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www.pcmag.com March 21, 2006
TRAVEL GEAR BLOWOUT!
71 HOT PHONES, PDAs, MP3 PLAYERS, CAMERAS, & MORE
The Ultimate Guide to
Staying Connected
59 Ways to Keep in
Touch with Your
Ofﬁce, Family,
and Friends
The $159 PC
Does It Compute?
Internet Explorer 7
What’s New
Hummer Laptop
Brawny & Beefy
Build a
Killer Game Room
We Show You How
www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 7
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Technology has changed the way we live,
work, and communicate. But not all gear is
suitable to the road warrior, so we gathered
together the best travel-ready equipment. Also,
the tips and information we provide will help
you stay connected, productive, entertained,
and safe—no matter where your journey
takes you.
68
COVER STORY
MARCH 21 , 2006 • VOL. 25 NO. 5
CONTENTS www.pcmag.com
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First Looks
26 High-Speed Cellular Data Networks
• Cingular BroadbandConnect (HSDPA)
• Sierra AirCard 860
• Sprint PCS Wireless High-Speed Data
(EV-DO)
• Merlin Wireless S620
• Sprint Power Vision MM-A940
by Samsung
• Sprint PPC-6700
• Verizon Wireless BroadbandAccess (EV-
DO)
• Kyocera KPC650
• Motorola RAZR V3c
• BlackBerry 7130e
30 MP3 Players
• Creative Zen Vision:M K
• Cowon iAudio F1
• Samsung Yepp YP-TJ7
32 Digital Cameras
• Kodak EasyShare P880
• Olympus Stylus 600
34 GPS
• DeLorme Earthmate GPS LT-20
with Street Atlas USA 2006
• Microsoft Streets & Trips 2006
with GPS Locator
36 Laptops
• Itronix Hummer Laptop IX600 K
• Alienware Area-51 m5500
• Gateway M465-E
40 Desktops
• Dell Dimension E310
M
• eMachines T6420
41 Media Center PCs
• Polywell MiniBox2 939NP-MCE
• Shuttle XPC M1000
42 Graphics Tools
• CorelDraw X3 Graphics Suite
• ACDSee Pro Photo Manager
44 Web Video
• Google Video (beta)
• iTunes 6
46 Internet Tools
• Podzinger
• SNARF
48 Media Sharing
• Grouper 2.0 Beta
• Streamload MediaMax
49 Security
• iShield 1.0.9.2
• Spyware Doctor 3.5
52 SMB: Printers
• Brother MFC-9420cn
• Lexmark C552n
• Ricoh Aﬁcio G7500
• HP Ofﬁcejet Pro K550L
• Corel WordPerfect Ofﬁce X3 SE
53 John Dickinson on Small Business
56 SMB: Software and Hardware
• eBay ProStores 6.0
• Firebox X8000
57 What to Buy
• The best products in one place.
ᮋ
ON THE COVER
Travel Gear Blowout!
page 71
Build a Killer Game
Room page 88
The $159 PC page 98
Internet Explorer 7
page 110
Hummer Laptop page 36
The Ultimate Guide
to Staying Connected
page 68
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 8
Opinions
11 Jim Louderback
15 Michael J. Miller:
Forward Thinking
61 John C. Dvorak
63 John C. Dvorak’s Inside Track
65 Bill Machrone
Solutions
101 The Connected Traveler in
Boston: Star Wars at the Science
Museum; MIT; tech-friendly
hotels—and Fenway Park.
104 Security Watch: Is this the year
of the Mac attack? Will its OS
ﬁnally attract the attention of
hackers?
108 SMB Boot Camp: Hack thyself!
Find and ﬁx the holes in your
SMB’s network before hackers
get there.
105 Ask Loyd: How to update an
optical drive; correct hard-drive
boot problems.
106 Ask Neil: How to restore banner
ads; conﬁgure Word to double-
space by default.
110 Vista Revealed: Internet Explor-
er turns (almost) 7. The new IE
has been a long time coming.
112 Software Solutions: You can
use Excel to get all sorts of stock
info automatically.
REAL- WORLD TESTI NG
98 Your Next PC
Will Cost $159
For a pittance, Fry’s Electronics sells
a box that, with modest upgrades
plus the addition of a monitor,
makes a good, fast, ofﬁce system.
Gaming + Culture
124 Gamesploitation: Cheating
in multiplayer games; top 10
Xbox 360 games.
127 Gearlog: Optimus puts dis-
plays on your keyboard’s keys.
Also in This Issue
58 Feedback
128 Backspace
Pipeline
19 eBooks, round 2; Wi-Fi for
camping; uncensoring the
Web for China; jargon watch.
Online
www.pcmag.com
Optimize Multitasking with
AltTabIt!: Our latest premium utility
makes switching and launching
Windows programs easier than ever.
(go.pcmag.com/alttabit)
UTI LI TY DOWNLOAD
FI RST LOOKS
Discussions: Log on and participate!
(discuss.pcmag.com/pcmag)
Downloads: Check out our indexed
list of utilities from A to Z.
(go.pcmag.com/utilities)
TOOLS YOU CAN USE
DVORAK ONLINE
K Each Monday,
John C. Dvorak gives
you his take on
what’s happening in
high tech today. Visit
go.pcmag.com/dvorak.
EXCLUSI VE COLUMNS
ULANOFF ONLINE
K And, each Wednes-
day, Lance Ulanoff puts
his own unique spin
on technology. Visit
go.pcmag.com/ulanoff.
Coming up:
• 3DMark06—inside the new
benchmark tests
• A dual-core processor for gamers:
AMD Athlon 64 FX-60
• Ten tips for easy motherboard
upgrades
(www.extremetech.com)
Future Watch
20 Horizontal computing with
Nethrone; a CANVAS for 3D art.
New reviews every week!
Coming soon:
• Altec Lansing
AHP712i
headphones
• Fujitsu LifeBook
P7120 K
• Nokia 6236i
phone
• Primary
Response
SafeConnect
(beta) antispyware
(go.pcmag.com/ﬁrstlooks)
BUI LD I T
88 The Ultimate
Game Room
Your ultimate game room wouldn’t
be complete without custom-painted
PCs, a huge plasma TV, an Xbox 360,
and a four-LCD scoreboard.
Cars
22 Toyota Prius
Fine Digital FineDrive 400
Motorola’s Mesh Network
23 Bill Howard
ா
www.pcmag.com
J I M LOUDE RBACK
I REMEMBER MY FIRST EXTENDED
business trip, consulting for National
Semiconductor in Silicon Valley while
living in New York City. Notebooks were
big and bulky in 1989, but I still hauled
one with me everywhere. Along with pro-
gramming on the plane, I used it to stave
off loneliness via the PCMagNet and PC
Week CompuServe forums.
Today I carry a revolving group of de-
vices to stay in touch with friends and family—see page
74 for a snapshot of my travel tech. Although my Nintendo
Game Boy and my MP3 players offer blessed isolation from
annoying seatmates, today’s tech is more about staying in
touch. I’d be lost without e-mailing my son, IMing my wife,
and calling friends and family from the road. That’s what it
means to be a connected traveler today: You can take a bit of
home with you, wherever you go.
Video Around the World. Tech also helps pass the time—
video gets me through those long delays. Here’s a plug for two
of my favorite techniques. The ﬁrst, the awesome Slingbox,
lets me watch my TiVo from anywhere in the world. I’ve used
it to catch Patriots games in Germany and local news from
across ten time zones. My friend Rob Cheng, who runs PC
Pitstop, uses it to watch all of his U.S. TV at home in Brazil.
Video quality isn’t perfect, especially with fast-moving
sports, but it’s amazing what it can do. And Slingbox now has
a smartphone client, so you can watch TV on the go.
You can even have some impish fun with Slingbox. On my
last trip to Europe, I hooked up—only to ﬁnd my wife watch-
ing Oprah. I’d neglected to explain Slingbox, so when I started
pausing, rewinding, and slo-mo-ing, she became understand-
ably vexed. After randomly selecting TiVo menu options for
a few seconds, she gave up in disgust and turned the TV off.
After enjoying some remote television, I called her up.
“You’ve been watching Oprah, haven’t you?” I asked.
“How’d you know?” she demanded, “and what did you do
to the TiVo?”
“You’ve been punk’d!” I laughed, and told her how.
Sure, I had to sleep in the guest room when I got back, but
it was worth it!
Video Sneakernet. My other video tip: Use your notebook.
Forgo those external video digitizers—the many I’ve tried,
including ATI and ADS models, haven’t been great. Nope,
the best way to get TV into my ThinkPad today is a return to
the sneakernet. I burn a DVD using my Philips DVD recorder
hooked up to the HD TiVo, and then pop it into the notebook’s
external DVD drive. Then I use a decryption utility to extract
the video to the internal hard drive. InterVideo WinDVD ren-
ders the ﬁles on screen. It’s the best way I’ve found to load
video from my TiVo to my notebook. Try it and see.
MORE ON THE WEB: You can contact Jim Louderback at
[email protected]. For more of his columns, go to
go.pcmag.com/louderback.
The Joys of
Connected Traveling
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Jim Louderback
EDITOR, REVIEWS Lance Ulanoff
EDITOR, TECHNOLOGY Ben Z. Gottesman
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER (ONLINE) Robyn Peterson
EXECUTIVE EDITORS Stephanie Chang, Carol L. Gonsher,
Vicki B. Jacobson (Online), Jeremy A. Kaplan
ART DIRECTOR Richard J. Demler
MANAGING EDITOR Paul B. Ross
REVIEWS
SENIOR EDITORS Dan Costa (Consumer Electronics), Jennifer DeFeo (Hardware),
Carol Mangis (Cars), Sebastian Rupley (West Coast, Pipeline), Sharon Terdeman
(Software/Web/Security)
LEAD ANALYSTS Cisco Cheng, Robert Heron, Davis D. Janowski, Oliver Kaven, Mike Kobrin,
Neil J. Rubenking, Joel Santo Domingo, Sascha Segan, M. David Stone, Terry Sullivan
REVIEWS EDITORS Kyle Monson (Software/Web/Security), Laarni Almendrala Ragaza
(Consumer Electronics), Eric Rhey (Hardware)
WEB PRODUCERS Rachel B. Florman, Molly K. McLaughlin
PRODUCT DATABASE MANAGER Gina Suk COMMERCE PRODUCER Arielle Rochette
INVENTORY CONTROL COORDINATOR Nicole Graham
FEATURES
FEATURES EDITORS Sean Carroll, Dan Evans, Sarah Pike
SENIOR WRITER Cade Metz STAFF EDITOR Tony Hoffman
ART
SENIOR ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Michael St. George ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Liana Zamora
ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR Aaron Able GRAPHICS DIRECTOR David Foster
STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Scott Schedivy
PRODUCTION
ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR Michal Dluginski PRODUCTION MANAGER Jennifer Murray
COPY CHIEF Elizabeth A. Parry COPY EDITORS Gary Berline, Ann Ovodow, Steven Wishnia
ONLINE
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ASSISTANT PRODUCER Whitney A. Reynolds PRODUCTION ARTIST Erin Simon
NEWS EDITOR Mark Hachman NEWS REPORTER Bary Alyssa Johnson
ASSISTANT EDITOR Jennifer L. DeLeo
UTILITY PROGRAM MANAGER Tim Smith COMMUNITY MANAGER Jim Lynch
EDITORIAL COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER Anita Anthony
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Helen Bradley, John Clyman, Richard V. Dragan, Craig Ellison,
John R. Delaney, John C. Dvorak, Galen Fott, Bill Howard, Don Labriola, Bill Machrone,
Ed Mendelson, Jan Ozer, Larry Seltzer, Don Willmott
INTERNS Veronica DeLeon, Nathan Edwards
CORPORATE PRODUCTION
ASSISTANT PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Ivis Fundichely
PRODUCTION MANAGER Michelle Chizmadia TRAFFIC MANAGER Amanda Allensworth
CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER Michael J. Miller
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12 PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com

