reminders. More signifi- accounts, including checking and savings, credit
cant, though, is a new sidebar that provides access to card, investing/retirement, and loans. Individual
the Quicken online community and to tools—your bills are handled capably under Quicken’s Bills tab.
to-do list, add-on services, and more. Intuit has also You can also set up a portfolio and download stock
organized Quicken’s primary tasks into tabbed sec- market information. In short, Quicken is well worth
tions: Bills, My Pages, Banking, Business, Investing, your dollars if you want money management that
Net Worth, Planning, Tax, and Quicken Picks. takes in all aspects of your small business and per-
One tab that you’re sure to spend a lot of time on sonal financial life, including your taxes, your portfo-
is Banking. Income and expenses from other parts lio, and your plan for the future.—Kathy Yakal

intacct for small Business

fall 2008 edition

What’s After QuickBooks?

QuickBooks is an exceptional small-business
accounting program, but it can be stretched only so
far. Before you reach that limit, you’d better think
about taking the next logical step—moving to a mid-
range accounting product, such as Intacct for Small
Business.
Like QuickBooks, Intacct is an accounting pro-
gram—but it's one of a very different sort. The base
program contains many of the features QuickBooks
offers, such as Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Cash Management, Intacct for Small
Payable, but it’s not an out-of-the-box solution. Company, General Ledger, Customization Services, Business Fall 2008
You’ll most likely need to work with Intacct to find Employee Expenses, Inventory Control, Order Entry, Edition
$400 direct and up
a reseller who can help you with, at the very least, and Purchase Orders. Like QuickBooks, Intacct has a Llllm
setup and implementation, if not training. And, as dashboard feature, but where QuickBooks has just
Pros unlimited dash-
you’d expect with a growing business, the account- one dashboard—the Company Snapshot—Intacct boards. clean, under-
ing expense will be commensurate with a system lets you build an unlimited number. This package standable interface.
that can handle more sophisticated needs—Intacct also provides other features that go beyond Quick- Graphical navigational
flow charts. comprehen-
estimates that a typical installation will cost roughly Books Pro, including automated billing and collec-
sive records and transac-
$10,000 a year. But attempting to get along with an tions management, as well as the ability to allocate tions. strong integration
underpowered solution will be far more expensive. and analyze cash in real time. and customization.
Because it’s Web-based, Intacct has an immediate Moving to Intacct represents a huge step. I’d rec- excellent help files.
advantage over QuickBooks: Employees can work ommend Intacct for businesses that are currently Cons requires consid-
with the accounting system anywhere—a boon for using QuickBooks but need to expand, and for mid- erable time to learn.
mobile workers. Intacct’s base modules are Accounts size and complex small businesses.—KY Click here for more.

20 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION aPril 2009

 first looks business

bills due, routes your vendor payments through the

approval process, and dispatches checks to your
payees. It does so through a combination of faxes,
e-mail, and electronic data storage, using a simple
Web site with a clean design.
If you’re using QuickBooks or Intacct, you can
integrate Bill.com data with either service. If you
Bill.com follow the simple directions, syncing the two prod-
$25 per month for one ucts—moving your chart of accounts, vendors, and
user; first ten payments
classes—should go without a hitch. Once you’ve got
per month are free,
$0.99 per payment Bill.com set up, the life of a typical bill goes like this:
thereafter; $10 per user A vendor mails you a bill. It goes to your A/P clerk,
per month for 2 to 11 who faxes it to your Bill.com fax number. Once the
users; $5 per month for
bill is in the system (Bill.com handles the OCR), you
each additional user. Bill.com
can add approvers, and once they’ve approved, you
Bill Tracking Made Easy
Ll l l m
can pay bills in full or partially, online (using the bank
Pros clean, simple
interface. Saves money account you’ve set up) or off-line.
and time. Reduces paper Small-business accounting packages have matured Bill.com’s two most noteworthy features are the
and paperwork. inte- tremendously, but there are still gaps in SMB pro- audit trail (in which every entry into the system is
grates with QuickBooks
cedures for enterprising software designers to fill. tracked and recorded) and the home page, which dis-
and intacct.com. Audit
trail. Bill.com successfully exploits one of those gaps with plays a monthly calendar with scheduled payments
a Web site that expands on the accounts payable on the appropriate days. For security, the site uses
Cons Takes some time
to understand the work- functions of your accounting application—assum- the same encryption scheme that your bank does.
flow. could use more ing you have one. Bill.com can serve either as a In short, I haven’t seen a Web-based application in
reports. standalone application or as an integrated add-on to this price range that carves out this exact niche and
Click here for more. QuickBooks. The service tracks and stores vendor implements it as well as Bill.com.—Kathy Yakal

QuickBASE (FAll 2008)

Database in the Cloud

QuickBase puts your company’s database applica-
tions online, so anyone in your organization can get
customized, secure Web access to anything from
inventory to contact lists to product management.
You probably won’t want to use it as an enterprise-
scale database, but for almost anything else, it’s an QuickBase
(Fall 2008)
impressive Web-based substitute for a server in Free 30-day trial; sub-
your office. scription, $250 direct
QuickBase is not cheap, but those who can afford per month and up
Llllm
it have access to a surprisingly simple and elegant
application. This simplicity becomes clear within Pros Power-
ful, fast, reliable
your first few minutes of using the app. The straight-
online database.
forward, no-clutter Web-based interface has helpful thanks to a built-in revision-tracking feature that can Extremely easy
prompts and explanations everywhere. I found it store multiple versions of the same document. to use, but
easy to get started either by using one of more than One limitation to keep in mind when using with elaborate options
for user permissions,
300 prebuilt database templates—many contrib- the document-storage system is that QuickBase
document storage, auto-
uted by real-world users—or by building a simple doesn’t work like “live” Web services, in which you mated e-mail notifica-
database from scratch. From there I found it simple can open an attached file in the browser and save tions, multiple tables,
to perform all the sorts of tasks the average user will it again directly to the Web. When you open a file customized reports, and
charting. Rich selection
want from an online database, including adding mul- attached to a database and make revisions, you
of prebuilt applications.
tiple tables, setting up tabular and graphic reports, have to save it locally first before uploading the new
Cons Attached docu-
and fine-tuning access permissions for users. version to QuickBase. For serious, business-class ment files can be ex-
What I like most about QuickBase is its clear database needs with the convenience of online ported only one by one.
interface, obviously the result of years of experience access, QuickBase is the service we recommend. In charting can’t handle
with consumer-level products like Intuit’s Quick- fact, it is the database app we use here at PCMag. some complex data.
Books. The document library app is impressive, — Edward Mendelson Click here for more.

APRil 2009 PC MAGAZInE DIGITAL EDITIon 21


Apple iLife ’09
$79 direct
Ll l l h
Pros Five
strong apps,
tightly integrat-
ed. Terrific value.
Connects to a
variety of Web services.
Cons iphoto competi-
tors are nearly as good,
at no cost. No update to
iDVD, which has no Blu-
ray support. awkward
handling of multiple
iMovies.
Click here for more.
22 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION april 2009
first looks software
apple iliFe ’09
Your Digital Life,
Apple Style
iLife is still the best suite out there for combining
your photos, videos, and audio doodlings into gor-
geous projects to show friends and family. iLife ’09
isn’t really a huge upgrade from iLife ’08, and the rise
of alternatives to a few of its apps means you may
actually want to think twice before dropping $79.
But if you intend to use all the pieces together, you’ll
be spoiled for any other suite. Why? Because the
strength of iLife is its integration. Each component,
individually, is good. Together they’re unbeatable.
Media flows effortlessly from one app to the other,
letting you put your photos, movies, or songs into
the hands of friends and family half a dozen ways.
Five components make up iLife: iPhoto, iMovie,
GarageBand, iWeb, and iDVD. The free download,
iTunes, is pretty much the sixth part and is neces-
sary if you want to take advantage of the suite’s
integration. iWeb and iDVD exist mostly to let you
publish material you collected or created in iPhoto,
iMovie, GarageBand, and iTunes. With iLife ’09,
Apple has unyoked the software a bit from the $99-
a-year MobileMe online service, giving you more
options to put your photos, videos, and Web sites
online with Flickr, YouTube, and other hosting ser-
vices—a welcome and much-needed move. For its
tight integration and continued feature innovation,
we award iLife ’09 an Editors’ Choice.
Finding FaCes in
the Crowd iphoto
’09’s best new feature
is the ability to sort
photos by who’s
in them, known as
“Faces.”
iPhoto ’09
Once, iPhoto had no peer. But now Google’s free
Picasa 3.0 has taken a lot of the wind out of iPhoto’s
sails, matching the new face-detection and geotag-
ging functions in iPhoto and one-upping it on speed.
If you intend to print your photos or export them
into iMovie, iPhoto is still the best choice.
As before, iPhoto imports images into date-
based collections called events, but you have two
new photo-sorting capabilities: Faces and Places.
The Faces feature scans through your photos iden-
tifying human faces and then asks you to tag them
with names. With our 4,500-image library, the pro-
cess took about 90 minutes. Places is striking but a
little less useful. It lets you plot the locations where
you took your photos on a Google Map, and zoom
in to look at collections of images you shot in the
same area. There are a few other enhancements, but
they’re too minor to change your buying decision. If
you’re just looking for a photo organizer and a way to
put your slideshows on the Web, look to Picasa. But
iPhoto still reigns for folks wanting to do more with
their photos.
iMovie ’09
iMovie ’09 keeps its predecessor’s radical clip-based
interface but adds a bunch of missing features that
advanced users will welcome. For example, clicking
on the corner of a clip gives you a list of advanced
features, such as a frame-by-frame precision editor
that helps—a little—with iMovie’s lack of timecodes
and frame markings. Also, the new iMovie sup-
ports two video tracks—sort of. You can cut away
to a second while playing the audio from the first,
embed one track in another to create a picture-in-
picture display, or do simple green-screen compos-
iting. Like most of iMovie’s features, these could be
more flexible. Two features that improve iMovie’s
integration with iPhoto are Themes (to add titles
and transitions) and Edit to Music (which lets you
synchronize transitions with the beats or lyrics of a
musical score—handy for customized slideshows).
The application still lacks one big capability:
HD support. While you can import HD movies
from most video cameras, you can’t output in HD.
If you’re using a Mac, though, iMovie is pretty much
your only cheap video-editing option.
garageBand ’09
It’s the fifth anniversary of GarageBand, and Apple
seems to be taking a new approach to this record-
ing app that is part toy, part tool. No one will ever
confuse GarageBand with Pro Tools, and Apple
seems to embrace the difference. In its latest itera-
tion, GarageBand seems more of a learning tool than
anything else. Sure, you can record some demos on
it, with either real instruments or supplied samples,
adding sounds and loops track by track. But Apple
seems more concerned with showing you the funda-
mentals of simple composing, digital recording, and
learning an instrument. It does the last through basic
video lessons called “Learn to Play.” Non-celebrity
lessons are free, but getting Norah Jones to teach you
piano, for example, costs $4.99. The payoff is that
Jones delivers a verse-by-verse how-to in panoramic
widescreen. Underneath her video, the ivories she’s
caressing light up on a virtual keyboard.
Apple has also added virtual amps and pedals
for guitarists to run their recordings through. The
less-compelling change to GarageBand is a feature
that lets you set up a band on a fake stage, choose
the style of music and instruments, and put songs
together. If you want basic music lessons and to get
your feet wet with basic recording-and-looping soft-
ware, GarageBand is worth your consideration.
Building out Your
get at the basic HTML of your Web pages, and every- site iWeb lets you
thing you do must be based on one of the iWeb’s 28 drop widgets onto
your page to add com-
graphical themes and 8 page types. You can insert an
plex objects—such as
“HTML snippet” as a widget, but it must play nice rSS feeds—to your site
with Apple’s existing code. Other widgets let you quickly.
drop in RSS feeds, a Google AdSense box, photos
and videos from an iSight camera or YouTube, and,
bizarrely, a graphical countdown. iWeb’s real func-
tion—like iDVD’s—seems to be to create showcases
for your other iLife content, and the program does
that admirably.
idVd 7.0.3
There’s no upgrade to iDVD in iLife ’09. The
upgrades come in iMovie, which now lets you send
projects to iDVD without compressing them to MP4
first, improving the quality. You can also set chapter
stops in iMovie, but you can’t send multiple videos to
iDVD without an intermediate step.
Apple has missed a lot of opportunities here,
such as Blu-ray support and providing a simple way
to consolidate multiple iMovies and iPhoto slide-
shows onto one DVD. You can do that, but it involves hoMeMade hol-
exporting, dragging, and dropping—at which point lYwood iMovie ’09
you might as well use something else. If you’re look- supports dual video
ing for a DVD-burning program to use with any- tracks, to a limited ex-
tent. You can drop in a
thing except iMovie, Roxio’s Toast 10 Titanium is far
second track while still
superior. But as a way to burn your iMovie projects playing the first’s audio
to beautifully themed DVDs, it’s still a good choice. or create a green-
—Tim Gideon and Sascha Segan screen effect.

iweb ’09
iWeb has finally grown up and gotten more flexible.
Apple’s easy-to-use, template-based Web site cre-
ator used to have one big downside: It could publish
directly only to MobileMe. But now you can publish
to any server that accepts FTP, which includes most
Web hosts. You can also manage multiple sites, with
each one uploaded to a different location.
iWeb is still not an enterprise-class, or even a
small-business-class, Web-design program. You can’t

april 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 23

 first looks software

Skype 4.0

Video Chat Keeps

Getting Better
Though we still categorize Skype as voice over IP,
Version 4.0 puts video front and center. The service,
which offers free voice and video calls between PCs
and low-cost calls to standard phones, has always
had a refreshingly clear interface, but now the UI has
been redesigned with a focus on video calling. The
quality of its combined voice and video exceeds that
of other available options such as SightSpeed, Tok-
Box, and Windows Live Messenger. This, along with
the great new interface, makes Skype our video-chat Skype 4.0
Editors’ Choice. The new Silk codec makes Skype’s sound quality Basic service, free
Skype is convenient for making and receiving noticeably better for voice calls than when we last Llllm

calls via your PC, but we don’t recommend it as a tested the service. Calls I made to landline phones Pros Free pC-
landline replacement or as a substitute for VoIP from Skype sounded full and fine, though not quite to-pC calls. Low
rates for landline
services such as Vonage. That’s because if your PC as clear as those over landline-only connections.
calls. Improved
goes south, so will your ability to make or receive Video quality is slightly improved, though I still quality.
Skype calls. You can remedy that with a dedicated experienced occasional stutter owing to bandwidth
Cons Default windows
Skype phone, but options run anywhere from $100 issues. Skype doesn’t have some features of other are too large. No built-in
to $300. Note, too, that Skype doesn’t provide emer- services—such as a Web-based version and group call recording. No Web
gency-number (911) service or actual human tech video chatting—but it’s still the best free service out client. No 911 service.
support. there.—Michael Muchmore Click here for more.

