PC Magazine - April 10 2007

SPECIAL DOUBLE ISSUE WEB 3.0 INSIDE THE INTERNET’S SURPRISING FUTURE MOVIE DOWNLOAD SITES WE RATE AND REVIEW THE BEST S...

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SPECIAL DOUBLE ISSUE WEB 3.0 INSIDE THE INTERNET’S SURPRISING FUTURE

MOVIE DOWNLOAD SITES WE RATE AND REVIEW THE BEST SERVICES

VISTA LAB REPORT POWERFUL NEW NOTEBOOKS AND PCS TESTED GET MORE FROM TECHNOLOGY

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO

SECURITY HOW TO STOP THE LATEST THREATS

PLUS THE CHANGING FACE OF SPYWARE 13 TOP SECURITY SUITES COMPARED 11 FREE TOOLS TO KEEP YOU SAFE U.S. $5.99 / CAN. $7.99 / U.K. £4.00

APRIL 10, 2007 WWW.PCMAG.COM

PROTECT YOUR PC AND YOUR IDENTITY

PCONTENTS APRIL 10, 2007 VOL. 26 NO. 7/8

Web 3.0 page 74 Movie download sites page 80

Vista lab report page 30

COVE R STO RY

SECURITY SUPERGUIDE

65

Now that Vista is here, we’re safe, right? Guess again. We walk you through all aspects of security in our Security Superguide, including setting up parental controls, choosing free antivirus software, getting rid of spyware, and a list of the top security threats.

29

Complete guide to security page 65

FIRST LOOKS

30 Hardware HP TouchSmart IQ770 PC Gateway FX530XT (Vista) Dell Dimension E521 Gateway NX570X HP Pavilion dv9000t (Vista) Dell Inspiron E1705 (Vista) Canon Pixma mini260

Illustration by Quickhoney

Epson Stylus Photo RX580 34 Consumer Electronics Pioneer Elite PRO-940HD Plasma TV Nokia 5300 XpressMusic i-mate JAQ Nikon D40 Canon PowerShot SD900 Digital Elph JBL Spyro Audio Technica AT-LP2Da

Mio DigiWalker H610 Plantronics Discovery 665 42 Networking Linksys CIT310 Dual-Mode Cordless Phone for Yahoo! Messenger with Voice Linksys CIT400 iPhone DualMode Internet Telephony Kit for Skype

Netgear SPH200D DualMode Cordless Phone with Skype 44 Software SpyEraser 1.1 Safend Personal Protector MP3tunes Oboe Locker

LaCie SAFE Hard Drive Iomega REV Loader 560 Perimeter eSecurity Vulnerability Assessment Network Magic 4.1 53 The Best Stuff

Guitar Pro 5 46 Business Western Digital My Book Pro Edition APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 7

PCONTENTS

F E AT U R E S

WEB 3.0

74

Fed up with all this Web 2.0 talk? Well then, let’s move on to Version 3. The blogs are already abuzz with talk of the Net’s next generation. Unfortunately, no one can agree on what it will actually look like.

BROADBAND CINEMA

80

On-demand movies over the Internet have finally arrived. But is watching them easy, fast, convenient, and cheap enough to give DVD mailing services and brickand-mortar rental stores a run for their money? We find out.

OPINIONS 13 First Word Jim Louderback 56 Lance Ulanoff 61 Dan Costa 62 Sascha Segan 63 Inside Track John C. Dvorak 122 John C. Dvorak

FRONT SIDE 21 News DRM on HD DVD and Blu-ray discs cracked; the digital music revolution. 23 Q&A Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and HDTV pioneer. 24 At a Glance The Sharp Triple View LCD; top tech quotes; a Gearlog gadget that brings you one step closer to Jedi.

WHAT’S INSIDE YOUR LAPTOP?

87

You may have tinkered—or at least peeked—at the guts of your desktop tower, but not many people have seen what’s inside their laptops. We show you exactly what’s in there, where it comes from, and what it’s made of.

HD RADIO

92

First it was AM, then FM. Now it’s HD radio. We introduce you to the next evolution in radio.