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www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 15
K
Governments are doing their best to censor and
control the Internet. Sometimes their goals sound
lofty; sometimes they seem really sinister. But any
way you look at it, the push for very open, free, and
anonymous information on the Web is meeting a
lot of resistance.
Just look at the U.S., where, compared with most
of the world, the controls are minimal. We have
laws restricting what minors are allowed to do on-
line. There are growing but ineffective attempts to
block pornography through legislation. And the
government is trying to intercept more messages
as part of the war against terrorism. All of these
have led to controversy in recent days.
The Bush administration asked the major search
engines for information on the most popular Web
searches, as part of an effort to reinstate the Child
Online Protection Act (COPA). Yahoo! and MSN
complied, while Google decided to ﬁght the order.
I’m not convinced that COPA is the right way
to protect our kids online. Content filtering has
gotten better over the past few years, and the big
search engines block out the worst content by
default. But more important, I’m concerned that
the government tried to keep its requests for this
search information a secret. If Google hadn’t com-
plained, we wouldn’t know about it.
Despite the outcry against what Yahoo! and
MSN did and what Google is fighting, it isn’t re-
ally a privacy issue. The information they’ve been
asked for isn’t personally identiﬁable. But the rea-
son people are getting upset is that it points out
what many people don’t realize—that these search
engines often do keep information about individ-
ual searches.
Of course Google—or whichever major search
engine you use—knows a lot about you. That’s how
search engines serve relevant ads. But users are
rightly concerned that these engines can ﬁgure out
who is searching for what—either through log-ins
or IP addresses. And users often don’t understand
what information the search engines are collecting
and how those companies are using the data.
If you want to be pri-
vate, it helps to under-
stand how companies
can track you online. The
easiest way is via cookies,
which are simple enough
to delete. IP tracki ng
i s harder to stop, but
there are ways around it,
through various anony-
mizing programs such as
Anonymizer, Tenebril’s
GhostSurf, Tor, and the
Java Anonymous Proxy. These programs do help
people in repressive environments, but using them
is too much trouble for the average computer user,
as they add a level of complexity and delays.
For most of us, the best solution would simply
be for the companies we deal with to tell us exactly
what information they are collecting, what they are
saving, and how they are aggregating or supple-
menting that data. Do companies share informa-
tion among their different properties? For instance,
does AOL know what shows you are watching on
Time Warner video or whether you subscribe to
Sports Illustrated? Does MSN know what versions
of Windows you have registered for?
We need more transparent privacy policies, ones
that make it much more clear what information
sites collect and use. I don’t mind Yahoo! keeping a
cookie on my machine for its My Yahoo! page, but I
may not want it to keep a log of my searches.
Giving users more control over their personal
information is a goal that in the long run would
serve the Web services, the government, and con-
sumers best.
I worry that even
well-intentioned U.S.
actions that place
minor restrictions
on the Internet are
sending the wrong
message.
When the Government Knows Where You Search
Forward Thinking
MI CHAE L J . MI L L E R
16 PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com
MORE ON THE WEB: Join us online and make your
voice heard. Talk back to Michael J. Miller in our
opinions section, go.pcmag.com/miller.
If the problem of keeping the Internet free, avail-
able, and anonymous is difﬁcult in open and demo-
cratic societies, it’s even harder in more closed
societies such as China.
All the major search engines now ﬁlter their re-
sults at the behest of the Chinese government. They
do so because that’s “the price of doing business in
China,” and they typically say that in the long run
having the Internet and all that information out
there will facilitate a more open exchange of ideas.
And China is a big market: The U.S., with 203 mil-
lion users, is now the biggest market, but it’s pretty
much saturated. China is second, with 103 million
users—less than 8 percent of its population.
Google is the latest to give in. Until recently, it
didn’t have a Chinese site. The Chinese government
blocks a number of political sites, but users could at
least ﬁnd out they existed using Google and then try
to circumvent the restrictions. But now Google has
a Chinese site that eliminates the sites the govern-
ment doesn’t want its citizens to see.
There are no great answers here. A Chinese
journalist was jailed after Yahoo! turned over his e-
mails. Microsoft has blocked antigovernment blogs
all over the world, and it’s still doing so in China.
It’s not just search engines that are a concern. All
sorts of tech companies make products that can be
used for repression: databases that can keep track of
what people are doing, ﬁrewalls that can block cer-
tain sites, and routers that can monitor what people
are doing online. It’s fruitless to say that U.S. tech
companies shouldn’t participate in the Chinese
market, but what they could do is at least ﬁght for
more transparency there—and it would be good to
see them come together to suggest proper rules.
China isn’t the only country restricting the Inter-
net. The U.S. has rules aimed at protecting minors.
A number of European countries have restrictions
against Nazi or racist content. But these are noth-
ing compared with closed societies. One of the
ﬁrst things the new hard-line Iranian government
did was crack down on the Web.
Even the U.S. government’s asking Yahoo! and
Google for large amounts of data makes people
more careful with their searches. I worry that
even well- intentioned actions to place minor con-
straints on the Internet are sending a message that
restricting information is acceptable. In one sense,
the countries that make finding dissident sites
close to impossible are pushing that message to an
extreme. And that’s a bad sign for all of us.
Government vs. the Free Internet
I’m a little late to the party, but I’ve recently started
a new Forward Thinking blog. I’ve been writing
stories for the Web for a long time, and technically
have had another blog that mostly repurposed my
Miller’s Choice newsletter, a collection of links to
my favorite Ziff Davis
stories of the week. But
our software has got-
ten better, and I have a
little more time these
days, so I thought I’d
try my hand at writing
a real blog that cov-
ers my opinions of the
conferences I attend
and the new products
I see.
I’ve tried this out first at eg2006—Richard
Saul Wurman’s eclectic and fascinating “en-
tertai nment gatheri ng”—and at DEMO ’ 06,
the annual launch pad for a whole range of new
products. It’s been an interesting experience. I
do ﬁnd myself scrambling to write about all the
things I see, and I ﬁnd that sometimes I don’t do
as much research as I normally would. But I’m
writing more freely about more topics and I can
post much more quickly. No copy editors and
no Web producers; just me, the blog, and an In-
ternet connection. Check it out at blog.pcmag
.com/miller and let me know what you think.
Becoming a Blogger
U.S.
Number of search
results:
2,110,000
CHINA
Number of search
results:
14,000
Forward Thinking
MI CHAE L J . MI LLE R
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ALTHOUGH E-BOOKS HAVE drawn a ho-
hum reaction in the U.S., Sony has been suc-
cessful overseas with them. This spring, the
company is launching one of the most far-
reaching U.S. e-book initiatives yet, led by its
svelte new Sony Reader (left). Mean-
while, Philips Electronics’ new
Readius reader has an eye-
popping ﬂexible roll-up
display that’s already
turned heads as a
prototype.
T h e S o n y
Re a de r , t o be
priced bet ween
$300 and $400, is the
result of many studies
of why users haven’t adopted e-books. “Our
research has shown that people are looking for
a device designed exclusively for immersive
reading,” says Ron Hawkins, senior vice presi-
dent of personal reader systems at Sony.
The Reader is only half an inch thick and
about the length and width of a paperback
novel. It also plays music and can display
PDF files. Most notably, it has a crisp, high-
contrast electronic-paper display from
E Ink that Hawkins claims will allow the user
to turn 7, 500 pages—enough for dozens of
books—before a battery charge is needed.
Beyond its design, though, the Reader may
benefit from deals Sony has struck with top-
tier publishers. Random House, Harper Collins,
Penguin Putnam, Simon & Schuster, and Time
Warner are making thousands of titles avail-
able at the Sony Connect online store.
The Readius appears to have the slickest
design of any e-book reader yet—straight out
of Minority Report. As shown, the ﬂexible dis-
play folds up like a scroll; when you’re not read-
ing, it’s as pocket-friendly as a pack of gum.
Sony will have the jump on Philips, though,
as the two gadgets square off. Third-party de-
signs of the Readius won’t ship until the sum-
mer. If these two products don’t herald the age
of e-books, nothing will.—Sebastian Rupley
A Wireless Network—Now
NEED TO SET UP a wireless network
while camping? Hey, it could happen, and
Kyocera’s KR1 Mobile Router is the easiest
way yet to do it. Unlike your average router,
it doesn’t require a tethered modem.
If you have EV-DO service and an EV-DO
PC Card, just pop the card in and you’ve got 802.11b or “g” net-
working. The idea is a logical extension of what people are already
doing with EV-DO PC Cards, says Jim Kelly, Kyocera’s executive VP.
The KR1 does cost more than most Wi-Fi routers, though. It’s
$299.99, but you get a $50 rebate if you buy it online. Oh, and it’s
svelte enough to slip into a fanny pack.—SR
Catch me if you can. Fol-
lowing controversy over
agreements by Google,
Yahoo!, and MSN to comply
with Chinese censorship
policies, Anonymizer is seek-
ing to free electronic speech
in China. Later this quarter,
the company will release
no-cost tools that will let
surfers post information and
access the Internet free of
ﬁlters—all anonymously.
Anonymizer already
provides similar services in
Iran. “Information bounces
off a proxy that we operate,”
says company president
Lance Cottrell. “It encrypts
all the trafﬁc and scrambles
the URLs, so there’s no trace
left on the user’s PC.”
Details on the new
services will appear at
anonymizer.com. If you’re
in China or headed there,
start forming your opinions
now.—SR
Who, Me?
E-Books, Round Two
Can innovative new designs convince people to chuck their paperbacks?
Would you tote these
in lieu of books?
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PI PELI NE
T E C H N O L O G Y T R E N D S & N E WS A N A LY S I S
THE HOLOGRAPHIC VIRTUAL DISC Alliance (HVD), founded by
Japan’s Optware, has rallied Fuji Photo and others behind plans to
develop optical discs that store a terabyte of data. If the discs material-
ize, holographic technology could succeed Blu-ray and HD DVD.
go.pcmag.com/pipeline
www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 19
You May
Approach
My Throne
WHY PLAY A GAME OR SURF the Web in
a chair when you could sit in a vibrating
throne? EMA Innovations (www.nethrone
.com) is wheeling out a line of radical new
seating concepts for game jockeys and PC
users. The ﬁrst one, seen here, is called Nethrone,
and will ship at the end of March. At $2,495 list, it’s
hardly an impulse buy, but who wants to settle for
a cheap throne?
Nethrone’s adjustable seat reclines fully, so you can
be nearly horizontal if you want, with your display hover-
ing over you. It also vibrates, which can add pizzazz
to your next Quake session. The armrests, headrest,
keyboard, joystick, and LCD panel support are all fully
adjustable too. You can put a PS2 console on board as
well, and the next generation of Nethrones will have
frame support for the Xbox 360.
Vertical computing? That’s so 20th-century.
—Sebastian Rupley
FUTURE WATCH
221-hp V6* • Up to 32 hwy mpg** • Class-exclusive 6-speed automatic transmission
†
• More innovation from Ford
*Optional on SE and SEL. **EPA estimated 24 city/32 hwy mpg (I4/automatic transmission).
†
Class is midsize sedans excluding Mazda 6.
SurroundSound? Try SurroundArt
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN ﬁne art runs into virtual real-
ity? You get CANVAS, which stands for Collaborative
Advanced Navigation Virtual Art Studio. It’s a three-
screened, back-projected, portable virtual-reality
environment designed for artists. In it, viewers typically
wear stereo glasses to gaze upon a 3D artistic world.
Artists use computers and software called Syzygy to
create the 3D images, such as the eye of a tornado. Here,
CANVAS director Rose Marshack is calling for changes
in her abstract dreamscape.—SR
go.pcmag.com/futurewatch
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 22
The roomy, ﬁrst-rate Toyota Prius offers fuel efﬁciency, a sleek ﬁt and ﬁnish, and
comfort. The hybrid engine is a marvel of technology, with the electric motor and gas
engine operating independently. The center-dash LCD shows a colorful but initially
confusing chart; you can see whether the engine and/or batteries are powering the car
and whether the engine or regenerated braking power is recharging the batteries. The
Denso navigation module is surprisingly disappointing. The premium sound system,
on the other hand, does a ﬁne job of overcoming road noise. Bluetooth synchronized
quickly with a couple of test phones.
Motorola’s Mesh Network
A new Wi-Fi mesh-networking system from
Motorola could improve communications among
police, ﬁre, and ambulance crews. The Motomesh
access points are called mesh wireless routers
(MWRs). Typically there are several per square
mile, atop lampposts. Each contains four radios,
two at the 4.9-GHz frequency and two at 2.4 GHz,
the frequency of 802.11b and 802.11g. In theory,
data rates can go as high as 6 Mbps, although
they more commonly top out at 2 Mbps.
CARS
www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 23
Bill Howard
Car Controllers
Evolve
TOYOTA PRIUS
$22,305 TO $29,381
BOTTOM LINE: The Prius offers great fuel
economy, especially in the city. The hybrid
engine is a technical marvel, but the Denso
nav system is poor. Bluetooth is available
in some options packages.
TOYOTA MOTOR CORP., WWW.TOYOTA.COM.
llllh
Fine Digital FineDrive 400
This portable navigation device has both 2D
and 3D displays and plug-in installation, and
it uses Navteq map data, the gold standard
for GPS devices. It held its own when tested
alongside a TomTom Go and an in-car GPS
system. The FineDrive 400 has a 4-inch
display and operates via a combination of
touch screen and button.
$500 list. Fine Digital USA Inc.,
www.ﬁnedigitalusa.com. lllmm
www.technoride.com
A shiny aluminum knob less than 2 inches
high is an unlikely lightning rod—unless
you’re talking about the BMW iDrive cock-
pit controller. After its debut in 2001, the
iDrive became a metaphor for all that’s
unworkable in technology-centric cars.
But competitors are coming to market,
improving the genre and even forcing the
iDrive to evolve.
The concept behind the cockpit con-
troller is simple: One control wheel and
an LCD take the place of the several dozen
knobs and dials that clutter dashboards.
Since the early 1990s, most
commercial airplanes have
adopted this type of “glass
cockpit,” reducing the num-
ber of switches and the com-
plexity faced by pilots. And
automakers often think of
their cabins as grounded air-
craft cockpits—BMW’s blue-
and-white logo, for example,
is patterned on a spinning
airplane propeller. So BMW
introduced the ﬁrst car con-
troller, the flawed iDrive,
and is now hard at work on a
follow-up.
Audi, Infiniti, and Mer-
cedes have created better
cockpit controllers, in part
because they learned from the iDrive’s
shortcomings. The problem with the ini-
tial iDrive, beyond the cool-looking but
slippery controller knob, was that it went
too far in removing dashboard switches
and relied too much on the controller. You
had to slide the controller in one of eight
compass directions, turn, and then click.
That made for a confusing number of
choices and took too long to learn.
The newer iDrive has just four direc-
tions: Communication, Navigation, Enter-
tainment, Climate. On the new 3 series,
the iDrive is optional. And recently, BMW
has been running focus groups to test
concepts that sound more like Audi and
Inﬁniti’s approach of adding task or pre-
fetch buttons.
Audi’s MMI (multimedia interface) was
a big step forward. The Audi control knob
isn’t quite as showy as the iDrive's, but
it’s easier to grip and has eight task but-
tons around the controller: Radio, CD, Net
(communications but not Web browsing,
sorry), Tel, Nav, Info, Car, and Setup. You
just press one of the eight buttons and
then ﬁne-tune with the control knob.
Inﬁniti’s wonderful M45 has the same
kinds of task buttons, except that the
control knob and buttons are mounted on
a slope on the dash, giving you a place to
rest your palm—an excellent addition.
I find Audi’s MMI setup preferable to
Infiniti’s busy layout. The Audi gear has
some brilliant touches. Slap
your palm anywhere to the
left of the MMI controller
to mute the sound quickly.
A nifty roller control on the
steering wheel provides fast
access to more precise vol-
ume control.
Buttons aside, though, the
cockpit controller is your pri-
mary path into the cockpit
LCD. Most cars move just a
few functions to the LCD, but
the Infiniti moves virtually
everything. Better still, the
most common screen you’ll
use while driving neatly in-
tegrates navigation, audio,
climate control, and phone
information. Sheer brilliance.
What else is needed? Sun-blocking
hoods above those LCD screens. More
LCD screens to replace the discrete
gauges on the dashboard. And how about
online help? Embed a short form of the
owner’s manual, along with any quick-
start guides, such as how to start and
stop a hybrid car, into the online systems,
maybe with a tutorial that teaches you
how to use the controller. With a little
more help for drivers, BMW’s ﬁrst iDrive
might not have been such a disaster.
>
MORE ON THE WEB
To check out the full reviews for
these products, navigate over to
www.technoride.com,
the car site for tech fans.
The top picture shows
the Audi MMI; below is
the Inﬁniti M45.
HAN DS - ON T E S T I NG OF N E W P R OD UC T S • go.pcmag.com/first looks
Cingular BroadbandConnect
(HSDPA)
Cingular’s new high-speed
data network, HSDPA, has
great potential for interna-
tional travelers and content
producers. But it’s not living
up to that promise yet. We
found it had slower speeds
and less coverage than the
competing networks from
Verizon and Sprint. HSDPA
(high-speed downlink packet
access) is the next evolution
of UMTS, the high-speed net-
work AT&T Wireless built
in six cities, but it is still not
widely deployed in the U.S.
For now, you connect to
HSDPA using one of two lap-
top PC Cards in one of the
16 metro areas Cingular has
hooked up. More cities will
come starting in April, and by
the end of the year, according
to Cingular, dozens of cities
will be covered.
Cingular matches Sprint’s
and Verizon’s prices, with a
$79.99 a month unlimited-
data plan that drops to $59.99
a month if it’s paired with an
existing voice plan that costs
at least $39.99 a month.
HSDPA has three theoreti-
cal advantages over Sprint’s
and Veri zon’s competi ng
EV-DO (Evolution Data Opti-
mized) technology. It’s GSM
compatible, so HSDPA de-
vices should be able to roam
to Europe and the rest of the
world. Cingular says that
UMTS and HSDPA roaming
agreements will appear later
this year.
HSDPA al so suppor t s
simultaneous voice and data
transfers, which Cingular
will use in a mobile webcam
application. (With EV-DO,
you can’t talk and surf at the
same time.) And it can poten-
tially handle upload speeds of
384 Kbps, more than double
the 153 Kbps of EV-DO.
Our HSDPA test results
were disappointing. We tested
Cingular’s network over three
days in December and Janu-
ary in Baltimore, Washington,
and Boston. We test download
speeds using two “bandwidth
tester” Web sites and down-
loading three files from an
SDSL connection in our labs;
we test upload speeds by up-
loading a 1MB ﬁle to our labs.
On our 16 successful test
runs, we got average down-
link speeds of 584 Kbps, with
an average latency of 321 milli-
seconds in hitting a basket of
four Web sites. On our vari-
ous tests of EV-DO networks,
we’ve seen average speeds
from 608 Kbps up to 821 Kbps,
with average latency in the
230- to 275-ms range. We’ve
also seen many individual
EV-DO file transfers come
down at well over a megabit
per second; our HSDPA trans-
fers peaked at 955 Kbps.
Uplink speeds were also
lower than expected, because
right now Cingular has them
capped at 1 28 Kbps. We
got an average of 125 Kbps.
That’s similar to EV-DO up-
load speeds. Cingular told us
it will lift the cap later this
year to boost speeds.
After further analysis, we
decided that Cingular’s main
problem is coverage, not tech-
nology. We got an average
signal strength of -88 dBm; a
strong signal should ideally
be i n the - 60s, and most
phones and cards lose signal
Forget bouncing between $10-per-day hotel Wi-Fi charges
and unreliable “community” hotspots in search of a Wi-Fi
signal. High-speed networks from Cingular, Sprint, and
Verizon bring a thick blanket of broadband to nearly every
major city in America with one monthly bill. With laptop
Internet everywhere and mobile music and TV on phones, they won’t help
your Internet addiction, but they’ll make sure it’s always fed.
THE MAGAZINE
WORLD’S LARGEST
COMPUTER-TESTING
FACILITY
G’Bye Wi-Fi, Hello 3G
30 Creative Zen Vision:M
31 Cowon iAudio F1
31 Samsung Yepp YP-TJ7
32 Kodak EasyShare P880
32 Olympus Stylus 600
34 DeLorme Earthmate GPS LT-20
with Street Atlas USA 2006
34 Microsoft Streets & Trips 2006
with GPS Locator
36 Itronix Hummer Laptop IX600
38 Alienware Area-51 m5500
38 Gateway M465-E
40 Dell Dimension E310
40 eMachines T6420
41 Polywell MiniBox2 939NP-MCE
BY SASCHA SEGAN
F I R S T
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 26
Cingular Tools
BEST PC CARD: Sierra AirCard 860
This is currently our preferred option
for Cingular’s HSDPA network because
it will attempt to lock on to any HSDPA
signal, even in areas where the signal is
weak. As a quad-band card, it lets you
roam across the U.S. and more than
95 countries by connecting to GPRS or
EDGE networks.
$199.99 direct. lllhm
BEST PHONE:
Phones due in March.
BEST PDA: Currently none available.
MORE ON THE WEB
For news and product reviews, visit
go.pcmag.com/forgetwiﬁ
WHAT THE RATINGS MEAN: LLLLL EXCELLENT l LLLLM VERY GOOD l LLLMM GOOD l LLMMM FAIR l LMMMM POOR
a 40MB bucket plan for $40
per month that scales up to
a maximum of $79.99 per
month as you use more data.
EV-DO promises seam-
less mobility wherever you
are. It’s not as fast as 802.11b,
but it’s a lot more ﬂexible. At
press time, Sprint claimed to
have coverage in 185 markets.
We looked at its 63 online
coverage maps, and we were
impressed. Sprint now covers
not only major cities like
New York and Atlanta
but also smaller burgs
such as Brownsvi l le,
Texas, and Lincoln, Ne-
braska, as well as some
major travel corridors.
That said, you should
pay close attention to
Sprint’s and Verizon’s
maps. For i nst ance,
Sprint covers Tucson,
Ar i zona ( Ver i zon
doesn’t), but Verizon’s
EV-DO network hits
some nort hern New
York City suburbs that
Sprint doesn’t yet reach.
You’ l l be happier wit h
Sprint in southeast Tex-
as, but folks in Portland,
Oregon, will want Verizon
service. Coverage also varies
within cities.
In recent tests in Wash-
ington, Baltimore, and New
York using the Novatel S620
PC Card, Sprint’s network
blazed. We got average down-
link speeds of 821 Kbps over
26 ﬁle transfers, with one test
peaking at 1.14 Mbps. Upload
speeds averaged 136 Kbps.
That’s in line with our earlier
August results in Hartford,
Connecticut, and Newark,
New Jersey, where we got an
between -106 and -110 dBm.
Even worse, several of our
test locations showed UMTS
or EDGE speeds rather than
the faster HSDPA system.
(We marked those tests as
unsuccessful and did not fac-
tor in those results.) As sig-
nal strength directly affects
transfer speed, we expect
Cingular’s network to appear
faster once it improves its
coverage.
For now, both Sprint and
Verizon have the upper hand
when it comes to high-speed
data. We’ll check back later
this year to see if Cingular
has picked up the pace.
Cingular BroadbandConnect
(HSDPA)
From $59.99 per month. Cingular
Wireless, www.cingular.com. lllmm
Sprint PCS Wireless
High-Speed Data (EV-DO)
Sprint’s EV-DO wire-
less data service has
come a l ong way.
When we first looked
at Sprint’s EV-DO network in
August 2005, we were disap-
pointed in its limited cover-
age and lack of phone-based
services. But the network
now covers more than 70 cit-
ies and carries the nation’s
best phone-based multi-
media service, Sprint PCS
Power Vision. That ties with
Verizon’s network for Edi-
tors’ Choice on high-speed
wireless connectivity.
Sprint’s prices have come
down, too. The company
charges existing voice sub-
scribers a maximum of $59.99
a month; data-only custom-
ers pay up to $79.99 for un-
limited use. Sprint also sells
average of 772 Kbps down-
link and 134 Kbps up.
I n bot h set s of test s,
Spri nt’s speeds came out
superior to Verizon’s. That
may ref lect congestion on
Verizon’s network; as more
people use an EV-DO net-
work, it slows down. But
Verizon’s network had lower
latency, averaging 236 mil-
liseconds to hit a collection
of popular Web sites, against
Sprint’s 274 ms. That
al so agreed wi t h our
August results.
Sprint has come a long way
in a few months, and we’re
ready to declare its EV-DO
network open for business. If
41 Shuttle XPC M1000
42 CorelDraw X3 Graphics Suite
42 ACDSee Pro Photo Manager
44 Google Video (beta)
44 iTunes 6
46 Podzinger
46 SNARF
48 Grouper 2.0 Beta
48 Streamload MediaMax
49 iShield 1.0.9.2
49 Spyware Doctor 3.5
52 Brother MFC-9420CN
52 Lexmark C552n
53 Ricoh Aﬁcio G7500
53 HP Ofﬁcejet Pro K550
54 Corel WordPerfect Ofﬁce X3
Standard Edition
56 eBay ProStores 6.0
56 Firebox X8000
RED denotes Editors’ Choice.
L O O K S
www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 27
BEST PC CARD: Merlin Wireless S620
Novatel’s S620 PC Card for Sprint’s
EV-DO network is a fast, compact way
to get broadband speeds where Sprint
offers them. Like its Verizon cousin, the
Novatel V620, the S620 has a built-in
antenna, making it less likely to catch on
things than a card with a ﬂip-up antenna.
$219.99 direct. lllmm
Sprint Tools
BEST PDA: Sprint PPC-6700
This Windows Mobile handheld combines
high-speed networking and an excellent
keyboard in a form that will actually ﬁt into
your pocket. And it’s all packaged attrac-
tively, with good
battery life.
$479 list.
llllm
BEST PHONE: Sprint Power
Vision MM-A940 by Samsung
Part phone, part entertainment center,
the Sprint Power Vision MM-A940 by
Samsung is the best platform for Sprint’s
3G network. It offers a 2-megapixel camera with
optical zoom, full-motion streaming TV, satellite
radio, over-the-air music downloads, speech-to-
text dictation, Bluetooth, a business-card scan-
ner, and a shake sensor.
$249.99 direct. llllm
F I R S T L O O K S
Consumer Electronics: High Speed Cellular Data Networks
you’re happy with Sprint cov-
erage where you live, work,
and travel, this super-speedy
system will keep you well
connected.
Sprint PCS Wireless
High-Speed Data (EV-DO)
From $59.99 per month. Sprint PCS,
www.sprint.com. llllm
Verizon Wireless
BroadbandAccess EV-DO
Verizon’s Broadband-
Access EV-DO net-
work lives up to its
promise of high-speed
Internet anywhere, any time.
A year after its launch, it
has evolved into a mature
network that you will soon
find indispensable. Though
Sprint offers lower prices and
more f lexibility, Verizon’s
relentlessly excellent cov-
erage earns it a share of our
Editors’ Choice.
BroadbandAccess now
covers more than 60 major
metropolitan areas across
the U.S. Unlimited data plans
are $79.99 a month, or $59.99
for existing voice customers.
That’s about on a par with
Sprint and Cingular.
Handheld plans cost $44.99
a month. Verizon has a wider
range of EV-DO handhelds
than Spri nt, but its plans
are more expensive; Sprint
charges a mere $15 a month
for handheld EV-DO use.
Download speeds averaged
741 Kbps on our most recent
tests around New York City,
with peaks up to 1. 2 Mbps.
That was faster than we got
during our December 2005
tests in the Baltimore/Wash-
ington area, where the average
was 609 Kbps. Uploads on our
most recent tests averaged 132
Kbps. That’s faster all around
than with Cingular’s network.
Sprint was fastest in Balti-
more/Washington, and Veri-
zon and Sprint fared about the
same in New York. Verizon
also consistently showed the
lowest latency of the three
networks, which means that
Web pages appear faster.
On our trials, we consis-
tently got the strongest signals
with Verizon, showing that its
results in Baltimore/Wash-
ington were probably caused
by network congestion.
Network maps show that
Sprint and Verizon take very
different approaches to their
build-out. Sprint tends to turn
on service in individual towns
and cities. Verizon has more
homogenous coverage across
broad metropolitan areas but
hasn’t turned on many less-
populated regions.
All this means you’re
more l i kel y to hol d
Verizon coverage within
about a 60-mile radius of
a major city or in metro
areas that blend together
(such as San Francisco/
Sacramento or the North-
east Corridor.) But Sprint
has coverage in smaller
places—such as Browns-
ville, Texas, and Boise, Ida-
ho—that aren’t anywhere
near Verizon’s metro areas.
Verizon and Sprint also
compete vigorously in con-
sumer services. Verizon’s
$15-per-month V Cast video
clip service still lacks live
TV, streaming radio, or an
information service as ro-
bust as Sprint’s Handmark
On Demand. We still aren’t
compelled by the V Cast se-
lection, especially compared
with Sprint’s Power Vision
service. But the V Cast Music
Store leads in the cell-phone
industry, offering the best
prices and
the best in-
tegration with Win-
dows Media Player.
Verizon recently started
letting you use several popu-
lar phones as laptop modems:
the LG VX9800, the Motor-
ola RAZR V3c, the Motorola
E815, the LG VX8100, and the
BlackBerry 7130e. It costs the
same $59.99 a month that PC
Card users pay. Sprint offers
a $25-per-month plan that
limits you to only 40MB of
data transfer.
Verizon Wireless Broad-
bandAccess continues to be
the Cadillac of wireless ser-
vices, thanks to the company’s
focus on high-quality cover-
age in broad metro areas. But
Sprint is coming up fast with
its small-city and rural cover-
age. Verizon needs to gun the
engines on its national build-
out if it wants to stay ahead.
Verizon Wireless Broadband-
Access EV-DO
From $59.99 per month. Verizon
Wireless, www.verizonwireless.com.
llllm
ANALYST’S TIP
Sasha Segan , Lead Analyst
Supercharge your high-speed wireless connection with an external antenna or a signal ampliﬁer. A $70-
to-$100 portable booster antenna plugs into most PC Cards and can improve your connection by a bar or
two. A $400 ampliﬁer like Spotwave’s Zen isn’t portable, but it can take you from one bar to four. That can
double or triple your connection speeds, so you can get the download quality you’re paying for.
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 28
Verizon Tools
BEST PC CARD: Kyocera KPC650
By using the new Qual-
comm MSM6500 chipset,
the KPC650 squeezes the
maximum possible band-
width out of Verizon’s EV-DO
data network.
$149.99 direct. llllh
BEST PHONE:
Motorola RAZR V3c
With its sleek façade,
the Motorola RAZR
has redeﬁned cool
phone design. This
version improves on some
of the original’s features
while keeping the excel-
lent design, reception,
and sound quality.
$419 direct. llllm
BEST PDA:
BlackBerry 7130e
A bright and speedy
way to check e-mail,
surf the Web, and, best
of all, hook up your laptop to
Verizon’s EV-DO network.
$299.99 direct. llllm
F I R S T L O O K S
Consumer Electronics: MP3 Players
Creative Takes a Bite Out of Apple
Video format support is
impressively broad. You
get MPEG-2, MPEG- 4
Si mple Prof i le (which
includes DivX and XviD
AVI files), Motion JPEG,
and WMV, as wel l as
TivoToGo content.
The videos looked very
sharp, and files running
at 30 frames per second
were perfectly smooth
with well-synced audio.
BATTERY LIFE/EXTRAS
Despite its excellent video
capabilities, the Zen Vi-
sion:M appears to us to be
primarily an audio player,
given its size. With that in
mind, we were hoping for
significantly more bat-
tery life for continuous
audio playback than the 12
hours 45 minutes we got.
(Creative’s claim is 14 hours
using only 128-Kbps MP3s,
but our test uses a more real-
istic mix of ﬁles at 128 Kbps to
320 Kbps.) The player lasted
4 hours 20 minutes for video
playback, which is substan-
tially better than the iPod’s 2
hours 30 minutes.
Creative really missed the
boat on a removable battery,
however. We thought it was a
great idea with the Zen Vision,
but the company didn’t carry
it over to this version.
The Zen Vi sion: M has
nearly everything you’d want
in a non-Apple player and is
definitely our new favorite
iPod alternative, but we have
a feeling it’s still not going to
sway the iPod-loving masses.
Creative Zen Vision:M
$329.99 direct. Creative Technology
Ltd., www.creative.com. llllh
BY MIKE KOBRIN
P
ortable media players
(PMPs) are still com-
ing of age, and it isn’t
yet clear where the sweet spot
is in terms of size and video
quality. But Creative is defi-
nitely covering its bases, with
its Zen Vision and now its new
Zen Vision:M ($329 direct), an
iPod-size (yeah, we said it, so
what?) 30GB player that plays
music, photos, and video.
Apple still wins out hands
down for hardware/software
integration. But, in terms of
just the hardware, the Zen
Vision: M comes closer to
taking a bite out of Apple
than anything else out there.
Creative is making some in-
roads on the software side as
well, with its new ZenCast.
com site and ZenCast Orga-
nizer, which make a wealth
of podcasts (audio and video)
available to Zen Vision and
Zen Vision:M users.
Measuring 4.1 by 2.4 by 0.7
inches and weighing 5.7 ounc-
es, it has quite a few more fea-
tures than Apple’s offerings,
though at $329.99 (compared
with $299 for the 30GB iPod)
it commands a premium. The
2.5-inch LCD screen’s resolu-
tion is 320 by 240 pixels.
The controls are a depar-
ture from those of the Zen
Micro. The layout consists
of four large tactile buttons,
plus two more that surround
the touch strip. The custom-
izable My Shortcut button is
a brilliant addition. Under the
Player Settings in the System
menu, you can choose a func-
tion or menu item for that but-
ton to jump to, no matter what
mode or menu you’re in.
gentle roll-off taking it down
about 4.5 decibels at 40 Hz—
a better-than-passing grade.
What surprised us was the
remarkably clean, powerful
signal the device puts out
at maxi mum volume. We
cranked the volume to the
max and measured the out-
put using our rock test track
(“More Than a Feeling” by
Boston). The Zen Vision:M
drove the included earbuds
to a sustained 107 dB, with
peaks of 111 dB—loud enough
to damage your hearing.
We loaded our test JPEG
images on the player and were
impressed with the vivid col-
ors. You can view slide shows
while listening to music.
ANALYST'S TIP
Mike Kobrin, Lead Analyst
The MP3 digital audio format is universally compatible; by contrast, no single video format is supported by all
portable players. When choosing a video-capable MP3 player, think about what formats the player can han-
dle. If you plan to get most of your video from a single source, a device with limited format support is ﬁne. If
you have plenty of videos already, get a player with broad format support to avoid doing a lot of transcoding.
The Zen Vi sion: M’s
interface is identical to
that of its bigger brother,
with every bit as much
polish and logic as that
of the iPod. We have
lots of love for Creative’s
contextual menus.
PLAYTIME
Usi ng our Microsoft
Windows XP test system
and Wi ndows Media
Player 10, we were able
to load the player with
media ﬁles without hav-
ing to install any propri-
etary software.
Th i s pl a ye r c a n
handle MP3, WMA, and
protected WMA, as well
as WAV ﬁles—but does
not support the OGG or
lossless codecs. Accord-
ing to Creative, support
for Audible.com content
will come in Q2 of this year.
The Zen Vision:M’s audio
capabilities are impressive.
On our subjective listening
tests, we heard nicely ex-
tended highs and fairly deep
bass, with a neutral-sound-
ing midrange. On our formal
lab tests, the player did very
well, turning in a f lat fre-
quency response, with only a
THE VISION:M comes in black,
white, blue, green, and pink.
THE ZEN VISION:M is slightly
thicker and heavier than the
30GB iPod.
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 30
F I R S T L O O K S
Consumer Electronics: MP3 Players
BY MIKE KOBRIN
N
o longer a dark horse
in the digital audio
player space, Cowon
continues to pump out solid
MP3 players, and the Cowon
iAudio F1 ($159.99 direct) is
no exception. Considering
the interesting design and
ample feature set, the price
tag isn’t too unreasonable for
a 1GB ﬂash-based player. Still,
it needs some improvements
before it tops our list.
The 2.9- by 1.4- by 0.8-inch
(HWD), 1.4-ounce F1 resem-
bles a shiny black MatchBox
Ferrari-style car. Its analog
controls are on top of the
trunk and include a four-way
rocker with a joystick in the
center. The two-color 128-by-
64 OLED screen is oriented
sideways in the windshield. A
little silver license plate on the
front says iAudio. Cute. The
kicker comes when you turn
the player on: The informa-
tion displays in analog gauges
that look like the dashboard of
a racing car. A little gas pump
indicates battery life.
The F1 is both USB mass-
storage-class–compliant and
compatible with Windows
Media Player. File format sup-
port extends to MP3, WMA,
ASF, WAV, and OGG, as well
as lyric (LDB), though there’s
no support for lossless codecs,
protected WMA, or Audible.
We were satisf ied with
sound quality on our infor-
mal listening tests using the
included earbuds. The over-
all audio was not mufﬂed or
murky, though we noted the
lack of strong, well-defined
bass as well as some softness
around the edges of sounds in
the middle and high ranges.
You can record FM, line-in,
and voice in MP3 format at up
to 128 Kbps; voice-activated
recording is built in; and an
auto-sync feature lets you
break up recorded tracks.
Unfortunately, battery life
was a big disappointment.
The internal nonremovable
rechargeable—rated at 22
hours—lasted only about
13.5 hours in our testing. We
checked all of the settings
and reran the test, but we got
the same results.
Overall, we’re pretty hap-
py with this player’s ﬂexibil-
ity and options, but the lack
of compatibility with online
subscription and download
services hurts it somewhat.
And the subpar battery life
is disturbing. Nonetheless,
this is a nice gift for younger
music fans—even we had a
tough time resisting the urge
to drive it around on our desk
going “vroom, vroom.”
Cowon iAudio F1
$159.99 direct. Cowon America Inc.,
www.cowon.com. llhmm
Cowon’s New MatchBox Car-Size MP3 Player
Samsung Says Yepp Again
BY MIKE KOBRIN
T
he Samsung Yepp
YP-T7X was a big hit
with us for its audio
quality, feature set, and cute
look. The latest iteration, the
Yepp YP-T7J, ($179.99 list)
has revamped analog con-
trols and support for music
subscription and download
services via Plays ForSure.
Though we like this model’s
new Microsoft esque quali-
ties, we’re disappointed that
it’s no longer a USB mass-
storage-class device. Still,
the wide array of features,
snazzy design, and sound
quality keep this 1GB flash
player on our short list.
The main physical differ-
ence between the YP-T7J and
its predecessor is the new
four-way rocker and center
select/menu button, which
replaces the older model’s
pushable joystick.
On the 1.2-inch screen,
viewing photos is still an
eye-squinting affair. The
body itself measures a wee
1.5 by 0.5 by 2.4 inches and
weighs just 1.4 ounces.
Audio format support
now includes protected
WMA, along with WMA
and MP3, although you
still can’t play OGG, loss-
less, or Audible.com ﬁles.
Frequency response is
very good, with a gentle
roll-off in the bass down
to about 25 Hz. Response
drops off sharply in the low-
est octave, but that’s below
what most consumer-grade
headphones can handle.
Thi s model has more
power than the previous ver-
sion. The player puts out an
admirably clean signal up to
one click below top volume
on its 40-step scale.
Samsung swapped out
the SRS WOW features of
the T7X and added a Digital
Natural Sound Engine menu,
which gives you access to
seven EQ presets, a custom
seven-band graphic equal-
izer, three different 3D sound
presets, and a customizable
3D setting.
Sadly, the life of the T7J’s
nonremovable battery is still
stuck at a bit under 13 hours,
according to our rundown test.
We’re on the fence about
which model we prefer. A few
more changes are necessary—
such as contextual menus and
longer battery life—before
this player can claim the Edi-
tors’ Choice throne.
Samsung Yepp YP-T7J
$179.99 list. Samsung Electronics
America Inc., www.samsung.com.
llllm
NAVIGATION ON THE
F1 can take bit of getting used to.
THE T7J’S SCREEN FONTS have
been resized to ﬁt better.
www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 31
F I R S T L O O K S
Consumer Electronics: Digital Cameras
BY TERRY SULLIVAN
T
he Kodak EasyShare
P880 ($599.95 list) is
an enthusiast camera
with some fancy features and
good video capabilities, but
it falls short on the basics.
There’s noticeable shutter lag,
the quality of its flash shots
is uninspiring, and pictures
aren’t as sharp as those from
other cameras in its class.
The P880 has an 8-mega-
pixel sensor, a Schneider-
Kreuznach Variogon lens
with a 5. 8X optical zoom
(a 35mm equivalent of 24mm
to 140mm) and maximum
f-stops of f/2.8 to f/4.1.
With D-SLR prices falling
to well under $1,000, enthu-
siast cameras must be nearly
ﬂawless to compete.
What does the P880 offer?
We love the 24mm view on
its zoom, and it has some neat
burst modes, as well as a RAW
shooting mode. A manual set-
ting mode and a hot shoe for
an external ﬂash let you do a
lot with this shooter.
We were disappointed in
some of the test results,
though. Our daylight
shots revealed some
noise, though not as
noticeable as in the
ﬂash shot. Color sat-
uration and fidelity
were very good, but
with some strong
purple fringing.
Flash coverage
was a bit uneven.
Images were also
somewhat grainy,
even at 100 ISO, a
setting that should produce
very little noise.
The P880 took less than 3
seconds to boot up, which is
respectable. The 2.1-second
recycle time was very quick.
There was, however, notice-
able shutter lag. There was
no pi ncushion distortion
visible at the telephoto end
of the zoom, but the barrel
distortion at the wide end
of the zoom was pretty evi-
dent. The camera’s score on
our resolution test was 1,625
lines—well below the range
for 8MP cameras of this type.
Video clips are saved as
640-by-480 (VGA) MOV
ﬁles at 30 frames per sec-
ond. Overall quality is
pretty good, although
a tad grainy, but the
zoom range can
give you a view as
wide as 24mm.
Sa d l y, t he
P8 8 0 ’ s v i de o
f unct i ons and
zoom ring aren’t
enough to satisfy
us. For better pic-
ture quality, you
could go with one
of two superzooms:
t h e Pa n a s o n i c
DMC-FZ30 or the
Fuji S9000. If you don’t
care about video features, you
might consider a D-SLR such
as the Nikon D50 or the Canon
EOS Digital Rebel XT.
Kodak EasyShare P880
$599.95 list. Eastman Kodak Co.,
www.kodak.com. llhmm
Fun Features, Short on Photo Basics
Stylus Stumbles
BY TERRY SULLIVAN
B
ack in the days before
“talkies,” the Olympus
Styl us 600 ($299. 95
list) might have found an
audience. Today, when the
majority of consumers ex-
pect sound with their video,
this ultracompact performer
won’ t f i l l theaters. True,
people will buy it for its still-
image capabilities—but when
there’s nothing outstanding
there either, can anything
else recommend it? Maybe.
The Stylus 600 is a 6-mega-
pixel camera with a 3X optical
zoom that has a 5.8mm-to-
17.4mm range (equivalent
to a 35mm lens with a 35mm
to 105mm zoom) and corre-
sponding maximum f-stops
of f/3.1 to f/5.2.
Our daylight test shots re-
vealed little noise in the image
and good color saturation and
accuracy. The picture was
pretty good overall but slight-
ly overexposed, resulting in
some blown-out highlights.
Coverage on our ﬂash test
shot was middling. The im-
age was underexposed by
about one stop, but color
saturation and accuracy were
pretty good. There was a bit
of fringing, with more noise
than the daylight image.
In our real-world tests, im-
ages demonstrated just ad-
equate quality. Shots of tree
branches against a bright blue
sky showed purple fringing.
The Stylus 600’s score on
our resolution test was 1,525