GooGLe earth 5.0

The World at Your

Fingertips
With the latest update of its virtual exploration app, Google Earth 5.0
Google now lets users dive into the ocean, zoom over Basic, free;
pro, $400 direct.
to Mars, and even travel back in time. Google Earth
Llllh
still lags behind Microsoft’s LiveSearch Maps when
Pros Many new
it comes to local search capabilities and 3D render- places to ex-
ing. However, it provides far deeper, richer environ- plore, including
ments to explore. Google’s offering is just more fun the ocean and
to use, and the latest version only propels it further surface of Mars.
New touring feature lets
ahead. you record and narrate
Google Earth 5.0 maps both the ocean surface your virtual adventures
and the seafloor. When you zoom close enough on and share them with
a body of water you’re hovering over, you dip under others
the surface. At that point, you see a topographical Cons requires a fairly
view of the underwater terrain. (Note that your com- for a region over time. For example, I checked out a robust graphics system
to take full advantage
puter needs a fairly robust graphics system to take patch of the Nevada desert as it looked in 1950, then of ocean exploration
full advantage of the ocean view.) Google Earth 5.0 watched as it became today’s Vegas strip. features.
also offers 21 new layers dedicated to ocean explora- And when you want to just get away—really, Click here for more.
tion, with content such as articles, images, and video really far away—there’s Mars 3D. A Global Map
for specific regions. The cool Animal Tracking fea- layer lets you view different map overlays of Mars,
ture even lets you swim along with tagged, satellite- showing the orb’s infrared signature or surface
tracked sea creatures. elevation in color-coded form. It’s these features as
Another noteworthy feature in the new Google well as a massive amount of new data and an equally
Earth is Historical Imagery. Clicking on the clock huge number of places to explore that make Google
icon lets you view newer and older satellite images Earth 5.0 a shoo-in for Editors’ Choice award.
from around the globe, so you can observe changes —MM

24 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION aprIL 2009

 first looks software

Quick looks
Visit pcmag.com for the full reviews of these and scores of other software products.

RED indicates Editors’ Choice. PROS CONS BOTTOM LINE

MOBILE APPS

Classics (for iPhone) • Beautiful presentation of books • No formatting options Classics’ page-turning animation and sound are
$2.99 direct • Chapters and bookmarks • Very limited number of books to choose from without peer in the iPhone book-reader crowd, but
l llhm • Best page-turning animation • No transfer of your docs from PC to iPhone don’t expect any control over your book’s appearance,
or the ability to buy any current works.

Photo Lab 1600 • Wide range of photographic tweaks and • Unwieldy interface Sudobility’s Photo Lab provides a solid combination of
(for iPhone) artistic effects • Puny, hard-to-adjust slider button photographic and artistic effects, though implement-
$2.99 direct • Some great creative modes • “Hover” pop-ups disappear erratically ing them can be frustrating because of interface
l llhm • Image auto-rotation problems.

SimCity 2009 • Brings addictive fun of SimCity series • Requests reboot of iPhone before first use The iPhone version of SimCity puts most of what
(for iPhone) to iPhone • Expensive for an iPhone app made the city-planning title a classic into your
$9.99 direct • Nice retro graphics pocket.
l lllh • Useful help section

SlingPlayer Mobile for • Smooth, sharp picture over Wi-Fi • Works only on AT&T and T-Mobile BlackBerrys It’s been like pulling teeth, but Sling Media has finally
BlackBerry (Beta) • Clear, easy-to-navigate interface for now released its impressive SlingPlayer Mobile app for
$29.99 direct • Controls TiVo and cable-company-issued DVRs • Sometimes slow to respond to key presses (some) BlackBerry handsets. If it works on yours and
L lllm you have a Slingbox, it’s a must buy.

SECURITY

PC Armor 2.2 • Tracks all file and Registry changes made by • Program warns that 100 percent cleanup of PC Armor records the changes made by every
$39.95 direct yearly a program installation “clutter” may destabilize the system program that installs on your system. The only time
l llhm • Can completely uninstall any monitored it needs attention is when a program tries to install a
program driver or some other action that could interfere with
• Warns about known malware-hosting sites its monitoring.

Ad-Aware Pro – • Speedy and accurate malware removal • Highly dependent on initial update, which Ad-Aware protects against spyware, viruses, and
Anniversary Edition • Blocks access to known malware URLs malware can block all types of malware. It’s effective both at cleaning
$39.95 direct • Includes useful tools for advanced users • Viewing or changing a recommended action infested systems and blocking malware attacks.
l lllm is awkward

MUSIC

Slacker.com • Slick new interface • Lots of display ads Slacker is a top-notch way to listen to music online.
(January 2009) • Flexible station creation lets you choose • Occasional 30-second audio ads The service gives you plenty of customization options
Free multiple artists • Some minor interface glitches and a sleek interface that informs while doing its job.
L lllh • Great sound quality

Pandora • Robust music-choice algorithms • Lacks customization options Pandora still rocks, and iPhone owners should
(Winter 2009) • Lots of genre stations • Slightly subpar sound quality download the mobile app immediately if they haven’t
Free • Few ads done so already. Desktop listeners, though, may find
L lllm • Killer iPhone app the main site a bit inflexible.

ACCOUNTING

CompleteTax • Intuitive interface • Doesn’t download data from brokerages CompleteTax should be on your list of online tax-prep
Premium 2008 • Excellent help options • Review process is time-consuming sites to explore. It comes from a very reliable source,
$29.95 direct (free e-file); • Good coverage of tax topics and its interface and guidance systems are on a par
state, $19.95 • Affordable with those of its competitors.
L lllm

GAMING

Flower (for PS3) • Players can play at own pace • May cause motion sickness Flower straddles the line between art and gaming,
$9.99 direct • Beautifully rendered giving players the feeling of moving around in a large
L llhm • Nonviolent—a rarity among games landscape painting.

APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 25


Chip Biz Buzzwords
Every business has its share of buzzwords
and terms that help insiders spot other
insiders and members of the milieu. It’s
useful to throw these terms around arbi-
trarily so others who may be lurking can
identify you as a fellow traveler (or, con-
versely, someone they want to avoid).
Years ago there was a cultlike per-
sonal growth training system called EST
(Erhard Seminars Training). One of its
catch phrases was, “They don’t ‘get’ it!” It
was code for outsiders not in the loop. The
term still lingers in Silicon Valley, which
was heavily caught up in this cult and
many of its ideas. So it’s no surprise that
everyone in the Valley is so comfortable
It’s no surprise that everyone in the Valley is so
comfortable with insider and exclusionary code
words, many of which make no sense.
with insider and exclusionary code words,
many of which make no sense.
One of the great businesses in history is
the semiconductor industry, and it set the
standard for code words and code words
within code words. Here is a partial guide
to the typical terms you’ll hear, and what
they generally mean.
One of these words—“chip”—has
become accepted by the public at large
and serves no useful purpose as a term of
exclusion anymore.
Glossary
The roadmap At first glance, if someone
told you they had the Intel roadmap, you’d
think it was driving instructions on how
to find the offices. But no, the roadmap is a
code word meaning a chart or diagram that
shows the generational outline and devel-
opment schedule of upcoming chips in the
form of a time line. It should probably have
a better name than “roadmap.”
26 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION APRIL 2009
john c. dvorak
The campus You’d think this had
something to do with school, no? But this
is actually the compound of buildings that
house most of a company. It should be
called an office park or compound.
The process This is usually used in
conjunction with either the size of the chip
trace lines, such as the 42nm process, or as
a generality referring to the overall manu-
facturing process type, such as the CMOS
process.
The sTraTeGic parTners This term
peaked when Intel announced the Itanium
microprocessor. The idea was to make an
announcement and then sucker any num-
ber of other companies to do a simultane-
ous press release saying that they are in
bed with you and think this announcement
of yours is just fabulous. It’s fallen out of
vogue since it can be embarrassing, which
is what it was with the Itanium.
parTs This generic term is used by the
semiconductor industry as a synonym for
“chip.” You’ll hear a sentence such as “Do
they make all the parts for it?” This actu-
ally means “Do they make all the chips for
the product?” It’s got nothing to do with
parts such as screws and the printed cir-
cuit boards.
GLue/supporT” chips These are
the chips (parts) needed to make the cen-
terpiece chip, usually a microprocessor,
work. I have never been able to tell what
sort of person uses the word “glue chip” as
opposed to those who use “support chip.”
pin-compaTibLe This means a chip
that fits into the socket (see below) meant
for another chip. It implies that the chip is
compatible with the chip that was origi-
nally designed for the socket.
sockeT The receptacle for a plug-in
chip, usually a microprocessor.
archiTecTure An outsider would
immediately think this was about build-
ings. But in Silicon Valley, the sentence
“What do you think about the architec-
ture” would almost always bring to mind
the inner workings and design of a micro-
processor or an entire computer. Each
company has an architecture, and the term
Intel architecture, for example, is generally
used to describe its version of a micro-
sprocessor, or it is sometimes a synonym
for the x86 architecture in general.
code name In the semiconductor
business, code names are commonly used
not to hide or conceal a product under
development but to describe products that
have no official name. This sort of conven-
tion is also used by software companies
such as Microsoft.
Wafers These are not cookies but
slices of a silicon crystal that has been spe-
cially doped with contaminants to become
the foundation for a semiconductor “chip.”
The wafer, which tends to be 300mm in
size (but isn’t always) could have hundreds
of chips etched onto its surface.
fab A truncation of the word “fabrica-
tion,” it refers to a factory or fabrication
plant that manufacturers semiconduc-
tors. It consists of a long line of extremely
expensive precision equipment into which
a blank wafer is introduced at one end and
is processed and eventually chopped up to
make individual chips. Today’s fabs often
cost over $1 billion to build.
There are even more terms than these,
but consider this a basic bluffer’s guide to
get you through most geeky conversations.
Ask someone how much wafers cost now-
adays, and watch them go off! Have fun.
dvorak Live on The Web John’s
Internet TV show airs every Wednesday
at 3:30 ET on CrankyGeeks.com. You can
download back episodes whenever you like.
Inside
Nokia and Netbook Mania Dept.: When I first heard about
Nokia considering getting into the netbook game, I made an
offhand joke that it would be interesting unless the company
ran Symbian as the OS. I figured that, like every other netbook,
it would be running Windows or Linux. So you can imagine
my shock when I was reading an article in which the Nokia
folks seem to be indicating their netbook will indeed be run-
ning Symbian. What?!? Is the device just going to be a huge
phone? It’s ridiculous. Stop now, guys, before it’s too late!
Meanwhile, there’s more and more talk on the streets
about Google porting its Android OS —actually a specialized
distro of Linux—to its own netbook. This makes a lot more
sense than using Symbian, that’s for sure. If Google puts its
resources behind Linux on the desktop,
I think we could actually see a platform
shift. This would be the time to do it since
Microsoft seems to be distracted by both
cloud computing and making money sell-
ing advertisements. The cash cows are what
should be getting the attention, but many
companies neglect them. Poor cows.
As the netbook scene heats up, you
have to wonder: Exactly where is the Sony
netbook? The company has released a few
smallish machines they say are netbooks,
but one, for example, with a Blu-ray drive
is $2,700. This misses the point of a net-
book, which is the low cost. It should cost
about $299. Expect to see some major changes at Sony now
that its European boss, Howard Stringer, will be running the
whole show, as he got rid of one more top executive. It will be
a magic act if Sony can somehow get back into a position of
influence. The entire netbook genre had Sony written all over
it, but the company could not execute. Kind of like with the
iPod and the iPhone. These would have been Sony products
in the 1970s.
Meanwhile, the term “netbook” itself is under legal
attack by Psion Teklogix, a company that actually coined and
trademarked the word in the 1990s. It is sending out cease-and-
desist letters, and Dell, Intel, and others have decided to attack
back. The thinking is that because Psion Teklogix abandoned
the name more than five years ago, it cannot now reclaim it.
We’ll see. The industry might just change the name to mini-
notebook or something else. Who cares?
How long will a DVD last? This always worries me, so I back
up most of my writings and photos on both DVDs and two hard
disks. I’m paranoid owing to bad experiences with machines
crashing, drives blowing up, and old CD-ROMS becoming
unreadable. I ran into a cache of 5.25-inch floppies recently and
only half were readable. I’m not sure what was on the other
disks and what I might have lost. These disks are from the mid-
1980s, so they are 20 to 25 years old and failing.
Most of the old 1X CD-Rs that I burned in the 1990s are
failing. Back then we were told that these discs would last
40 years with no problem. By my calculations we were told
wrong. Now when I have critical data, I turn to the expensive,
specially formulated DVD-R and CD-R Archival Grade discs
from Verbatim. They cost about $1 each! And apparently there
are special materials inside, including a gold reflective layer to
prevent corrosion and a hard-coat plastic. These are nice discs
and are supposed to last 100-plus years.
What you have to also note nowadays is that most of the
normal 25-cent-or-cheaper media is now manufactured all
over the place, and all the brands are jobbing out too much.
The exact same brand of disc could be made in China, India,
or Japan. It’s a mess with inconsistent qual-
ity. Most people agree, though, that the two
highest-quality brands are Verbatim and
Taiyo Yuden. Taiyo Yuden has an interest-
ing product with its unusual “Watershield”
printable DVD; inkjet printing on the label
seems to be impervious to water and won’t
smudge if gotten wet. You pay for the qual-
ity, though, at about 60 cents per disc.
Is the economic downturn over? The
semiconductor folks always have a pretty
good handle on this and they almost all
think that this economic event is ending
with the first quarter, and many are talking
about a “U”-shaped recovery beginning in
the second quarter. If that happens things could really rock,
since there is a huge pent-up demand for tech gear that
keeps building and building. Let’s hope they are correct.
The Smallest Projector Coming to a Cell Phone Near You
Dept.: Have you been following the story behind those little
pico/pocket projectors? They’re minuscule and can typically
project a 480-by-320 image at various sizes, usually up to 60
inches. If you’re thinking of dropping the $300 to $400 for one
of these things, you may want to wait, as the second genera-
tion pico DLP is being developed by Texas Instruments. The
new display is 854 by 480.
Speed Demon Dept.: If you’ve been following the prog-
ress insofar as SOHO and networking speed are concerned,
you’re probably waiting for 10-gigabit-per-second Ethernet.
Now it looks as if we’re beginning to see development on the
generation after that—40 Gbps. Sounds good to me! Mean-
while Juniper Networks has developed a new network proces-
sor that looks as if it can crank along at 604 Gbps. This would
mean downloading an entire Blu-ray HD movie in less than a
second. This development will be fun to watch unfold.
WANT MOre DVOrAk? John writes a weekly column for our Web
site, too. Log on to go.pcmag.com/dvorak. You can also e-mail
him at john_dvorak@pcmag.com.
APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 27