lines—above par for a 6MP
camera. There was no pin-
cushion distortion and just
the normal amount of barrel
distortion. Boot-up took just
2.4 seconds and the recycle
time a respectable 3.4 sec-
onds. We did notice some
shutter lag, however.
Video capabilities were
disappointing. You can shoot
640-by- 480 motion JPEG
clips until the memory card
fills, but only at a choppy 15
frames per second. The big-
ger disappointment was that
the Stylus 600 shoots movies
only without sound.
In the end, we can’t endorse
this ultracompact. There are
many other alternatives, such
as the Casio Exilim EX-Z750
or EX-S500, that will give you
much better movie quality—
with sound.
Olympus Stylus 600
$299.95 list. Olympus America Inc.,
www.olympusamerica.com. llmmm
THE P880
has a 24mm
zoom lens.
THE STYLUS 600 has a
big , clear, fairly bright LCD.
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 32
F I R S T L O O K S
Consumer Electronics: GPS
BY CRAIG ELLISON
T
he hardware end of
the DeLorme Earth-
mate GPS LT-20 with
Street Atlas USA 2006 ($99.95
list) is a small, roughly rect-
angular receiver that sits on
the dashboard. Users of pre-
vious Street Atlas USA ver-
sions will notice some user
interface improvements, in-
cluding the EZ-Nav toolbar.
This lets you set the starting
and end points for your trip,
enable or disable the GPS re-
ceiver, open the options dia-
log menus, and share maps
on the Web.
According to DeLorme,
Street Atlas 2006 has been
upgraded with 268,000 new
roads, and its POI (points of
interest) database updated
with data from lodging, gaso-
line, restaurant, and retail
chains. The software found
signiﬁcantly more restaurants
and had more updated infor-
mation than did Microsoft
Streets and Trips 2006.
Li ke S&T 2006, Street
Atlas 2006 provides voice-
prompt ed t ur n- by- t ur n
direc tions. It trumps S&T
2006, though, by announcing
upcoming turns and using
text-to-speech conversion to
pronounce the street names.
Without any speech training,
Street Atlas 2006 recognized
all of the voice commands we
tested from its vocabulary of
60. Yet though its user inter-
face has been updated, navi-
gation was cumbersome.
The true test of perfor-
mance for a GPS-based prod-
uct is a road trip, of course.
When we ran t he same
routing test as we did with
S&T 2006, the route recom-
mended seemed less direct,
and the map database didn’t
know about a recently com-
pleted ramp that was part of
the S&T 2006 route. On the
other hand, we li ked that
Street Atlas 2006 automati-
cally recalculated our route
after we made an error.
Our biggest disappoint-
ment was with the GPS errors
we encountered. In several of
our tests, Street Atlas 2006
reported that we were off
route when we were actually
on well-established roads
that were part of our course.
But, in all cases, Street Atlas
2006 reported a 3D ﬁx.
Street Atlas 2006 is much
more ful ly featured than
Microsoft’s Streets and Trips
2006 but harder to use.
DeLorme Earthmate GPS LT-20
with Street Atlas USA 2006
$99.95 list. DeLorme,
www.delorme.com. llhmm
The DeLorme Earthmate GPS Gets a Little Lost
Heading in the Right Direction
BY CRAIG ELLISON
M
icrosoft Streets &
Trips 2006 with GPS
Locator ($130 street)
includes a number of new
features that are significant
improvements over its pre-
decessor, Microsoft Streets &
Trips 2005. The bundled GPS
receiver connects via USB 2.0.
But the most signif-
icant new feature
is voice-prompted
directions. The vo-
cabulary, however,
is somewhat lim-
ited compared with
that of DeLorme’s
Street Atlas 2006.
For instance, S&T
2006 announces an
upcoming turn with
a prompt, “In zero
poi nt two mi les,
exit right.” Street
Atlas 2006 will also give the
street name using its text-to-
speech technology.
To create a route and gen-
erate directions, you merely
type in the starting and end-
ing locations and click on
“Get Directions.” Trips can
include multiple segments; if
you have more than four, you
can instruct Streets and Trips
2006 to optimize the route.
Finding points of interest
(POIs) is fairly simple. You
can select from 15 restaurant
and 35 POI types to display
on the map. When you click
on a POI, a balloon box pops
up with detailed information.
Right-click on the POI icon,
and you can add it
to your route list.
We were di sap-
pointed to find a
number of outdated
or missing listings.
On our routing
test, the program
provided accurate
directions to the in-
terim destination,
and the GPS receiv-
er remained locked
onto the route. The
map database ap-
peared to have been updated
recently, as the generated
route took us onto a recently
completed interstate ramp.
On our return trip, we
made an i ntent i onal er-
ror to see how S&T 2006
would handle it. Unfortu-
nately, unlike Street Atlas
2006—which automatically
recalculates after a missed
turn—S&T 2006 only re-
ported “off route!” There is a
“recalculate route from here”
button, but having to click on
a button while you’re driving
can be dangerous.
Though it’s not as fully
featured as DeLorme’s Street
Atlas 2006, Microsoft Streets
and Trips 2006 is far easier to
use and offers better GPS lo-
cating capabilities.
Microsoft Streets & Trips
2006 with GPS Locator
$130 street; without GPS receiver,
$40. Microsoft Corp.,
www.microsoft.com. lllmm
STREET ATLAS USA 2006 has a new EZ-Nav toolbar that runs
across the top of the screen.
S&T 2006 has a GPS pane that shows current lati-
tude and longitude, as well as GPS signal strength.
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 34
F I R S T L O O K S
Hardware: Laptops
Itronix Hummer Laptop IX600
built-in card for high-
speed cellular data
networks (EDGE and
EV-DO) from Cingu-
lar, Sprint, or Verizon.
Like the Hummer
laptop’s battery, the
80GB hard drive is
easily removable by
releasing a latch. We
should note that the
multimedia and con-
nectivity features on
this notebook are a bit
lacking. Though most
notebooks these days
include a DVD-burning
drive, this laptop comes
with only a DVD/CD-
RW combo drive. And
it also has only two USB
ports and no FireWire or
S-Video ports. But you do
get a VGA port, a serial port,
and both a PC Card slot and
an ExpressCard 34 slot.
Our SYSmark 2004 SE
tests indicate that the Hum-
mer laptop’s score was about
6 percent better than that of
the Ferrari 4000. But the Fer-
rari is a better notebook by
far for gaming, as it integrates
the ATI Mobility Radeon
X700 graphics. The Hum-
mer laptop managed to last 3
hours 10 minutes on our bat-
tery-life test, which is not as
long as the Acer notebook’s
3:43 and not even close to the
Panasonic Toughbook’s 6:17.
If you need a tough note-
book for the field—and you
or your employers have deep
pockets—the Itronix Hum-
mer Laptop IX600 belongs
on the passenger seat of your
Hummer H3. But if you just
want a cool car-theme note-
book, look to the Acer Fer-
rari 4000.
Itronix Hummer Laptop IX600
With 1.86-GHz Intel Pentium M 750,
512MB DDR2 SDRAM, 80GB hard
drive, 128MB Intel Graphics Media
Accelerator 900 GM, 12.1-inch display,
DVD/CD-RW drive, Microsoft Windows
XP Professional, $3,368 direct. Itronix
Corp., www.itronix.com. lllmm
BY CISCO CHENG
F
or t hose looki ng to
maxi mi ze t hei r off-
road capabilities, the
Itronix Hummer Laptop IX600
($3, 368 direct) plans to de-
liver—if you’re willing to
fork over the extra cash. The
Hummer laptop is ideal if
you’re out in the ﬁeld all day
(think construction workers,
architects, park rangers, ﬁeld
scientists, and so on), but for
the average Joe who wants a
cool car-theme laptop, the
$2,000 Acer Ferrari 4000 is a
much better deal.
The metal cover is de-
signed to look like a Hum-
mer’s hood and comes i n
three colors: red, bright yel-
low, and pewter tin. But we
prefer the subtle red lines
and carbon-ﬁber outﬁt on the
Acer Ferrari’s chassis to the
chunky, in-your-face style of
the Hummer. (Though, in all
fairness, the Hummer SUV is
seemingly all about being in
your face.)
Itronix is known for mak-
ing notebooks for the mili-
tary, so you can be sure that
this one is made to withstand
some abuse. The chassis is
made entirely of magnesium
alloy and feels much thicker
than that of the Panasonic
Toughbook W4. The note-
book has a handle at the
back so you can carry it like
a briefcase. Accordi ng to
Itronix, the Hummer laptop
can withstand drops from
30 inches, strong vibrations,
and extreme temperatures.
It also has a spi l l-proof
keyboard. We wouldn’t
recommend subjecting
a $3,368 laptop to any
of these hazards, but
having that peace of
mind is always a plus.
For a system with a 12.1-
inch screen, the Hummer isn’t
easy on the arms, weighing in
at 6.7 pounds. Other systems
with 12-inch screens, such as
the 3.2-pound Lenovo
ThinkPad X41, typi-
cal ly weigh half as
much. The Hummer’s
screen is designed for
outdoor viewing, and
we noticed that im-
ages looked washed
out when you take it
indoors. The full-size
keyboard is comfort-
able to type on, but
the touchpad isn’t as
wide as that of the
Ferrari 4000. A key-
board task light
pops open above the screen
for dark conditions.
The Hummer laptop has
several wireless antennas to
keep you connected to the
rest of the world. In addition
to Bluetooth and 802.11a/g
Wi-Fi, it has a built-in Leadtek
GPS receiver and comes with
Microsoft Streets & Trips
2005 preinstalled. There is
a significant learning curve
to activating and navigating
the GPS features (we suggest
reading the Leadtek manual
ﬁrst). But once we got going,
the device was able to recog-
nize our position in midtown
Manhattan and followed us all
the way uptown. The system
also includes Leadtek’s Win-
Fast Navigator tool, which
gives a tracking view of all
satellites within range. For an
astronomical $1,180 more, you
can add a touch screen and a
THE HUMMER LAPTOP’s case is made of tough magnesium
alloy, comes in three colors, and includes a handle.
THE HUMMER
LAPTOP’s 12.1-inch screen is
optimized for outdoor viewing.
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 36
F I R S T L O O K S
Hardware: Laptops
BY CISCO CHENG
T
he Alienware Area-51
m5500 is the com-
pany’s latest Media
Center notebook to offer two
built-in graphics options. In-
tegrated Intel graphics get you
the best battery life. But when
you need the best gaming ex-
perience, ﬂip a switch on the
case and kick in the nVidia
GeForce Go 6600 MXM.
You’ll have to reboot, though,
which is irksome.
Overall, the m5500 is a
better-than-average note-
book—and it has a ver y
cool extraterrestrial design.
It straddles the fence be-
tween a gaming and a multi-
media notebook, but given
its features and components,
gamers will be happier than
media enthusiasts.
The blue LEDs f lashing
behind the alien eyes and
logo are the most distinc-
tive feature of an Alienware
notebook. The lights are es-
pecially noticeable against
the dark-gray exterior. The
thin prof ile—1. 2 by 14 by
10.6 inches (HWD)—is very
sleek, yet deceptive, because
the unit weighs a hefty 7. 2
pounds. The 15.4-inch matte
screen isn’t ideal for a Media
Center notebook. Bright-
er, higher-contrast
screens are bet-
ter for view-
i ng movi es
and photos.
The m5500 carries
some fast components, in-
cluding a 2.0-GHz Pentium
M 760, 1GB of memory, and a
fast (7,200-rpm) 80GB hard
drive. There are three USB
ports and one FireWire port,
as well as S-Video and VGA
hook-ups, a line-in jack, and
a 4-in-1 memory card reader.
You can also get a dual-layer
DVD±RW drive. Unfortu-
nately, there’s no TV tuner, so
you’ll have to look for a third-
party tuner card (Alienware
doesn’t offer one) if you want
to watch and record live TV.
The m5500’s perfor-
mance was average on
our Wi ndows Medi a
Encode tests, ﬁnishing in
14:11. We ran some gam-
ing tests with the nVidia
graphics, and though the
scores weren’t the fastest
we’ve seen, the system
will play a lot of your fa-
vorites. However, switch-
ing to the nVidia graphics
will reduce the already sub-
par battery life.
The Alienware Area-51
m5500 wi l l undoubtedly
draw crowds for its space-
age design and the ability
to switch between graphics
systems. But its battery life
needs to be improved, and
it’s a couple of features short
of being a true Media Center
notebook.
Alienware Area-51 m5500
$1,900 direct, Alienware Corp.,
www.alienware.com. lllmm
Alienware Doubles Your Graphics Fun
Gateway’s Plain yet Powerful Notebook
BY CISCO CHENG
T
he Gateway M465-E is
not just a conven tional
business notebook, al-
though its design might say
otherwise. With Intel’s lat-
est Core Duo components, a
solid security platform, and
long battery life, it packs a
wallop. If raising the perfor-
mance bar is your company’s
motto or if you’re a tireless
workaholic, then the M465-E
is worth considering.
On the outside, the M465-E
retains the same bland design
as the M460 (and every
other laptop Gateway
ma ke s) . Ne we r
components trim
the weight to 6. 3
pounds (from the
M460’s 6. 8 pounds),
but there are sti l l lighter
business-class notebooks to
be found.
The system’s 1.83-GHz In-
tel Core Duo T2400 is a notch
below the Core Duo proces-
sors found in some recent
Acer and Dell notebooks, but
the results are still impres-
sive. We simultaneously ren-
dered a high-resolution image
using Adobe Photoshop CS2
and transcoded a video file
with Windows Media Encod-
er 9. Both tasks ran smoothly,
with Norton AntiVirus
scanning in the back-
ground.
The M465-E’s SYS-
mark 2004 SE scores
were just below those
of some other dual-core
notebooks we tested.
But it still outperformed
the single-core M460 on
these tests by 25 percent.
Battery life was a bright
spot for the M465-E: It out-
lasted the competition on
our MobileMark 2005 tests,
running 4:04. Gateway also
offers a 12-cell battery ($120)
that lasts an astonishing 7:09.
The M465-E has a modular
dual-layer DVD±R drive and
a 5-in-1 memory card reader.
The standard 60GB hard
drive is adequate for business
use, but you can also upgrade
to a 100GB drive for $135.
The machine doesn’t have
a fingerprint reader, but it
does include a TPM (Trusted
Platform Module) chip, the
first Gateway notebook to
have one. The M465-E inte-
grates its own user-friendly
recovery suite, but it still
lacks a comprehensive man-
agement tool such as Lenovo
offers on its ThinkPads. The
Gateway M465-E is signifi-
cantly more powerful than
its predecessor, the M460.
The new security features
and excellent battery life will
have corporate buyers think-
ing “upgrade.”
Gateway M465-E
$1,649 direct. Gateway Inc.,
www.gateway.com. lllhm
THE M5500 has
a sleek, space-age design.
DULL LOOK,
high performance.
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 38
F I R S T L O O K S
Hardware: Desktops
BY JOEL SANTO DOMINGO
The Dell Dimension
E310 ($929 di rect,
$746 without moni-
tor) is an entry-level
entertai nment
PC. Although it ’s a
little more expensive
than most entry-level
PCs, it offers the best
bang for the buck of
any system available at
present. Our test unit
came with Dell’s Data-
Safe option, which combines
passive (RAID 1) and active
(Norton Ghost) backup.
The E310’s BTX minitower
is bland, but it runs quietly and
has space for additional PCI
and PCIe x1 cards. The 2.8-
GHz Pentium 4 521 processor
supplies adequate muscle for
light multimedia use. There’s
no TV tuner in the base con-
ﬁguration, but a $100 upgrade
gets you one with a remote.
A dual-layer DVD writer, a 13-
in-1 card reader, and Dell 2.1
speakers round out the multi-
media hardware.
Our conﬁguration includ-
ed a second 160GB hard drive
(a $90 option with the base
package)—part of Dell’s Data-
Safe backup strategy. The
drives are set up in a RAID 1
(mirroring) array. Since each
drive contains an exact dupli-
cate of the data on the other,
you have only 160GB of total
storage, not 320GB. If one
fails, the other takes over.
The other half of the
DataSafe strategy is Nor-
ton Ghost 10, which backs
up your C: drive to a D: par-
tition. With a Ghost backup
on the D: drive, you can re-
cover lost ﬁles or return your
system to a previous working
state. But since RAID 1 copies
changes to both drives, if you
accidentally delete or lose
ﬁles, you’re out of luck.
On our multimedia tests,
the E310 was not lightning-
fast, but it’ll perform ﬁne for
occasional video-encoding or
photo-editing jobs.
The E310 provides a seam-
less backup solution sorely
needed by most multimedia
users to keep music, photos,
and videos.
Dell Dimension E310
$929 direct. Dell Inc., www.dell.com.
llllh
The Best PC Value Out There
An Entry-Level eMachines Media Center PC
BY JOEL SANTO DOMINGO
T
he eMachines T6420
($870 di rect, $600
without monitor) is a
competent entry-level Media
Center PC, and given its pres-
ence in major big-box stores,
readily available. Because it
has room for upgrades, it’s
a good system for those who
want to start at the lower end
and gradually build up to
a high-end system.
The box looks like every
eMachines desktop of the past
few years, with silver and dark
gray dominating the design.
But on the inside this system
is thoroughly contemporary.
Its motherboard is based on
the nVidia nForce 410 chipset
with built-in GeForce 6100
graphics, and it comes with
the midrange AMD Athlon
64 3400+ processor, which
is reasonably fast and 64-bit
compatible. There’s a large
(200GB) hard drive, a dual-
layer DVD±RW drive, and
a 17-inch LCD monitor.
You won’t find a built-in
TV tuner—not unusual in
this price class—but since
eMachines doesn’t offer one,
you’ll have to
buy a thi rd-
party card to
watch and re-
cord live TV.
You can also
add a PCIe
x1 card or a PCIe x16 graph-
ics card. Two spare memory
slots, an empty drive bay, and
a couple of free SATA ports
on the motherboard add to the
expansion capabilities.
The processor and graphics
are average for this category.
On our 3DMark05 multimedia
tests, the T6420’s scores were
on a par with other systems,
but on our Windows Media
Encode test it produced a
lower score than competing
models. The T6420 is built
for Web surﬁng and viewing
multimedia content.
Compared with the Dell
E310, the T6420 is a lot more
expandable, making it more
of a tinkerer’s PC. But the
E310 blows the T6420 away
with its DataSafe backup
strategy and 15 months of AV
protection, as opposed to the
eMachines’ less generous 90
days. Overall, though, the
eMachines T6420 is a good
entry-level Media Center PC,
and the upgradability is an
added beneﬁt.
eMachines T6420
$870 direct. eMachines Inc.,
www.emachines.com. lllmm
THE DELL E310 gives multi-
media users a safe backup strategy.
THE T6420 is an entry-level Media Center with upgradability.
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 40
F I R S T L O O K S
Hardware: Media Center PCs
Media Center PCs: The Next Generation
theater PC. But there are bet-
ter choices out there for about
the same money.
The M1000 is certainly an
attractive Media Center PC,
with a clean front panel that
looks the part. Swing-down
doors hide the 8-in-1 media
card reader and USB ports. In
the middle of the front panel,
a comprehensive blue infor-
mation display shows music,
photo, and TV info.
Viewing standard TV on
the M1000 is a pleasant expe-
rience. The PureVideo tech-
nology built into the nVidia
GeForce 6600 LE graphics
card helped the M1000 dis-
play a sharp and well-
balanced picture from
the included SDTV and
HDTV tuners.
Since the M1000’s Pen-
tium M 740 (a notebook
processor) runs cooler than
a desktop-class Pentium
4, the M1000 has a quieter
fan—a big plus for a PC that
sits in your living room. The
M1000’s 250GB hard drive is
a standard size for this class,
and a handy “Storage-2-Go”
removable hard drive bay is
located in the front.
The M1000 was slow on
our Windows Media Encode
test, taking over 16 minutes
to complete, but it turned
in a decent time on our Pho-
toshop CS2 Action set (2:52).
In short, the M1000 is best
suited to viewi ng photos
and video content rather
than hard-core photo/video
editing.
The Shuttle XPC M1000 is
an attractive Media Center
PC, though there isn’t any-
thing in particular about its
price or features that makes
it more attractive than our
current favorite—the HP
Digital Entertainment Cen-
ter z555/z556.
Shuttle XPC M1000
$1,899 direct. Shuttle Computer Inc.,
www.shuttle.com. lllmm
BY JOEL SANTO DOMINGO
T
he latest generation
of Media Center PCs
are rol l i ng off t he
production lines loaded with
new components, such as
dual-core processors, higher-
capacity hard drives, and up-
dated horizontal form factors.
But is this enough to usurp
the old champs? That’s what
we set out to determine.
Polywell MiniBox2
939NP-MCE
The Polywel l Mi ni-
Box 2 93 9NP- MCE
($1, 888 direct, $1, 520
without monitor) is a
compact, relatively qui-
et Media Center PC that
can ﬁt in either a home ofﬁce
or a living room. With a dual-
core Athlon 64 X2 processor,
twin TV tuners, and a good
amount of hard drive space,
the MiniBox2 is a Media Cen-
ter PC worth a look.
The MiniBox2 has a small
footprint, but it’s rather tall—
twice as tall, in fact, as most
horizontal Media Center PCs.
There is a pop-out handle
on the front of the case, but
you probably won’t be toting
this system around, since it
weighs more than 20 pounds.
Room to upgrade consists of
space for one PCIe x1 card
and an additional PCIe x16
graphics card.
Thanks to its dual-core
Athlon 64 X2 3800+ proces-
sor, the MiniBox2 has the
power to continue working
while TV shows are record-
ing in the background. With
the twin TV tuners, you can
record two shows at once.
Because the graphics card
doesn’t need cooling, system
noise is greatly reduced.
We are i mpressed with
the MiniBox2’s two 250GB
hard drives i n a RAID 0
array, which give you a total
of 500GB of space—plenty of
CS2 Action set in 1:21, which
is faster than the average.
But, predictably, the inte-
grated nVidia GeForce 6150
graphics kept the system’s
3D scores relatively low (just
9 frames per second).
It’s not the prettiest or
smallest Media Center PC
out there, but the MiniBox2
room to record your favorite
shows, rip your entire music
collection, and store your
photo collection to show on
the TV when relatives visit.
The MiniBox2 performed
well on our multimedia tests,
taking 7 minutes 43 seconds
to encode our test video ﬁle
on the Windows Media En-
code test. The system com-
pleted our Adobe Photoshop
may serve as the middle
ground for those who want to
convert to a digital home and
want an expandable system
that can still ﬁt equally well
in the living room or ofﬁce.
Polywell MiniBox2
939NP-MCE
$1,888 direct; without monitor,
$1,520. Polywell Computers Inc.,
www.polywell.com. lllhm
Shuttle XPC M1000
The Shuttle XPC M1000
($1,899 direct) is a horizon-
tal AV-style Media Center
PC that ﬁts well in a home
theater rack. It’s black with
chrome accents, so it looks
good next to black or silver
AV equipment. With an inno-
vative wireless keyboard and
decent component choices, it
makes a somewhat compel-
ling case for itself as a home
The HP Digital Entertainment Center
(Z555, Z556, or Z558) continues to serve
as a template for what all AV-style Media Center
Edition PCs should strive to be in the living room. Three years
after the Z555’s introduction, we have yet to ﬁnd a better
living room PC.
THE REIGNING CHAMP:
HP Digital Entertainment Center
THE NEW POLY-
WELL AND SHUTTLE Media
Center PCs ﬁt nicely in a home theater.
www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 41
F I R S T L O O K S
Software
BY GALEN FOTT
L
ongtime users of Corel-
Draw Graphics Suite
have a secret: You can
produce high-quality graph-
ics without spending a mint.
Corel Draw X3 Graphi cs
Suite (for X3, read “thirteen”)
adds strong new tools to an
already excellent package.
The $399 suite consists pri-
marily of the vector drawing
program CorelDraw and the
image editor Photo-Paint.
Version 12 users will no-
tice some changes in the
included apps. Corel R.A.V.E.
is gone. But CorelTrace has
been incorporated into the
CorelDraw program and to-
tally redesigned. This tool,
now called PowerTrace, lets
you turn pixel-based images
into resolution-free vector
art, and it’s the strongest new
feature in the suite.
Text handl i ng has also
gotten an upgrade. There are
new dockers (the program’s
terminology for palettes) for
formatti ng, a WYSIWYG
font menu, automatic hy-
phenation, and interactive
type-on-a-path handling.
Corel Draw and Photo-
Paint share a couple of new
features. A Hi nts docker
gives information and advice
about the currently selected
tool, and both include the
excellent new Image Adjust-
ment Lab, which col lects
many commands used for
correcting digital photos.
Best of all, you can take snap-
shots of the image as you
work. These are collected in
a strip at the bottom of the
window, and clicking on one
returns the image to the state
it was in when the snapshot
was taken.
You also get over 1,000
fonts, 10,000 clip-art and dig-
ital images, and 100 templates
for projects such as business
cards and brochures. This is
an excellent choice for users
who need powerful graphics
tools at an affordable price.
CorelDraw X3 Graphics Suite
$399 direct; upgrade, $179; student
and teacher edition, $99. Corel Corp.,
www.corel.com. llllm
CorelDraw X3 Graphics Suite—Lucky 13
ACDSee’s Photo Manager Goes Pro
BY GALEN FOTT
T
he new ACDSee Pro
Photo Manager i s
a strong choice for
professional photographers
who are seeking a complete
workflow solution—that is,
a way to manage the entire
photo-editing process from
cataloging to publishing and
archiving.
In addition to a healthy
roster of proprietary RAW
ﬁle formats, ACDSee Pro also
recognizes Adobe’s public
DNG format, bolstering the
program’s compatibility. And
ACDSee Pro lets you process
RAW ﬁles nondestructively.
ACDSee Pro’s excellent
tool s i nclude Level s and
Curves controls for expo-
sure, white-balance presets
with adjustable temperature
and tint, and precise Unsharp
Mask and noise-reduction
controls. These RAW adjust-
ment settings can then be ap-
plied to other photos through
batch processing. In fact,
ACDSee Pro is notable for
its robust and diverse batch-
processing tools.
There are numerous other
enhancements throughout
the program. Professionals
will embrace ACDSee Pro’s
support for ICC and ICM
color proﬁles. The program’s
interface is adaptable, with
savable workspace layouts
and customizable shortcut
keys. HTML Web photo
galleries created from the
program’s templ ates are
also nicely customizable. A
new Tag check box appears
on every thumbnail in the
browser window, making it
easier to weed through large
batches of photos quickly and
isolate the best shots.
Though t he tool set i s
strong, when ACDSee Pro is
compared with Apple’s sleek
(and much more expensive)
Apert ure program—and,
more relevantly, Adobe’s new
Lightroom—its i nterface
seems unattractive and is
bound to be less appealing to
professional photographers.
ACDSee Pro Photo Manager
$129.99 direct. ACD Systems Intl. Inc.,
www.acdsystems.com. llllm
CORELDRAW COMES WITH upgraded text handling, offering many new formatting options.
ACDSEE PRO PHOTO MANAGER gives you excellent tools for
processing RAW format photos.
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 42
F I R S T L O O K S
Software
BY KYLE MONSON
A
lt hough t he era of
video downloading
i s j ust begi nni ng,
that’s not stopping content
owners from rushing to form
alliances. First we had Dis-
ney/ABC joining forces with
Apple to sell TV shows via
the iTunes Music Store. And
now CBS, the NBA, and Sony
BMG have announced part-
nerships with Google, giv-
ing the newly launched beta
version of the Google Video
Store exclusive rights to CBS
TV shows, NBA basketball
games, and music videos
from Sony BMG artists.
The Google Video Store
catalog also contains sub-
missions by users, so prepare
yourself for lots of amateur
videos, bootlegged concert
footage, and Kanye West
ranting against George Bush.
For example, a search for
“golf” returned 612 results,
including footage of
the Volkswagen Golf,
personal videos of golf
swings, a Robin Wil-
liams standup routine,
and clips of models
posing for Golf Punk
magazine. And that’s
just the ﬁrst page.
The paid content is
much more predict-
able. CBS is offering
both new shows, such
as Survivor, and clas-
sics li ke The Brady
Bunch and I Love Lucy
for $1.99, and CSI is
available as a sort of
24-hour rental for
the same price. The
NBA is offering download-
able versions of basketball
games the day after they’re
pl ayed, as wel l as cl as-
sic games, for $3.95, which
seems a bit steep to us. And
though Google Video i n-
cludes a search for movies,
don’t expect to ﬁnd the latest
(or any) blockbusters here.
The first time you down-
load a video cl ip, you’re
prompted to download and
i nstal l the Google Video
Player, a streamlined app
that plays the GVI video ﬁles
that the Google Video
Store dispenses (we
couldn’t get GVI files
to play in Windows
Medi a Pl ayer 10 or
QuickTime).
Submi t t i ng your
masterpiece is pain-
less: just download
the Google Video Up-
loader, and drag and
drop the ﬁles you want
to upload. Once the
Google Video review
team signs off on it,
your footage will be
added to the catalog.
Google Video cer-
tainly still has bugs,
but overall it’s got a
clean look and feel to it, and
we’re quite sure the catalog of
available content is balloon-
ing even as you read this.
Google Video Store (beta)
Video player, free; download prices
vary, depending on content. Google,
www.video.google.com. lllmm
Searching for Films at the Googleplex
iTunes: More than Music
BY RICK BROIDA
V
ersion 6 of Apple’s
music manager-cum-
store presents the
usual hodgepodge of interface
tweaks and feature upgrades.
But iTunes 6 also does video,
and does it reasonably well.
Indeed, Apple’s grand ex-
periment—TV shows, mu-
sic videos, and Pixar shorts
for $1.99 a pop—has enjoyed
grand success, as evidenced
by the snowballing number
of current titles available for
download. In addition to the
ABC hits Desperate House-
wives and Lost, iTunes now
carries content from NBC
and several Viacom channels
like Nickelodeon, Comedy
Central, and MTV.
Meanwhile, iTunes’ pod-
cast section has expanded
to include video podcasts,
though most have the same
amateur origins as regular
podcasts. You can also use
iTunes to convert movie ﬁles
stored on your PC, but only if
they’re already in MPEG-4 or
MOV format.
But not all that’s new in
iTunes 6 centers on video.
The software now devotes
roughly a quarter of the
Library view to the Mini-
Store, which provides quick
access to various store fea-
tures from within your music
collection. Click on one of
your Brendan Benson tracks,
for instance, and moments
later the MiniStore displays
some of his other albums;
gift, review, and tell-a-friend
options; and related artists.
Respondi ng to users’
concerns over privacy (the
MiniStore necessarily com-
muni cates wi t h Appl e’s
servers to fetch relevant in-
formation), Apple recently
patched iTunes so that the
ﬁrst time the MiniStore opens
it states its purpose and gives
you the option to disable it.
Despite the major advances
in the world of video, iTunes
still offers no music subscrip-
tion option to match Napster
To Go and the growing list of
other ﬂat-rate services. Most
users buy portable players
with music in mind, and in
that regard iTunes is starting
to fall behind the curve.
iTunes 6
Player, free; download prices vary,
depending on content. Apple Com-
puter Inc., www.apple.com. lllhm
THE GOOGLE VIDEO STORE lets you download
or upload your video content of choice.
ITUNES USHERED in the era of video to go, but it may be fall-
ing behind the curve by not offering a subscription plan.
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 44
F I R S T L O O K S
Software
BY BILL DYSZEL
A
newly launched ser-
vice called Podzinger
offers a set of sophis-
ticated tools for searching
out text in the ever-expand-
ing supply of podcasts. Pod-
zinger automatically ingests
thousands of podcasts and
applies speech-to-text con-
version and indexing to yield
a list of relevant results com-
parable to Google’s searches
of Web-based text.
Each Podzinger result in-
cludes an embedded player,
so you can play any program
right from the results screen.
A list of transcribed excerpts
accompanies the results,
showing the time and context
of every occurrence of your
search term. Conveniently,
you can click on the time
code to jump directly to that
excerpt. You can limit your
search to a speciﬁc series of
podcasts, and you can create
a custom RSS feed around a
term you search for frequent-
ly and add that feed to your
browser or RSS aggregator.
As with many speech-to-
text conversions, Podzinger’s
interpretation of some sen-
tences can be comical, partic-
ularly when diction is unclear
or the speaker has a heavy
accent. Sometimes music can
confuse the speech recogni-
tion program—which makes
spoken text over background
music particularly suscep-
tible to error—and singing is
not interpreted at all.
At this point, the service
plays only on selected com-
binations of Web browsers
and audio players, but it gives
you the most popular brows-
ers, such as Microsoft Inter-
net Explorer (RealPlayer and
Windows Media Player, both
Version 9 and later), Firefox,
and Safari (both QuickTime
6.0 and later).
Several ot her services
offer podcast searching—
among them Podscope and
blinkx.tv—but none offer
such sophisticated text con-
version along with equally
convenient playback options.
As the universe of podcast
content grows, services like
Podzinger will become in-
creasingly valuable.
Podzinger
Free. BBN Technologies Corp.,
www.podzinger.com. llllm
Searching the Spoken Word
E-Mail Triage
BY RICK BROIDA
W
ithin your moun-
tain of legitimate
e-mai l , how can
you quickly zero in on the
really crucial stuff, like in-
structions from your boss or
questions from your clients?
Microsoft has proposed
an answer: SNARF, or Social
Network and Relationship
Finder. Designed for Micro-
soft Outlook 2002 and 2003,
this free add-on gives you an
at-a-glance overview of your
Inbox. But instead of sorting
the messages, SNARF sorts
the senders, pulling “impor-
tant” ones to the top of the
list. The idea is that your
most frequent correspon-
dents are the most impor-
tant. It’s a nifty idea, but the
tool is confusing at ﬁrst—and
downright fugly.
Getting started is easy:
Download and install the
2MB program, then wait sev-
eral minutes while it scans
your Outlook messages and
builds its index. The result-
ing window divides mail into
three categories, creating a
kind of messaging triage.
By default, all three panes
display a week’s worth of
messages. SNARF lets you
add, remove, and customize
panes, as well as tweak the
metrics used to sort the mes-
sages. The top pane lists only
those senders who put your
name in the To or CC field.
The second pane shows the
senders who didn’t specify
your name (meaning they’re
probably distribution lists).
The bottom pane is the
catch-all, listing every corre-
spondent from the past week.
Next to each name, SNARF
displays the number of mes-
sages received and sent in the
last 30 days. A blue highlight
reflects this number, effec-
tively turning each pane into
a graph of message volume.
Clicking on any name brings
up a list of all correspondence
with that person for the speci-
fied period, no matter which
folder it’s in. This can be very
useful for managing e-mail.
On our tests, SNARF pro-
duced odd results. For in-
stance, instead of limiting
themselves to week-old mail,
all three panes listed a hand-
ful of senders we hadn’t cor-
responded with in years.
SNARF is a research proj-
ect and doesn’ t solve the
problem of e-mail overload,
but does provide some relief.
SNARF
Free. Microsoft Corp.,
research.microsoft.com/community/
snarf. llmmm
PODZINGER offers sophisticated tools for searching out text in podcasts.
GET A PRIORITIZED view
of your Outlook e-mail with
Microsoft SNARF.
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 46
F I R S T L O O K S
Software
BY CADE METZ
W
hen Grouper de-
buted in late 2004,
it led a new wave of
“private” peer-to-peer apps,
tools that let you share files,
songs, photos, and videos
with friends and family. Bare-
ly more than a year later, the
2.0 release has fallen in step
with all-the-rage online apps
such as Flickr, del.icio.us, and
TagWorld, encouraging you
to tag your media and share it
with the Web at large.
Moreover, the new ver-
sion gives special attention to
video sharing. Grouper has
always handled video, but
now you can import video
clips straight from your cam-
era, edit them together, and
share them from a single in-
terface. And it’s all free. With
Grouper’s (partial) peer-to-
peer model, much of your
shared data is stored on your
PC, not on distant servers.
Yes , you can
still share all sorts
of ﬁles among pri-
vate groups, but,
clearly, Grouper
is now focusing on
tagging videos and
sharing them with
the public.
When you first
down l oad a nd
launch Grouper, a
home page gives
you a choice of
actions, and at the
top of the list is
“Share my videos
and photos with the Grouper
Community.” Clicking on
this link lets you select media
ﬁles from your hard drive and
add them to the app’s public
directory. Conveniently, you
can also import photos and
videos straight from certain
digital cameras.
As with similar directories
on services like Flickr and
del.icio.us, Grouper’s public
directory can be searched via
tags—keywords that describe
uploaded media files. When
you share with the communi-
ty at large, you have no choice
but to attach at least two tags
to each file. You might tag a
birthday video with the word
party or a humorous video
with the word funny.
You can’t post
individual music
files to the public
di r ect or y—t he
major record labels
wouldn’t stand for
it—but you can
create and share
customized multi-
media f i les that
Grouper likes to
call Groovies, in
which photos and
videos are edited
together and over-
laid with music.
After clicking the
Create Groovie button, you
can stitch together a surpris-
ingly slick mini-movie.
It’s still in beta and it can be
somewhat slow and buggy at
times, but if you’re into apps
like Flickr and TagWorld,
you’ll love the new Grouper.
Grouper 2.0 Beta
Free. Grouper Networks Inc.,
www.grouper.com. llllm
Video-Sharing with Strangers
Streamload Your Media Files
BY CADE METZ
S
treaml oad Medi aMax
provides a personal site
where you can store and
share all sorts of digital ﬁles,
including photos, videos, and
songs. MediaMax most re-
sembles the ultra-slick Glide
Effortless, in that
it’s practical ly a
second operating
system—a pl ace
where you can or-
ganize and enjoy
your multimedia,
not just swap files
with others. Swap-
ping doesn’t reach
beyond people you
know and doesn’t
include the general
public.
The interface is
certai nly an i m-
provement over the
previous version. The ser-
vice now offers an ActiveX
control for uploading files
en masse, for example. Once
installed, it lets you upload
simply by dragging groups
and dropping them into your
browser window.
You can upload photos,
videos, MP3s, Microsof t
Word ﬁles, spreadsheets, and
Power Point presentations.
The application moves each
ﬁle into a primary “File Man-
ager,” which is a simple nest-
ed directory, and then sorts
recogni zed mul-
timedia files into
other directories.
At the very least,
the site serves as
an online reposi-
tory. It gives you a
place to put backup
copies of your im-
portant content.
Wherever you are,
whatever machine
you’re using, it’s al-
ways in reach. And
since the service
automatically rec-
ogni zes popul ar
multimedia types, you can
launch ﬁles straight from the
site—without downloading.
You share files using the
same interface. You can send
them as e-mail attachments
or provide URLs invitees can
download from.
With a free account, you
can store up 25GB of data
and download or share up to
500MB each month (though
you can’t upload files larger
than 25MB). Unfortunately,
a ﬂaw in the service lingers:
After you upload files, they
don’t immediately appear,
and there’s no way of check-
ing their status. Sometimes,
you can wait for 10 to 15 min-
utes. Still, there’s a lot to like
in the new Streamload.
Streamload MediaMax
For 25GB storage, 500MB sharing,
25MB sending, and 25MB hosting,
free; other service levels, $14.95 to
$39.95 monthly or $119.40 to $359.40
per year. Streamload Inc.,
www.streamload.com. lllmm
GROUPER 2.0 is convenient for sharing your personal
media with your friends and the Web at large.
STREAMLOAD MEDIAMAX gives you an easy (and
free) way to store and share multimedia ﬁles.
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 48
F I R S T L O O K S
Software
BY NEIL J. RUBENKING
Y
our 6-year-old may
mistype his favorite
cartoon’s URL and
wind up at a porn site; a 16-
year-old may reach the same
site deliberately. Guardware’s
iShield offers a solution for
both situations: It detects
porn images in the browser
and offers a variety of options
for dealing with them.
Each time the browser (In-
ternet Explorer, Netscape,
Firefox, or Mozilla) loads a
Web page, iShield analyzes
the i mages found on that
page. It looks for skin tones,
textures, faces, limb shapes,
and a variety of other cues
to decide which images may
be porn. A Safe | Safer | Saf-
est setting controls just what
proportion of bad images will
trigger page blocking.
With some trepidation, we
put the product through its
paces. It didn’t block depart-
ment-store lingerie ads but
covered up a few scantily clad
models at the Victoria’s Secret
site. A Google Images search
on “breast self-examination”
was correctly allowed. When
we ventured into more dan-
gerous terrain, iShield blocked
almost every image.
The product’s recognition
of porn images is not perfect.
It never ﬂags black-and-white
images or images in which
the color balance is suffi-
ciently “off” to change skin
tones. It also seems more at-
tuned to recognizing female
nudes than male. And we
found that some oddly inno-
cent images—“head shots” of
pumpkins from last Hallow-
een—were blocked.
iShield can also go into
silent-running mode, simply
recording Web pages that
seem to contain inappropri-
ate images. It lists the time
of each access, though not
the username, and the par-
ent/administrator can click
a recorded URL to view it
without iShield’s ﬁltering. Of
course, your tech-savvy teen-
ager may attempt to evade
this monitoring by terminat-
ing iShield. We tried a num-
ber of different techniques
and found iShield remarkably
resilient.
On the whole, iShield does
a good job of shielding your
kids from images you’d rather
they didn’t see.
iShield 1.0.9.2
$24.95 direct. Guardware LLC,
www.guardwareinc.com. lllhm
Block Those Baddies
The Best Spyware Doctor Yet
BY NEIL J. RUBENKING
W
ith Version 3.5, PC
Tools has cranked
up Spyware Doc-
tor’s power in several areas.
The just-introduced Kernel
Delete technology gives the
antispyware new ways to re-
move rootkits and deal with
other complex, self-
defending malware.
And hidden-process
detection shines a
spotlight on the pro-
cesses—including
rootkits—that stop
simpler tools.
We subjected the
new version to our
usual torture tests.
As with the previous
version, it detected
all six commercial
keyloggers we used
for test i ng, suc-
ceeded in removing all but
one, and blocked installation
of four.
We did see improvement in
the handling of our 15 sample
spyware-type threats. One
that had slipped past the pre-
vious version was blocked,
and two that had resisted the
old release’s attempt at re-
moval got canned.
Overal l , t he sof t ware
missed removing only one and
failed to block just one—an
impressive performance. In
most cases, its ProcessGuard
module knocked out malware
installation instantly. A few
mi screants man-
aged to install one or
more ﬁles, but those
ﬁles weren’t allowed
to run. After each
removal scan, Spy-
ware Doctor insist-
ed on rebooting the
system and running
a cleanup scan.
One notable plus
is better integration
of malware infor-
mation in the scan
results window. In
addition to show-
ing a threat level and listing
the associated ﬁle and Regis-
try traces, the window now
displays a description of the
highlighted item.
Spyware Doctor’s On-
Guard Protection monitors
the system, looking for pro-
grams performing activi-
ties typical of malware. And
unli ke many antispyware
products, it blocks only ac-
tivity associated with pro-
grams that it can identify as
malware, so you won’t suffer
a warning every time an in-
nocuous program sets itself
to launch at start-up.
Spyware Doctor 3. 5 is an
evolutionary step toward that
great day when we’ll hold
anti spyware products to the
same standard as anti viruses:
removal of every known in-
the-wild threat.
Spyware Doctor 3.5
$29.95 direct. PC Tools,
www.pctools.com. llllm
ISHIELD CAN PREVENT children from accessing porn sites ac-
cidentally (or on purpose), and it’s very easy to install and use.
PC TOOLS HAS ratcheted up its antispyware’s
power in several areas, but you won’t even see
the most important enhancements.
www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 49
F I R S T L O O K S
Small Business: Printers
Choosing the Best Printer for Your Ofﬁce
ing a ﬁrmware upgrade
to fix it, which will be
offered on Brother’s
Web site.
The MFC-9420CN’s
text quality is typi-
cal for a color laser
AIO, but just a touch
lower than the best
color lasers. More
than half of our test
fonts were easily
readable at 5 points.
Graphics and photo
quality are also typi-
cal for color laser
AIOs, with graphics
showing dithering pat-
terns on some output
and a tendency to lose
thin lines. Photos suf-
fered from obvious dith-
ering and a noticeable tint,
but the quality is good enough
for use in client newsletters
and Web pages.