iPhones for Everyone!
The biggest flaw in Apple’s near-perfect
iPhone has always been the network it’s on.
So as rumors have arisen once more (based
on an old story from September) of Apple
developing an iPhone for Verizon Wire-
less, the most reliable cell-phone network
in the U.S., the Internet has been going
absolutely nuts. Of course Apple wants
to develop an iPhone for Verizon. At this
point, Apple wants to develop an iPhone
for everyone. There’s just one problem:
the hideous, mysterious, Faustian contract
Apple signed with AT&T. And that one is a
showstopper.
Apple’s exclusivity contract with
AT&T was an attempt to rewrite the eco-
Developing a new iPhone for Verizon will take
a year or so. But Apple plans ahead: It’ll have that
phone ready when its AT&T contract is up.
nomics of the cell-phone business. This
arrangement wasn’t about visual voice
mail or even, really, about branding. It was
about money and control. In exchange for
a bond of blood, AT&T would kick some
of its monthly subscription fees to Apple
and let Apple control retail distribution.
This was radical. This was unique. This
was a failure.
The iPhone sold well here, but the
United States is a fraction of the global
mobile market, and international carri-
ers weren’t too comfortable with Apple
cutting into their monthlies. It turned out
that mobile-phone carriers around the
world are much more comfortable kicking
in one-time subsidies than kicking back
monthly fees. So for the international mar-
ket, Apple went to a much more normal
system of accounting (normal for the cell-
phone industry, that is), and as a result, the
iPhone has reached spectacular sales num-
bers around the world.
28 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION APRIL 2009
SASCHA SEGAN
Along the way, Apple has also learned
that tying itself to one wireless carrier
damages, rather than reinforces, its brand.
This is because the quality of its product
becomes too tightly coupled to the qual-
ity of that carrier. Notice that in many of
Apple’s “later” countries, the iPhone is
available on multiple carriers. Apple’s
acting CEO Tim Cook has clearly stated
that the company is not married to a one-
carrier strategy.
Apple has also gotten more flexible
in regard to pricing and distribution, two
major stumbling blocks when Apple first
tried to get Verizon interested in the first-
generation iPhone, at least if you believe
USA Today. Heck, these days the iPhone
is available even at Wal-Marts across the
country. Apple of 2009, as opposed to
Apple of 2006, is much more willing to
work and partner with mobile-phone car-
riers and third-party retailers.
Mobile-phone carriers have learned a
couple of things in the past few years as
well. Everyone’s dabbled with visual voice
mail. Phones like the T-Mobile G1 and the
Palm Pre have made U.S. carriers more
comfortable with phone manufacturers’
taking a starring role in product rollouts
and software updates, though Apple takes
that kind of control to a new level. Two
years have also proved that the iPhone is
a unique phenomenon that everybody
wants in on.
So Apple will put iPhones on every-
one’s network, but in the U.S. it will want
to put them on Verizon’s first. Verizon is
now the largest carrier in the country. Also,
Sprint has what Apple would consider
an unhealthy relationship with Palm, and
T-Mobile has that Google Android thing
going on.
If the iPhone were to go to Verizon
before 2010, Apple would have to build a
version for Verizon’s CDMA network. That
would have been a great chore back in 2007.
Apple isn’t actually that big a company;
developing two cell phones from scratch
would have been a big deal for it. But Apple
is going on its third phone by now, and it
has a few years of experience. The com-
pany could pull it off at this point.
Developing a new phone for Verizon
will take a year or so (especially consider-
ing the tasks of getting it through the FCC
and Verizon’s own hellish network-testing
process). But Apple plans ahead: It’ll have
that phone ready when its AT&T contract
is up. Verizon will likely demand a three-
month CDMA exclusivity agreement,
to which Apple will consent. Sprint and
T-Mobile will follow after a few months.
If the AT&T contract lasts past 2010,
a Verizon launch gets even easier. The
iPhone could be one of the first devices
on Verizon’s new LTE network, which will
use a fourth-generation technology that
Verizon will share with AT&T, T-Mobile,
and dozens of international carriers. An
LTE iPhone would eventually be an almost
universal device.
Apple’s AT&T contract is still shrouded
in mystery. All we know about the terms is
that the contract is a “multiyear.” Under
the most liberal interpretation, that means
Apple could be out from under AT&T’s
thumb by July. But USA Today reported
in separate stories that the contract runs
through the end of 2010 or even 2012,
which puts the Verizon launch firmly in
the LTE zone. I’m pretty sure that when-
ever that clock goes ding, a whole lot more
people will be able to buy iPhones.
STAY PHONE-SMART Keep up with the
latest on smartphones by reading Sascha’s
column at go.pcmag.com/segan.

The Case of magicJack
About a year ago, PCMag.com’s network-
ing analyst walked into my office, put a
small plastic box on my desk, and told me
that we had a new Editors’ Choice for VoIP
solutions: the YMax magicJack. The value
proposition was obvious: clear calls any-
where in the U.S., dead-simple operation,
and, best of all, the box cost only $40 (plus
another $20 a year for service). Sure, it
sounded too good to be true, but after a lot
of testing, we found that the product actu-
ally worked as advertised. Fast-forward a
year, and even though the magicJack’s net-
work and firmware have been upgraded,
our opinion of the product is considerably
We tested four different magicJack units, and every
time we came to the same conclusion: When it works,
it’s great. When it doesn’t, don’t expect much help.
lower. The magicJack’s story should serve
as a cautionary tale for the entire technol-
ogy industry.
Truth be told, we started getting com-
plaints about the magicJack as soon as
we published our review. Not just a few
unhappy users, but dozens of them. There
were also plenty of poor Better Business
Bureau reports. Turns out the primary
problem isn’t with the product itself—it’s
with the company’s technical support. And
for many would-be buyers, the issues that
are coming to light are deal breakers.
My colleague Sascha Segan has already
written about the limits of professional
product reviews in his column. Review-
ers have products for only a short period
of time before they send them back to the
vendors. This makes it impossible either
to perform long-term testing or to evaluate
build quality across an entire product line.
In the case of the magicJack, however, we
tested four different units over the course
of a year. Every time we came to the same
DAN COSTA
conclusion: When it works, it’s great; when
it doesn’t, you shouldn’t expect much help
from the company.
YMax has been very busy since the
launch of magicJack in 2007. The com-
pany’s aggressive marketing efforts have
put its product in the hands of pretty much
every technology journalist I know, and
the resulting reviews have generally been
quite positive. YMax has also blanketed
late-night cable TV with ads—stay up
past 1 a.m. and there’s a good chance you’ll
see a goofy infomercial for the magicJack.
The company even placed units into a
recent TED conference goody bag and
got its own football game: the magicJack
St. Petersburg Bowl.
All this press has been a boon for
YMax. All told, the company estimates it
has sold more than two million magicJacks
since the product launched, and it’s now
selling them at a rate of 250,000 a month.
At $40 a pop, plus annual revenues of $20 a
year, that’s a lot of cash rolling in. This also
means an enormous user base that needs
billing, technical, and customer support
services. This is where YMax, like many
start-ups, comes up woefully short. YMax
simply doesn’t answer phone calls. The
company doesn’t list a corporate number
anywhere on its Web site and offers no live
voice support, only live chat. And even live
chat is accessible only after you’ve been
repeatedly dumped into the site’s knowl-
edge base. Although the product often “just
works,” when it doesn’t, you’re in trouble:
Live chat is not an ideal medium for help-
ing a user adjust UDP ports or reconfigure
firewall settings.
YMax CEO Dan Borislow stopped
by our offices a couple of months ago to
talk about how the company has grown
and what it’s doing to improve customer
support. He even let me peek into its
chat-based support infrastructure, which
consists of real-time instant messaging
with service reps in the Philippines, who
are always on call and are graded based
on their performance. The system looks
pretty impressive.
In our real-world testing, however, the
live chat reps were not helpful. Worse,
we were directed to make changes to our
system Registry to solve routine network-
ing problems. As tech journalists, we can
handle that, but for the average user this is
a recipe for disaster.
It’s a mistake to think of YMax as only
a company that hawks a $40 adapter on
late-night TV. YMax is a phone company,
and a pretty big one. Yes, it uses VoIP, but
its business model is very different from
those of Vonage and other cable opera-
tors that offer phone service. The magic-
Jack service has a nationwide network
of media gateways and session border
controllers, as well as CLEC (competi-
tive local exchange carrier) certifications
in all 50 states. YMax is a huge company
with a vast technical architecture to sup-
port. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be
spending enough to take care of that cus-
tomer base.
Sure, managing the explosive growth
that YMax has experienced in the past year
would tax any company. But YMax seems
to have lost track of its purpose. It isn’t just
selling an inexpensive gadget, it’s selling a
service. And providing a service requires
more than simply placing calls. Sometimes
it requires taking them.
What’s your experience with the
magicJack? We’ve set up a comments sec-
tion on Gearlog. Click here.
TALK bAcK To DAn E-mail your thoughts
to dan_costa@ziffdavis.com.
APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 29
30 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION APRIL 2009
Home
Networking:
A Refresher
Course If you’re reading this story, chances are very good that you already have a
Rebuilding your home network. You’re a PC Magazine reader, after all. So why the refresher
home network course on why you need one and how to set one up? As we all know, the
times they are a-changin’ constantly in the tech world, and with so many
doesn’t have to be new products and services being offered, some of you may want to rebuild
your home network to accommodate all that you want to do with it.
tough, if you follow You may also have a home network but have always wondered about its
our steps. mechanics—like what goes on in the brain of that little router of yours, or
how the router’s wireless radio actually works. We’re here to explain what’s
going on inside your devices.
By Oliver Rist and Beyond the basics of letting you share high-speed Internet access with
Eric Griffith computers and devices in the house, home networks allow you to control
what the kids are doing on the Web, share data and multimedia files, auto-
mate backups for all of your PCs, and even use webcams to see what that
new puppy is doing in the living room while you’re at work. The bedroom
computer upstairs can print to the color printer in the downstairs study, and
the media PC in the living room can show a movie on the PC-connected TV
in the basement rec room.
Adding on network-oriented products and peripherals makes the setup
even more useful. Network attached storage (NAS) lets you create shared
folders for each family member; these folders can be accessed both from the
home network or from the Internet if you’re away from home. NAS devices
also make efficient places to store all those backup files. In this story, we’ll
review some of the hottest new NAS devices, as well as the newest routers,
network printers, and media devices, all for your home network.

APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 31

 New Wireless Routers
Add Speed, Drop Price
To really take advantage of your home net-
work, you’ll want a wireless router. A router ne-
gotiates traffic between your network and the
Internet, and the switch and wireless access
point integrated with the router handles traf-
fic among the various devices in your home
network, be they PCs, laptops, media devices,
or whatever else you’ve plugged in or linked
up wirelessly. The latest crop add a slew of
neat features beyond mere speed, but speed is
definitely at the heart of these gadgets.
Today’s wireless routers are built around
the 802.11n specification, meaning they can
hurl data around your house at a incredible
gallop: 300 megabits per second (Mbps),
theoretically. In our testing, the routers we re-
viewed actually moved bits at speeds ranging
from 63 Mbps to 133 Mbps.
Two of the routers we tested, the Net-
gear RangeMax Wireless-N Gigabit Router
WNR3500 l l l m m ($119.99 list) and the
Belkin N+ Wireless Router (F5D8235-4)
l l h m m ($119.99 list) include Gigabit Ether-
net (GigE) connections, so wired connections
can really zip. The third product, the D-Link
RangeBooster N Dual-Band Router (DIR-628)
l l l l m ($99.99 direct), uses the more
common 10/100 Mbps Ethernet.
New routers like these place a real empha-
sis on ease of setup. Many have a WPS (Wi-Fi
Protected Setup) button, such as the one
you’ll find on the Belkin and Netgear routers.
Press the buttons on the client adapter and
router simultaneously to automatically setup
networking between the two, without having
to set channel, SSID, and WPA encryption key.
For WPS devices without a button—like a lap-
top with integrated Wi-Fi—you have to manu-
ally enter a PIN code.
The Belkin router’s claim to fame is that it
provides an easy way to add network storage.
Simply plug an external hard drive into the
router’s USB 2.0 port. The included software
utility worked well and mapped the drive as
a local drive, letting you access it from any-
where on the network. The combination of
this storage manager software and the port
provide a tremendously useful feature you
won’t find on many routers at this price.
The Netgear router’s wireless repeater
function takes networking up a notch over
its competitors. A repeater makes possible
wireless meshing of a sort—a way for Wi-Fi
devices to talk to each other wirelessly. It
establishes ad-hoc connections or direct con-
nections using MAC addresses, a very cool
feature. With the wireless repeating function
turned on, the router can extend the range
of your wireless network. When you add it all
up, the router can work well in a home or in a
small business.
The D-Link, our Editors’ Choice among BELKIN N+ WIRELESS
these routers, supports a wealth of fancy ROUTER
features: channel auto-scanning for both
bands and mixed channel widths, a quality of
service (QoS) engine, VPN gateways and ac-
cess control policies. The router’s firewall even
supports IPsec VPN and includes some nifty
network address translation (NAT) filtering
capabilities to limit traffic at the protocol level.
In addition, the low price (just $119.99 direct) is
a sign that wireless-n, now at draft 2.0, is finally
hitting the mainstream.
D-LINK RANGEBOOSTER N DUAL-BAND NETGEAR RANGEMAX
ROUTER WIRELESS-N WNR3500

The Connection
Not only have most of us had high-speed
Internet for years, but we don’t know any-
one who doesn’t have it. In general, most
home networks get broadband from fiber
optics, cable, or DSL. For those in remote
areas, satellite TV is the way to go—it’s
still better than dial-up service. Those
living in rural areas should also consider
a WISP, or wireless Internet service pro-
vider. WISPs act like upside-down satellite
dishes, reaching down into the ground to
connect to fiber-optic lines, while long-
range wireless routers installed in each
customer’s house point sideways toward
the tower. If you’re considering switching
your provider, pick the one with the most
throughput (measured in megabits per
second, or Mbps) for the lowest monthly
cost, and you’re good to go. In our annual
Service and Reliability Survey, the favorite
broadband type among our readers, hands
down, was fiber, which you can get via the
highly rated Verizon FiOS service (in very
select areas of the United States, that is).
Setting up high-speed Internet service
is much, much simpler than it used to be.
As a first option, you can make an at-home
service appointment with the phone or
cable company, then wait for that highly
precise, “anywhere between 8 a.m. and
4 p.m.” arrival time. Some providers may
require this, or at the very least insist that

32 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION APRIL 2009


you visit their local office to get the modem
kit, because they won’t allow the use of a
third-party modem.
If they do allow it, your other option
is to purchase a DSL or cable modem kit
at your local electronics store. It usually
includes a name-brand router, a definite
plus. You can find these packages at stores
like Best Buy or WalMart, and online at
Buy.com or Amazon. They’ll include the
modem plus a router—or one unit with the
modem and router integrated—as well as
setup instructions and info on how to reg-
ister your new service with the provider
automatically. Again, these kits used to be
a nightmare of bad instructions and non-
functioning automation. Today’s packages,
however, are easy-peasy.
Stick the Quick Start CD into your com-
puter and follow the on-screen instruc-
tions. Typically, it will ask you to plug your
router into the phone or cable TV line first,
then it will take a minute or so to find itself
on the provider’s network (the Internet)
and register. After that, you’ll plug your
computer into the other side of the router,
fill out some identification and billing
information, make sure your computer’s
network settings are set to “Automatically
get an IP address,” and that’s it. You’ll be on
the Internet.
Any other computers you plug into the
back of that router will not only see the
Web, they’ll also see each other (or they
will after you run Microsoft’s home net-
working wizard)—and hey, you’ve got a
basic network.
Networking and Windows
Once your router is functioning and your
computers are plugged in, you need to
make sure all the computers can see not
just the Internet, but each other as well.
For Vista and Windows 7 machines, you’re
not going to have to do much besides wait.
These versions of the Windows operat-
ing system are much smarter about net-
working. Vista PCs will simply find each
other on the network as long as they’re
all in the same IP subnet—a logical divi-
sion of a local area network, which is cre-
ated to improve performance and provide
security. If your computers don’t see each
other, Vista has a couple of network fix-it
wizards, as well as the “Set up a home net-
work” wizard for you to fall back upon.
Windows XP machines, on the other
hand, are a mixed bag. Those in the same IP
subnet should see each other, but there’s a
The Best Network Printers
INkjET ALL-IN-oNE
Epson Artisan 800
$299.99 direct
l lllm
The Artisan 800 is weighted more toward
home use but can also be a good fit for a
home office with light duty needs. It includes
both Ethernet and Wi-Fi support, so it’s
easy to share. Photo output is high quality,
and you can print directly from PictBridge
cameras, memory cards, and USB keys. For
office users, it has a standalone copier and
fax machine, and it includes a 30-page auto-
matic document feeder (ADF) for scanning
and faxing multipage documents as well as
legal-size pages.
Click here for more.
APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 33
MoNoChRoME LASER ALL-IN-oNE
Brother MFC 7840w
$225 street
l lllm
Most printers in this cat-
egory at this price tend
to tackle only personal
tasks and connect only by
USB cable. But the 7840w
breaks the mold. Its talents include
printing, faxing, and scanning over
a network. It can send e-mail via a
PC, adding the scanned document
as an attachment to an e-mail mes-
sage. It also works as a standalone
copier and fax machine, and it in-
cludes a 35-page automatic docu-
ment feeder (ADF),
Click here for more.
CoLoR LASER ALL-IN-oNE
Samsung CLX-3175 FN
$400 street
llllm
The CLX-3175FN is small enough to be a
truly personal color laser AIo, although the
network connector will also let you share it in
a small office. It prints, scans, and faxes, even
over a network, and also works as a stand-
alone fax machine, copier, and e-mail sender.
A 15-page automatic document feeder lets
you easily scan, copy, or fax multipage docu-
ments as well as legal-size pages.
Click here for more.
INkjET ALL-IN-oNE
Canon Pixma MP980 Wire-
less Photo All-In-One Printer
$299.99 direct
l lllm
This photo-centric all-in-
one printer can also func-
tion as a standalone home
photo lab. It can print,
scan, copy, and e-mail—by
opening a message on your PC and
adding a scanned document as an
attachment. It can both scan and
print directly from 35mm slides
and strips of film, and print di-
rectly from PictBridge cameras and
memory cards (but not USB keys),
letting you preview photos on a
3.5-inch color LCD display.
Click here for more.
The Best Network Media Devices
Slingbox PRO-HD
$299.00 list
l lllm

The Slingbox PRo-hD is one of the

best-performing, easiest-to-use media
extenders out there. It streams high-
definition video over a home network
and near-hD-quality content over
the Internet (provided sufficient bandwidth is
available). So you can watch hD videos stored
on your cable box DVR or DVD player on your
computer, wherever you are as long as you
have an Internet connection. You can also
pause and resume live TV through the box,
TiVo-style.
Click here for more.

Blockbuster 2Wire MediaPoint

$99 direct; 25 free rentals, then $1.99 to
$3.99 per rental
ll l m m
This set-top box delivers movies to the
home via the Web and is a nice comple-
ment to Blockbuster’s DVD and online
offerings. It is similar to the Roku Digital
Video Player (formerly known as the Net-
flix Player by Roku) but does not allow
you to stream movies to a computer at no
additional cost; rentals on MediaPoint run
from $1.99 to $3.99 each.
Click here for more.
Apple TV
$229.00 direct for 40GB drive; $329 for 160GB drive
l lllm
With an intuitive interface, plenty of iTunes video content (including movie rentals),
and a good price, Apple TV is a must-have networking device for the iTunes-addicted.
You can wirelessly stream content—music, TV shows, even high-definition movies—from
the iTunes libraries of up to six computers or play files directly from the device’s hard
drive. It also lets you download or stream audio and video podcasts, watch YouTube videos
from the Web, and view photos from online Flickr accounts and .Mac photo albums.
Click here for more.

chance they won’t. You’re best off running
the “Set up a home network” wizard right
away for XP, which is available off the Net-
work Neighborhood screen. Just run this
wizard on every XP machine individually.
The most thinking you’ll have to do is pick-
ing a workgroup name for your network.
(But that’s an important step: You can’t
share files or printers between PCs that
don’t have the same workgroup name.)
Understanding Your Router
The router is the heart of your home net-
work—which is good. That’s because it’s
doing several important jobs. First, it’s the
outward face of your Internet connection.
To the phone, cable, or satellite company,
your Internet account is represented by
just one Internet address. If you look on
your router’s basic setup or status Web
page, you’ll see that address at the top,
generally labeled something like “WAN
IP address” or “Internet IP address.” This
is all that the provider or anyone on the
Internet can see of your network. The
router maintains that external address
and simultaneously hands out a bunch
of internal addresses to the computers in
your house, using a different IP address-
ing scheme than the public one used by
your provider. The process of translating
traffic between the internal and external
addresses is called Network Address Trans-
lation (NAT), and the process for handing
out those internal addresses automatically
is called the Dynamic Host Configuration
Protocol (DHCP).
NAT is used because the TCP/IP net-
work protocol was never intended to
support the millions of users, devices,
and Web sites that currently populate
the Internet. There simply aren’t enough
addresses to go around, so one per cus-
tomer is all ISPs can manage—and even
then they need to play cycling games,
so your WAN IP address will probably
change every few weeks.
On the internal side, you can set up
whatever IP addressing scheme you’d like
using your router’s DHCP settings. This
looks like Sanskrit, but don’t panic: For
the most part you can leave the default
settings. Most routers default to a 192.168.
X.X address scheme. It’s those last two Xs
—technically they’re called octets—that
concern you. The second-to-last variable
determines your subnet. So PCs addressed
as 192.168.1.X are all in the same subnet
and should see and network with each
other just fine. One that’s addressed as
192.168.0.X will be left out in the cold.
That last octet will be different for every
device you plug into the network. The
router, for example, might be 192.168.1.1.
The first PC might be 192.168.1.2, your
laptop might have “.3,” the Xbox might be
assigned “.4,” and so on. That last octet can
be any number between 1 and 254, so you’ve
got plenty of addresses to go around inside
your home—so you needn’t worry about
running out.
The reason to stick with the default
192.168.0.X or 192.168.1.X scheme is because
that particular range is not routable on the
Internet. This means that anything hack-
ing past the firewall built into your router
will have some trouble accessing the PCs
behind it. Another non-routable address-
ing scheme is 10.10.X.X. You can set your
scheme to run any way you’d like, but these
schemes are the safest.
Speaking of safe, your router, as men-
tioned, is also your firewall, which is criti-
cal to a safe network. A good firewall using
stateful packet inspection (which ensures
that all inbound packets are the result of
an outbound request) keeps the bad guys