If having the convenience
of an all-in-one matters more
to your ofﬁce than somewhat
better overall quality and
speed (and Brother ﬁxes the
monochrome printing bug),
the MFC-9420CN may well
be your preferred choice.
Brother MFC-9420CN
$800 street. Brother International Co.,
www.brother.com. llllm
COLOR LASER
Lexmark C522n
The Lexmark C522n
($499 direct) is an in-
expensive color laser
printer with great per-
formance, excellent text out-
put, and good graphics and
photo quality. And it’s priced
right for a personal color
laser. The optional 500-sheet
paper tray ($299) boosts ca-
BY M. DAVID STONE
W
hether your goal
is to impress your
clients and cus-
tomers with sharp, colorful
brochures or just print inter-
nal documents, choosing the
right printer is not only smart,
it can win you new customers
(or retain existing custom-
ers) and save you money. But
which one is right for your
needs? Here’s an overview of
the different types.
An all-in-one color laser
offers the convenience and
space savings of copying,
scanning, and often faxing
capability from one machine
combined with high-speed
printing and expanded paper
handling. Color lasers are a
speedy, reliable choice for
businesses that have medium
to heavy print duties. You
should opt for a model that
lets you expand paper capac-
ity (or duplexing) and share
across your network.
While most small ofﬁces
are perfectly happy with
printers that handle letter-
and legal-si ze paper,
some need to print tab-
loid and super-tabloid
output. Fort unately,
you don’t have to spend
a bundle for a large-
format pri nter or go
with a slow ink jet any-
more. And if your print-
ing needs are light but
you need high quality for
photos, a business-class
ink jet is the way to go.
Here we review ﬁve print-
ers that run the gamut of
business needs to give you the
know-how to pick the right
one for your company.
ALL-IN-ONE
COLOR LASER
Brother MFC-9420CN
There aren’ t many
color laser all-in-ones
(AIOs) that are aimed
squarely at the small
office, bearing price
tags of $1,000 or less.
However, the Brother
MFC-9420CN ($800
street) is a printer that
we can recommend for
very small businesses.
It offers the right com-
bination of speed, output
quality, and features—
al t hough i t exhi bi t ed
a pr obl em t hat unex-
pectedly slowed it down
duri ng our monochrome
printing tests.
The MFC-9420CN prints,
scans, faxes, copies, and
scans to e-mai l . And the
built-in 35-page automatic
document feeder (ADF)
makes scanning, faxing, and copyi ng multipage docu-
ments a breeze.
Bui lt around an engi ne
rated at 31 pages per minute
(ppm) for monochrome and
8 ppm for color, the MFC-
9420CN theoretically should
be the fastest color AIO in its
price class. On our tests
(timed with QualityLog-
ic’s hardware and soft-
ware www.qualitylogic
.com), it handed in a total
time of 20 minutes 19 sec-
onds, making it the second-
fastest AIO in its class.
It turns out that the Broth-
er AIO pri nted even our
monochrome-only files in
color mode, slowing its print
times significantly. Brother
says it is aware of this issue
and is in the process of test-
ANALYST’S TIP
M.David Stone , Lead Analyst
Any of the printers included here could be the ideal choice for your small ofﬁce. An AIO saves both money and
precious space over having separate devices for printing, scanning, copying, and faxing. If you print many
documents on both sides of a page, look for duplexing as a standard feature or optional upgrade. For the best
possible text quality, focus on laser printers. But if you need graphics and photos, look to a standard ink jet.
LEXMARK’S
color laser is a
budget-friendly choice.
BROTHER’S LASER AIO is a
great space-saving option.
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 52
F I R S T L O O K S
Small Business: Printers
pacity to an ample 750 sheets,
letting this printer function
as the ofﬁce workhorse.
Performance is one of the
best arguments for choosing
this printer, which handed in
a total time of 11 minutes 19
seconds on our business ap-
plications suite.
Output quality is impressive
for text and good for graphics
and photos. Most tests fonts
were easi ly readable at 4
points. This printer’s graphics
output had eye-catching color
and crisp, sharp edges, though
we did see some posterization
and minor registration prob-
lems. Photo quality is good
enough for items like news-
letters, which is the most you
can expect from a color laser
printer.
With good output quality,
fast speed, and a high maxi-
mum paper capacity, the
C522n earns a spot
as our new Editors’
Choice and would
make a fine addition
to your ofﬁce.
Lexmark C522n
$499 direct. Lexmark Inter-
national Inc., www.lexmark
.com. llllm
TABLOID PRINTER
Ricoh Aﬁcio G7500
The Ri coh Af i ci o
G7500 ($675 street)
offers laser-class speed
and quality at a low
price for ofﬁces on a budget.
The G7500 uses the Gel-
Sprinter technology, which
sprays ink from a nozzle, so
the G7500 is technically an
ink jet. But the highly viscous
gel dries almost immediately,
letting the printer put lots
of ink on the paper quickly
without blurring edges.
If you judge according to
performance, the G7500 is a
laser-class printer and best
compared with such devices.
Even the ink cartridges have
yields comparable to those of
laser toner cartridges, with a
claimed 3,200 pages for black
and 2, 500 pages each for
cyan, yellow, and magenta.
The G7500 offers
excellent paper han-
dling for the price,
with duplexing stan-
dard, a 250-sheet tray
for stock up to tabloid
size, and a single-sheet
manual tray that handles
banner-size paper (12 by
51 inches). An optional
500-sheet tray ($160) holds
up to legal-size paper.
On our business applica-
tions suite, the G7500 com-
pleted the test in 12 minutes
54 seconds. That’s slow com-
pared with the speed of cur-
rent tabloid-size color lasers,
but again, the G7500 costs
much less.
The G7500’s text quality
was very good, with several of
our test fonts easily readable
at 4 points. Graphics come out
good enough to hand to an im-
portant client or customer, as
THE RICOH G7500 is a low-
cost, large-format laser.
www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 53
As a writer and editor, I live most of my desktop life staring at
a word processor; the rest of my time is spent running data
through a spreadsheet or preparing presentations in a slide-
oriented package. Like most PC users, I've spent the last sev-
eral years using Microsoft's ubiquitous Ofﬁce Suite to do those
chores, and while I have my complaints, mostly I've been happy.
But it's tempting to look around once in a while to ﬁnd out what
the rest of the world is up to. Frankly, what it’s up to makes up just
a small part of the computer-using world. Microsoft estimates
that over 600 million computers have its Ofﬁce Suite installed,
and that number is hard for any competitor to cope with.
But cope they do, and lately I've taken a look at two suites —
Corel's new X3 edition of WordPerfect Office and Sun's Star-
Ofﬁce 8—to see just how well other products would enable me
to do my work. What I’ve found is that if you can live with a couple
of limitations and quirks, you can spend a lot less money on the
non-Microsoft products and do all the work
you want to do.
These suites—very fine products that
have been developed by skilled software
designers and engineers—are made even
better by offering a seemingly unbreakable
level of compatibility with the Microsoft
products. As a result, you can share files
with colleagues or business partners who are using these prod-
ucts and not fear losing information.
They do operate a bit differently here and there, but that doesn't
really matter, because within a few hours or days you'll get used
to those differences and forget all about them. After all, there’s no
such thing as a nonquirky software product, so why should Micro-
soft have exclusive rights to oddly designed interfaces?
Some limitations, however, may be important. StarOfﬁce, for
example, doesn’t provide an e-mail client. Unless you do all your
e-mail using Web-based services or can live with Outlook Express
or the equivalent, that’s a component you really must have. The
new X3 edition of WordPerfect Ofﬁce has a very ﬁne e-mail client,
but it doesn't support Microsoft Exchange, and that may be a prob-
lem. Neither suite has a database manager like Microsoft Access,
but I can't think of a reason to consider that a deﬁcit.
Many if not most of you are very used to the Microsoft Ofﬁce
products, and you may feel uncomfort-
able with learning the idiosyncrasies
of another product. Let me assure you,
there are not very many of them, and
you may save enough money to upgrade
that old PC. For our reviews of the dif-
ferent alternatives, visit go.pcmag.com/
ofﬁcealternatives.
>
MORE ON THE WEB
For reviews, tips, and advice,
all with a focus on small and
medium businesses, visit
www.smartcompany.com
Microsoft Ofﬁce Alternatives
John Dickinson
F I R S T L O O K S
Small Business: Printers
Corel WordPerfect X3: A Worthy Alternative
BY EDWARD MENDELSON
T
hink of an annoyance
in Microsoft Office,
and you probabl y
won’t find it in Corel Word-
Perfect Office X3, the latest
version of this venerable
office suite, now enhanced
with its own mail program.
Office can’t export files in
PDF format (although the
next version, due by the end
of the year, will), but Word-
Perfect outputs PDF ﬁles and
also imports PDF ﬁles so you
can edit them.
Outlook won’t index your
messages for i nstant re-
trieval, but WordPerfect’s
WordPerfect Mail module
indexes everything. Where
Word automatically refor-
mats documents without ask-
ing permission, WordPerfect
waits for your command—
including a command that
reformats your work to fit
a speciﬁed number of pages.
Worried about comments
and undo/redo i nforma-
tion hidden in your Word
files? WordPerfect includes
a “Save without metadata”
command that clears out
everything you can’t see on
the page. Tired of reformat-
ting information pasted into
Word from a Web page? Use
WordPerfect’s Ctrl-Alt-V to
paste text from the Web and
give it the format of the doc-
ument you’re editing.
WordPerfect Ofﬁce X3—so
named to avoid calling it Ver-
sion 13—still uses the same
basic file format that Word-
Perfect has used since Ver-
sion 6, enhanced to support
all European languages as
smoothly as Word does. Also
included is the Quattro Pro
X3 spreadsheet. It’s less pow-
erful than recent versions
of Microsoft Excel but is ca-
pable of building Excel-style
pivot tables and provides
live links to SQL databases.
The Presentations X3 pack-
age gets the job done and di-
rectly outputs PDF ﬁles, but
it lacks PowerPoint’s razzle-
dazzle graphics and effects.
Presentations Graphics X3
provides a direct route to the
suite’s solid but unspectacu-
lar graphics-editing features,
without the slide-organizing
capabilities. The WordPer-
fect Mail program doesn’t
look much like the rest of the
suite, but its built-in indexing,
RSS reading, and trainable
spam filter leave Microsoft
playing catch-up.
If you’re a longtime user
of WordPerfect Ofﬁce, you’ll
appreciate the new features.
And if you’re searching for an
alternative to Microsoft, this
is deﬁnitely one to consider.
Corel WordPerfect Ofﬁce X3
Standard Edition
$299 list; upgrade, $159. Corel Corp.,
www.corel.com. llllm
long as you use high-quality
mode. Photo output is good
enough for newsletters and
other internal uses.
For tabloid-size printing
with laser-class quality and
speed at bargain prices, the
G7500 is not just a good choice
and our Editors’ Choice—it’s
the only game in town.
Ricoh Aﬁcio G7500
$675 street. Ricoh Corp.,
www.ricoh-usa.com. llllm
HEAVY-DUTY INK JET
The HP Ofﬁcejet Pro K550
HP’s Web site claims
that the Officejet Pro
K550 Color Pri nter
($199 di rect) i s the
world’s fastest desktop color
printer. In reality, it’s not. But
it’s certainly the fastest by far
in this price class, at least for
business applications. Even
better, it doesn’t sacrifice
quality for speed—text
and graphics qual-
it y are among
the best you’l l
ﬁnd in an ink jet
printer.
The K5 5 0 ’ s
250-sheet capac-
ity input tray and
a USB connection
make t hi s model
a good choice for
a home or small ofﬁce.
For t hose who need
two-sided output, there’s a
duplexer option ($79.99).
Keep in mind, however, that
the K550 has no network
connection.
HP’s claim that the K550
is the fastest desktop color
printer stretches the truth
only a little. On our business
applications suite, it ﬁnished
i n 9: 08—a record for the
K550’s price class.
Our photo suite provided a
more signiﬁcant challenge to
HP’s speed claim: The print-
er averaged a leisurely 2:43
for each 4-by-6 and 5:42 for
8-by-10 images. That’s an-
other reason why the K550 is
most appropriate in an ofﬁce,
where pr i nt i ng
photos is gener-
ally not an issue or
a necessity.
Overal l output
quality was better
than that of most
ink jets, particularly
for text and graphics.
All but two of our test
fonts were easily read-
able at 4 points.
Graphics quality is as
good as that from any ink
jet we’ve seen. Although
photo printing is the K550’s
weak point, that’s not criti-
cal with a printer intended
primarily for ofﬁce use. More
to the point, the K550 does
enough things well to make
recommending it easy.
HP Ofﬁcejet Pro K550
Color Printer
$199 direct. Hewlett-Packard Develop-
ment Co., www.hp.com. llllm
GET THE OFFICE APPS YOU NEED, minus the aggravation,
with Corel WordPerfect Ofﬁce X3.
THE HP K550 prints high-
quality photos at top speeds.
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 54
F I R S T L O O K S
Software
BY KATHY YAKAL
eBay ProStores 6.0
is a complete solu-
tion for merchants,
offering automated
store creation for be-
ginners and advanced design
tools for the experienced.
Four subscription levels,
from $6.95 monthly for a very
basic ten-product site to a
whopping $249.95 per month
for enterprise-level service,
offer a range of capabilities.
It’s a terrific blend of mer-
chant muscle, conceived and
executed exceptionally well.
We reviewed ProStores
Business, for which the base
cost i s $29.95 per month
and an addition 0. 5 percent
fee for successful transac-
tions. (Current eBay Store
sellers receive a 30 percent
discount). This level is quite
adequate for eBay sellers and
other small companies. It
includes a personalized do-
main, 5GB of storage space,
up to 50GB per month for
data transfer, up to 50 unique
mailboxes, great documenta-
tion, and 24/7 tech support.
Your product catalog can
contain an unlimited num-
ber of items, which can be
listed and cross-sold on eBay.
Shipping integration with
the U.S. Postal Service, UPS,
FedEx, and Canada Post is
built in, as is the ability to
print labels.
Getting up and running is
easy whether you’re starting
from scratch or integrating
an existing Web site. You’ll
find 180 wizard-driven tem-
plates and numerous custom-
ization options. The Design
Studio lets you add and alter
templates and link to other
sites. You can add dazzle
using tools such as Dream-
weaver, Flash, and MP3s.
The Store Admi ni stra-
tion page stores preferences
for billing options, sales-tax
computation, accounti ng
synchronization with Quick-
Books, and the like. It also
lists product details, custom-
er lists, orders, and customiz-
able reports.
Thi s merchant- maker
combi nes the undisputed
power of eBay with a unique
storefront builder and man-
ager. ProStores 6.0 stands
with the best of the storefront
creation applications.
eBay ProStores 6.0
Business edition, $29.95 monthly plus
0.5 percent transaction fee. ProStores
Inc., www.prostores.com. llllh
eBay-ing for Pros
Firebox Is on Guard
BY OLIVER KAVEN
T
he WatchGuard Fire-
box X8000 i s t he
f lagship firewall in
WatchGuard’s Firebox X Peak
line of UTM (Uniﬁed Threat
Management) appliances. It’s
a robust, albeit expensive,
product notable for perfor-
mance; high availability that
includes failover; trafﬁc pri-
oritization and management;
remote connectivity; and
centralized management.
To satisfy businesses in
need of a blazingly fast se-
curity solution, the X8000
provides seven 10/100
Mbps Ethernet interfac-
es and three Gig E ports,
for supporting complex
deployment scenarios
that require individually
controlled network segments
and security zones.
Firewalls in today’s net-
works are the first point of
impact for incoming data
and the gateway to the out-
side world, so most now ﬁlter
out malware and spam. The
X8000 provides security by
integrating a stateful packet
i nspection f i rewal l, VPN
concentrator, application
proxy, AV engine, intrusion
prevention, spam blocking,
and URL ﬁltering.
With Fireware Pro version
8.2, WatchGuard introduced a
new spam-blocking service in
partnership with Commtouch
(www. commt ouch. com),
which doesn’t require signa-
tures to detect junk e-mail.
WatchGuard has expanded
the WebBlocker service to
include 40 filtering catego-
ries and has redesigned the
update engine to perform
incremental upgrades rather
than full downloads. And
Fireware Pro now includes
enhanced protection to block
spyware at the gateway.
The X8000 also provides
enterprise-level features that
will appeal to those manag-
ing complex networks. Multi-
WAN fai l over, dynami c
routing (BGP, OSPF, RIP),
QoS (Quality of Service), and
authentication against Active
Directory and LDAP directo-
ries are only a few examples.
The management interface
remains easy to use despite
the increasing complexity of
the ﬁrmware. Oldies but good-
ies such as the HostWatch
utility and the live-traffic
monitor are still useful.
Unfortunately, few small
and medium-size businesses
will be able to afford the Peak
line of ﬁrewalls. But those on
limited budgets can check
out WatchGuard’s Core line
of appliances. They don’t
provide t he t remendous
throughput, but they include
the same ﬁrmware and many
of the useful features you’ll
ﬁnd in the Firebox X8000.
Firebox X8000
$9,900 direct. WatchGuard Tech-
nologies Inc., www.watchguard.com.
llllm
THE NEW PROSTORES 6.0 offers a complete solution for build-
ing an online store, for both beginners and the more advanced.
THE FIREBOX X8000 is a multi-
talented ﬁrewall that offers remote connectiv-
ity and centralized management of distributed networks.
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 56
brushes simplify complicated editing tasks.
go.pcmag.com/photoshopcs2
FINANCIAL SOFTWARE
Microsoft Money Premium 2006
Microsoft Corp.; $75 street
Thorough setup assistant, excellent
bill-paying tools.
go.pcmag.com/msmoney
HOME NETWORKING
Linksys Wireless-G WRT54G
Linksys; $60 street
Good performance and a solid feature set,
extremely easy to set up.
go.pcmag.com/linksyswrt54g
CONSUMER ELECTRONICS
PORTABLE MEDIA PLAYER (HARD DRIVE)
Archos AV 500
Archos; $499.95 list (30GB)
Great video quality, compact, lightweight,
bright LCD, easy to use.
go.pcmag.com/AV500
DIGITAL CAMERA (COMPACT)
Canon PowerShot S80
Canon U.S.A. Inc.; $549.95 list
Great picture quality, good performance,
wide-angle lens.
go.pcmag.com/S80
MOBILE PHONE (SPRINT)
Sprint’s Power Vision MM-A940
Samsung Electronics America Inc.; $399.99 direct
Vast feature set, optical zoom lens,
Bluetooth, good game performance.
go.pcmag.com/MMA940
MEDIA HUB
Buffalo LinkTheater
Buffalo Technology (USA) Inc.; $299 direct
Broad ﬁle support, moderate price,
relatively easy installation.
go.pcmag.com/LinkTheater
DESKTOP
Dell Dimension E310
Dell Inc.; $746 direct, with 17-inch LCD, $929
Windows XP Media
Center Edition, DataSafe
option for added storage
protection, great bang
for the buck.
go.pcmag.com/dellE310
ALL-IN-ONE PRINTER
Canon Pixma MP500
Canon U.S.A. Inc.; $199.99 direct
Prints, scans, and copies; fast perfor-
mance; excellent paper handling.
go.pcmag.com/CanonPixmaMP500
DEDICATED PHOTO PRINTER
Canon Selphy CP510
Compact Photo Printer
Canon U.S.A. Inc.; $99.99 direct
Fast performance, low running cost, very
good photo quality for the price, battery
option.
go.pcmag.com/canoncp510
LCD MONITOR (21-INCH)
Gateway FPD2185W
Gateway Inc.; $599.99 direct
Excellent image quality, lots of video
connections, highly adjustable.
go.pcmag.com/GatewayFPD2185W
HARD DRIVE
Maxtor OneTouch II
Small Business Edition
(SBE)
Maxtor Corp.; $599.95 direct
Works with Windows 2000/2003
Server and Small Business Server;
unattended backups.
go.pcmag.com/
MaxtorOneTouch IISBE
SOFTWARE
ANTISPYWARE
Spy Sweeper 4.5
Webroot Software Inc.; $25–$30 street
Powerful spyware protection; offers
detailed info about found threats.
go.pcmag.com/spysweeper
PHOTO EDITING (PROFESSIONAL)
Adobe Photoshop CS2
Adobe Systems Inc.; $649 direct
The industry standard; new Vanishing
Point, Smart Objects, and Spot Healing Gateway FPD2185W
Canon
PowerShot S80
PDA
Dell Axim X51v
Dell Inc.; $324 direct
Uses Microsoft Windows 5.0 Mobile; good
value, Wi-Fi networking, good security.
go.pcmag.com/AximX51v
HARDWARE
LAPTOP
Dell Inspiron 6000
(Media Center)
Dell Inc.; $968.80 direct (E-Value Code 1111-i6004pc)
Media Center OS, 15.4-inch widescreen
display, very good performance.
go.pcmag.com/inspiron6000mce
Dell Dimension E310
WHAT TO BUY
57
go.pcmag.com/whattobuy • F I R S T L OOK S
www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 58
OUR WAKE- UP CALL
I just read “The Sorry State of Security” (February 21 cover
story) and I have just three words to say about it: gripping, riv-
eting, outstanding.
Thank you for hitting the nail on the head, ﬁnally. We all
need a wake-up call, and we need it now.
Scott Haggard
MY CREDI T CARD I NFO—WHY?
In your First Looks review of Glide Effortless (February 7,
page 59), Cade Metz describes a new Web portal.
When I began to register for a free subscription, I was re-
quired to ﬁll in credit card details. I became suspicious. Is this
a customary routine in the U.S.? Is it
a way to get credit card info for an ID
theft? Anyway, I stopped the registra-
tion process.
Can you check and report in the
next possible issue if you unknow-
ingly promoted a scam?
Henk Eggens
Yes, Glide is legitimate. But, no, it isn’t
customary for American companies to
ask for credit card numbers when pro-
viding a free service. This is a dumb
move in any country. You weren’t the
only one to balk at that credit card
screen, and after countless complaints, the company is reconsid-
ering its approach. They’d better. Otherwise, this promising ser-
vice (see the letter below) won’t see the light of day.—Cade Metz
I N PRAI SE OF GLI DE
I read your ﬁrst article on Glide a few months ago and signed
up for an account. After using it over a period of several weeks,
I agree with your assessment that it is truly a paradigm shift. I
work on many different computers and need access to ﬁles and
the ability to provide access to these ﬁles to others. The ﬂexibil-
ity that Glide provides to share ﬁles (once you get used to the in-
terface) is amazing. Glide consistently goes a few steps further
than the other online ﬁle management and sharing systems that
I have tried. Glide provides enhanced features, including some
that don’t exist anywhere else that I’m aware of. It’s refreshing
to see a product that provides new possibilities and real value.
Jason Saunders
YAHOO! FOR A CHOI CE
I agree with Lance Ulanoff about Yahoo! (go.pcmag.com/
yahoolefthook). I have never particularly liked Yahoo!, but I am
very glad that there is an alternative to Google. Google is getting
so popular that it has the potential to become dangerous. Al-
ready it controls which Web pages appear ﬁrst in search results,
and it is not just about the merits of that page. Any company
with as much control as Google has over the material the public
reads also has the potential to misuse that control. I suppose
sooner or later, news broadcasts will commonly be streamed
over the Web. That would be similar to the situation that would
exist if one person controlled all the nation’s newspapers. So
three cheers for Yahoo!—or should I just say “Yahoo!”?
Brian Palmer
Glad you agree, Brian. Still, let’s not go overboard and equate
popularity with evil machinations of oligarchic control. Google
is big business because we, the consumers, made it so. And while
its algorithms help popular content bubble up toward the top of
search results, the popularity is driven, again, by us the consum-
ers. In the end, the key to keeping one popular company from
having too much power is creating healthy competition. That’s
something I think Yahoo! is ﬁnally doing.—Lance Ulanoff
SONY’ S HDTV/PVR: A DREAM COME TRUE
I read Jim Louderback’s article about cable DVRs and TiVo
boxes (December 27, page 67). He indicated that the only way
How to Contact Us
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E-MAIL [email protected]. MAIL Feedback, PC Magazine, 28 East 28th
Street, New York, NY 10016-7940.
All letters become the property of PC Magazine and are subject to editing. We
regret that we cannot answer letters individually.
After using Glide for several weeks, I agree with
your assessment that it’s truly a paradigm shift.
‘‘
’’
FEEDBACK
GLIDE REQUIRES that you ﬁll in credit card information to receive a free subscription.
go.pcmag.com/feedback go.pcmag.com/feedback
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 60
When looking for music, I’d like the full version,
not the cut-down version they play on the radio.
Corrections and Ampliﬁcations
In our review of the BitTorrent Client 4.2 (February 7, page 116), we incorrectly stated
that BitTorrent requires JRE (Java Runtime Environment) 1.5. The BitTorrent client does
not require any additional software, Java-related or otherwise.
to record HD programs was by using a TiVo set-top box or a
cable company set-top box. Then I read the letter by Daniel
Riek (Feedback, February 7, page 63). Daniel states “Right now
I don’t think you can record any HD programming with a DVR
that hasn’t been issued by the provider (Cable, DirecTV, Dish)
except for over-the-air signals.”
Well, that’s not true. I’ve owned a Sony HDTV receiver/
DVR set-top box (model DHG-HDD500) since June 2005, and
this baby can indeed do HD recording from over-the-air. It
also can record HD from cable, as long as your cable company
supports CableCard technology. This DVR can receive and re-
cord analog and digital (HD) over-the-air broadcasts. It also
receives and records cable analog and digital (HD) broadcasts.
The cable digital channels (both SD and HD) are enabled using
a CableCard installed by your local cable company. Therefore
you aren’t stuck renting or buying a particular cable company’s
box. If you move to another area serviced by a different cable
company, just install their CableCard in the Sony and you are
all set! The programming is accomplished using the “TV Guide
on Screen” system that is included in many newer TV sets.
The Sony HDTV/PVR is a dream come true for people like
me who get their HD programming from over-the-air and ca-
ble and are not interested in using DirecTV and Dish services.
The Sony HDTV/PVR I own has a 500GB hard drive, but it’s
also available in a 250GB model for about $200 less.
Don Davis
If I hadn’t spent all my money on that HD TiVo, I’d rush to buy one
of those Sony boxes. Sounds like a nice setup.—Jim Louderback
MUSI CMATCH MEETS YAHOO!
I enjoyed Michael Miller’s “More Choices for Digital Music
Fans” (February 7, page 8) and wanted to point out that no
discussion of digital music is complete without a mention of
Musicmatch’s On Demand service, which is now powered by
Yahoo! Music.
I just upgraded to Musicmatch Plus and now subscribe to
its Musicmatch On Demand To Go. With this service, I can not
only add as many tracks or albums as I want from the Yahoo!
collection, but also download unlimited tracks and albums to
my MP3 player! (I use the Dell DJ 20.) The service costs $12 per
month ($120 when billed annually)—but there is no limit to how
many downloads you can take and carry around!
The drawback is that the ﬁles are locked, so you can’t burn
them to CDs—but I’m starting to wonder why I even need CDs
anymore. With my Dell DJ 20, I can carry 1,000 albums in a
cigarette-sized box. I guess we could use our audio CDs for
backups, but then again, we could always re-download them.
In short, this old-school music lover really loves the conve-
nience and economy of getting unlimited albums to download
and carry around. The Musicmatch software is awful, but the
downloaded ﬁles play ﬁne on Windows Media Player.
One last thing—the On Demand To Go service can be used
only with Musicmatch 10.1 or later. This version is difﬁcult to
find—most Google searches will get you only to Version 10
(and that includes going directly to the Musicmatch Web site).
Scott M. Harwood, Jr.
I agree about digital music, but what do you do in your car? Until
a mini-jack comes standard on every car, without CDs you’ll still
be ﬁghting with old technology that delivers subpar results—like
FM transmitters and cassette adapters.—JL
BRI NG BACK OUT- OF- PRI NT SONGS
Your article “Stop the Music” (February 7, page 8) failed to
bring up a very important point. Some of us look for songs that
the recording companies refuse to put out anymore, saying
there is no “real” demand for these songs and that they would
lose money having them in their catalog of music. When look-
ing for music, such as Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” I’d
like the full version, not the cut-down version they play on the
radio. Pay-per sites have small versions of a few vintage songs,
but some of us would like the full-length versions. Their idea
is that if you want the song(s), you’ll pay for what they give
you. So where are we to go but to the peer-to-peer sites?
Will the recording companies or online music stores lose
money by listing songs in different lengths on their sites? No.
Could they make money adding them to their listing? Yes. It
seems the music business has forgotten the old saying con-
sumers live by, “If you don’t have what I want, I’ll go get it
elsewhere.” Once the recording companies change their way
of thinking, realize that consumers will indeed go someplace
else to get what they want, and adjust accordingly, peer-to-
peer might be a thing of the past.
Susan Connors
You are absolutely right. The recording companies seem to be
getting it—albeit slowly. Universal Music, for example, just an-
nounced that it would bring back more than 100,000 songs from
its out-of-print catalog. Others, I’m sure, will follow suit. —JL
‘‘
’’
FEEDBACK
go.pcmag.com/feedback
61 www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE
W
eb 2.0 is the latest moniker in an
endless effort to reignite the dot-
com mania of the late 1990s. This
one seems to be succeeding. The
problem is that little has changed.
Bad ideas of the past have been renamed and spiffed
up. We’re watching a classic example of “old wine in
new bottles”: Changing the label doesn’t make the
wine any better, but it does get us to buy more wine.
Here’s what’s really happening. Some trends that
were knocked for a loop by the dot-com bust, such as
online retailing, rebounded without anyone resort-
ing to smoke and mirrors. Their growth is steady,
and their future seems rosy. But the fallout from
the dot-com bust sidetracked many other trends.
The assertions of Web 2.0’s promoters, a welter of
catchy, impressive-sounding phrases, seem nothing
more than a rehash of those failed digital panaceas.
Self-service. Perhaps the inventors of Web 2.0
don’t realize what the real trends are, because lost
amid the buzzwords and highfalutin conferences is
the reality that what people are actually doing on-
line is built around the concept of using the Web to
do things yourself. That has been the main thrust
of the Internet since its inception. Since simplicity
(the core idea underlying self-service) is not a mon-
eymaker, this idea is lost in a fog of terms such as
“participation architecture,” “play-enabling,” “rich
experience,” “user-contributed folksonomy,” “hack-
ability,” and “user remixability.” But it’s all evolu-
tion, not the revolution the cheerleaders promote.
This lingo makes no sense to anyone not caught
up in the dream. The real dream, by the way, is to
get rich quick without doing any real work—except
maybe writing some code once. For programmers,
this dream dates back to 1981, the start of an era in
which coders could be prima donnas, get away with
it, and walk away wealthy.
Greed factor. During the late 1990s, the golden
ring slipped just past the grip of a lot of wannabes,
who are convinced that they can do it right this time
around—if only there is another dot-com surge.
Web 2.0 is a rallying point. Maybe cheerleading will
make it happen! But what they are cheerleading for,
a slew of vague and meaningless concepts, shows
that they have no clue about what they are doing.
These newest initiatives indeed stem from 1999
concepts, just as if there had never been a dot-com
bust. I’ll let you in on a Silicon Valley secret. Ac-
cording to local lore, the dot-com bust had nothing
to do with the stupidity or greed of Web mavens
and MBAs. It was the fault of Enron, MCI, and bone-
headed venture capitalists. The push to pursue the
same notions is based on the misguided belief that
there was no failure in the ﬁrst place. Wild, eh?
The growth of Web-related enterprise is chug-
ging along, though without the ﬁnancial craziness
of the late 1990s. Perhaps things are better without
all that money (ducking thrown cabbage). Except
for those losing out on that get-rich-quick scheme.
Efﬁciency. As I see it, the impetus behind Web
2.0 is the drive to make the do-it-yourself Internet
more efficient. And this is what is mostly over-
looked by the folks who hope to create a new dot-
com boom by promoting excitement about Web
2.0. Take Wikipedia (please!)—which is made pos-
sible by the do-it-yourself nature of the Web. The
self-service that was supposed to change the way
people do business has extended into everything
online, from the Wiki encyclopedia that “writes
itself” to blogging and podcasting, where people
make their own newspapers and broadcasts, to so-
cial networking systems, where people ﬁnd dates.
Yet remember that podcasting is an evolution of the
streaming media and webcasting of the late 1990s.
Critics of self-service ideas such as blogging
will tell you that they can’t replace operations such
as The New York Times for news gathering, but so
what? A combined million blogs sure can. Not only
is blogging do-it-yourself in nature, but so is ﬁnd-
ing and following your favorite blogs. Both blogs
and old media have their rightful place on the Net.
As I read the Web 2.0 blather, I rarely ﬁnd anyone
who understands that self-service is the real focus
of the profound changes in how the Web has been
used in the past few years. Instead, some see these
changes in utopian terms. Web 2.0 conferences ﬁll
up with high and mighty speakers pontificating
about a Brave New World where everything is cool
and you can share photos and download music!
They don’t get it. The latest buzzwords just cap-
ture an idea that has been passed along for decades:
“If you want something done right, do it yourself.”
Welcome to Web 2.0. You’re on your own!
John C. Dvorak
Web 2.0 Baloney
The push to pursue
the same notions as
before the dot-com
bust is based on the
misguided belief that
there was no failure
in the ﬁrst place.
MORE ON THE WEB: Read John C. Dvorak’s column
every Monday at go.pcmag.com/dvorak. You can
reach him directly at [email protected].
www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 63
J OHN C. DVORAK
Inside Track
H
ere Comes the Era of the CMS Dept.: One of
the most popular emerging applications is
the CMS or content management system.
These are programs that first emerged as
expensive and elaborate high-end systems to manage
the content of large organizations, especially infor-
mational Web sites such as PCMag.com or the Wall
Street Journal’s site, WSJ.com.
A basic CMS system typically consists of a back
end, into which content is loaded, and a front end,
which displays the content to the end user. Both
ends can vary greatly in complexity. Many people
don’t realize that the reason for blogging’s success
stems from the development of popular CMS sys-
tems that anyone can use. Back in the late 1990s,
only a few CMS systems were commercially avail-
able, and most content management was done on a
custom basis.
Then along came blogging, which started by
using a scaled-down CMS system (the simple
Blogger.com hosted application). As blogging
evolved and added new features, more advanced
CMS systems were developed. Recent systems are
extremely powerful and can be used for all sorts of
purposes besides blogging. Some of these systems,
such as WordPress, still promote themselves pri-
marily as blogging applications, and others, such
as Drupal, are promoted as CMSs. In fact, blogging
software is CMS software that simply targets a
market. WordPress can be used for many different
kinds of projects.
Once you learn a CMS system, it will become
your fastest way to deploy a complex, professional-
looking Web site. I’d advise people interested in
using CMS software to use their search engines
to see what’s out there. A quick look at the CMS
world reveals over 150 systems available for ex-
perimentation, most of them free systems evolving
from open-source development. It’s amazing what
you can get for nothing.
My current favorite CMS systems are Word-
Press, Mambo, and Joomla (a Mambo spinoff cre-
ated by Mambo’s former development team, which
became disgruntled and split off ). My Dvorak
Uncensored blog uses WordPress. Two other sys-
tems that have good reputations are Drupal and
e107. Just know that there are plenty for you to
choose from.
Typically, the open-source systems are server-
side Linux applications and require recent ver-
sions of the PHP script compiler as well as MySQL.
It’s quite interesting how the majority of CMS apps
have gravitated to the so-called LAMP platform
(Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP).
If you have never used even the most basic
CMS, I’d advise starting a simple blog on any of the
free hosted services. Blogger.com, now owned by
Google, is as good as any. There you’ll experience
one of the fundamental systems and a generalized
model for CMS data entry. Once you learn how to
use that, you can graduate to the more complicated
systems such as Mambo or Joomla.
Many small ISPs and hosting services already
have many of these CMS systems on their servers.
Often all it takes is a request to load a copy into your
site’s directories, and then you’re on your way.
Say It Isn’t So Dept.: Here’s a real head-slapper.
Microsoft is making noise about doing an iPod de-
vice—an MP3 player. Why? The only thing I can
ﬁgure is that Microsoft, like most big companies,
is a creature of habit. It knows that when it com-
petes against Apple, it not only wins, but wins big.
I’m guessing that some executive took a look at the
iPod’s 80 percent market share and the massive
revenues from the device and just assumed that by
copying the idea, Microsoft will get all that money
in no time. Crazy.
If the company goes ahead with this plan, I as-
sume the player will be done by the competent
team doing the Xbox 360 and will become a periph-
eral to that device. The Xbox 360 already has a
hookup so that an iPod can play music in the back-
ground through the Xbox sound system.
Obituaries Dept.: Apparently Sony has killed off
the cute and moderately popular AIBO robot dog.
When the company lost $10 billion last year, some-
one had to look for scapegoats, and apparently the
dog was it. Though the cybercanine was hardly a
massive proﬁt center, it did give the company some
sorely needed cachet. Sony will still manufacture
the AIBO for a while, but development has ceased.
With even less fanfare, the Western Union
Company announced that it will no longer do tele-
grams. STOP. When I first heard this I realized
that it was the end of an era. STOP. But that era
was over so long ago that I’m certain nobody read-
ing this gets the “STOP” gag. Telegrams probably
reached their zenith as a form of communication
in the 1930s and 1940s. Once long-distance phone
calling went worldwide, there was no reason to
use a telegram.
That said, if Western Union had a real clue, it
would have publicized the demise of the telegram
in advance and let people send themselves a mes-
sage for old times’ sake before shutting down the
service. I would have sent a few, just to have a sou-
venir of a dead but once crucially important indus-
try. Too late now. Dummies.
Once you
learn a CMS
system, it
will become
your fastest
way to deploy
a complex,
professional-
looking Web
site.
www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZI NE 65
Y
ou’re too smart to be sucked in by those
eBay scammers with zero feedback or
too-good-to-be-true offerings. You know
your way around PayPal; you know your
rights as a buyer, and you know how to be
a good seller. So do I. You see an opportunity, you
bid aggressively, do a little last-minute sniping,
win your prize. So did I—or so I thought.
DAMAGED IN TRANSIT
I saw a really nice Fender Blues Junior guitar
ampliﬁer on eBay, an early one with a tweed fab-
ric covering instead of the usual black vinyl. The
tweed amps fetch a premium, and I got this one for
a little less than the going rate. I love these amps,
and modifying them is a hobby. I had dreams of
making this one into a smooth, warm, jazz amp.
UPS delivered the amp, but when it arrived my
heart sank. Before I even opened the box, I could
see the large gash in the corner—it looked as if
someone had taken a swing at it with an ax. The
cut went through the cardboard, through the bub-
ble wrap, into the corner of the amp, through the
tweed, and into the wood. The amp was insured,
however, and it could be repaired. I checked the
UPS site, which stated that UPS preferred that the
damage claim be ﬁled by the shipper. I contacted
the seller, who ﬁled the claim. UPS wanted to in-
spect the amp; a driver picked it up from me and
gave me a receipt.
IT’S ALL SETTLED . . . OR IS IT?
That was the last I saw of the amp. After a couple
of weeks, I contacted UPS via e-mail, and the cus-
tomer service rep sent back a terse note saying
that the matter had been settled with the shipper,
and that I should take it up with the shipper if I
wanted more information. I e-mailed the seller,
who claimed that he hadn’t heard a thing. Uh-oh,
was I being scammed?
I went back to the UPS rep, who reiterated—in
a stop-bugging-me tone—that the matter had been
settled with the shipper. Then the light bulb went
on. The seller had sent the amp from a local store
that did UPS shipping. I contacted the UPS rep
one more time, and he ﬁnally made it clear that as
far as UPS was concerned, the store, not the seller,
was the shipper. Never mind that I’d paid for the
shipping and insurance, and that I’d paid for the
amp and it was my property. What had the UPS
people done with the amp? They’d sent it back . . .
to the shipper.
I got in touch with the seller, who tried to
reach the shipper, but the shipper had, rather
inconveniently, gone out of business a day or two
after my amp arrived. So there the amp sat, in a
closed store. Over the next couple of days, I tracked
down and talked to both the seller and the store
owner, and they promised to do their best to get the
amp back to me. And that’s where it still sits, seven
weeks later, half a country away.
If I had had any idea that UPS was going to
hijack my amp and send it back to the shipper,
without ever clarifying who they considered the
shipper to be, I would never have released it to
them. Not that I could have imagined the store
would go out of business, but since I had pur-
chased the amp—and had paid the shipping and
insurance fees—it was and still is my property,
and to send it back to him was to burden him and
cheat me. All I can do is hope that the shipper is
a decent guy, business setback notwithstanding,
and that he resends it to me. Heck, I’d even pay the
shipping again at this point. But I’m both bafﬂed
and annoyed by UPS’s position—never mind the
snarky attitude—that its resolution of the claim
was none of my business.
LIVE AND LEARN
Although I thought I was wise in the ways of on-
line auctions, I’ve learned an important lesson:
The buyer and seller can consummate a mutually
satisfactory transaction, all the eBay and PayPal
stuff can go smoothly, and you can still ﬁnd your-
self screwed over by as seemingly benign an en-
tity as UPS.
I’ve subsequently heard stories of UPS paying
insurance claims, taking possession of the mer-
chandise, and disposing of it through a broker. It
then often winds up on eBay again. Meanwhile,
I don’t seem to be the payee of the insurance in
UPS’s eyes, and I’d hate to wind up buying the
darn thing again. What can Brown do for you?
Don’t ask.
What Brown Did for Me
MORE ON THE WEB: You can contact Bill Machrone at
[email protected]. For more of his col-
umns, go to go.pcmag.com/machrone.
I’m both bafﬂed and
annoyed by UPS’s
position—never mind
the snarky attitude—
that its resolution of
the claim was none
of my business.
Bill Machrone
D
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PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 68
C
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T
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a
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Make a list of all the tech tasks you’ll want to do on
your trip, starting with: checking e-mail, editing
documents, making phone calls, watching DVDs. Then
gather the equipment needed. Check that your hardware
has all the software you’ll need.

If you’re taking a digital camera, round up your
memory cards (and ofﬂoad old photos).

Take the ﬁles you’ve put on your ﬂash drive and
e-mail them to an account you’ve created on a
Web-based service such as Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo! Mail.
Now, even if you lose your laptop and your ﬂash drive, your
content is safe on an easily accessible server.

Connect all your devices before you pack. This will
ensure that you haven’t forgotten any necessary
cables—which can be expensive, inconvenient, or down-
right impossible to replace on the road.

Before your trip, cycle—charge, use, and charge
again—all your batteries in the gear you’ll be tak-
ing. Battery life dwindles over time, so avoid surprises: It’s
always easier to buy a new battery before you leave town.

Set an auto-respond message for your e-mail, so
people don’t think you’re ignoring them.

Sync your PDA with a computer you’re leaving
behind. If your PDA goes AWOL, your data won’t.

Make a list of everything you’ve packed and store it
on your PDA, your computer, and in your desk drawer.
It’ll save you time when you pack for your next trip.
1Lenovo ThinkPad Z60t (page 78) 2Phone line Y-connector 3Ethernet cable 4SanDisk Cruzer Proﬁle (USB thumb drive) 5palmOne Treo 650 (Cingular/GSM) (with Treo
TripKit) (page 71) 6Epson P-4000 Photo Viewer (page 71) 7Garmin nüvi 350 (page 72) 8Extra SD cards 9ZipLinq phone extension cable – Dell Axim X51v (page 74) !Ulti-
mate Ears super.ﬁ 5Pro (page 71) @DVDs for ﬂight #Nikon D50 (page 72) $ZyAIR AG-225H Wi-Fi ﬁnder & USB adapter (page 76) %Apple iPod 30GB (with video) (page 72) ^
APC Universal Plug Adapter &Extra laptop battery *IOGear USB 2.0 Hub & Card Reader (page 78) (APC TravelCase Roller (page 72) )Power strip with 6-foot cable
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 70
Predeparture Checklist
Avoid that sinking feeling of arriving at your destination only to realize that
you left your notebook’s power supply on the kitchen table.—ALAN COHEN
The Ideal
Travel Bag
The Ideal
Travel Bag
What you should pack
depends on where you’re
going, what you’re doing
there, and how long you
plan to stay. Still, there’s
some gear we’d take any-
where—a laptop, a camera,
an MP3 player. Here’s a
visual guide to the stuff we
wouldn’t leave home with-
out. For some of them, page
numbers indicate where
you’ll ﬁnd the minireviews
later in this story.—SC
1
3
2
5
6
7
9
–
#
8
$
%
^
&
4
*
@
(
)
!
Essential
Gear
Some of our favorite products—
road-tested, PC Magazine Labs approved.
Canon PowerShot
SD550 Digital Elph
Looking for something a bit smaller
than a D-SLR? The 7.1-megapixel
Canon PowerShot SD550 Digi-
tal Elph measures 3.5 by 2.2 by
1.0 inches and weighs only 8
ounces. At $449.95 list, it’s a bit
pricey, but it includes a 2.5-inch
LCD display, and it takes good
photos in almost any situation.
www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 71
Creative TravelDock 900
Ever get tired of headphones?
On your next road trip, pack the
Creative Travel Dock 900 ($79.99
direct), a wonderfully adept portable
speaker set for your portable music
player. It weighs little more than 9
ounces, folds up into a package the
size of a sunglasses case, and gives
you 32 hours of playback time.
(The player is not included.)
Epson P-4000
The one-pound Epson
P-4000 multimedia
photo viewer is an
excellent photo and
video viewer with
camera ofﬂoading
abilities and 80GB
of storage space.
The image quality is
breathtaking, and the
viewer is very easy to
use. You can display
slide shows on-screen
and with A/V output that
produces a clear, stable
picture. The P-4000
is a pricey addition to
your suitcase, though,
at $699.99 (direct).
Ultimate Ears super.ﬁ 5Pro
Prefer earbud-style earphones to traditional headphones? You can
still cancel out a fair amount of ambient noise. We recommend the
Ultimate Ears super.ﬁ 5Pro, “in-canal” phones that use silicon and
foam tips to seal out unwanted sound. They don’t work quite as well as
true noise-canceling headphones, but they certainly make for a more
enjoyable listening experience. The rub? A $249.99 (list) price tag.
palmOne Treo 650 (Cingular/GSM)
Why carry a cell phone and a PDA when you can hit the road
with the palmOne Treo 650? Combining the two devices
in a single, svelte package, the Treo includes a gorgeous
320-by-320 screen, a backlit keyboard, and a speedy
312-MHz processor. Palm offers four versions of the
device (from $299, depending on the provider and deal).
T
H
E

W
E
L
L
-
C
O
N
N
E
C
T
E
D

T
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A
V
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L
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T
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W
E
L
L
-
C
O
N
N
E
C
T
E
D

T
R
A
V
E
L
E
R
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 72
Archos AV 500
Equipped with a
4-inch widescreen
LCD, the Archos AV 500
($499.95 direct for the
30GB model, $699.95
for 100GB) is perfect
for watching video on
the plane; and when
you hit your hotel room,
you can plug into the TV
and watch from there.
Much like the iPod,
the Archos AV plays
digital songs and stores
other types of ﬁles.
Nikon D50
Whatever your destination, you can’t leave home without a
digital camera. Our favorite consumer digital SLR is the Nikon
D50 ($849.95 list). It’s surprisingly light (1 pound, 3 ounces),
yet it has a 6.1MP sensor and a built-in ﬂash. If you opt for the
two-lens kit—18–55mm and 55–200mm Zoom Nikkor lenses
—you expand your total optical zoom range to more than 10X.
APC TravelCase Roller
Not only will the APC
Travel Case Roller ($89.99
list) keep your computer
safe, it’ll also keep it juiced
up. The Travel Case has plenty
of space for gadgets, which
you can charge three at a
time via airplane, auto, or
AC power outlets. The
large, well-padded bag has
abundant pockets and
compartments and a
removable slim case and
sleeve. It comes in black
and ﬁts notebooks with
15.4-inch or smaller screens.
RIM BlackBerry 8700c
It’s a cell phone with Web access,
PDA apps, and, most important,
e-mail. With its beautiful high-res
color screen, Cingular’s RIM
BlackBerry 8700c ($349.99)
makes it easier than ever to
read messages. You can open
attachments and even zoom
in on JPEGs. And thanks to its
effective keyboard, sending
messages is nearly as easy.
Garmin nüvi 350
The 5-ounce Garmin nüvi 350
($900 street) is the ﬁrst GPS
unit powered by the SIRFstar III
GPS. The 350 ﬁxes its location
extremely quickly, and can do
so even among the skyscrapers
of Manhattan, and even under
construction scaffolding.
Apple iPod
When you hit the road, there’s no better entertainment device than
the Apple iPod. The latest version ($299 direct for the 30GB size,
$399 for 60GB) handles video as well as digital songs. What you
may not realize is that it’s also a great way to carry all sorts of other
ﬁles. After all, an iPod is little more than a souped-up hard drive.
Mobile Edge Green
Faux-Croc TechStyle Portfolio
Looking for something sleeker? This little
number ($49.99 direct) is a favorite. It’s
nicely padded and lightweight, and you’re
unlikely to accidentally grab someone
else’s similar-looking case. It’s avail-
able in black, pink, or yellow as well.
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 74
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The editor-in-chief
of PC Magazine,
as well as the
editorial direc-
tor for Ziff Davis’s Consumer/Small
Business Group, Jim lives in Cali-
fornia. Many of the people he man-
ages work in New York, so he
spends a lot of time on the road.