34 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION APRIL 2009


Sonos Bundle 150
$999 direct
ll l l h
Although pricey,
the Sonos Bundle
150 is the perfect
solution for those
with several mu-
sical tastes—and many
rooms—in the same
house. Whether you use
Rhapsody, iTunes, or
Sirius, this deluxe wire-
less home audio system
works seamlessly, stream-
ing music from your PC
to as many zones as you
choose to set up.
Click here for more.
off your home network—and believe me,
the bad guys are out there. At PCMag
.com Labs, we once plugged an open PC
into a non-firewalled Internet connec-
tion and recorded how long it took the PC
to become hacked or infected. The low
record was 20 minutes. Watch out.
You should also install a software fire-
wall on every Windows PC and make
sure it stays updated. Just open the app
every few weeks, and it will tell you if you
need a software update. That’s as easy
as downloading a file and hitting “save.”
Vista and Windows 7 have pretty good
firewalls included with the operating sys-
tem; for windows XP our Editors’ Choice
is Comodo Firewall Pro 3.0.
Setting Up Wireless
Probably the last thing your router is
doing is providing wireless access using
Wi-Fi. The giveaway used to be whether
or not it had antennas, but more and more
routers today remain stylish by hiding the
antenna—even multiple antennas—inside
the bezel. Actually, it’s hard to find a router
today that isn’t Wi-Fi-capable. PCs with
Wi-Fi will see the router almost immedi-
ately, but you shouldn’t let it go at that.
Roku Digital Video Player
$99 direct
l lllm
This Roku device, formerly known as the Net-
flix Player by Roku, has gotten much more than
just a name change in recent weeks. Though
it used to offer only Netflix movies for on-
demand video streaming, it has now added
Amazon’s 40,000 video titles to its offering,
for à la carte rental ($3.99 for new releases, and
$2.99 or $1.99 for newer releases or TV shows).
Click here for more.
Wireless networking works on RF
(radio frequencies), so it’s essentially a
radio: Anyone within 300 feet (indoors) or
600 yards (outdoors) can tune in to your
signal. Some people are quite open to shar-
ing their Internet connection this way, but
doing so can leave your PCs vulnerable.
Unless you want anyone parked outside
your driveway to know what’s on your net-
work, your PCs, your hard disks, and the
like, it’s a good idea to use some security.
Your router offers several wireless
security options. The two most popular
are WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) and
WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access). Either
will give you enough basic protection,
though WPA2 is tougher. But many folks
still use WEP, because Windows XP has
trouble with more advanced forms of wire-
less security. Also, if you’ve got any older
Wi-Fi products around your house using
802.11b technology, WEP is probably all
they support. WEP is easy to crack by any-
one with the right tools and the time to put
in, however, so don’t trust it for important
data. Windows Vista handles either with
aplomb, so stick with WPA2 there.
Setting up wireless is again just a short
series of steps. First pick a channel (you
Xbox 360 Arcade
$199.99 list
l llmm
For gamers, this inexpensive yet stripped-
down version of the popular game console
may not satisfy, as it ships without a headset,
network cable, or a hard drive. But for those
interested in streaming media, it’s outstanding,
once you install Microsoft’s New Xbox Experi-
ence (NXE) oS. NXE offers a solution to the
Arcade’s lack of storage space: It allows Netflix
subscribers the ability to log on and add mov-
ies to their “Instant Movie” queue, letting users
view them, seamlessly, within minutes.
Click here for more.
can stick to the default unless there are
a lot of other wireless routers around, as
there probably are in an apartment build-
ing). Stick with channels 1, 6, or 11: They
don’t “overlap” and thus have less interfer-
ence. Set all your wireless devices to the
same channel. The router will then ask
you to name its wireless network; this is
called the SSID in Wi-Fi-speak. Definitely
do not to stick with the default here, which
is usually “Linksys” or “D-Link” or some-
thing similar. Use something personal,
like “BobsWireless.” When asked which
security option you’d like to use, opt for
WPA2 if you know that all the devices on
your network support it. After that, sim-
ply pick a security key, which boils down
to a password-type phrase. Try and go
strong here. Use not just “password” but
“P4ssW0rd1234”—because a mixture
of capitals, numbers, and symbols with
letters is much harder to crack, let alone
guess. Avoid words found in the diction-
ary. The balance here is to come up with
something easy to remember. Even then,
it’s a good idea to change that security key
every few months.
Save that and all you have to do is go to
each of your wireless computers and let
APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 35
them scan for the SSID (BobsWireless).
When a device finds it, it will ask you for
the security key. Type it in, hit Save, and
those PCs will automatically connect
whenever they’re turned on and in range.
Last Thoughts on Wires and Ports
Once your home network is running, those
wireless computers should be able to see
each other as well as any wired computers
you have plugged directly into the back of
the home router. And speaking of wired,
stick with Category 5e or Category 6 Ether-
net patch cables. Both of these are capable
of running Gigabit-speed Ethernet (GigE).
The highest-end home routers have GigE,
which has a data rate of 1,000 Mbps—ten
times faster than “Fast Ethernet.”
Gigabit Ethernet will be especially
useful if your network winds up carrying
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36 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION APRIL 2009
movies and hi-def TV content around the
house, or if you play multiplayer games.
And who doesn’t? If those ports on the
back of your router aren’t enough, drop $30
or more on a GigE-capable switch. Plug it
into a GigE port on your router, and then
all the ports on the switch will function the
same as those on the router. You’ll instantly
go from four available GigE ports to 8, 12,
or 20 depending on how big a switch you
choose. You can even plug a second switch
into the first.
If you have areas of the house where
Wi-Fi won’t reach and you don’t want to
thread Ethernet cable through the walls
or around doors, you can sometimes take
advantage of existing wires in the walls.
If you’re lucky enough to have coaxial
cable running from room to room, a set
of MoCA-capable adapters (short for
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multimedia over coax) on either end will
use the wire as if it were Ethernet. You
can even do the same with power lines in
your house, using adapters that support
HomePlug technology. Those are even
easier, because they just plug into existing
outlets, then have an Ethernet cord that
comes out to attach to the router and dis-
tance switch.
There are plenty of ways you can now
add to or modify your home network. You
can add more wireless security, another
wireless access point, media devices to
share photos and videos, webcams for
watching the house while you’re away,
parental controls so the kids stay safe on
the Web, picocells that use the Internet to
extend the range of your cellular phone,
and the list goes on and on. But this is the
foundation for everything else to come.
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The Future of Wireless
Home Networking
802.11n networks have
been the standard at
home for years (even
though 11n still isn’t fully
ratified). It’s time to
move on, already!
Wi-Fi’s future holds faster
speeds, better ad hoc
connections, and more.
By Eric Griffith
Illustration by Otto Steininger
When wireless Internet access really took
off en masse, say about 2003, we were
mesmerized by the technology. Imagine,
browsing the Web at home, untethered! It
didn’t take long, however, for the wonder-
ment to wear off and impatience to set in.
We wanted more—faster speeds, better
security, more stability. Fortunately for
us, the technology and standards govern-
ing wireless home networking don’t stand
still. New innovations are in the works all
the time. Here’s a glance at what’s to come,
in the short and the long term, in wireless
networking at home.
Device-to-Device Connections
Wi-Fi networks have two basic modes of
operation. One is called infrastructure;
here client devices (like laptops or hand-
helds) connect to one access point (AP)
that facilitates communication among
them. This is by far the most popular way
to connect—you’re probably using it at
home right now if you have a Wi-Fi router.
The other mode, called ad hoc, allows
client devices to communicate directly.
That functionality can be handy, albeit a
pain to implement. Furthermore, ad hoc
networking can be a security nightmare:
Scammers can easily trick you into con-
necting to them by pretending to be an
AP. That’s why, when you use a wireless
connection in a hotel or coffee shop, you
should always be sure about the SSID (net-
work name) to which you’re connecting.
Ad hoc networking may be getting a
much-needed shot in the arm. The Wi-Fi
Alliance—the industry group that tests all
APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 37
802.11-based products for interoperabil-
ity—has two task groups working on these
instant peer-to-peer (P2P) communica-
tions. The first group is looking to improve
the existing ad hoc protocol, according
to Kelly Davis-Felner, marketing director
for the Alliance. The second is develop-
ing a “soft AP,” software that makes a cli-
ent device like a laptop appear and work
as an infrastructure AP. That way, multiple
devices can connect to it directly.
The soft AP approach may be getting an
assist, since Intel is backing it. At the Con-
sumer Electronics Show (CES) in January,
the company—whose Wi-Fi chips power a
huge number of laptops—showed off a soft
AP under the name My Wi-Fi. The soft-
ware ran on laptops with Intel Centrino 2
chipsets, making each laptop the center of a
personal area network connecting as many
as eight Wi-Fi devices at once. The laptop
maintained a separate connection to a real
AP, however, so it could, for example, share
an Internet connection with all attached
devices. Reports say My Wi-Fi also can be
used to connect peripherals, even audio
receivers for streaming from the laptop.
Key for both Alliance groups is making
sure these P2P connections are secured
using Wi-Fi Protected Setup, the simple,
one-button security configuration created
by the Wi-Fi Alliance
to i m p rove o n Wi - WI-FI ThroughpuT: WhaT’S avaIlablE NoW
Fi Protected Access Specification
(WPA2), which is in 802.11b
turn based on the IEEE
802.11g
802.11i specification.
The layers upon layers 802.11a
of support in this arena 802.11n
are mind-boggling.
Why two groups? The Alliance doesn’t
know which technology the industry will
prefer. It doesn’t even have a name for this
enhanced P2P connection yet. Another
consideration: Who would use it? Davis-
Felner believes consumers would like it
for quicker content transfers, file synchro-
nization, and more, and that big corporate
enterprises could expect it to help with
direct connections to peripherals like print-
ers and projectors. “Enterprise IT people
should feel comfortable with it,” she says.
IEEE: More Speed (Eventually)
The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers) may be the most
democratic organizational body ever con-
ceived—sometimes to a fault. Every mem-
ber gets a say, which is partly why, almost
38 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION APRIL 2009
five years after debates began on the initial
proposal, the “High Throughput” stan-
dard for wireless networks—better known
as 802.11n—is still not ratified. In fact, it’s
unlikely to be ratified by the IEEE’s 802.11
Working Group for another year.
802.11n is done enough, however, and
that’s why there are plenty of 11n-based
Wi-Fi products on store shelves, satisfy-
ing those who need increased speed and
range. So tabling that discussion, what
might the IEEE have up its sleeves for after
11n? Plenty, it turns out.
Let’s be clear on the terms. Within the
IEEE there are working groups for all types
of technologies. Wireless LAN (WLAN)
just happens to go by the name 802.11,
whereas Ethernet goes by 802.3. Within
each working group are task groups, usu-
ally identified by a letter, such as the “n” of
802.11n; these groups are actively working
on technology specifications to amend
the original. Before a task group can exist,
it is a study group, wherein members toss
around the idea and see if anyone even
cares enough to pursue it. Then there’s
balloting, editing, and changes, ad infini-
tum—sometimes for years.
The reason 11n has been so important
for so long is because it’s about increases:
more throughput and better range on wire-
throughput frequency
11 mbps 2.4 ghz
54 mbps 2.4 ghz
54 mbps 5 ghz
ranges from 150 to 600 mbps either 2.4 ghz or 5 ghz Works with 802.11a, b, or g point along the shortest
less networks—boosts that everyone wants.
Thus it’s no surprise that not one but two
task groups were spawned from the “Very
High Throughput” study group—there’s
TGac and TGad. The TG is for Task Group;
these may eventually translate to 802.11ac
or 802.11ad, if they go anywhere.
According to Bruce Kraemer, chair of
the 802.11 Working Group, TGac “might
double what we have now” for WLAN
speed by increasing the total data through-
put available to a cluster of users in a
relatively dense environment. It won’t do
much for an individual, but the difference
for a large number of users could be sig-
nificant, possibly in a business or even in a
cluster of users at an airport hot spot.
TGad is a whole different beast, as it
will venture into radio-band frequencies
new to Wi-Fi: the 60-GHz spectrum. Like
the 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz frequencies used
today, 60-GHz is unlicensed by the Federal
Communications Commission, so anyone
can use it. (Wikipedia says 60-GHz is use-
ful for short-range data links of 1.7km (1.06
miles) with throughput of up to 2.5 gigabits
per second.) Kraemer says while “ac might
go to a 2-to-1 increase, ‘ad’ could bring a
data-rate increase of 10 to 1.” However,
using new spectrum means an entirely new
radio technology, so there will be no back-
ward compatibility with existing Wi-Fi.
When can we expect to see 11ac or 11ad?
Not for a while; in a year or more they
might be out of the initial discussion stage.
Of course, there’s a lot more cooking
than just those two potential amendments.
There’s also 802.11s, a mesh-networking
specification that’s been on the drawing
board since September 2003. (It probably
won’t be final until September 2010.) Lap-
tops and other devices with 11s support will
function as mesh points (or MPs) and form
links with each other, allowing packets of
data to skip from device to device across
the network as needed.
Mesh has been around for a while in
many proprietary forms, and is important
not only because it can extend a network’s
range but also because it has self-config-
uring abilities: Mesh
devices can move about
compatibility without impacting
Works with 802.11g overall performance.
In such a network, data
Works with 802.11b
will hop around from
Works with 802.11n mesh point to mesh
path to where it needs
to go. Actual 11s is already in use in at least
one product: the One Laptop per Child
project’s XO laptop uses it to communicate
with XS school servers, in some tests over
distances as great as 2km (1.2 miles) with
802.11s data hops from device to device.
802.11u will provide a Wi-Fi device
with methods of connecting securely to a
network, based on the external network’s
type. For example, if you have access to the
cellular connection that provides Internet
access to the Wi-Fi router on a bus, 11u will
keep that connection secure. It will also
allow a Wi-Fi device to discover more
information about that external network,
such as whether it’s free of charge or not.
11u could be published by March 2010.
Finally, 802.11z “Direct Link Setup”
is the 802.11 Working Group’s take on
ThE FuTurE oF 802.11: SpECS oN ThE DraWINg boarD
Specification type DeScription expecteD publication Date

802.11ac throughput categorized as a “very high throughput” specification, 801.11ac would increase throughput over 802.11n 2012
by a ratio of 2 to 1. its spectrum would be 5 ghz.

802.11ad throughput also a “very high throughput” specification, 802.11ad would increase throughput 10 to 1 over 802.11n. it 2012
would reside on the 60-ghz spectrum.

802.11s mesh networking this specification would allow devices such as cell phones or laptops to serve as mesh points, forming September 2010
wireless links with each other.

802.11u Security Known as “interworking with external networks,” this specification would enable secure connections for march 2010
Wi-fi devices based on the security protocols of the external network the device is using, whether that
network is cellular, ethernet, uWb, or something else.

802.11z ad hoc networking this “direct link setup” specification allows two Wi-fi devices to securely connect to each other in peer-to- January 2010
peer mode by using the security credentials of a larger network’s access point.

improving ad hoc connections, at least for
business users. Entirely unrelated to what
the Wi-Fi Alliance is doing for device-to-
device communication, it allows two lap-
tops that would normally communicate
on a secure network to form an exclusive
P2P connection. This happens only after
they’ve authenticated security credentials
through an AP. It’s a super-secure ad hoc
that requires the right security setup.
Zigbee and Z-Wave: home Control
and More
Another 802 Working Group with growing
impact at home is 802.15. It’s a standard for
wireless personal area networks (WPAN)
using very-low-power radios to send small
amounts of data. Bluetooth is one kind of
WPAN; it’s based on 802.15.1. Some industry
groups have for years been using another
version, 802.15.4, to bring wireless home
automation and control to homes. Coupled
with Wi-Fi, these WPANs can create an
ecosystem that stretches from your laptop
all the way to your light switches.
The ZigBee and Z-Wave standards
are two of the most prominent uses for
802.15.4. An industry alliance with many
partners has formed to push each technol-
ogy. Both enable intelligent mesh network-
ing, so the more devices added to a WPAN
the better. Eventually, every light switch,
thermostat, and motor in your home could
have a chip that lets it communicate, and
you would control them all from a single
interface, whether a remote, an LCD panel
on a wall, or your laptop.
Recently utility companies have taken
notice of these technologies. In fact, sev-
eral are integrating ZigBee technology
into meters for electricity, gas, and water.
If meters could talk via ZigBee to a home
router or gateway with Internet access,
customers would gain access to real-time
rate information and utilities could auto-
matically read meters without sending
someone out in a truck. The potential for
saving money is tremendous. Of the 80 mil-
lion meters that need replacing, the ZigBee
Alliance won contracts to be in at least one-
third of them in 2008; the Alliance thinks
that number will grow through 2009.
ZigBee has a lead with the utility com-
panies, but Z-Wave (owned by Sigma
Designs) is still in the fight for your home
automation. At CES this year, Z-Wave part-
ners demonstrated energy management
systems to help both utilities and consum-
ers, as well as the usual home controls—
picture your ADT monitoring panel
doing much more than just sounding the
alarm. One of the cooler items: lock maker
Schlage is adding Z-Wave remote access to
its wares, so you could someday use your
cell phone to lock all your doors at night.
Or imagine doing that with the same uni-
versal remote you use for your TV.
Will ZigBee and Z-Wave overlap with
Wi-Fi? They do today, but if you have
either 802.15.4 technology, it likely came
as a value-added feature from your broad-
band provider, which supplied a residen-
tial gateway/router with WPAN tech built
in. Telcos desperately want to horn in on
that security market, and they know that
ZigBee or Z-Wave can help, giving them
another reason to charge customers extra
per month and letting them up-sell you
on new products for that wireless ecosys-
tem—everything from water-spill moni-
tors to window alarms to thermostats.
Both groups think that you’ll soon be able
to walk into Best Buy and get a router from
a name brand that includes both Wi-Fi and
ZigBee or Z-Wave.
802.15.4 may appear soon in your phone,
too, to provide extra telecom services.
Korea and some European countries are
doing this already. And ZigBee is pursuing
a personal health strategy, using devices
like the phone to monitor people’s health
status in a non-invasive way.
DlNa: linking More Devices
Another interesting networking story to
come out of CES this year was the Digital
Living Network Alliance (DLNA), a five-
year-old consortium of industry companies
that’s only now getting serious attention.
The interest centered on news of full sup-
port in the upcoming Windows 7 operating
system. This move puts Windows 7 devices
at the heart of an ecosystem of DLNA-
approved consumer electronics.
According to DLNA president Scott
Smyers, a senior VP for early supporter
Sony, DLNA certification is all about
interoperability. DLNA itself is based on
Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), but that
protocol only goes so far when handling
discovery between network nodes and
providing access. DLNA is the layer that
makes sure streaming-media formats can
work across nodes and providing “link
protection” for commercial content using
yet another standard: DTCP-IP, or Digital
Transmission Content Protection over
IP, which will someday prevent copy-
protected digital content on a home net-
work from going out over the Internet.
DLNA has been tied closely to other
networking standards, such as Wi-Fi and
MoCA (Multimedia over Coax, for net-
working across coaxial cable). In fact, if a
networking product aims for DLNA certifi-
cation, and it uses wireless 802.11, it must be
certified for interoperability by the Wi-Fi
Alliance before the DLNA will give it a seal
of approval. There are 240 DLNA member
companies, and scores of products at CES
had the logo. To date, the DLNA has certi-
fied 4,000 products, including computers,
printers, HDTVs, stereo equipment, DVRs,
and digital picture frames.
Windows 7 may be the catalyst needed
to get DLNA off the ground. Windows 7
users will be able to right-click a media
file and send it instantly to any DLNA
player device on the network. That already
sounds like a step up from finding files
using Windows Media Center.
That said, will DLNA support make it to
all Media Center hardware? The PlaySta-
tion 3 is DLNA-ready, like most Sony prod-
ucts, but Smyers is not sure whether DLNA
is coming to the Xbox 360. That’s a ques-
tion for Microsoft. Adding the support via
a software upgrade can only help the Xbox
communicate with Windows 7 computers
of the future, so it seems like a no-brainer.

APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 39

Solutions
problems solved this issue

42 at Work 48 tips
• Learn how to set up accounting • Find your toolbar in Word for Mac • Use Speed Dial in Firefox
software • Align image in Word • Get the best HDTV image quality
• Tweak default start times in • Choose the right HDTV ports
44 office
Outlook’s calendar • Properly place your speakers
• Learn hidden tricks in OpenOffice.org
• Improve Power-line performance • Calibrate your camera’s monitor
46 security • Turn your cell phone into a modem
• Keep your smartphones secure • Take shortcuts to Internet searches

keep it private Before you start posting anything, go into

your privacy settings and decide whom you want to be able to
see your photo albums, videos, profile, status updates, and so on.

Staying Safe on Facebook

Grown-ups, take note! Here is what you need to know before “friending” your first
Facebook connection. By Bill Dyszel
Recent news stories have reported a litany
of Facebook horror stories from geriat-
rics—you know, people over age 30—who
dented their dignities, if not their careers,
through careless social networking. Some
people think that the post-collegiate crowd
is simply too fuddy-duddy for Facebook.
Others insist that the site is now as essen-
tial as e-mail and phone service, if not air
and water, and nobody of any age should
be discouraged from squandering time on
Facebook. Even Bill Gates is reported to
have a half-hour-a-day Facebook habit.
A typical Facebook humiliation scenario
involves having someone post something
questionable to your “wall,” the public
Facebook page, and then having that item
inadvertently and automatically blasted
to everyone you know via Facebook. That
group often includes business associates
and other people with whom you’ve culti-
vated an illusion of respectability. Horrors!
Because the Internet offers so many
paths to public humiliation, it’s not entirely
fair to single out Facebook. In the site’s
defense, you have to be a Facebook member
to see all of the truly embarrassing items on
another member’s page. Besides, Google
can reveal more dirt about a person than
Facebook does, and that includes material
over which an individual has little control.
But if you have a professional reputa-
tion to protect, a Facebook account creates

40 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION APRIL 2009

 solutions social networking

a risk. Those two are natural enemies, like

eggs and bowling balls. Facebook is simply
not designed as a tool for business. If you
feel that you have no choice but to dilly-
dally on Facebook, consider these facts:
• Facebook was designed by adoles-
cents, for adolescents with adolescent
goals in mind. Only a few years ago, a
.edu e-mail address was a prerequisite to
a Facebook account, a requirement that
effectively limited membership to college
students. That sensibility remains part of
Facebook’s DNA. A site designed to help
you publish photos of yourself barfing over
a beer keg is unlikely to help burnish your
reputation in business.
• Facebook’s opaque user interface,
the result of its fundamentally collegiate,
video-gamer sensibility, is not designed
to be an effective business tool. Mistakes
are far easier to make and harder to cor-
rect than you’d expect in an application
designed for actual work.
• You can’t predict or control who will
ask to “friend” you on Facebook. What do pitfalls of finding friends You can easily find out who on your contact lists
you do when your boss or an important cli- are on Facebook. Think twice before adding business contacts to your network.
ent asks to become your Facebook friend?
If your Facebook page includes the names person or via a phone call that you origi- password of an online e-mail account such
of everyone in your witches’ coven, do you nate. You need to be sure that you’re deal- as Gmail or Yahoo; it pulls the account’s
want important potential clients to see ing with a moocher you actually know, not address book information into Facebook.
that? Or will you insult some bigwig by some unknown scammer. You should also Good sense says that you shouldn’t pull a
refusing a friend request? It’s not exactly contact the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint list of business contacts into Facebook if
the dilemma of the ages, but it’s certainly a Center, at www.ic3.gov, to file a complaint. you think there’s a risk of embarrassment.
potential social headache that adults need In some other cases, a phony Facebook You might also consider who’s allowed
to consider when joining Facebook. friend invites you to view a video that to see photos that other people have tagged
• Facebook developers often spring new requires you to download a player. Natu- with your name. You may not want certain
features on users without warning. Not rally, that player is infected with malware. photos to be seen by certain people. It’s
long ago a new “beacon” feature tracked Obviously, this same scam could be deliv- also possible for people to tag photos with
members’ online shopping transactions ered by e-mail or ordinary Web surfing, but your name that aren’t actually you, so it’s
and broadcast details to the world. The the familiarity of relationships on Facebook probably best to set your privacy level to
feature was dialed back after a firestorm induces people to lower their guard. limit tagged photo viewing to your friends,
of protest as well as some huge lawsuits Don’t despair. You can maintain a rea- not the whole network.
over privacy violations, but the impulsive sonable level of safety on Facebook. A few Let’s face it, Facebook is a time sink.
sensibility of Facebook developers augurs common-sense precautions can reduce Be prepared to spend an hour or so set-
similar surprises in the future. And it raises your risk of problems. For starters, look ting up your account when you first join.
the creepy question of why Facebook is col- over your privacy settings by selecting Pri- It doesn’t take that long to get an account
lecting that information in the first place. vacy Settings from the Settings drop-down established, but it does take some time to
• Facebook phishing is beginning to menu in the upper right-hand corner of the configure your account to make it suitable
surface. In one scenario, scammers hijack screen. You can adjust every detail of your for use by a grown-up.
the Facebook log-in of a friend of yours and privacy settings, including who can see A bit of social engineering can also help
then pretend to be that friend with an urgent pictures, postings, personal information, you distinguish business contacts from
need for money. They contact you via chat and work information. You can also adjust social friends. If an important business cli-
and start the scam from there. To you, it what individual members see, so your boss ent wants to “friend” you, suggest that you
looks like a request from a person you actu- or ex-spouse might not see things that the connect on LinkedIn or one of the business
ally know, often embellished with personal rest of the world does. There’s some wis- networking services instead. That way you
information gleaned from your own Face- dom in allowing only people you actually don’t have to insult someone by refusing
book entries. If anyone asks you for money know to view your profile. to be a friend, and you can position your
on Facebook, use your head—don’t do it. At One part of the “Find Friends” feature relationship as something more important
the very least, insist on direct contact in is a service that asks for the log-in and than a casual encounter on Facebook.

APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 41


Eight Steps to Setting Up Your
New Accounting Software
Is the biggest roadblock between you and a modern accounting system fear of plunging in?
Try these eight first steps to get started. By Kathy Yakal
Last month we tackled the question, “Does
your business need accounting software?”
Those of you who answered yes will find
that taking the time to set up your software
right will pay off in time saved every day of
your working life.
First, you must choose an applica-
tion. We recommend Microsoft Office
Accounting Professional 2008, MYOB Pre-
mier Accounting 2008, Peachtree by Sage
Complete Accounting 2009, or Intuit’s
QuickBooks Accounting Pro Edition 2009.
Running a few sample reports with what-
ever system you choose will help you get
warmed up. Once you’ve done this, you’re
ready to follow these next steps.
1. Use the opening setup tools.
MYOB MYOB’s New Company File Assis-
tant gets your company file started, while
the Setup Assistant takes you much
deeper. You start with general customiza-
tion options, then move through each sec-
tion (such as Accounts and Sales).
Office AccOUnting Use the Quick Start
window. After you’ve entered your com-
pany’s contact information, selected your
Chart of Accounts type, and saved your
company file by clicking through the wiz-
ard, the Quick Start window should open.
42 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION APRIL 2009
solutions at work
You can complete all of your setup tasks
here, or you can access the setup functions
anytime from menus.
PeAchtree After Peachtree runs you
through its opening paces (fiscal year,
Chart of Accounts, and so forth), it pops
open a setup guide. You can either follow
the links to some of the necessary steps or
access them through the menus.
QUickBOOks Use the EasyStep Interview.
This multistep wizard, which should take
only a few minutes to complete, starts
you on the path to setting company pref-
erences. It asks questions about whether
you’ll be using inventory and paying
employees, for example, and if you will be
it turns those features on. But it doesn’t do
everything.
cUstOMized rePOrts Peachtree
2. set company preferences. makes it easy to design your own reports.
MYOB Despite the depth of the automated
setup, you should still go into the pref- changing assigned accounts, and so on.
erences window at Setup | Preferences. PeAchtree Go to Options | Global to set
There are plenty of options to choose preferences for things like spell-check,
from there. decimal entry, and transaction sorting.
Office AccOUnting Go to Company | QUickBOOks If you’ve gone through the
Preferences. Most of this material is self- EasyStep interview you’ve already done
explanatory. You’re turning features on some of this work, but some remains. Go to
and off, setting a default interest rate and Edit | Preferences, and click down the list,
minimum finance charge, approving or making your wishes known.
PAYrOll setUP
3. secure your audit trail.
Payroll is probably
the most complex MYOB In Setup | Preferences | Security,
module to set up check the box next to Use Audit Trail
for all packages, Tracking. In the same window, click the
including Microsoft User IDs button to assign access to specific
Office Accounting parts of the program to individual users.
Professional (left).
Office AccOUnting If you want an
Be sure to have
complete informa- audit trail, check the Use Change Log field
tion about your in Company | Preferences. To give users
employees’ pay access only to specific parts of the pro-
rates and withhold- gram, go to File | Manage User and Roles.
ing before you start. P e Ac h t r e e The audit trail in the
Peachtree versions that contain it is on
and cannot be turned off. Go to Maintain
| User Security to assign roles and permis-
sions.
Online BAnking MYOB incorporates online banking services
through the Bank Register at its Bank Command Center.
QUickBOOks The audit trail in Quick-
Books is on and cannot be turned off. To
assign user access, go to Company | Set Up
Users and Passwords.
4. establish your sales tax.
MYOB This task is handled in the Setup
Assistant.
Office AccOUnting After you’ve set
up sales tax codes, you can create groups
that contain related codes that are often
charged together. For example, if you sell
products in the Seattle area, you could
make a group that contains the local and
Washington state taxes. You might also
want to set up a code for customers in
other states who don’t need to pay your
sales tax. Click Company | Sales tax.
PeAchtree Click the Customers & Sales
button on the left, and then the Sales Tax
icon. Follow the wizard to set up sales
agencies and taxes.
QUickBOOks Go to Edit | Preferences |
Sales Tax. Click the Company Preferences
tab, and then click the Yes button if it isn’t
already selected. Click Add Sales Tax Item
to set up your sales tax agencies, and then
answer the other questions that appear in
the window.
5. customize your forms.
MYOB Go to Setup | Customize Forms.
Select the form you wish to modify, and use
MYOB’s layout designer tool, which helps
you add fields and shift them around.
Office AccOUnting You can modify
the templates included for forms, such
as those for invoices, credit memos, and
purchase orders. Click Customers | Man-
age Word Templates, and select a template
type (say, Invoice) from the list on the left,
then the precise document and color (for
QUickBOOks sYsteM MAP QuickBooks uses a flowchart
navigation system to guide you easily from task to task.
example, Invoice Service–green.doc). Click
the Modify button and the document will
open. Use Word’s editing tools to add a
logo or make any other changes you like.
PeAchtree: Click Reports & Forms |
Forms. Select the form that you want to
customize and click Customize. You can
use Peachtree’s layout designer tools to
make changes to any of the forms that are
supported.
QUickBOOks You can modify the boiler-
plate form templates by going to Lists |
Templates, selecting the form you want
to modify, and either clicking on the Tem-
plates pull-up list in the lower left-hand
corner for options, or double-clicking on
it. Use the customization tools and layout
designer to make your changes.
6. create cover letters for e-mails.
MYOB Use MYOB’s OfficeLink tool to
modify prefab Word templates (you must
go to Word to make any modifications).
Back in MYOB, go to the Card File Com-
mand Center and select Create Personal-
ized Letters to initiate the mail merge.
Office AccOUnting Office Accounting’s
integration with Word also helps you write
boilerplate cover letters to go along with
forms. Go to Customers | \Write Letters and
follow the wizard’s steps.
PeAchtree Click Reports & Forms |
Forms. Select the letter you want to edit
and click Edit Letter Template. Click Edit
in the window that opens to create your
alterations.
QUickBOOks Integration with Microsoft
Office makes creating personalized mail-
ings easy. Go to Customer Center and click
on the Word drop-down menu. Select
Customize Letter Templates and follow the
wizard.
7. set up online banking.
MYOB You can download banking state-
ments; first go to your bank’s Web site to
learn how. When that’s set up, go to the
Banking Command Center and click Bank
Register, then Get Statement.
Office AccOUnting Click on Banking
| Banking Home and you’ll see all of the
options for this function. If you’re going to
use online banking, click that button and
walk through the wizard.
PeAchtree Click Tasks | Account reconcil-
iation. Select the account to reconcile, and
click the arrow next to the Banking icon to
set up online statement download.
QUickBOOks Go to Banking | Online
Banking | Set Up Account for Online Ser-
vices.
8. import company data from excel
MYOB This is handled in the Setup Assis-
tant, though you must first convert your
file to a TXT document.
Office AccOUnting If you want to
import, for example, a customer list, click
File | Import Excel data. You may have to
massage your existing database to get
it in shape for Office Accounting. Click
the Open Folder button in the wizard that
opens to see the spreadsheet templates, or
simply follow the wizard’s steps to see the
mapping tool.
PeAchtree First, save your Excel file as
a CSV (comma-separated values) docu-
ment. Then in Peachtree, click File | Select
Import | Export, then click Import to see
the order of mapping fields.
QUickBOOks Go to File | Utilities | Import |
Excel Files. You’ll be able to copy and paste
your spreadsheet’s columns into a spe-
cially formatted spreadsheet, then import
that data into QuickBooks.
APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 43