Age: 43
Residence: Paciﬁca, California
Occupation: Editor-in-chief,
PC Magazine
Days on the road last year: 100
Essential gadgets: Creative MP3 Player
and noise-canceling headphones
Next gadget: Cellular Internet card
Last city visited: Los Angeles
Next trip: New York
Favorite airline: Virgin, Upper
Class; Song for coach
JIM LOUDERBACK, EDITOR
Option Wireless GT Max
Option’s new PC Card for Cingular’s high-speed HSDPA network
lets you roam at top speed around the world. In 16 U.S. cities (more
coming), it blazes at around 600 Kbps. In more than a dozen other
countries, you get speeds up to 384 Kbps, and elsewhere in the U.S.
and the world, it runs up to 150 Kbps. Pricing wasn’t set at press time.
Bag
Search
Dell Axim X51v
So you need a PDA on
the road, and you might
play a few games, too.
Look no further than
the Dell Axim X51v
($399 direct), a Win-
dows Mobile handheld
with hardware-based
graphics accelera-
tion. Intel’s 2700G 3D
graphics accelerator
and a VGA screen
brings desktop-level
graphics to games and
videos. Dell bundles
several games, includ-
ing a 3D minigolf title.
Altec Lansing AHP712i
The Altec Lansing AHP712i noise-canceling headphones
($149.95 list) may not produce sound accurate
enough for the most discerning audiophile, but these
lightweight headphones do provide pleasing sound
and feel great to wear even for extended periods
—a must for serious travelers. They cancel about
17 db of noise—whether it’s planes, trains, or
automobiles—while introducing only minimal hiss.
PlusTek OpticSlim
If you need a portable scanner,
pick one that emphasizes
portability: the PlusTek
OpticSlim ($129 direct). It
doesn’t come with great OCR
software, but you can still
scan in all sorts of documents
and ditch all the paper you
might accumulate at, say,
a trade show.
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1IBM ThinkPad X40 2MagicaLink retractable USB cable 3Creative Zen MicroPhoto 4Handspring Treo 650 5Mini Maglite ﬂashlight 6Apple iPod
shufﬂe 7 SD card 8 Extra battery for Zen Micros 9 Sennheiser PXC 250 noise-canceling headphones – Nintendo DS ! Memorex M-Flyer 1GB USB
key @Creative Zen Micro #Extra battery for ThinkPad
OUR CONTRIBUTORS: Cade Metz is PC Magazine’s senior writer, and Ben Z. Gottesman is editor, technology. John C. Dvorak and Bill
Howard are contributing editors, and Sascha Segan is a PC Magazine Labs lead analyst. Nathan Edwards is an editorial intern. Alan Cohen
is a frequent contributor. Features editors Sean Carroll and Sarah Pike and executive editor Carol L. Gonsher were in charge of this story.
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 76
Wi-Fi Finders
The Linksys WUSFBF54G
Wireless-G USB Network Adapter
with Wi-Fi Finder, Trendnet
TEW-429UB 54Mbps 802.11g
Wireless USB 2.0 Adapter with
HotSpot Detector, and ZyAIR
AG-225H Wi-Fi Finder & USB
Adapter ﬁnd Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g)
hot spots—even with your laptop
turned off! These devices tell
you the name, strength, and
encryption levels of all found
networks, and—if you don’t
already have a wireless card—
can be used to connect to them
via your USB port. All three
performed well, but they all have
quirks: The Linksys ($89.99 list)
performed fastest but doesn’t
distinguish between WPA and
WEP encryption. The Trendnet
($67.99 direct) doesn’t detect
802.11a networks. And the
ZyAIR ($80 street) is slow but
offers Mac OS X drivers.
Sprint PPC-6700
The Palm Treo 650 is our favorite
PDA-cell phone combo, but the
Sprint PPC-6700 isn’t far behind.
Though it weighs but 6.1 ounces,
this Windows Mobile device (from
$449.99, depending on deals)
includes EV-DO high-speed
wireless access and local area
Wi-Fi, and its keyboard compares
with any we’ve ever used.
Palm TX
Prefer the Palm OS to Win-
dows Mobile? Better act
fast. Now that Palm’s in bed
with Microsoft, the TX
may be the last of the
Palm OS handhelds, and
it’s a beauty. Equipped
with a 320-by-480 screen,
it’s perfect for surﬁng
the Web and reading
documents. And at $299,
it may be the cheapest
PDA that offers
built-in Wi-Fi.
Mobility Electronics
iGo everywhere130
The Mobility Electronics
iGo everywhere130 ($149.99
direct) is about the size of your
laptop’s power brick, but it
will charge your laptop from
a standard AC, airplane, or
auto power source. And with
the included iGo dualpower
accessory, it’ll charge a
second device at the
same time. You will need
a compatible power tip
(about $10) for each
gadget. The unit comes
with several notebook tips.
Think Outside
Stowaway Travel Mouse
Hit the road with the $79.99
(list) Think Outside Stowaway
Travel Mouse, and even your
PDA will feel a lot like a desktop.
The Think Outside connects
to your PDA wirelessly via
Bluetooth, letting you navigate
your display without picking up
a stylus. Don’t carry a PDA? You
can also use it with a laptop.
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www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 77
This DJ and
producer runs
SAW.Recordings
and plays clubs
around the world. His latest album,
Renaissance Presents 3D, a 3-CD set,
was released in February. Check him
out at www.satoshitomiie.com.
Age: 39
Residence: New York City
Occupation: DJ/producer/
record label owner
Days on the road last year: 200+
Essential gadgets: 17-inch Apple
Power Book, Shure E3 in-ear earphones
Next gadget: Music controller
Last city visited: Naples, Italy
Next trip: London, then on tour
throughout Europe, Asia, Australia.
Favorite airline: ANA; Virgin
117-inch Apple PowerBook 2LaCie Mobile Hard Drive, design by F.A. Porsche; 100GB 5,400-rpm 3Panasonic PS06iC phone (Japanese) 4Sony Ericsson
Akono Headset HBH-662 5 Sony Ericsson W800i Walkman phone 6 Mini Maglite ﬂashlight 7 PhilipsGoGear HDD120 20GB MP3 player/recorder
8Shure E3 sound-isolating earphones with custom earpiece 9Elecom travel mouse (Japanese) –Carabiner ﬂashlight !4GB iPod nano @Audio
interface: Digidesign Mbox #AirPort Express Base Station
SATOSHI TOMIIE, DISC JOCKEY
Bag
Search
HP Photosmart 475
GoGo Photo Printer
Bringing a digital camera?
Why wait till you get home
to print out pics? If you don’t
mind carrying 3.3 pounds
more, the HP Photosmart
475 GoGo Photo Printer
($279 direct) ink jet is an
impressive take-along. It
prints great 5-by-7 pictures
reasonably fast (don’t get
them wet, however; they
aren’t waterproof), and has a
1.5GB internal drive and
a direct connection for
watching slide shows on TV.
Pentax OptioWP
& Optio WPi
Imagine you’re in a swimming pool, taking
video clips of your kids, when one of them
dives under, and you follow, ﬁlming all the
way. The ultracool ability to shoot underwater
photos and video clips is available on the
new Pentax 5MP OptioWP and 6MP OptioWPi
digital cameras. Despite some limitations, these
amphibians make shooting underwater easy
and fun. Street price is around $350—and no
expensive underwater housing is needed.
D-Link AirPlus
G DWL-G730AP
Wireless Pocket
Router
Yes, they even make
wireless routers for
the road. The D-Link
AirPlus ($59.99
direct) measures 3.3
by 2.5 by 0.7 inches,
and it works just like
any other wireless
router. And with a
ﬂip of the switch,
you can turn it into
a wireless access
point (for serving up
a wireless network)
or a wireless client
(for connecting to an
existing network).

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PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 78
Lenovo ThinkPad Z60t
There’s no laptop we’d rather take on the road than
the Lenovo ThinkPad Z60t ($1,099 to $2,149 direct,
depending on conﬁguration). A brilliant 14- or 15-inch
widescreen, EV-DO broadband for connectivity
anywhere, an optional titanium case ($25 extra),
a battery that lasts about 4.5 hours, and a sturdy
keyboard make this 5.1-pound package a great
choice for the traveler.
Kyocera KPC650
The fastest high-speed cellular card
we’ve tested, the Kyocera KPC650
(Verizon Wireless; $99.99 with two-
year contract; $79.99 per month) will
keep your laptop connected on the
road. We surfed at average speeds of
700 Kbps on Verizon’s network, which
already covers over 170 major cities.
This electrical
engineer turned
patent attorney
specializes in
semiconductor patents for one
of the largest IP law ﬁrms in the
country. His current focus is
business method patents. He
travels back East about once a week.

Age: 48
Residence: Rancho Santa Fe, California
Occupation: Patent Attorney,
Fish & Richardson PC
Days on the road last year: 80+
Essential gadgets: laptop, BlackBerry
Next gadget: supermicro laptop
Last city visited: Washington
Next trip: Dallas
Favorite airline: United
SCOTT HARRIS, ATTORNEY
IOGear USB 2.0 Hub & Card Reader
You can carry around yards of cables to con-
nect all your equipment, or you can buy a USB
hub and card reader to connect everything
together. We suggest the lightweight, elegant
IOGear USB 2.0 Hub & Card Reader ($59.95
list), which has six USB hubs and reader
slots for all six major media-card formats.
ABSmini Automatic
Backup System 40GB
Call for backup: At 40GB, the
stylish ABSmini ($259 direct)
has enough room to back up your
essential ﬁles, yet slips easily into
a pocket or laptop bag. Included
BounceBack Express and Copy2Go
backup software help ensure your
data won’t be lost if your
laptop goes south.
Bag
Search
1Sony VAIO VGN-T250 2Arcos ArcDisk20GB hard drive Sony USM-2550 256MB USB 2.0 memory key 4Magellan RoadMate 760 5Sony ICD-BMI voice
recorder 6Apple iPod mini 4GB 7iPod mini travel charger 8Sony Digital Data Viewer DD-IC50 Japanese to English translator 9Extra battery for DSC-T33
–Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T33 !Sony VCT-MTK Portable Tripod Travel Kit @Extra batteries #Motorola V265 cell phone (Verizon) $RIM BlackBerry 6230 %
Maglite Solitaire ^Sony VAIO VGP-BPS3 rechargeable battery pack &Atkins Advantage Chocolate Delight shake *Sony VAIO 11-Mbps Wireless LAN PC Card
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The Best
Connected
Airlines
Air travel has long been a screwy business: Where
else does the same ticket cost $300 on Monday and $1,100 on
Thursday? Today, while airlines save money by taking olives
out of salads, they’re spending big to bring high-tech entertain-
ment—and even broadband—to the main cabin. So far it’s been
non-U.S. airlines offering on-board (and expensive) Wi-Fi, but
domestic carriers Continental and JetBlue now provide free Wi-
Fi on the ground. Whichever airline you ﬂy, ﬁnd out what kind
of plane you’ll be on, and check SeatGuru.com to ﬁnd the best
seats for comfort, entertainment, and power.—Alan Cohen
www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 79
AIRLINE TECH AMENITIES IN-FLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT
Continental Airlines
www.continental.com
n
EmPower outlets (adapter required) at all business-class seats and
several rows at the front of the coach cabin on 767 and 777 aircraft
n
Free Wi-Fi in all 27 airport clubrooms.
n
No on-board Wi-Fi.
n
Personal video monitors on all 767 and 777 aircraft: 16 video channels
(movies and TV) in business class; 8 in coach; 10 video games. Some
aircraft offer no video programming.
n
Up to 20 audio channels available, depending on aircraft.
Delta Airlines
www.delta.com
n
EmPower outlets (adapter required) at all business-class and most
economy seats on 777, 767-400, and 737-800 aircraft. Adapters sold
on ﬂights to/from Brazil, Chile, Europe, India, and Japan.
n
Most airport clubrooms offer fee-based Wi-Fi.
n
No on-board Wi-Fi.
n
Some aircraft have in-seat video monitors; others (generally short-
haul routes) offer no programming at all.
n
On long-range ﬂights, coach passengers may have up to 12 movies
and TV programs to choose from and 10 audio channels.
n
Business-class passengers may get 7–8 video titles, 10 audio channels.
Japan Airlines
www.jal.com
n
AC outlets (no adapter required) at all ﬁrst- and business-class seats.
n
On some aircraft, ﬁrst- and business-class passengers can borrow
laptop batteries for use during the ﬂight.
n
On-board Wi-Fi being rolled out: $29.95 for 6-hour+ ﬂights; $19.95
for shorter ﬂights; $9.95 for 30 minutes’ access, $0.25 per minute
thereafter. Free onboard Wi-Fi access to airline’s Web portal, which
provides ﬂight information, some games, and JAL-speciﬁc content.
n
MAGIC entertainment system (not available on every aircraft) offers
each passenger a personal video monitor with 21 video channels, 17
audio channels (with content including rakugo—traditional Japanese
comic monologues), and video games (selection varies by aircraft).
JetBlue Airways
www.jetblue.com
n
Free Wi-Fi throughout JetBlue departure gates at New York’s JFK
airport and Long Beach, California airport.
n
No onboard Wi-Fi
n
36 channels of DirecTV programming at every seat. On 2 hour+
ﬂights, ﬁrst-run and classic movies from Fox InFlight Premium
Entertainment available for $5 (free on some Caribbean routes)

.
n
Aircraft upgraded in late 2005 to offer 100-plus channels of XM
Satellite Radio at every seat.
Lufthansa
www.lufthansa.com
n
AC outlets (no adapter required) at all ﬁrst- and business-class seats.
n
On-board Wi-Fi being rolled out: $29.95 for 6-hour+ ﬂights; $19.95 for
shorter ﬂights; $9.95 for 30 minutes’ access, then $0.25 per minute.
Free on-board Wi-Fi access to airline’s Web portal, with news, travel
information, and some shopping features.
n
Fee-based Wi-Fi being rolled out in airport clubrooms.
n
On long-haul ﬂeet, now rolling out Lufthansa Media World in ﬁrst and
business class: Personal monitors with 21 video channels (movies and
TV), 23 audio channels, 9 video games, and language-study courses.
Coach passengers get 1–3 movies, depending on the route, and 23
audio channels.
Northwest Airlines
www.nwa.com
n
AC outlets (no adapter required) at all business-class seats on select
aircraft. New A330 aircraft offer AC outlets for the front half of coach.
n
Web site for wireless PDAs and BlackBerry devices (wireless.nwa.com);
users can book ﬂights, check ﬂight status, and rebook canceled trips.
n
No onboard Wi-Fi.
n
Varies. Older jets may offer no video programming, while newer ones
boast multiple video and audio channels. Personal video monitors
with 10 channels and games in business class on 747-400 aircraft.
On the A330 jet, all seats have these amenities.
n
Noise-canceling headphones in business class; standard ones in coach.
Singapore Airlines
www.singaporeair.com
n
AC outlets (no adapter required) at all ﬁrst- and business-class seats
on select 747 and 777 aircraft (plus “executive economy” seats on
all A340 aircraft). Other aircraft may use DC outlets, which require
adapters.
n
Onboard Wi-Fi being rolled out: $29.95 for 6-hour+ ﬂights; $19.95 for
shorter ﬂights; $9.95 for 30 minutes’ access, then $0.25 per minute.
Four channels of live TV via laptop included with Wi-Fi fee.
n
Varies depending on aircraft, though all seats on all jets have
personal video monitors. The most advanced system has on-demand
entertainment, with up to 60 movies, 100 TV programs, 225 music
CDs, 91 video games, 12 audio channels, interactive instruction in 22
languages, and live text news.
Virgin Atlantic
www.virginatlantic.com
n
EmPower outlets (adapter required) at all business-class seats and at
premium-economy (full fare) seats on some aircraft.
n
Fee-based Wi-Fi available in airport clubrooms; Gatwick (London)
lounge has PlayStation and Xbox game consoles.
n
No onboard Wi-Fi.
n
Personal video monitors in all classes on all aircraft; programming
differs depending jet’s entertainment system. Best bet: Virgin’s v:port
system, with over 300 hours of on-demand video, 14 audio channels,
a jukebox with over 50 CDs, audio books, children’s programming, a
search tool, and SMS messaging to devices back on the ground. Other
aircraft offer 14–20 video channels, 9–14 audio channels, and 10–15
Nintendo games.
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The Best
Connected
Airports
at airline members’ clubrooms. Increasingly, you can ﬁnd it at
the gates, and sometimes it’s even in the food court. Though
free Wi-Fi may not yet be quite as common as a delay in Chi-
cago’s O’Hare Airport, it’s not nearly as rare as a delicious
vegetarian meal in coach. And even when you do have to pay,
the price is often fairly reasonable: You can typically get on-
line for less than $10 per day.
At the best-connected airports, it’s not just about Internet
access, either: Other tech amenities, such as battery-charging
stations for laptops and kiosks for DVD rentals and returns,
are starting to arrive at the gate, too.—AC
Airports may be demanding more and more of our
time as we wade through more checkpoints, but at least
they’re letting us put those hours—and hours—to good use.
No longer is wireless Internet access a perk found exclusively
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 80
AIRPORT TECH AMENITIES
Hartsﬁeld-Jackson Atlanta
International Airport
Atlanta
www.atlanta-airport.com
n
Fee-based Wi-Fi throughout. Passengers given a choice of three
providers (Boingo Wireless, Concourse Communications, and
Sprint Nextel); charges range from $7.95 to $10.95 per day.
n
Laptop Lane in Concourses A, B, and T offers fee-based private
ofﬁces with PC workstations and broadband.
n
InMotion Pictures location for DVD player and disc rentals and
returns.
Logan International Airport
Boston
www.massport.com/logan
n
Fee-based Wi-Fi in all ﬁve terminals, at $7.95 per day.
n
Fee-based Internet kiosks located in four terminals (B, C, D, E).
Long Beach Airport
Long Beach, California
www.longbeach.gov/airport
n
Free Wi-Fi at gates, in restaurant, and on outside patio on north
side of airport.
n
When passengers log on to Wi-Fi, start page provides arrival and
departure information, and links to Long Beach events and Web
sites.
McCarran International
Airport
Las Vegas
www.mccarran.com
n
Free Wi-Fi throughout airport.
n
Telephone technical support hotline to help conﬁgure Wi-Fi
adapters.
n
Fee-based Internet kiosks (no PC required) in C and D concourses.
n
Check-in kiosks let passengers print boarding passes for 14 differ-
ent airlines.
n
InMotion Pictures location for DVD player and disc rentals and
returns.
Mineta San Jose
International Airport
San Jose, California
www.sjc.org
n
Fee-based Wi-Fi in all three terminals ($6.95 per day).
n
Downloadable ﬂight schedules available (for PCs and PDAs) at
airport’s Web site.
n
Fee-based Internet kiosks throughout airport.
n
InMotion Pictures location for DVD player and disc rentals and
returns.
Minneapolis-St. Paul
International Airport
Minneapolis-St. Paul
www.mspairport.com
n
Fee-based Wi-Fi at all gates and in concession area ($6.95 per day).
n
Free Wi-Fi access to real-time ﬂight arrival and departure status,
news headlines, and airport information.
n
PowerPort station in Lindbergh Terminal, Concourse C, offers
fee-based PC use, Internet access for passengers without PCs, and
battery-charging bays.
n
Fee-based Internet kiosks located in Lindbergh Terminal, Con-
courses C, D, E, F, and G.
n
InMotion Pictures location for DVD player and disc rentals and
returns.
Orlando International
Airport
Orlando, Florida
www.orlandoairports.net
n
Free Wi-Fi throughout airport.
n
Online Lost & Found (via airport’s Web site) lets you ﬁle lost-item
reports and inquire about found items at the airport’s Lost & Found
department.
n
Voice-activated travel information line (dial 511) lets passengers
check ﬂight status and airport roadway conditions from any
telephone.
n
InMotion Pictures location for DVD player and disc rentals and
returns.
San Francisco International
Airport
San Francisco
www.ﬂysfo.com
n
Fee-based Wi-Fi throughout Terminals 1, 3, and the International
Terminal; in the airline clubs in Terminal 2; at the gates at the
United Express Terminal; at the bus station at the International
Terminal; and at the airport rental-car facility ($9.99 for a day pass;
$6 for an hour).
n
PowerPort station in Terminal 3 (near Gate 83) provides fee-based
battery-charging bays and Internet access stations. PowerPort
Business Center in International Terminal provides fee-based
workstations with broadband Internet access and printer.
n
Fee-based Internet kiosks located in Terminal 3.
n
InMotion Pictures location for DVD player and disc rentals and
returns.
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If a hotel can charge $6 for a soda, imagine its rates
for Internet access. Yet some of the toniest hotels have ﬁrst-rate
technology at surprisingly reasonable rates. Indeed, Wi-Fi is of-
ten on the house, at least in lobbies and lounges (which makes
The Best
Connected
Hotels
low-ﬂoor rooms great for poaching signals, if not for the views).
Other hotels make you pay to check e-mail but provide tech-
friendly touches, such as safes that can ﬁt—and charge—lap-
tops, and even emergency BlackBerry batteries.
Budget-oriented chains often have surprisingly good con-
nectivity. Many offer free broadband in rooms or public areas.
Hilton’s Hampton Inn and Hampton Inn Suites boast com-
plimentary high-speed Internet access in all rooms (mostly
wired—newer properties have Wi-Fi) and free wireless in lob-
bies and other areas. Most AmeriSuites provide free in-room
wired or wireless broadband with Wi-Fi in the lobby. Many Mar-
riott Courtyard and Residence Inns offer free in-room broad-
band. Best Western offers free wired or Wi-Fi broadband in 15
percent of each hotel’s rooms (and some public areas).—AC
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 82
HOTEL / LOCATION TECH AMENITIES
Hotel Valencia
San Jose, California
n
Free Wi-Fi and wired broadband in guest rooms.
n
Free Wi-Fi in all public spaces.
n
Complimentary PC and printer use in 24/7 business center.
n
Hotel’s Web site offers live chat for prospective guests
The Beverly Hilton
Beverly Hills, California
n
Wi-Fi and wired broadband in guest rooms ($9.95 per day).
n
Free Wi-Fi in public spaces: lobby, lounge, outdoor patio, and ter-
race—even poolside.
n
Complimentary Ethernet cables.
n
Wi-Fi adapters can be borrowed free of charge.
n
Laptop-size safe with two outlets.
n
42-inch plasma HDTV (with ﬁve channels of HDTV programming,
upgrading to ten channels early this year).
n
Cell-phone chargers loaned free.
Hyatt Regency Denver at
Colorado Convention Center
Denver
n
Wi-Fi and wired broadband in guest rooms ($9.95 per day).
n
Free Wi-Fi in most public spaces.
n
Ethernet cables may be purchased for $10.
n
Wi-Fi adapters can be borrowed for $9.95/day (includes Internet
access).
n
Full-service Kinko’s business center in lobby.
Four Seasons
Washington D.C.
Washington
n
Wi-Fi and wired broadband in guest rooms ($9.99 per day; includes
both wireless and wired).
n
Wi-Fi in public spaces (including health club), but guests must pay
for in-room broadband to use it.
n
Wi-Fi adapters loaned free.
n
32-inch ﬂat-panel HDTV (ﬁve HDTV channels; HDTV on-demand
movies this spring).
n
In-room XM Satellite Radio expected in 2006.
n
Disposable 60-minute BlackBerry battery packs available at no
charge.
n
Laptop and cell-phone chargers loaned free.
Marriott Baltimore
Waterfront Hotel
Baltimore
n
Wired broadband in guest rooms ($9.95 per day)
n
Wi-Fi in lobby, lounges, restaurants, and meeting rooms. $2.95 for
ﬁrst 15 minutes, then $0.25 for each additional minute (in-room
access charge doesn’t include Wi-Fi).
n
27 “Technology Rooms” include unlimited wired broadband and
telephone calls; $30 premium.
n
Technology Rooms have 32-inch LCD HDTV (with six channels of
HD programming). TV has connectivity for MP3 players, digital
cameras, and more. These rooms have laptop-size safes with two
outlets.
n
Ethernet cables provided in guest rooms.
n
Wireless adapters available for rent (charge varies).
Wall Street District Hotel
New York City
n
Acer desktop PCs with ﬂat-panel displays in half the rooms; all
rooms to be equipped by May (no charge for use).
n
All PCs print to a central printer (no charge).
n
Rooms have wired broadband; complimentary in Deluxe rooms,
$9.95 per day in less-expensive Superior rooms.
n
Free Wi-Fi in ﬁrst-ﬂoor lobby, restaurant, and bar; also in second-
ﬂoor conference center and health club.
n
Business center offers free Internet access and PC/fax use.
n
Calls to guest rooms can be forwarded to guest’s cell phone.
n
Guests can borrow Wi-Fi adapters at no charge.
n
Hotel has three Toshiba Satellite laptops (with cases) guests can
borrow (no charge for guests in Deluxe rooms; $9.95 per day for
guests in Superior rooms).
Fairmont Le Chateau
Montebello
Quebec, Canada
n
Wi-Fi in guest rooms (no wired broadband). Complimentary for
rewards-program members; otherwise, $13.95 (Canadian) for 24
hours of use.
n
Wi-Fi in public spaces, including lobby, lounge, outdoor patio,
and by the ﬁreplace (users must purchase daily Wi-Fi plan or be
rewards-program members).
n
Wi-Fi adapters loaned free.
Langham Place Hotel
Hong Kong
n
Wi-Fi and wired broadband in guest rooms (HK $120—about U.S.
$15—per day).
n
All areas of hotel (even elevators) Wi-Fi enabled; 500 wireless
access points.
n
Cisco 7970 color IP phones in guest rooms, providing weather,
news, stock quotes, streaming Web-based radio, and free SMS
messaging.
n
Mobile IP phone in each room, usable anywhere in hotel.
n
42-inch plasma TV in each room.
n
Laptop-size safe with power outlet.
n
Rooms with PC available upon request.
n
Team of guest-support technologists on call 24/7.
peat a recent trip, go home, or
go to a location in the internal
address book. You don’t have
to key in entire city and street
names; many services auto-
fill—finding Sycamore Street,
for instance, once you’ve en-
tered S-Y-C. The device finds
your initial position by trian-
gulating from nearby cell tow-
ers. Hit OK to confirm your
destination. About 25KB of
map data is downloaded, your
phone disconnects from the
cellular service (and from your
monthly allotment of minutes)
and looks for GPS satellites,
and you’re under way.
The display typically indi-
cates the road you’re on, the
distance to the next turn, the
name of the next turn or exit,
ti me and di stance to your
desti nation, and an arrow
showing the direction of your
next turn. You’ll be surprised
how much can be crammed on
a phone display and still be leg-
ible. Voice instructions rein-
force what’s on the display; hit the OK button and
they repeat.
We recommend getting a phone with a large
color screen: some of the Nextel ViaMoto mono-
chrome phones are hard on the eyes. The VZ Navi-
gator service has the most comprehensive display.
TeleNav falls in the middle. Options for occasional
use may include $3 for 24 hours or $1 per trip (trips are often
sold in ten-packs). Even with portable navigation gadgets now
as low as $500, dashtop GPS will still cost you more than four
years’ worth of $10-a-month cell-phone GPS.
If you have a Symbian- or Windows-based smartphone, you
can buy the software once and load maps for one region at a
time. The phones may require external Bluetooth GPS mod-
ules and their transformers. Check out ALK Technologies’
proven CoPilot Live 6 ($200) and Destinator Technologies’
Destinator ($150), just released in the U.S.
If you decide to take the GPS-via-cell-phone route, we highly
recommend investing $25 in a dash or window mount; it’s dan-
gerous to hold the phone in your hand while driving.
This vacation, you
promised to pack light: A cam-
era that fits in a shirt pocket.
No si ngle-function gadgets
with their transformers and
car adapters. But you also don’t
want to get lost (or get yelled
at for it nanoseconds later).
The solution: Navigation and
mapping integrated into your
cell phone.
Your cell phone probably
has a GPS l abel
on it s case, but
that just gives 911
a fix on your loca-
t i on when you
call. An emerging
generation of cell
phones, however,
is enabled for turn-
by-turn routi ng,
moving maps, and
l oc at i on- ba s ed
services (“Where’s
the nearest Thai
r e s t a u r a n t ? ” ) .
These ser vi ces
work, they’re cool,
and they’re yours for around ten bucks a month per phone (de-
pending on the carrier) with no equipment costs—other than
buying a new cell phone and signing up for another two-year
service contract, of course.
Motorola’s ViaMoto, Networks In Motion’s AtlasBook (re-
branded as VZ Navigator by Verizon Wireless), and TeleNav’s
TeleNav are the three leading suppliers of turn-by-turn navi-
gation to cellular carriers. They all work passably well and,
yes, they can be used on a small cell-phone screen, as long as
it’s in color.
To get going in these services, arrow over to your phone’s
Options or Extras menu and choose Navigation. Decide if you
want to navigate to a point of interest or street address, re-
Cell Phones
Learn to Navigate
For $10 a month, get
GPS delivered to your
cell phone—wherever,
whenever you need it.
BY BILL HOWARD
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 84
Show me the way:
Motorola’s ViaMoto
GPS software (left)
and TeleNav (top)
de liver easy-to-
follow directions
to your cell phone.
Create a Windows password.
Sure, entering a password means
an extra step at start-up. But with-
out it, anyone with access to your
PC can get in and see everything
you have. Use a USB key–based
password manager, such as
Pass2Go (www.pass2go.com).
When you type usernames and
passwords, a keylogger on a public
PC or even your notebook can steal
them as you’re typing. With a pass-
word manager, the hacker would
need to steal the key and learn
the master password. Privacy
ﬁlter: LCDs are readable from any
angle—not so good when you’re
working in an airplane or Internet
café. Slip on a 3M Notebook Privacy
Filter and only you will be able to
see what’s on your screen. Try
a secure remote-control program
such as GoToMyPC or LogMeIn
instead of storing ﬁles and running
e-mail programs like Microsoft
Outlook or Thunderbird on your
notebook. Check on your room:
If your security concerns border
on paranoia, many webcams, such
as the Creative WebCam Live! Ultra
for Notebooks, include surveillance
software that tracks motion and
even lets you log on and watch
remotely (if the notebook is online).
Lock
It Down

A laptop in a
public place is
a very tempting
target. Thieves
may be after the
computer itself,
or they may be
more interested
in its data and
Internet trafﬁc.
Try these prod-
ucts and tips to
keep it all safe
and secure.
BY BEN Z.
GOTTESMAN
Security Tips
www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 85
NOTEBOOK PC with
ﬁngerprint authentica-
tion: Portable comput-
ers such as the Lenovo
ThinkPad X41T tablet
PC have built-in ﬁnger-
print readers. Without
the proper print, you
simply can’t log in.
USB FLASH DRIVE: Also
known as USB keys or thumb
drives, these portable stor-
age devices may be the best
place to store critical data. The
SanDisk Cruzer Proﬁle has a
built-in ﬁngerprint reader that
lets you encrypt your ﬁles,
so even if the key is stolen, its
contents are inaccessible.
NOTEBOOK LOCK:
If you need to leave
your notebook behind
in your hotel room,
tie it down with
a cable lock such
as the Kensington
MicroSaver Portable
Notebook Combina-
tion Lock. Make sure
that whatever you
tie it to is immov-
able as well. If all
else fails, consider
using the hanger
bar in the closet.
CARRY A PORTABLE wire-
less router, such as the
D-Link High-Speed Pocket
Router/AP, to keep your
notebook off the same
subnet as all the other
computers in your broad-
band- connected hotel—
and, of course, to make
that connection wireless.
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The less expensive but newer bou-
tique hotels often have the best connec-
tivity, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised
by the excellent connectivity in some
remote locales. The Grand Hotel Union,
the nicest luxury hotel in Ljubljana, Slo-
venia, has a free megabit line into the
room (and perhaps the biggest down-ﬁlled pillows I have ever
seen anywhere—another bonus).
If you do your homework, you can even get connected in
places where connectivity is hard to ﬁnd, such as Vietnam. In
fact, the owners of the stylish Caravelle hotel in the Saigon sec-
tion of Ho Chi Minh City made special government arrange-
ments to get an Internet connection for the hotel’s guests.
When booking a hotel, look for one that brags incessantly
about its Internet connections. Most of the chains, on the
other hand, have outsourced their connectivity needs to off-
site providers. These hotels mention Internet connectivity as
an afterthought, and the services are often down. Worse, they
Europe, Asia, South America, the Middle East—I’ve
traveled the world over in the past few decades and have man-
aged to get online in all sorts of unnerving circumstances.
The key to success is being prepared for the worst. Even with
near-universal Internet connectivity—wired and wireless—in
some places, staying connected with your ofﬁce network or
just reading your e-mail can be difﬁcult.
Hotel connectivity outside the U.S. is generally subpar. It is
often unreliable even in hotels that cater to business travelers.
I can’t tell you how often I’ve checked into a brand-name hotel
to be told that the network connections were down and would
remain down for the next few days.
The Connected World
Insider tips and secrets for staying connected during your
travels abroad. BY JOHN C. DVORAK
Illustration by Nigel Owens
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 86
may charge from $10 to $20 a day for a connection, on top of an
already expensive room fee.
In countries such as Croatia, the infrastructure is still be-
ing built out, and connectivity is hard to come by. The last
time I was in Zagreb, the hotel had only one wireless link,
inside a small business center in the lobby. If you’re traveling
to a city that isn’t a tourist destination, stay at a hotel with a
business center. Many will have connected computers, and
you should be able to surf the Internet and access any Web
mail you have waiting.
Have fun on your travels around the world! Send me an
e-mail at [email protected] with your horror
stories. I’d love to hear about them.
Traveler
International Travel
Checklist
Don’t leave home without making sure
all your tech gear is in order.

Do your research. If hotel personnel casually tell you they have
Internet access, don’t believe them. Always ﬁnd out the cost and the
speed. Use e-mail to investigate. If a hotel is unresponsive, look elsewhere.

Bring an RJ-45 cable. You can’t imagine how many hotels don’t have
an extra one. Test the cable before you take it. Many are defective.

Go online and look up hot spots in the town you’re visiting. These
may be anything from coffeeshops to hotel lobbies.

Make sure your laptop has good wireless connectivity. If not,
buy an add-in card.

Bring an RJ-11 cable. This is just in case you have to dial up over the
phone for a connection. You may have to use a special wall jack that
is speciﬁc to the country you’re in. Many online sites sell the adapters.

Bring an AC plug adapter. Especially in the less touristy areas, hotels
may not have one to lend. Be careful with 220-volt power; it’s lethal.

Check your power supplies to make sure they’re 110/220. Some are
not. Also look for those that require manual switching. You’ll be
sorry if you plug a 110-volt device into a 220-volt socket.

Get international dial-up capability. AOL is the easiest service, but
there are others. Don’t assume that they all work as advertised.

Buy an airline laptop-power adapter kit. These let you plug into
in-ﬂight systems or car lighters. Keep your laptop fully charged in case
you ﬁnd yourself without power. Bring an extra battery and keep it charged.

Set up an IMAP connection. If you use an e-mail client such as Micro-
soft Outlook Express, ask your network admin to set up an IMAP con-
nection that can be accessed via the Web. This is handy at Internet cafes.

Load up your USB key. Back up important ﬁles on a USB key in case
you lose use of your laptop.

Set up and test your VPN. Have a backup plan in case you can’t get
on the VPN while traveling.
AMERICAN MOBILE PHONES, even GSM phones, don’t
necessarily work in Europe. For assurance, look for a new
device called a phase 2+ compatible phone. American
mobile-phone companies have lousy relationships with
overseas mobile-phone companies. (Check out www.
gsmworld.com for more information.) Request that your
service provider turn on the international service.
Smart travelers buy local SIM cards in the area they’re
visiting and use them for local calls. Most American wireless
carriers sell “locked” phones rigged so you can’t swap out
the SIM card unless you get the code that unlocks the phone.
I buy my own phone rather than use a subsidized
locked phone sold with a service agreement. If your phone
is unlocked, you can buy and use local SIM cards wherever
you go. Or before you leave, you can buy local cards—or the
Global Riiing SIM card—from Telestial (www.telestial.com).
To call the U.S., consider Internet VoIP solutions. Denmark,
Finland, Norway, and Sweden all have solid connections that
make Gizmo, Google Talk, and Skype VoIP systems work
perfectly. South of Munich this’ll be iffy. Bring a microphone
and headset for your laptop. If you have a Vonage or another
VoIP system, you’ll need the network adapter provided by the
company, a mini hub, and a telephone handset.—JCD E
Using your cell phone abroad
For complete reviews of the products mentioned in this story,
visit us on the Web at go.pcmag.com/travel.
More on the Web
www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 87
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THE ULTIMATE
GAME ROOM
STUN YOUR FRIENDS WITH
THE BEST PLACE ON EARTH
TO PLAY GAMES,
INCLUDING AN AMAZING
(AND AMAZINGLY EXPENSIVE)
LAN PARTY SCOREBOARD.
WE SHOW YOU HOW.
BUILD IT
BY DAN EVANS
AND NATHAN EDWARDS
>
TURN THE PAGE
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 88
...and open the gatefold for
detailed parts and plans.
1,000 top techno
BUILD
,
DESIGN
,
MAKE YOUR GAME ROOM A VIP ROOM,
WITH CUSTOM-PAINTED PCs,
A GIANT-SCREEN PLASMA TV, AN XBOX 360,
AND THE WORLD’S FIRST LAN SCOREBOARD.
There’s nothing worse than watching someone else play a video
game. It’s not like watching professional sports, where the players
clearly outclass your pedestrian skills. They make it look easy. But
let’s face it: You could never jump that high or run that far.
But behind a controller? Hey, that’s different. You’re Michael
Jordan mixed with Tom Brady, and you know precisely how to execute
the moves that other guy can barely attempt. Its just “A-B-A-B-A-B,”
for crying out loud. And so you sit and stew, biding your time, waiting
to grab the controls and rack up a serious body count.
In the Ultimate Game Room, that was just one of the problems we
tried to solve. Our cardinal rule: “No one shall be without games.”
If you can’t get onto the Unreal server, saddle up one of the gaming
chairs, set your sights on the 42-inch plasma, and play the Xbox 360
while you wait your turn. You may ask, “If I’m busy shattering every
current Tony Hawk record, enjoying the full-bodied cacophony of a
gaming chair with built-in subwoofers, how will I know when it’s my
turn?” That’s the other problem we solved.
If pro-sports stadiums can have gigantic scoreboards, why not
game rooms? Now they do, with PC Magazine’s killer LAN scoreboard.
It takes advantage of the game server’s unused graphics power to
display current game data. With two dual-head video cards and four
screens, we can display four different stats (one per screen): the
players, the map, the frag leader, and basic server info. Just like at
Wrigley or Fenway, one glance and you’ll know what’s happening in
the current round of Unreal Tournament—or many other popular LAN
games, with a little tweaking. The best part: You can actually make a
LAN scoreboard yourself. We’ll show you how.
1
The scoreboard is at heart a
shallow pine box, so get your
toolbox out! We’ll eventu-
ally screw monitors on it using their
standard VESA mounts, route the
cables through holes in the back,
and hang the whole thing on the
wall. First stop: Home Depot.
2
Next, the project’s actual
nuts and bolts. Right-angle
brackets hold the score-
board’s frame, four 1”-by-6” pine
boards, together. The lumber and
LCDs are heavy, so we’ll want
strong joints. Drill starter holes be-
fore screwing…pine is solid wood.
BUILD A LAN SCOREBOARD
1
A
C
F
1
BUI LD I T!
logy brands. (In other
UPGRADE
3
After building a rectangular
frame, ﬁnd the halfway
point and add a cross brace
for support. Don’t forget to cut a
notch in the lower-right corner of
the frame to route the video and
power cables. Do it before you
attach the scoreboard’s face.
Philips 42PF9630A 42-inch HD
The better to frag you with, my dear. A
high-def 16:9 display, ambient lighting via
Philips’s cool Ambilight technology, and
a CableCard slot seem so integral, you
almost won’t miss your 2.5 grand. Almost.
$2,400 street, www.philips.com
Microsoft Xbox 360
What makes the 360 a tough act
to follow? Try wireless controllers,
HDTV support, and blazing graph-
ics. Spring for the more expensive
version for HD, Ethernet, and a
20GB drive. $400 street, www.xbox.com
Dell XPS 600 Extreme Gaming PC
The dual nVidia GeForce 7800 GTX cards
easily ran our scoreboard. And with a
24-inch LCD widescreen, 1GB of RAM, a
660GB RAID array, and a 3.6-GHz Extreme
Edition CPU, you know it’s a gaming power-
house. $4,700 and up, www.dell.com
4
Now screw the face of the
scoreboard into the frame.
Voila! Time to clean up your
workspace and break out the
5
/8”
screws for the LCD’s VESA mounts,
which form a simple square.
We’ll be hanging four 17-inch
screens, so space them evenly.
E
A B C
H
D
B
words, everything you need
>> MORE ON THE WEB
Logitech z5500 Digital 5.1 Speakers
With ridiculous bass and a mind-boggling array of
features (like the beautiful wired controller and a
wireless remote), these premium media speakers
will easily handle outputs from your console, PC, or
any other media device. Mids and highs tend to get
overpowered by the subwoofer, but for gaming and
movies, the z5500 is right on. $400, www.logitech.com
Logitech G15 keyboard, G7 mouse
The G15 has 18 programmable macro keys (perfect
for FPSs and MMOGs), glowing blue backlights, and a
programmable LCD screen. The G7 is wireless, uses
a laser, has hot-swappable batteries, and introduces
adjustable resolution. Keyboard, $80; mouse, $99,
www.logitech.com
nVidia GeForce 7800 GTX video card
These top-of-the-line cards have dual DVI-out ports,
and they boast the fastest speeds and the best
anti-aliasing and anisotropic ﬁltering. Using SLI, you
can bridge the two and power one monitor, though
we ran all four scoreboard LCDs instead and skipped
the SLI ability. The downside? They sure don’t come
cheap. $600 apiece, www.nvidia.com
Most players bring their own rigs to LAN parties. Even the battleﬁeld by provid-
ing matching PCs of your own—just make ’em good enough for gaming. We opted
for Dell systems, Logitech keyboards and mice, and big, bright 19-inch Sam-
sung LCDs. Then take the concept to the next level with a custom paint job.
1
Painting a PC is no different from
other household painting projects.
We used the same Krylon you’d use
to spray a doghouse to paint four Dell
Dimension XPS R400s. But be careful with
your paint; make sure to block off fans and
ports that would let paint into the case.
2
After a solid base coat transformed the bor-
ing exterior, we added the logo of our Unreal
team: the Brooklyn Skulls. Find an image,
print it, and trim it for a stencil with an X-Acto
knife. Use heavyweight paper, vellum, or Mylar.
3
We painted two case designs, one
red and one black—Home versus
Away. Make wide, even sweeps with
the can and let the base coat dry thor-
oughly before breaking out the stencil.
For extra credit, tape off the screens of
your LCDs and spray matching bezels.
DESIGN A CUSTOM
PAINT JOB
6
The only way to export game data to our
scoreboard was a custom app that reads,
sorts, and displays stats in real time. We’ll
share the code with you for free. Download away!
5
Measure the VESA mounts
twice before drilling holes.
Otherwise you’ll have a lop-
sided display. Samsung LCDs are a
good choice, by the way; the com-
pany’s Magic Tune software lets
you adjust the screens remotely.
What’s left? Paint, of course!
2.95”
(75 mm)
2.95”
(75 mm)
GO.PCMAG.COM/DIY
Pyramat PM220 Sound Rocker
Connect your TV’s audio-out port to the
Pyramat Sound Rocker for 80 watts of bum-
rumbling power. A subwoofer in the seat and
two speakers atop the backrest let you feel
every Halo 2 gun battle or Tony Hawk wipeout
without standing up. $99 direct, www.target.com
G
D
E
F
TIP: The right way to paint involves
sanding, primer, clear coat, and
dust masks. Use a drop cloth, too, or
you’ll Jackson Pollock the place.
G
d.)
Jhe Righl Jechuology. Righl ^way.
JM
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º
800.399.4C0w
|u Cauada, call 888.898.C0wC
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C0w.ca
You could plug an Xbox 360 into a 19-inch CRT. You could also
run a marathon in your ﬂip-ﬂops. We chose to plug ours into this
42-inch plasma screen and send the audio out through this 500-
watt speaker system. Want to take it even further? Read on.
< <
Xbox 360 faceplates
Xbox looking just a little too...plain?
Grab a new look for it with detach-
able faceplates. Microsoft’s include
Flame, Woody, and Silver, and there
are tons of third-party options avail-
able on eBay. Or make your own at
Facetags.com. $20 direct, www.xbox.com
Wireless network adapter
If you’ve got a wireless network at
home, you can eliminate one more
wire from behind the TV with this
accessory from Microsoft. It plugs
into one of the 360’s USB ports and
features dual-band a/b/g wireless
connectivity. $99 direct, www.xbox.com
12-year-old kid brother
He’ll geek out. Seriously. And then he’ll invite all of
his friends over and they’ll play Halo 2 until their
eyeballs fall out and then all of his friends will think
you’re, like, the coolest person ever. Price: unavailable
UPGRADE YOUR XBOX 360
Gaming T-shirts
An essential item whenever
two or more serious gamers
are gathered. Declare your
allegiance to obscure OSs,
make insider references to your
favorite games, or just show the
world that you’re a gamer.
$10 direct and up, www.thinkgeek.com
Mini-fridge
The original gamer’s cooling
system. Keep your Mountain Dew,
Red Bull, and Bawls soda (the Holy
Trinity of gamer drinks) nice and
cold, your reﬂexes sharp, and your
nerves shot until dawn.
$125 direct, www.bachelorfurniture.com
EXTRA CREDIT
Sunshine
Sure, it’s bright and can cause nasty burns. But
you should go outside once in a while. Sunshine
helps your skin produce vitamin D, and can take
the edge off your pallor. Free, weather permitting.
Don’t forget to feed your real-life avatar, or
its ﬂesh-and-blood body will weaken and
dry out. We’ve found a full collection of food,
drink, and clothes to ﬂesh out your meat-
space. Keep your friends happy...with pizza.
The glass is as essential to lemonade as the
lemons, sugar, and water. Are you a working with
a pint glass or a jigger? So before buying your
lumber and investing in LCDs, size up your space.
The best technique is to create a floor plan, as
we’ve done at left. Figure on at least 4 feet for
each desk, or your friends will feel cramped.
Don’t skimp on the ventilation, either. The ideal
LAN room needs a cross breeze, or else the heat
of your PCs (and the four LCDs we’ve built into
the LAN scoreboard) will slowly cook you all.
Finally, take a minute to add up your room’s total
power consumption, and make sure your circuit
can support it. High-performance PCs consume
about 5 to 7 amps each; don’t put five on a 10A
circuit. Consider all these factors and your
lemonade is certain not to spoil. E
Face: 38” by 48”
$17 street
This piece is going to be the center
of the whole project, so be careful
to get it right. Measure twice and
cut once, and do all of your
painting and detailing before
attaching the monitors.
Monitors: Samsung
SyncMaster 730B
4 at $300 street
We recommend Samsung LCD
monitors, which can be adjusted
and fine-tuned from the PC. If you
substitute CRTs, build this board
much closer to the ground or as a
free-standing structure.
Cordage: Power-
Squid outlet multiplier
$12.99 direct
With four power cords running
from our LAN scoreboard, the
PowerSquid was key to
consolidating them all and not
using up all our wall outlets. Thank
god for ThinkGeek.
Sandpaper:
Norton Valu-Pack
$9.75 per pack
Sand the metal surfaces of
your case to ready them for the
primer. Note that you don't
need to blast your way to bare
metal; what you're looking to
do is smooth the surface for a
terrific, lust-inspiring paint job.
Get a multipack of papers, one
with a coarse grit of, say, 300,
one a fine grit around 600.
Stencil: Oxford
Vellum
$16 for 50 sheets
Choose an opaque
heavyweight piece of vellum or
Mylar, thicker than a file folder
(which will also work, though
the paint will soak through and
wet it).
Spray Paint:
Krylon
3 cans at $5.50 each
Since you are going to apply
two or three coats of paint,
start with primer; it will
prevent bleeding and dripping.
Nearly any brand will do—just
make sure the can states that
it works on metal.
Console: Xbox 360
$400 street
Microsoft has taken us to the
next level of console gaming.
The Xbox 360 deserves to be
treated like the royalty that it
is: Bow to it, and spend hours
playing before it.
HDTV: Philips
42PF9630A 42" HD
$2,400 list
The Xbox 360 is no
Commodore 64. You can’t just
hook one up to an ordinary
TV—you might risk insulting it.
Instead, go HD…and go big.
Philips’s Ambilight technology
expands the action right off
the screen.
Speakers:
Logitech Z-5500
Digital 5.1
$400 direct
If you’re spending the money
to have a big screen, you might
as well go all out on the big
sound to go with it. These
speakers will have you thinking
that the bad guys are actually
shooting back.
Top and bottom: Two 48” pine boards,
1” by 6” ($17)
Sides: Two 36.5” pine boards, 1” by 6”
($11.50)
Cross brace: One 46.5” pine board, 1”
by 6” ($11)
Six right-angle brackets ($8.64)
5
/8” No. 8 wood screws ($5)
Fire-engine-red paint ($15)
Project total: $1,298.13
Primer ($6)
Dust masks ($11.94 for a
50-pack)
Clear-gloss enamel ($5)
Project total: $65.19
Pyramat PM220 Sound Rocker
($99 direct)
Xbox 360 Wireless Networking Adapter
($99.99)
Second Xbox wireless controller ($49.99)
Project total: $3,448.98
PROPER PLANNING
ULTIMATE GAME ROOM: PARTS LIST
THE BOARD THE PAINT JOB THE XBOX 360
<
Want to build the projects shown
above? Flip back a page for plans.
TURN THE PAGE
BUI LD I T!
speed already,
a fast, cheap box
like this would make
an excellent ofﬁce system
or home server. Plus we’re
willing to guess Grandma doesn’t
have half that power at her place.
YOU’RE KIDDING, RIGHT?
We’re not kidding. But that said, can a
PC that sells for $159 really be viable?
We took the plunge and bought one, just
to ﬁnd out. We didn’t expect a colorful,
jacked-up gaming rig for under $200...
and we didn’t get one. Unpacking the
GQ 3131 from its box revealed a compact
minitower case. But it was black, at least,
not beige. We popped the screws off the
side panel and peeked inside.
The GQ’s purple mot herboard
(wouldn’t the fashion mag be proud?) is
an ECS 741GX-M—a socket-462 board
suitable for AMD’s Athlon and Sempron
W
ere GQ magazine to de-
sign a computer, it would
sport a Gucci leather
jacket and stroll in slick
Prada loafers. It would
also cost eight, maybe nine thousand
dollars. But when Fry’s Electronics de-
signed the GQ system, it wasn’t thinking
of luxury linens and leather. It wanted
something cheap. The surprising thing
is that the GQ (short for “Great Quality,”
by the way, not Gentleman’s Quarterly)
turns out to be a powerful PC. It’s low-
cost, in other words, not high crap.
Why should you care about a cut-rate
Californian computer? After all, you’ve
probably got a PC or two at home already.
But consider: This one is probably faster
than yours. It contains an AMD Sem-
pron 2400+ chip, which runs at 1.67 GHz;
unless you’ve bought a computer in the
past year or two, that’s a faster chip than
yours. And if you’re up to your eyeballs in
pro cessors. It’s got four USB
2.0 ports, built-in six-channel
audio, and 10/100 Ethernet. The board
isn’t exactly bleeding-edge, although it
does offer an empty AGP graphics slot in
case you want to add a card. It also comes
with a generic modem, for people who
still dial in, and a single 128MB memory
module in one of the two DIMM sockets.
As you might guess, this PC for
tightwads doesn’t run any ﬂavor of the
Gatesian operating system. Instead, the
computer ships with Linspire, the OS
Holy tightwads, Batman!
A better PC than what you’re running
costs less than a pair of designer jeans?
What’s happened to the computer industry?
By Loyd Case
B
e
l
i
e
v
e