Seven Cool Things You Can Do
with OpenOffice.Org
Even Microsoft Office can’t manage some of the tricks that OpenOffice.org—a free application
suite, not just a Web site—has to offer. By Edward Mendelson
OpenOffice.org 3.0 costs absolutely noth-
ing, yet its features and functionality prob-
ably make it Microsoft Office’s biggest
rival. Even though OpenOffice.org—which
is, yes, an application suite, not just a Web
site—can’t do everything Office can, it can
do quite a bit, and it has some of its own
tricks that even Office can’t manage. Here
are a few of those tricks that may not be
so obvious, as well as a few ways you can
make OpenOffice.org less annoying upon
install.
1. Edit two or more parts of a docu-
ment at the same time.
Microsoft Word has a nifty split-window
feature that lets you divide the current
window into two panes, so you can edit
page 5 of your document in the top pane
and page 505 in the bottom. To switch from
one pane to the other, you don’t have to
waste time scrolling back and forth—you
OnE bETTEr Than a SPlIT wIndOw PanE Use Window | New Window to open as
many windows as you like on the same document. Note that you can display different
toolbars, or no toolbars at all, in each window.
44 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION APRIL 2009
solutions office
simply click in the other pane.
OpenOffice.org doesn’t let you split
a window into two panes, but it offers an
even better feature. Click the Window
menu, then New Window, to open a new
window that displays the same document
you’re working on. You can open as many
windows as you want, each at a differ-
ent place in your document; any change
you make in one window is immediately
reflected in all others.
You can reduce screen clutter by turn-
ing off toolbars in one or more windows
(use View | Toolbars). To tile or cascade the
windows, right-click on the OpenOffice
.org button on the Windows taskbar.
2. Turn off the blinking lightbulb.
By default, a lightbulb icon appears in a
tiny window whenever OpenOffice.org
does anything that isn’t exactly what you
typed—for example, when it replaces two
hyphens with a dash. It doesn’t exactly
blink, but after the third or fourth time it
opens, you may think of it as “that blink-
ing lightbulb” (you might use a word
other than “blinking”). To turn it off per-
manently, go to Tools | Options, and then,
in the left-hand pane, expand the menu
tree by clicking the plus sign next to Open-
Office.org. In the General dialog, remove
the check mark next to Help Agent.
3. Use OpenOffice.org to open
legacy documents.
Years ago, older versions of Microsoft
Office could open documents created by
almost any of the myriad word proces-
sors and spreadsheet programs that were
widely used before Microsoft monopo-
lized the market. Recent versions of
Office can’t open many of those older
formats—including files in old Microsoft
Word versions, such as Word 6.0. By con-
trast, OpenOffice.org continues to open
Word documents dating back to Version
6.0. OpenOffice.org also opens WordPer-
fect documents, including files created
in WordPerfect for the Macintosh 3.5
Enhanced, which not even WordPerfect
for Windows tries to open.
By the way, there’s something confus-
ing about OpenOffice.org’s claims. The
product purports to support at least one
format that never existed: The list of sup-
ported file types in its File | Open dialog
includes “Microsoft WinWord 5.0,” even
though there never was such a version.
Word for Windows skipped from 2.0 to 6.0
in its version numbers.
4. Play a vintage Space Invaders
game.
Remember the days of software “Eas-
ter Eggs”? These were not-very-secret
keystrokes or mouse clicks that brought
up silly graphics in some programs and
games in others. Even Microsoft Excel

SPacE InvadErS In a SPrEadShEET OpenOffice’s Calc
gives you the satisfaction of destroying alien invaders when you
can’t bear to look at your financial planning worksheet.
used to have a secret game built in before
Redmond lost its sense of humor. Open-
Office.org’s Calc spreadsheet program still
includes a 1990s-era shoot-’em-up Space
Invaders game. Open the Calc app, and in
any cell enter
=GAME(“StarWars”)
Make sure to copy the capitalization
shown here. Calc will open a StarWars
game in which you shoot down a fleet of evil
alien ships. The explanatory text is in Ger-
man (the original version of OpenOffice.
org was written in Germany), but you don’t
need to know German (or even English) to
play the game. Calc has a slightly Teutonic
attitude toward fun-and-games, however:
After you quit the game, you’ll need to shut
down Calc and start it up again before you
can play a second time.
5. Save files in Office formats by
default.
By default OpenOffice.org saves files in its
own format, which most Microsoft Office
users can’t open. You can save individual
files in Office format by using OpenOffice
.org’s File | Save as… menu and selecting a
Word format from the Save as Type drop-
down. But you can tell OpenOffice to save
in Office formats by default by choosing
Tools | Options, then find the Load/Save
category, and the General subcategory. In
the Document Type drop-down, choose
Text Document, and in the Always Save
As drop-down, choose Microsoft Word
97/2000/XP. Then, in the Document Type
bUIldIng macrOS Tools | Customize brings you to this dialog,
where you can attach any macro to an action, such as saving or
printing a file. Make sure to record your macros first, and then
come back to this dialog.
drop-down, choose Spreadsheet, and in the
Always Save As drop-down, choose Micro-
soft Excel 97/2000/XP. These choices will
create files that can be read by any modern
word processor or spreadsheet.
6. automate actions easily.
Many advanced Microsoft Office users
take advantage of macros that run auto-
matically when you open, print, or close a
file, but Office’s interface doesn’t provide
built-in clues for creating an AutoClose
macro that will run whenever you close
a document. OpenOffice.org goes Office
one better by providing a menu-driven
interface that lists all the actions that
can automatically trigger macros—and
these include a wider range of actions
than the ones that can be automated eas-
ily in Office. For example, you can create
a macro that is triggered every time the
number of pages in a document increases
and that inserts a header with a page num-
ber if the number goes above, say, 2.
Other actions that can automatically
trigger macros include saving a document
under a different name and running a
mail merge. To use this feature, record the
macros you want to use, then go to Tools |
Customize | Events and assign your chosen
macro to specific events.
7. Fix those single quotes.
By default, OpenOffice.org Writer creates
good-looking, curly “typographic” dou-
ble-quotation marks as you type, but for
some reason, when you type a single quo-
tation mark (or an apostrophe) it uses a
vertical line, as if you were still using your
grandfather’s manual typewriter. You can
fix this by going to Tools | AutoCorrect…,
then going to the Custom Quotes tab and,
under Single Quotes, adding a check mark
next to Replace.
FIxIng qUOTES Use
Tools | AutoCorrect…
to open this dialog,
and add the check
mark next to Replace
near the top. If you
click the button to the
left of Default, you get
the dialog shown here,
where you can make
sure that the program
has chosen the correct
quotation mark.
APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 45
 solutions security watch

Mobile Device Security Measures

Even the simplest cell phones carry enough data to be dangerous in the wrong hands.
By Matthew D. Sarrel
Everyone is mobilizing. Our lives, not just their computers. This makes our mobile You may have some help from your
business but also personal, have become devices and the data they contain just as security suite; some of these now include
entwined with our cell phones (or is it important as our laptops and desktops. mobile features, although at this point
vice versa?). “Cell phone” isn’t even the Add a direct Internet connection (which we’re not sure they’re necessary.
right term anymore for many people, who very few people secure)—and the likeli- However, there are a number of things
use their BlackBerrys, iPhones, and other hood of physical loss or theft—and you’ve you can do yourself to avoid a data-theft
smartphones almost as much as they use got a recipe for disaster. disaster.

BlackBerry (System 4.5 and higher)

Go to Options, then Security Options, then:
1. PaSSword-Protect Start-uP. Under General Settings,
set Password to Enabled. You may also want to change other set-
tings here, such as the number of password attempts allowed
before the device is locked, and whether the device should auto-
matically lock on holstering. Commit your changes by pressing the
Back button (the half-circle arrow) and enter your new password
when prompted. Choose a password you’ll remember and that will
be quick and easy to type. Confirm that password, then exit to the
main menu. Lock your phone by pressing and holding the * button
to confirm that it has been password-protected.
2. encryPt data. Scroll past General Settings to Content Pro-
tection, and enable it. Under Strength, you can select Strong (80
bits), Stronger (128 bits), or Strongest (256 bits). Use Stronger for
faster encryption/decryption or Strongest for the most security.
Selecting Yes for Include Address Book will keep your contacts
secure but will also result in disabling caller ID when the phone
is locked. Circle-arrow back out, then create an encryption key
by randomly moving the trackball and typing characters. A good
practice is to regenerate an encryption key every two to four
weeks: Under Security Options | General Settings, click on any ser-
vice, then click Regenerate encryption key.
3. Secure PaSSwordS. Never save usernames and passwords
in your mobile device’s browser. Anyone who finds your device
could gain access to all of your online accounts. Instead, use the
Password Keeper utility to store and encrypt this info.
4. Lock down BLuetooth. By default, Bluetooth is on. In
addition to wasting your battery, this leaves you open to Bluetooth-
based attacks. From the Home screen, go to Set Up Bluetooth. When
prompted to Add Device select Cancel. Press the Menu button,
then select Options. Set Discoverable to No, so other devices can’t
find your BlackBerry, and set Security to High—or if the Bluetooth
devices you use with your BlackBerry support it, set Security to
High + Encryption to encrypt Bluetooth data transmissions. From
the checklist, enable only services you think you’re going to use
with Bluetooth—most commonly headset and hands-free.
5. cLear memory. Also under Security Options, memory clear-
ing can delete sensitive data, such as unencrypted e-mail messages
and username, password, and other certificate-related info. You can
set the BlackBerry to clear memory under certain circumstances—
for example, when you holster your BlackBerry or lock it.

46 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION APRIL 2009

 iPhone
Unfortunately, you won’t find a list item
called “Encrypt data” below. At this point,
there doesn’t seem to be any encryption
available for iPhones.
1. enaBLe PaSScode Lock and
auto-Lock. Click the main iPhone Set-
tings icon, and then click the General
tab and select Auto-Lock. Select the time
period you want, and then exit out to the
Home screen. Once Auto-Lock locks the
phone, Passcode Lock will require you to
type a four-digit PIN to unlock it. Click the
iPhone Settings icon, then the General tab,
then Passcode Lock. From there enable
Turn Passcode On. Enter your passcode.
Tap Require Passcode and then choose
Immediately.
2. Secure PaSSwordS. There’s no
native way to do this, so you’ll have to use a
third-party password manager.
3. Lock down BLuetooth. It’s great
that Bluetooth is off by default on iPhones,
but you should also set yours to require an
eight-character PIN for connections with
Macs. Turn on Bluetooth only when you
need it.
4. cLear the memory and cache.
Back on the Passcode Lock screen, you can
disable SMS Preview while the device is in
its locked state, and also turn on the Erase
Data function. This will wipe the iPhone
clean after ten failed passcode attempts.
You can clear cookies, browser cache, and
history from the Settings menu in Safari.

Smartphone (windows mobile 6)

1. PaSSword Protect Start-uP. Go to Start | Settings | Lock and
configure a password. Check the box next to Prompt if the device is
unused for and then select a time period from the drop-down box,
something in the 5-to-30-minute range. You can set your password
to be a simple four-digit PIN or a strong alphanumeric string and
then enter the password in the boxes below. You can also set a hint,
but remember that this can be read by anyone with physical access
to your phone. At this point, it would help to go to Settings | Today,
click the Items tab and check the box next to Device Lock to pro-
vide a quick locking option on your Home screen.
2. encryPt data. Under Settings | Security | Encryption, check
the box that says Encrypt files placed on the storage card, then
click OK. A storage card can actually contain both encrypted and
nonencrypted data, but encrypted data can be read only from the
device in which it was encrypted and written, or from a Windows
PC using ActiveSync and Windows Mobile Device Center. There’s
also a big gotcha lurking: If you have to perform a hard reset of
your device or update the ROM, you will lose the encryption key
stored on the device, and with it, access to your data. Companies
can push encryption policies to Windows Mobile devices using
Exchange Server 2007.
3. Secure PaSSwordS. This requires a third-party solution,
such as KeePas or some other eWallet type of encrypted password
manager.
4. Lock down BLuetooth. Go to Start | Settings, then the
Connections tab, then Bluetooth. On the Mode tab you can enable or
disable Bluetooth and make your device visible; Off and Not visible
are the more secure settings. Scroll all the way right to the Security
tab and check the box to require authentication for data beaming.
5. cLear the memory and cache. In Internet Explorer,
go to Menu | Tools | Options; in the Memory tab you can set a his-
tory retention time in days or clear the history manually. Click the
Delete Files button to clear the Web cache. Navigate to the Security
tab and click the Clear Cookies button.

APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 47


Tips
Useful tidbits from PCMag editorial staff, Labs analysts, and readers
MICROSOFT OFFICE
Restore a Disappearing Toolbar in
Word for Mac
Recently my oft-used formatting toolbar in
Word 2008 for Mac went missing. One day
it simply disappeared, despite the fact that
the Formatting box under View | Toolbars
remained selected—how to get it back was
a frustrating mystery. I trolled every menu
option in Word, looking for the box that I
could check to recover it. At last I noticed
a small, nondescript oval button in the top
right-hand corner of my document win-
dow: Clicking on it made my toolbar magi-
cally reappear. Turns out that this little
bubble expands and retracts Word’s tool-
bars. In fact it appears all over Apple’s OS
X, in Finder, browser, and other programs’
windows, and it does the same thing in all
of them. Who knew? Thanks, Apple, for
making this option so puzzling!—Wendy
Sheehan Donnell
Align Images in Microsoft Word
It’s easy enough to get an image into Word
2007—just copy it to the clipboard and
paste it in, or choose Insert | Picture. But
once the image is in there, you may find it a
balky old thing. You can’t move it around,
and you can’t put text alongside it; it’s
an albatross! The key to unlocking your
pasted image lies in the Text Wrapping set-
ting. By default, it’s set to In Line with Text,
which might be handy if your image is an
arcane rune not found in any font—then
it would flow with the text and stay in just
the right place. Most of the time, though,
you’ll want to choose a different setting.
Right-click the image, choose Text Wrap-
ping from the context menu, and choose
Square or Tight (or any of the other wrap-
ping options). Now your pasted image is
48 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION APRIL 2009
SOluTIONS
no longer locked in place. You can move
it wherever you want, and you can decide
how the text should behave around it.
You’ll find other helpful options in the Pic-
ture ribbon that appears when you select
an image.—Neil J. Rubenking
Set New Time Increments in
Outlook’s Calendar
Outlook’s calendar divides days into hours,
which are in turn broken up into half-hours,
with appointments starting and ending on
the hour or half-hour. You’re allowed to
type odd times in (down to the minute), but
for people whose classes, appointments,
or other calendar items regularly start and
end at 15 or 45 minutes past the hour, sched-
uling can become tedious. Having fielded
questions from such folk, I scoured Out-
look’s calendar options, to no avail.
The answer was out there, however,
lurking in a context menu—thanks, Micro-
soft, for putting a random option nowhere
near the Options dialog. Here’s how to make
Outlook respect your schedule: Right-click
somewhere in your calendar (somewhere
within a day, not in the left-hand pane) and
choose Other Settings.... Then, next to Time
Scale, choose another time increment—say,
15 minutes. In addition to seeing your hours
divided into four segments instead of the
default two, your scheduling drop-down
will display times in 15-minute increments.
You can’t type in a custom increment, but
being able to choose 5-, 6- (6-minute incre-
ments? Seriously?), 10-, 15-, 30-, or 60-min-
ute increments is a start.—Sarah Pike
NETWORKING
Improve Power-Line Performance
If you are getting less-than-stellar perfor-
mance with your power-line network, it’s
MISSING TOOLBAR?
If your toolbar in Word
2008 for the Mac goes
missing, click on the
gray oval box in the
right-hand corner.
probably because your adapters are con-
nected across two circuit breakers. For
best results, make sure the power-line
adapters are on the same circuit. Note that
networking performance can also degrade
if your electric circuit is overloaded, so
try not to use the hair dryer, refrigerator,
and air conditioner all on the same one.
—Mario Morejon
Turn Your Cell Phone into a Modem
Wishing you could get on the Internet
from your laptop without having to find
a Wi-Fi hot spot? Don’t want to pay $60
per month for a cellular broadband con-
nection? You can probably use your cur-
rent cell phone as a modem for your
laptop—and at a significant savings com-
pared with implementing a separate PC
card, ExpressCard, or USB solution. Head
over to Smart Device Central’s Modem
Tethering Guide for information on set-
ting up this kind of connection: There are
instructions for each carrier using a PC
laptop, and one specifically for Mac laptop
users.—Jamie Lendino
CAMERAS
Calibrate Your Monitor
Ever wonder why some of your friends’
pictures look better than yours? Well,
maybe it’s not your camera; it could be
your monitor. Calibration tools and soft-
ware can help you optimize your moni-
tor’s contrast and brightness settings so
that your pictures can come out looking
detailed and accurate. Expensive tools like
the Spyder3 can adjust your monitor for
you automatically. And software calibra-
tion tools like DisplayMate can help you
fine-tune your monitor’s picture to your
eye. A quick Google search will turn up
a bunch of free basic-calibration images
you can try as a way of getting your feet
wet.—PJ Jacobowitz
MulTIMEDIA
Get the Best Image Quality from
Your HDTV
Most HDTVs provide several picture pre-
sets that can be selected for quickly and
easily optimizing the picture quality for a
particular viewing environment—such as
daytime or nighttime viewing. An HDTV’s
default picture mode usually produces its
brightest picture, which would be suitable
for use in a sunny or otherwise brightly lit
room. For a more accurate and natural-
looking viewing experience, particularly
in a dimly lit environment where the eye
is more sensitive to detail, picture presets
such as Movie, Cinema, or Natural are bet-
ter choices. —Robert Heron
Choose the Right Port for Your
HDTV
Video sources such as Blu-ray players,
cable and satellite set-top boxes, and con-
sole game systems provide an array of con-
nection options to use with an HDTV. For
optimal picture quality, always use the best
port that the source and the TV share. For
instance, if an upscaling DVD player and
a HDTV both have HDMI ports (a single-
wire, digital audio/video connection), then
always use the HDMI ports. The next best
port option would be component video
input (a three-cable analog-video-only sys-
tem). Ports such as composite (the yellow
RCA-style port) or S-Video (a four-wire,
single-cable video connection) do not sup-
port HD formats and should be avoided
when connecting HD-compatible gear. If
you have no choice but to use composite or
S-Video, opt for the latter: It will provide a
more detailed picture.—RH
Improve the Quality of Your Music
Library
With MP3 player capacities increasing
every year, most devices have more room
for “lossless” files now. Lossless files act
like ZIP files—they use far less compres-
sion but take up much less space than
the originals, and sound a lot better than
lower-bit-rate MP3, WMA, and AAC files.
In iTunes or Window Media Player, you
can choose to import files as either Apple
Lossless or WMA Lossless. Or, using free
software available online, you can con-
vert audio into FLAC (free lossless audio
codec)—just make sure your player can
support FLAC first.—Tim Gideon
Optimize Sound Through Proper
Speaker Placement
Stereo is mixed in two channels, and if you
want to hear the same balance the mix engi-
neer heard, make sure your head forms an
equilateral triangle with your two speak-
ers’ tweeters (high-frequency drivers). You
want your ears to be at the same height as
the tweeters, so buying the right height of
speaker stand is essential. Speaker height
can be problematic at a desk if the speak-
ers aren’t upward-angled. There are desk-
top speaker stands, however, that eliminate
this issue—or you can use phone books
or CD cases, just as long as you place both
speakers at the same height.—TG
INTERNET
Speed-Dial Your Nine Favorite Sites
Using Firefox
A reader named Gregory T. wrote to me
recently saying that he wished Firefox
would mimic a feature from Opera, his
favorite Web browser: Speed Dial opens
new tabs to a grid of nine user-chosen
sites. With it, your most-visited sites are
a single click away. (Gregory also finds
Firefox faster than Opera, which sur-
prises me, as Firefox is often the worst
performer on my speed tests.) Good news!
For devoted Firefox users and Opera users
who have to open Firefox for the occa-
sional incompatible site, an extension,
also called Speed Dial, adds just such an
option to Firefox.—Michael Muchmore
This Just In: Google’s Not the Only
Internet Search Provider!
I always use the Google box in the upper
right-hand corner of my browser to do
a search, rather than taking the time to
go to Google.com or whatever. And I’m
always looking for keyboard shortcuts to
avoid having to move my hand over to the
mouse and back. Here’s one: Put your cur-
sor in the box, type some text, and then use
the Ctrl-Down Arrow or Ctrl-Up Arrow
to scroll through the various installed
engines, rather than using the pull-down
menu. Awesome! —Jeremy A. Kaplan
GREAT IDEA! Got a tip to share? Find a cool
new trick in your favorite gadget or app?
Send it to tips@pcmag.com. We’ll run it
through the PCMag Labs wringer and print
our favorites on this page.
SPEED DIAL This
Firefox extension allows
users to open new tabs
to a grid of nine sites of
their choice.
APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 49
 editors’ Choices
in key Categories
Best
printers
monoCHrome laser
Digital pHoto & ViDeo
multimeDia suite
Cell pHones
alltel
For the complete samsung ml-2851nD adobe Creative suite 3 rim BlackBerry Curve 8330
reviews of these $150 street From $229.99 with contract
$999 direct
products and more Color laser at&t
ViDeo-eDiting soFtWare
Editors’ Choices check lexmark C544dn $499 direct Cyberlink powerDirector 7 apple iphone 3g
out go.pcmag.com/
editorschoice
stanDarD inkJet ultra $119.95 direct From $199.99 with contract
Canon pixma ip4300 pHoto eDiting sprint
$99.99 direct rim BlackBerry Curve 8330
Desktops adobe photoshop Cs4
all-in-one inkJet $1,150 list $179.99 with contract
mainstream
Canon pixma mp980 picasa 3 (beta) Free t-moBile
Hp pavilion elite m9400t Wireless $299.99 direct Digital pHoto Frame
NEW samsung memoir
n
$843 list
pHoto printer sony Vaio VgF-Cp1 $299 list sgH-t929 $299 direct
BuDget/Value
Hp photosmart a636 Verizon Wireless
lenovo ideaCentre k210 Compact photo printer mp3 players samsung knack sCH-u310
$449 direct $149.99 direct HarD Disk $39.99 with contract
gaming/ multimeDia
microsoft zune 120gB unloCkeD
Velocity micro raptor netWorking
signature edition $6,999 direct
$249.99 list nokia n82 $629 direct
netgear powerline adapter FlasH
nNEW Dell studio Xps 435
kit (XaVB101) $130 street apple ipod touch 8GB, HeaDsets
$1,769 direct
smC smCgs8p $300 street $229 direct BluetootH
all-in-one aliph new Jawbone
apple ipod nano 16GB,
sony Vaio VgC-Js130J/p HDtVs $199 direct $129.99 list
$1,099.99 list plasma samsung yp-u3 (2gB) $90 list
Business Vizio Vp505XVt $1,499.99 list HeaDpHones
Dell optiplex 755 $1,183 direct lCD speakers/DoCks ultimate ears ue 11 pro
samsung ln52a750 Chestnut Hill sound george $1,150 list
laptops & noteBooks $3,999.99 list $549 direct
mainstream
oleD Hercules Xps 2.1 lounge oFFiCe & proDuCtiVity
apple macBook pro 15-inch sony Xel-1 oleD Digital tV
(penryn) $2,899 direct $60 street adobe acrobat 9 pro
$2,499.99 list logitech pure-Fi Dream $449 direct
gaming
$200 direct NEW QuickBase
n
alienware m17 $2,059 direct Digital Cameras $250 direct/month
multimeDia CompaCt meDia eXtenDers NEW skype 4.0 Free
n
Hp HDX16t $1,790 direct Canon powershot a1000 is sonos Bundle 150 $999 direct speeCH reCognition
meDia Center/Desktop replaCement $349.99 list
slingbox pro-HD $299 list Dragon naturally
lenovo thinkpad W700 D-slr speaking 10 $99.99 direct
$4,240 direct nikon D300 $1,800 street gaming Consoles Desktop puBlisHing
acer aspire 6930g-6723 (body only)
$1,020 street sony playstation 3 $399 direct adobe illustrator Cs4
Canon eos rebel Xsi $699 list $599 direct
Dell studio Xps 16 $1,804 direct (body only) gps DeViCes
netBook ipHone apps
superzoom
NEW asus eeepC 1000He NEW garmin nüvi 265t
n
n panasonic lumix DmC-Fz18
$400 street $279.99 list air sharing $6.99 direct
$399.95 list stanza Free
Business
gaDgets photogene $2.99 direct
lenovo thinkpad t400 Digital ViDeo Cameras
$1,580 direct NEW amazon kindle 2
n
Creative Vado pocket $359 direct
entertainment
BuDget
Video Cam HD pandora (for iphone) Free
Hp pavilion dv2800t $299.99 direct
$1,049 direct rhapsody From $12.99/month
sony HDr-sr11 nNEW slacker Free
$1,099.99 direct NEW apple ilife ’09 $79 direct
storage n
portaBle nNEW google earth 5.0 Free
NEW lenovo thinkpad usB
n nNEW simCity 2009
portable secure Drive (for iphone) Free
$319 list
NEW Clickfree HD325 $180 list
seCurity
n
Desktop antiVirus
Western Digital my Webroot antiVirus with
Shop wisely. Print this page and bring it with you.

Book studio edition ii antispyware 6.0 $39.95 direct

$430 list suite
netWork-attaCHeD storage norton internet security
Hp storageWorks aio400t 2009 $69.99 yearly
$3,799 list parental Control
net nanny 6.0 $39.99 yearly
lCD monitors
lenovo thinkVision l200x BaCkup
$499.99 list sos online Backup (beta)
Dell ultrasharp 2408WFp $19.95 direct
$689 direct
FinanCial
proJeCtors reaDing QuickBooks accounting
Canon realis X700 $2,500 list is Fun again The pro edition 2009 $199.95 list
neC Vt800 $1,000 street Amazon Kindle 2 has a slew nNEW Quicken Home
Dell m109s $499 direct of new features for bookworms. & Business 2009 $79.99 direct

50 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION APRIL 2009