I
t
o
r
N
o
t
!
Your Next
PC Will
Cost
$159
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 98
formerly known as “Lindows.”
Even though the GQ runs a Linux
variant, 128MB of RAM still seems a
bit thin. But what do you want for $159?
Well, you’d want a keyboard and
mouse. And the GQ3131 gives you one
of each. You also get a pair of (terrible!)
stereo speakers. The keyboard is surpris-
ingly good, with decent tactile feedback.
The mouse seems generic—not particu-
larly responsive in an era of 2,000-dpi
gaming mice. But who cares?
Rounding out the system are a fast
40GB hard drive and a 52X CD-ROM
ing it to a $1,200 or $1,400 system seemed
like cruel and unusual punishment—and
besides, some glaring performance limi-
tations were apparent right out of the
box. For example, the system was fairly
unresponsive. It took several seconds to
paint windows (the desktop objects, not
the OS), and applications took as much as
a minute to load.
The problem lies neither in the CPU
nor in the integrated graphics, but in the
sparse 128MB of RAM. We replaced the
single stick with a pair of 256MB mod-
ules (a simple, cheap upgrade), and the
system became quite snappy—relatively
speaking. You won’t mistake it for an
Athlon 64 or Intel P4, but we created
documents and browsed the Web with-
out noticing any slowdowns.
Considering that you can buy 512MB
of RAM for less than $40, we’d strongly
recommend adding memory. Once that’s
done, you’ll have a surprisingly capa-
ble little office system. It may not play
F.E.A.R., but it should handle light Web
browsing and ofﬁce apps just ﬁne. We’re
also very impressed with how easy it
was to set up. The Linspire OS was easy
to conﬁgure and a snap to use. Windows
users should ﬁnd it quite comfortable.
Does this system presage the $129 PC?
And someday, if we cross our ﬁngers and
pray, the $99 PC? Doubtful. As Attila the
Hun once said, the gouging has to end
somewhere. But discounts this deep will
become less eyebrow-raising as time
goes on. We suggest buying one now...
before everyone else becomes as much
of a cheapskate as you. E
• NEW TECH You’ve heard of PCI
Express, SATA, and dual-core, but
you won’t get them here.
• LCD MONITOR Nope. Not a
chance. In fact, there’s no screen
included, period.
• DVD BURNER There’s no DVD
recorder, not even a CD burner. But
there is a fast CD-ROM drive.
• SOFTWARE Nothing from Micro-
soft here, but to be fair, the Linspire
OS is pretty decent.
drive. No, you don’t get a burner
for $159. Nor a monitor, though
Fry’s offers a 17-inch compan-
ion CRT for $119. We eschewed
that, and plugged it into a 19-
inch LCD in the lab just to see
what would happen. When we
pressed the power button, our
cynical sides expected sparks
and smoke. Instead, we were
welcomed by Linspire.
LET’S HEAR IT FOR $159!
After a fairly lengthy boot-up,
we were greeted by the Linspire
start-up screens, which walked
us through a typical first-start
process. It was painless and
straightforward. Since we’d
connected to a network prior to
starting the PC, Linspire pulled
an IP address from our router and we
were surﬁng the Internet in short order.
Linspire runs and operates, for the
most part, a lot like Microsoft Windows.
In fact, Linspire’s relative familiar-
ity and ease of use are two of its biggest
selling points. So you’ll ﬁnd a system of
ordinary-looking windows and icons, a
menu bar at the base of the screen, and
a desktop where you can store shortcuts
to common applications. Conveniently
enough, Linspire includes OpenOffice
1.1.3—the Microsoft Ofﬁce–compatible
open-source suite originally designed by
Sun Microsystems. Like Linspire itself,
OpenOfﬁce is familiar and easy to use.
We didn’t bother to run any perfor-
mance tests on this cheap PC—compar-
www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 99
• COMPUTER In addition to the 1.67-
GHz AMD Sempron chip, you’ll get four
USB ports, Ethernet, and an AGP slot.
• MEMORY Only 128MB of RAM,
which is barely adequate, really. Re-
place it with 512MB for around $40.
• SPEAKERS They’re included, but
they sound awful. Really, these speak-
ers are just terrible.
• KEYBOARD AND MOUSE A sur-
prisingly responsive keyboard and
generic ball mouse round it all out.
WHAT $159 BUYS YOU... ...& WHAT IT DOESN’T
REAL- WORLD TESTI NG
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NINE ZERO
90 Tremont St.
www.ninezero.com
Great boutique hotel, with
complimentary printer and in-
room Internet (broadband, of
course). Rooms have sizable
desks with speakerphones
and ergonomic Freedom
chairs from HumanScale.
24/7 tech support.
HOTEL@MIT
20 Sidney St., Cambridge
www.hotelatmit.com
An inn drenched in technol-
ogy, a geek’s Graceland,
catering speciﬁcally to the
connected traveler. Lobby is
decorated with historically
signiﬁcant robots from MIT’s
grads. Each room is equipped
with a complimentary T1 line
and a laptop-size safe. We
especially like each room’s
PlayStation.
HOTEL COMMONWEALTH
500 Commonwealth Ave.
www.hotelcommonwealth.com
The Hotel Commonwealth
always receives high marks
for its in-room high-speed
wired and Wi-Fi Internet con-
nections. What sets it apart
are the in-room cordless VoIP
phones. Take one throughout
the hotel and never miss an
important call.
HOTEL MARLOWE
25 Edwin H. Land Blvd.
www.hotelmarlowe.com
Funky, luxury boutique hotel.
Fun place to stay when in
town for business by day and
good times at night.
BEST WIRED
HOTELS
CELL PHONE: According
to user surveys, Verizon
provides the best cell-phone
coverage in the greater
Boston area, followed closely
by T-Mobile and Sprint.
WICKED SMART: Cambridge
is located right across the
river from Boston and is home
to two of the top universities
in the world, Harvard and MIT.
THE BIG DIG: Boston’s
$14.6-billion highway-
construction project is almost
done, including the Zakim
bridge (above). It’s the most
expensive public-works project
in history. www.bigdig.com
FAST FACTS
FUN & TASTY HOT SPOTS
B.GOOD CAFE
131 Dartmouth St.
Healthy fast food plus free Wi-Fi
equals delicious!
TOSCANINI’S
899 Main St., Cambridge
The best ice cream in Boston
and all the Net you can eat.
TECH SUPER-POWERS CAFE
252 Newbury St.
Shop and see the trafﬁc on
Newbury Street, then drop $5
per hour to rent a PC .
MIRACLE OF SCIENCE BAR
321 Mass. Ave., Cambridge
Dorks and drinks, free wireless!
HELD OVER AT LOGAN AIRPORT: Most airports promise full
Wi-Fi support, but signals drop in and out far too easily and
coverage is spotty. Not Logan. The airport’s wireless network,
LoganWiFi.com, provided great service with no dropouts. It
charges $7.95 for a full day of connectivity, plus free news, air-
port info, and a guide to the city. Also on LoganWiFi: a Java ap-
plet that tracks air trafﬁc, so you can verify that there is in fact
a delay due to high trafﬁc. Comcast subscribers cheer; there’s
free access to Comcast.net. Check your mail for nothing! Un-
like many cities’ systems, Boston’s subway runs directly to the
airport; $1.25 and the Silver Line quickly take you downtown .
TOP TECH ATTRACTIONS: Got a few hours to kill in Boston? Don’t miss the small but nifty Star
Wars exhibit at Boston’s Museum of Science. Mixing original models, costumes, and science,
it’s a treat for even casual fans of Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, and the rest. You can even ﬂoat
around on a working hovercraft while ogling an actual pod racer from the ﬁrst episode. It’s not
cheap, however, at $20 for an adult ticket and another $5 to sit in a mock-up of the Millennium
Falcon for a short movie. You’d better hurry too —the exhibit closes on April 30. But even if
you arrive after it’s gone, the Museum of Science is always well worth a visit.
THE CONNECTED TRAVELER
Boston
WHILE YOU’RE IN TOWN Make a pilgrimage to one of the last remaining
shrines of old-time baseball, FENWAY PARK. The Red Sox are always
in contention for the World Series, and the park is so small that there’s
nary a bad seat in the house. For tickets go to www.redsox.com, but
you’d better go early: Tickets sell out quickly. Go Sox!
www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 101
go.pcmag.com/connectedtraveler • S OL UT I ON S
Apple customers should start taking
security more seriously. Here are the
basics.
Choose a good password. The best
passwords are longer than eight
characters, are not composed of a
single word found in the dictionary, and
have at least one non-alphanumeric
character.
Use ﬁrewalls. A hardware ﬁrewall is a
good ﬁrst line of defense. The software
ﬁrewall in OS X can alert you to rogue
programs.
Patch regularly. A fully patched Mac
is more secure than one that is not.
Back up your ﬁles. Your data is more
valuable than your computer.
Use antivirus software. The Mac’s
increasing popularity means that
signiﬁcant virus attacks are not far
behind.
FIVE WAYS TO
STAY SAFE
KEEP YOURSELF SAFE! Subscribe to our
Security Watch newsletter and get
up-to-date info on the latest threats
delivered to your inbox automatically:
go.pcmag.com/securitywatchletter.
Mac Attack!
In 2006, Apple’s operating system will likely see major
attacks. BY ROBERT LEMOS
share for Apple, but unfortunately it also
means that more online attackers are
likely to target Mac users. While
Mac OS X is more secure than
Windows, dozens of critical ﬂaws
augur that attackers will have more
than ample opportunity to compro-
mise systems.
Apple users should make certain
that their Mac OS X firewall and au-
tomatic patching are turned on. They
should r un ant i vi r us sof t ware
as well and be sure to update
the vi rus def i nitions dai ly.
Finally, users should back up
i mportant f i les of ten. Ask
yoursel f what would happen
i f you l ost al l your dat a
today—and prepare for
the worst by scheduling
regular backups as often as
necessary.
There’s only one certainty in com-
puter security: An attack will even-
tually get through your defenses. Be
ready for it.
X gives them a slick interface when they
want cool, and a Unix-like operating
system when they want to go deep.
In 2005, more software f laws were
found in the Apple Mac OS X than in
Microsoft Windows (see chart). But
only 29 of the Mac problems were of
high severity, while 38 of the Windows
problems were of high severity.
Malicious hackers will be able to code
exploits more quickly for the latest crop
of Macs because of Apple’s move to the
x86 architecture—a platform better un-
derstood by hackers than the PowerPC
platform.
Finally, while Apple
hasn’t had tremendous
success in increas-
ing its share of the personal computer
market, analysts predict that this situa-
tion will change in 2006. The estimates
are based on surveys that have shown
that almost 20 percent of PC users who
have bought an iPod will buy a Mac rath-
er than a PC as their next computer. Such
momentum could mean decent market
S
tart talking about security con-
cerns with a hard-core Mac user
and the conversation frequently
turns into an argument based on his-
tory: “There has never been a virus on
Mac OS X, and the Mac OS has much
better protections than Windows. So I
don’t have to worry about security.”
Yet history is a poor indicator of future
performance. The first two assertions
are, for the most part, true. There has
never been a major Mac OS X virus. And
the Mac OS X has many of the advan-
tages of its open-source and Unix-like
underpinnings, including least-privilege
access for users.
But Apple users who
believe they don’t have to
worry about security are
likely to have a rude awaken-
ing this year. Three trends are
converging to make Apple’s popular
personal computers the new prov-
ing ground for hackers and online
attackers. First, the platform has
become more popular among
people who search for f laws.
Second, the move to an x86 ar-
chitecture means that the ma-
jority of hackers will be able to
write exploits using assembly
code for Macs. And third, in-
creasing market share makes the
platform a more tempting target.
Apple PowerBooks and Mac
minis are cool, yet there’s a deeper
reason for their popularity among
people who search for ﬂaws. The OS’s
core underpinnings are based on a vari-
ant of Unix known as the Berkeley Soft-
ware Distribution (BSD). The younger
generation of researchers cut their teeth
on some distribution of Linux, the open-
source descendant of Unix. The Mac OS
Robert Lemos is a freelance technology
journalist and the editor-at large for
SecurityFocus.
Windows XP
flaws
Mac OS X
flaws
2005 2004 2003 2002 2001
0
20
40
60
80
100
App|e Jakes a b|t
|n 2005, more software f|aws were found |n the
App|e Nac 05 X than |n N|crosoft w|ndows.
Source: National Vulnerability Database, NIST.
S OL UT I ON S • go.pcmag.com/security watch
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 104
SECURITY WATCH
105
ExtremeTech.com’s editor Loyd Case
tackles your toughest hardware problems
each issue. Send him yours at
[email protected].
An Optical Drive Upgrade
I would like to know how to remove my
CD-RW and install a CD-DVD unit. I have
heard you must be sure not to introduce
any static electricity into the CPU.
LORNE TOMPKINS
While static electricity can be a concern,
particularly in dry weather, swapping out
an optical drive is one of the safer things
you can do, provided that you ground
yourself. Keep the PC plugged into the
wall outlet, and touch any metal part on
the case fairly frequently. The drive itself
makes contact with the motherboard only
through the data cable; if you never touch
any of the pins at the end of the data cable,
you’re unlikely to transmit static electricity
to the CPU itself. Note, though, that some
optical drives have parts of the circuit
board exposed, and you should take care
not to discharge a static spark onto any of
those components.
Removing the actual optical drive is
usually easy, but varies depending on
the case design. First, disconnect all the
cables. Most optical drives have only a
power cable connection and the data
cable, which is usually a ﬂat, 40-pin cable.
Keep the motherboard side of the cable
attached. Note that a few older systems
may also have a CD audio wire attached to
either the motherboard or a sound card, so
look out for that, too.
Optical drives are typically attached in
one of three ways: latched into the case
via “tool-free” latches; screwed directly
into the case; or mounted on rails, which
then allow the drive to slide into the bay.
Remove the drive in the way that is appro-
priate for the case. If necessary, detach
any rails from the old drive and attach
them to the new drive.
Assuming this is an ATAPI optical drive,
check the old drive for the master/slave
jumper setting, and set the jumper on the
new drive to the same setting (although
if the drive is on the end of the cable, and
doesn’t share the IDE bus with anything
else, it can be the master device).
Now you can reinstall the new opti-
cal drive into the case and reattach the
data and power cables. You won’t have to
install drivers, but you may need to update
your CD/DVD burning software for proper
operation.
A Stealth Hard Drive
When I start my PC, I get this message:
“Primary Hard Disk 1 not found. Push F1 to
continue, F2 for setup utility.”
When I push F1, the system boots nor-
mally and runs properly. How do I ﬁx this?
TAMMY KNIGHT
There are several potential causes for this.
Your system BIOS is set to boot off
another hard drive ﬁrst. Many BIOSs have
settings to rearrange the boot order of
devices. Note that some of these BIOS
settings are a bit buggy, and may not
auto matically search for the next bootable
device, which is why you see the error.
Some hard drives take a little time to
spin up. When that happens, a system that
boots quickly sometimes doesn’t “see” the
drive. You can actually change this in your
system BIOS. Usually, there’s a setting
known as “Hard Drive Pre Delay” or “Hard
Drive Pre-Boot Delay.” Set this for some
ﬁnite time, like 10 seconds.
How’s This Monitor for HDTV?
I read your review on the Dell 3007WFP
30-inch monitor. Sounds like a great
monitor. What are you thoughts on it as an
HDTV monitor? Can it handle fast action
such as sports or action movies? Also,
what type of HDTV receiver would I need?
B. J. TAGLIANETTIA
If you mean to use it purely as an HDTV
monitor, it would be overkill—and might
not work well. Here’s why: The 3007WFP
has two “built-in” modes: 1,280-by-800
and 2,560-by-1,600.
No current set-top box, upscaling DVD
player, or upcoming high-deﬁnition disc
player supports 2,560-by-1,600. So you’d
be stuck with 1,280-by-800. You’d do
better with a 30-inch HDTV display, since
those have sophisticated video proces-
sors. The 3007WFP relies on the host
device (PC) to handle the scaling.
Playing back HD content from a PC, if
you have a good video card (the recent
ATI X1000 series cards have great built-in
scaling capability) might be a good option.
go.pcmag.com/askloyd • S OL UT I ON S
ASK LOYD
www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE
TWO EXAMPLES
of drive rails. You may
need to detach the rails
from your old drive and
fasten them to the new.
MOST OPTICAL DRIVES have only a pow-
er cable and a data cable, both of which
should be easy enough to disconnect and
then attach to the new drive.
CHECK THE OLD drive for its master/slave
jumper setting, and use the same setting
for the jumper on the drive you will replace
it with.
Upgrading Your Optical
Drive: A Simple
Procedure
S OL UT I ON S • go.pcmag.com/solutions
Default Double-Spacing in Word
As a college student, I need to write
lots of essays, and double- spacing
is required for them. I prefer to
write using Microsoft Word 2003.
Is there any way I can conﬁgure it
to double-space automatically?
XINXIN DAI
You can do that quite easily. Open a new
document and choose Styles and Format-
ting from the Format menu. Find and
select Normal in the Styles and Format-
ting panel at right. Click the down arrow
next to Normal and choose Modify. Click
the Format button at the bottom left of
the Modify Style dialog box and choose
Paragraph. Find the Line Spacing setting
and change it from Single to Double. Click
OK. Back in the Modify Style dialog, check
the Add to Template box and click OK.
That’s it—from now on, new documents
will be automatically double-spaced.
“Action Canceled”
Replaces Online Ads
On some Web pages, I get the phrase
“Action Canceled” where there has
been an advertisement. I use Webroot
Spy Sweeper and Norton Corporate
AntiVirus. Can you direct me to a solu-
tion to my problem?
C. R. MEYER
Many security products include an option
to block banner advertisements. You can
accomplish the same thing using a simple
text ﬁle called HOSTS (see the article
“Block Web Ads”; go.pcmag.com/
blockwebads). The normal purpose of the
HOSTS ﬁle is to match a domain name
with the corresponding IP address without
having to access a DNS server. To block
banner ads, you can simply match them
with an invalid IP address in the HOSTS
ﬁle. That’s what Spy Sweeper does when
you enable its Com-
mon Ad Sites Shield.
When this sort of ad
blocking is in place,
ads typically show
“Action canceled” or
“The page cannot be
displayed.”
If you really want to
see those banner ads,
you can go into Spy
Sweeper and disable
the Common Ad Sites
Shield. If you ﬁnd that
Spy Sweeper was not
actually the source
of the HOSTS ﬁle
change, you can navi-
gate to C:\Windows\
System32\Drivers\
Etc and rename the
HOSTS ﬁle to something else, say, HOSTS.
NOT. Then create a new text ﬁle named
HOSTS containing just the line “127.0.0.1
localhost” (no quotes).
Problems When
Scheduling a Task
When I schedule a new task in Task
Manager, I get an error saying that the
new task has been created but may not
run because the account information
could not be set. It reports the error
0x80070005, “Access is denied.” It
says I should try the Browse button to
locate the application. What can I do?
ARUN PRASATH
When you schedule a task, you must give
it the account name and password under
which it will run. That way the task can
run even if a different user (or no user) is
logged on. You must use an account for
which a password is deﬁned. If you try to
use an account that has no password, or
if you omit the password, you’ll get the
error described here.
So, ﬁrst check to be sure that the ac-
count you’re using has a deﬁned password
and that you’ve entered the password cor-
rectly. If the account and password seem
okay, the problem may be with Windows
itself: Microsoft acknowledges a problem
in Windows XP SP2 that can produce
precisely the same symptom. After more
testing, the company will release a hotﬁx
to solve the problem. You can also obtain
a patch from Microsoft by linking from
the Knowledge Base article at support.
microsoft.com/kb/884573.
Windows XP Home users will have to
rely on the hotﬁx or patch, but those with
XP Pro can correct the problem manu-
ally using the Group Policy Editor. Launch
gpedit.msc from the Start menu’s Run
dialog. Navigate to Local Computer Policy
| Computer Conﬁguration | Windows Set-
tings | Security Settings | Local Policies |
User Rights Assignment. In the right-hand
pane, double-click Access this computer
from the network. Click the Add User or
Group button, enter the name of the ac-
count you’re using for the scheduled task,
and click the Check Names button. Then
click OK, OK again, and close the Group
Policy Editor.
ASK NEI L
WHEN YOU SCHEDULE a task in Task Manager, you must give
it the account name and password under which it will run, or
problems may ensue.
Each issue, PC Magazine’s software
expert Neil J. Rubenking answers your
toughest software and Internet questions.
Send yours to [email protected].
SPY SWEEPER and many security prod-
ucts block banner ads—but you can get
those ads back if you really want to see
them.
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 106
S OL UT I ON S • go.pcmag.com/askneil
Hack Thyself
Discovering security ﬂaws is the ﬁrst step toward
getting your small business’s computers in shape .
BY MATTHEW D. SARREL
T
heft of proprietary information.
Denial-of-service attacks. Spyware.
Viruses. These are the foes you bat-
tle daily in the war to keep your business’s
network secure. To win you have to know
your weak points.
The best defense in your arsenal is a
vulnerability assessment scanner, which
automatically discovers security ﬂaws on a
network and can often correct them. These
tools have been around for years, but only
recently have they begun to offer such fea-
tures as customized reporting, distributed
threat assessment, and automatic correc-
tion of software bugs, viruses, and weak
access-control policies. Commonly found
workstation vulnerabilities include open
NetBIOS ports for ﬁle and printer sharing,
as well as users who run rogue Web servers
or peer-to-peer ﬁle-sharing clients.
These scanners can also find improper
conﬁgurations of applications, which can
leave networks unprotected. For example,
Microsoft Exchange’s default conﬁguration
used to leave the server as an open SMTP
relay, which spammers could exploit, send-
ing millions of e-mails that appeared to
originate from the victims’ networks. You
don’t want your company’s e-mail server
listed as a spammer haven.
Many vulnerability assessment scan-
ners also take on patch management—the
deployment of code updates to repair bugs.
Web servers and e-mail servers require
frequent patching, as do the underlying
OSs. This is especially true of Microsoft
products, because they’re frequent hack-
ing targets. A scanner identifies the OS
and common applications and tells you
whether or not they’re up to date.
GFI LANguard Network Security Scan-
ner 7 ($495 for up to 32 IPs; GFI Software
Ltd., www.gﬁ.com) is a good place to start.
It’s relatively inexpensive and easy to use,
and GFI offers a 30-day trial. It scans your
entire network, moving from IP address
to IP address, and provides information
such as which Microsoft Windows Service
Pack is in use, as well as reporting on miss-
ing security patches, open shares, open
ports, services/applications active on the
computer, key Registry entries, and weak
passwords. GFI LANguard NSS also de-
tects rogue wireless access points and USB
devices that could be used to smuggle infor-
mation out of your company.
Scan results can be analyzed using ﬁlters
and reports, so that each bit of information
can help you shut down the vulnerability
before it can be exploited. It can shut down
unnecessarily open ports, close shares, and
install service packs and hotﬁxes.
GFI LANguard NSS performs security
audits on computers based on either Win-
dows or Linux. The scanning engine col-
lects hardware and software information.
It also checks for the presence of security
software such as antivirus and antispyware
applications and ensures they’re running
properly and have the most recent malware
deﬁnition ﬁles.
GFI LANguard NSS conducts its scans
and generates a report that can be sorted
by IP address or by the vulnerability uncov-
ered. Highlighting a speciﬁc vulnerability
on a speciﬁc computer brings up either an
option to correct the issue automatically
or instructions to correct it manually. You
should rescan every one to three months.
If you aren’t comfortable assessing and
closing vulnerabilities on your own, hire
a network security consultant. Many con-
duct initial vulnerability assessments free,
hoping you’ll hire them to ﬁx the problems
they uncover. A good consultant will pro-
vide a prioritized list of recommendations
for securing your network and computers,
along with a breakdown of vulnerabilities
and their severity, computer by computer.
You can then have the consultant fix the
problems, or do it yourself.
Whether you conduct a vulnerability
assessment or a consultant does, it’s a criti-
cal ﬁrst step in securing your business’s IT
infrastructure. After all, your network is
only as secure as its weakest point.
Matthew D. Sarrel is a consultant and
former PC Magazine Labs technical
director.
Back Oriﬁce Blaster Lovsan Sasser SubSeven
Network ports used
UDP ports 31337 and 31338 TCP Port 125 "DCOM RPC";
UDP Port 69 "TFTP"
TCP ports 135, 4444 TCP ports 445, 5554, 9996 TCP ports 1243, 1999, 2772,
2773, 2774, 6667, 6711,
6712, 6713, 6776, 7000,
7215, 16959, 27374, 27573,
54283
Description
Trojan horse allowing
remote access
Using DCOM RPC vulnerabil-
ity, Blaster spreads itself by
downloading and executing
"msblast.exe"
Buffer overﬂow leads to
DDOS attack on
windowsupdate.microsoft
.com
Frequent crashes caused
by a buffer overrun in the
Local Security Authority
Subsystem Service
Trojan horse allowing
remote access
U
nw
elcom
e
G
uests
A vulnerability assess-
ment tool can close
the door on a variety of
miscreants.
I
L
L
U
S
T
R
A
T
I
O
N
S

B
Y

D
Y
N
A
M
I
C

D
U
O

S
T
U
D
I
O
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 108
S OL UT I ON S • go.pcmag.com/smbbootcamp
SMB BOOT CAMP
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 110
Explorer Turns
Seven (Almost)
It’s been ﬁve years since IE6. What’s new? BY JOHN CLYMAN
Many of IE’s new features focus on
addressing the all-important security
issues. (For more details, see “Security
in IE7,” go.pcmag.com/IE7security.) Oth-
ers, such as improved support for CSS
(Cascading Style Sheets) and partial
transparency in PNG (Portable Network
Graphics) images, are designed to meet
the needs of Web developers. Many are
welcome conveniences: IE’s print en-
gine can now shrink Web pages to ﬁt on
printed pages—no more right margins
being cut off. And the browser also gives
you easier ways to clear your browsing
history and set parental controls, support
for which is built into Vista itself.
One highly desired feature that IE7
will not include, at least initially, is in-
cremental, “wordwheel” searchi ng
within an individual Web page—a strik-
ing omission, given Microsoft’s stated
intention to make search pervasive
throughout Vista. You’ll ﬁnd our ongoing
coverage of IE7 at go.pcmag.com/IE7 .
O
ne of the prominent new com-
ponents of Micro-soft Windows
Vista is Internet Explorer 7.
And it’s about time. After IE6 shipped
in August 2001, it seemed as if Micro-
soft all but halted development of its
browser. But the Web didn’t stop evolv-
ing just because IE did. Browsers such
as Firefox brought tabbed browsing into
the main-stream, RSS emerged as a stan-
dard way to stay abreast of the explosion
of blogs and other information sources,
and spyware threats and phishing scams
became ever more brazen.
Yes, Windows XP Service Pack 2 in-
cluded some security enhancements
in IE, but the ab-sence of wholesale im-
provements in the browser has squan-
dered the leadership that Microsoft
expended so much effort to win. (It
may seem like ancient history, but IE
was once a second-rate alternative to
Netscape Navigator.) So we’re glad to see
Microsoft start moving ahead with Inter-
net Explorer 7, which will be an integral
part of Windows Vista and will also be
available—minus a few Vista-dependent
capabilities—for Windows XP.
LIN VERSION 7, Internet Explorer ﬁnally supports tabbed
browsing natively, so you can keep multiple Web pages
open without spawning a whole stack of new application
windows.
VISTA REVEALED
LIE7’S NOVEL “quick tabs” feature shows thumbnails of all
your open tabs. It’s visually appealing and may be helpful if you
have lots of tabs open, but when it comes to working with the
tabs, you get the same functions in this view as by right-clicking
on tabs, nothing extra.
IE7 INTEGRATES K
with Microsoft’s
phishing detection.
In Vista, the entire
address bar turns
yellow when you visit
a suspected phishing
Web site (red for
a conﬁ rmed phishing
site). Clicking the
“Suspicious website”
notice brings up this
dialog box for more
information.
J IE7 AUTO-DISCOVERS RSS
and Atom feeds and lets you
view their contents, subscribe
to feeds, and share subscrip-
tion lists with other RSS-aware
apps, like feed aggregators—
but it’s designed for casual use,
not as a replacement for a full
RSS reader.
S OL UT I ON S • go.pcmag.com/vista
Excel Comes Alive
You can add live stock data to an Excel spreadsheet.
BY MARK J. BRICKLEY
W
ell, “live” might be a bit of an exaggeration—but a 15-minute delay for ac-
tual stock data isn’t bad! You could use this data to determine the current
value of your stock holdings, ﬁgure out your gains or losses, and do many
other calculations. There are two approaches to gaining access to stock data.
The easier way takes advantage of
the Smart Tag feature that arrived with
Microsoft Ofﬁce XP. And for those who
need to keep track of more than just a
few stocks, there’s the extremely handy
MSN MoneyCentral Stock Quotes add-
in. Along with the ability to download
stock data, the add-in also features the
MSNStockQuote function . With this
function, you can incorporate referenc-
es to stock data as part of any formula.
Getting Stock Data
with Smart Tags
IF YOU HAVE SMART TAGS ACTIVATED
(select Tools | AutoCorrect, then the
Smart Tags tab, and check Label data with
Smart Tags), any stock abbreviation on
your spread sheet will be marked. Simply
click the Smart Tag icon in the lower right
of the cell and select Insert Refreshable
Stock Price. The downside: Smart Tags
drag in a huge area of data—about 12
rows by 16 columns for each stock.
SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS
1
INSTALL THE ADD-IN. You’ll ﬁnd the
MSN Money Stock Quotes add-in at
www.microsoft.com/downloads (search
the site for “MSN Stock Quotes” and se-
lect the one for Excel). Once it’s installed,
you will have a new toolbar and a new
function. The data from the add-in is far
more compact than the data returned by
Smart Tags, but you may ﬁnd you don’t
need to display any stock data.
2
GET STOCK QUOTES. Once the toolbar is up and running, highlight the stocks you’re
interested in. Click on Insert Stock Quotes, then the Add button to move the relevant
data ﬁelds to the “selected” list. Click OK and the data will arrive on your worksheet.
3
WANT MORE INFORMATION? The MSNStockQuote function requires the abbrevia-
tion for the stock and a description of the data you need. For example, to get the most
recent price of Microsoft, you’d use =MSNStockQuote(“MSFT”, “Last”).
Have more than a few stocks? It’s more efﬁcient to use cell addresses to ﬁll in the
stock names. For the function’s second argument, any ﬁeld listed in the Insert Stock
Quotes dialog box will work. Many of these codes have numeric alternatives—rather
than say “52 week high,” you can use “year high” or the code 15. For a list of codes,
go to ofﬁce.microsoft.com and search for “stock quotes.” The help page at the
top of the list that appears contains an MSNStockQuote function reference.
Getting Data by Using the MSN MoneyCentral Stock Quotes Add-In
Tracking more than a few stocks and
want to avoid the clutter? Try the MSN
MoneyCentral Stock Quotes add-in.
S OL UT I ON S • go.pcmag.com/solutions
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 112
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 124
DUPING
The oldest and often easiest
of game exploits is duplicat-
ing items. It can be as simple
as quickly dropping and pick-
ing up an item over and over
unti l it doubles. Even the
rumor of easy loot is enough
to send players off on strange,
pointless errands. In World of
Warcraft, for instance, most
duping tricks involve trading
gold or items to another player
and then getting your charac-
ter rolled back to the state it
was at before the trade, some-
times by making a character
with an inappropriate name and delib-
erately having it reported, for example.
Any gamemaster (GM) who catches you
duping is going to kick your butt.
PATHFINDING
MMOGs are all about hitting monsters
until they die from it. Many players
discover, however, that exploits
are available when you’re run-
I
n any massively multiplayer online
game, it’s a long, hard fight from
newbiedom to level awesome. But
some players think that’s a game for
chumps. They know what they want, are
clever about taking it, and work hard not
to get caught. Cheating is as old as gam-
ing, video or otherwise. And an online
game universe is a big, tricky thing to
make. When you have millions of people
romping through your creation, they’re
going to do all kinds of crazy, unan-
ticipated things—which can let them
become tiny gods if left unchecked.
ning around instead of going toe-to-toe
with a critter. Monsters like either to
make a beeline for a threat or to follow
invisible trails laid down by the design-
ers. One classic example of pathﬁnding
is players leading EverQuest’s dragons
out onto bridges, then slipping away to
blast them with spells from below. The
problem with this and other variants is
that not only is it sometimes unclear to
players that pathfinding is wrong, but
GMs with hair-trigger tempers love to
ban people for it.
POWERLEVELING
The most prevalent example of path-
ﬁnding right now is taking advantage of
the mentoring system in games such as
EverQuest 2 and City of Heroes. Men-
toring and sidekicking artiﬁcially adjust
a character’s level to one closer to that
of the rest of a group, letting friends of
disparate levels venture out together.
Powerleveling is great stuff, but it’s not
without its faults. In EQ2 it’s possible to
lower your average level when zoning
into a particular area, then unmentor
inside to create a spot whose mobs are
scaled to an improper group average.
MACROS
MMOGs can be pretty tedious. Click-
ing the same thing over and over again
can be done just as well by a script as
by hand—so naturally, people make
scripts. Some actually go so far as to
implement scripts for killing monsters,
MORE TOYS! In World of Warcraft, there are several
ways to duplicate an item, known as duping.
WANNA ßUY A W0kKAk0UN0?
S14k w4kS 04l4II£S: After a s|ng|e p|ayer duped a
huge amount of money, 5ony 0n||ne |nterta|nment
banned any p|ayer w|th bogus cred|ts.
£¥£kµ0£S1 2: |t's poss|b|e to |ower your
|eve| art|f|c|a||y when enter|ng an
area, then to create a tone whose
mobs are sca|ed to an |mprobab|y
|ow average sk||| |eve|.
w0kl0 0I w4k0k4I1: 0haracter pos|t|on |s
determ|ned on the c||ent s|de, so p|ayers can f|dd|e
w|th pos|t|ona| data and be |nstant|y transported to a
monster-free tone, a cheat ca||ed speedhack|ng.
Gamesploitation
Lying, cheating, and stealing . . . for fun and proﬁt.
BY SCOTT SHARKEY, 1UP.COM
GAMING + CULTURE
go.pcmag.com/gaming-culture
www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 125
collecting loot, and even schlepping it
back to vendors. Whether or not this
is an officially butt-kickable offense
depends on the game. Some games, such
as Star Wars Galaxies and the original
Asheron’s Call, actually condone it, but
others place it above all other evils.
HACKING
Hacks are an entirely different class of
nastiness. Rather than taking advantage
of something broken in the game, hacks
break thi ngs themselves. Whether
they’re available depends mostly on
how much is handled in the game’s
client rather than on its servers, which
are inﬁnitely harder to monkey with.
On one end of the spectrum are
games like the original Diablo, which
stored all of its character data on the
client side. Diablo was so easy to mess
with that it ended up becoming the
most hacked game in history. On the
other end, most modern games are
comparatively ironclad. World of War-
craft is an exception, however. Charac-
ter position is determined on the client,
making it possible for players to ﬁddle
with positional data and be instantly
transported within the zone.
There are many reasons players cheat,
most of them not very nice. There’s the
thrill of putting one over on someone,
be it game designers or other players.
There’s the lure of free items, levels,
and status. For the really unscrupulous,
there’s easy money to be made selling
ill-gotten items, cash, and characters.
If you’re on that side of the gaming
fence, we hope you get caught. Jerk.
POWERLEVELING In City of Heroes, you
can artiﬁcially adjust a character’s level.

1
BATTLEFIELD 2: MODERN COMBAT
Vehicles and weapons abound as you ﬁght.
2
SPLINTER CELL 4
The ongoing adventures of a double agent.
3
THE ELDER SCROLLS IV
Unravel a sinister plot threatening the Empire.
4
FULL AUTO
Lethal street races? Where do I sign up?
5
eNCHANT arM
Look out for Golem. He’s a devil.
6
GHOST RECON 3
Become the warrior of the future.
7
HALO 3
The buzz is on for this shooter game—due in the fall.
8
FINAL FANTASY XI: TREASURE OF THE AHT URHGAN
The third expansion pack takes you on exotic treasure hunts.
9
KAMEO
Elves take on trolls. Blood ties are betrayed.
10
MLB 2K6
Start breaking in your mitt. It’s due in the spring.
TOP 10 l Xbox 360 Games
ON THE
AUCTION
BLOCK
You never know what
kind of booty you’ll
ﬁnd on the block.
ITEM:
Remember
this 1970s-era
Mattel electronic
football game?
EBAY PRICE:
$9.99
ITEM:
Hoops fans might
yearn for this
Michael Jordan
PSP skin.
EBAY PRICE:
$10.99
ITEM:
That’s an ofﬁcial
blue Zelda sword
and scabbard—
made of steel.
EBAY PRICE:
$165
Source: 1up.com. Ranked by highest online buzz.
WHO WOULD build a
computer case and a
hot rod–modded PC out
of what looks like brass
water piping? Blake
Betz, a reader at PC
Magazine’s sister site
ExtremeTech.com, did
just that. His creation,
Coppertop, actually
uses copper plumbing
pipes for its archi-
tecture. The system
houses an AMD Palo-
mino Athlon XP 1700+
processor, a Matrox
Millennium G400 32MB
Dual Head graphics
card, a Hauppauge PVR
250, a 120GB Maxtor
DiamondMax hard drive,
and more. Perhaps the
ﬁnishing touch should
be liquid cooling?
MOD WORLD
Full-size
keyboards will arrive
later this year. Picture the keys
displaying Russian characters at the
click of a button, or showing icons for applications.
What if every key on your keyboard had its own customizable
display? That’s the thought behind Optimus’s line of ﬂexible-
function keyboards. The three-key Optimus mini, which sits
next to your current keyboard, will ship this spring for $120.
Each key is topped by an OLED display with 96- by 96-pixel
resolution. Here, the keys are set to retrieve mail, show an
animated clock, and display Web images. Each can show ﬁve
frames per second, and as the images change, you can use the
Shift or Ctrl keys on your normal keyboard to execute actions.
QWERTY may soon feel outdated.—Sebastian Rupley
MORE ON THE WEB
For more products like the new Swiss
Army knife/MP3 player, head to
www.gearlog.com
The initial keyboard contains only
three buttons, but the Shift and
Ctrl keys triple their functions.
A F T E R HOU R S • go.pcmag.com/afterhours gearlog.com • G E AR L OG
www.pcmag.com MARCH 21, 2006 PC MAGAZINE 127
GEARLOG
KEYBOARD
METAMORPHOSIS
PC MAGAZINE MARCH 21, 2006 www.pcmag.com 128
PLASMA OR LCD: WHICH ONE ARE YOU?
Edited by Don Willmott
PC Magazine, ISSN 0888-8507, is published semi-monthly except monthly in January and July at $44.97 for one year. Ziff Davis Media Inc, 28 E. 28th St., New York, NY 10016-7940. Periodicals postage paid at New York,
NY 10016-7940 and at additional mailing ofﬁces. POSTMASTER: Address changes to PC Magazine, P.O. Box 54070, Boulder, CO 80328-4070. The Canadian GST registration number is 865286033. Publications Mail Agree-
ment No. 40009221. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to P.O. Box 503, R.P.O. West Beaver Creek, Richmond Hill, ON L4B 4R6, Canada. Printed in the U.S.A.
If your entry is used, we’ll send you a PC Magazine T-shirt. Submit your entries via e-mail to [email protected]
(attachments are welcome) or to Backspace, PC Magazine, 28 E. 28th St., New York, NY 10016-7940.
Ziff Davis Media Inc. shall own all property rights in the entries.
Winners this issue: Ji Ho Choi, Andy Dvorak, Alex Hu, Bill Lewis, Brian Sullivan, and Bryan Weber.
<<
The licked
ones are
available
for a few
bucks less.
(eBay)
<<
You may need a few of those trailers
to get the whole job done.
<<
Like the bug that’s responsible for this
Web page. (Wired News)
>>
So far, the
shameful
hackers
appear to
have the
upper hand.
(NukeSentinel)
>>
Backspace
on the
Road:
Nassau,
Bahamas.
>>
Awwww, how romantic! (ad spotted on eBay)
BACKSPACE

PC.magazine 21.March.2006

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