25 Connected Traveler A jaunt through Barcelona; the best SIM cards for European travel.

TECHNORIDE 26 2007 MINI Cooper Clear Channel upgrades real-time traffic feed; car security at your fi ngertips.

ALSO INSIDE 18 Feedback 18 Abort, Retry, Fail

25 YEARS OF PC MAG 54 1989 Remember that time we failed to notice the blatantly misspelled word on the cover of our own magazine? We hope not.

SOLUTIONS 104 Ask Neil IE upgrade makes trouble; automating tasks at shutdown. 105 Ask Loyd One USB port isn’t enough; Flight Simulator weighs down PCs; upgrading from a full-size motherboard to a micro. 106 Solutions: Business Make your site more attractive to search engines; meet PowerPoint 2007; integrate steps to create a spam- and spywarefree office. 110 Solutions: Home Copy music from your iPod. 112 Security Watch A storm blows through the Internet; viruses on the rise.

BUILD IT

THE PC SUBWOOFER

97

Hate computer clutter? Serious about music? Happen to have an angle grinder laying around? With a bit of effort you, too, could build a subwoofer from an old PC tower. We show you how. PC Magazine, ISSN 0888-8507, is published semi-monthly, except monthly in July and three issues in November, at $44.97 for one year. Ziff Davis Media Inc., 28 East 28th Street, 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 Agreement 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.

10 PC MAGAZINE APRIL 10, 2007

PCMAG ONLINE If you dig Bill Machrone’s Build It story on page 97, you’ll like this even more: We’re giving away this unique subwoofer. Head over to go.pcmag .com/diysubwoofer and enter to win the giveaway. And while you’re there, check out everything else that PCMag.com has to offer—extended product reviews, breaking tech news, and much more.

F I R ST WO R D BY JIM LOUDERBACK, EDITOR

Winter of My Discontent

M

AYBE I’M JUST FEELING

blue because winter has dragged on, but I seem to be even angrier with tech companies t h e s e d a y s — s t a r ting with AT&T. Why am I mad at Ma Bell? Because of the way she’s corrupted and perverted the concept of Net neutrality. When I fi rst heard that the FCC had approved the merger of Bell South and AT&T, ramming things through on December 29 while the rest of us were napping, I was cautiously optimistic. The companies sealed the deal by promising unfettered access to their broadband lines. But then I read an analysis of the merger, done by my friend Dave Burstein, editor of the highly regarded DSL Prime newsletter and Web site. It turns out that AT&T’s version of Net neutrality is a chimera. Why? Because it specifically omits HD video. Net neutrality means that you should have the right to transfer whatever you want over the broadband connection you pay for, and at the advertised speed—regardless of who provides the content. If you’re connected with Yahoo!/AT&T DSL, for example, Google and Ask.com should be just as speedy and just as capable as Yahoo!’s Web site. Yes, AT&T will guarantee that for text and photos, but when it comes to high-definition video, AT&T reserves the right to restrict what you watch. That means AT&T can prioritize its own bundle of HD channels, preventing other HD content from flowing smoothly down those pipes that you’re already paying for. That’s just wrong. I’m hopping mad at Verizon, too. I really wanted to get my 7-year-old son a cell phone, and I’d decided that the cute Migo, with built-in GPS, was just the right product. Parent-programmable buttons on the front let you preconfigure who can call in and out, and you can track exactly where your child is at any time, via the Internet. I’m not a Verizon customer, though, and it would’ve cost me close to $100 a month to use the phone. Why? To get access to that cool GPS tracking ability, the parent has to have a Verizon cell phone, too. That would mean buying yet another phone, paying for the monthly family plan, and, on top of all that, paying a separate fee for the GPS service. No thank you. Illustration by Robert Neubecker

Who else has me incensed? Geek superstore Fry’s, a mostly West Coast chain of technology shops that sell everything from motherboards to MP3 players. I recently purchased a replacement camcorder battery at Fry’s, picking up one that promised to support “most Canon camcorders.” Alas, after I sliced open the blister packaging, it didn’t fit the GL2, so I attempted to return it. The store manager fi rst told me that I couldn’t return the battery because I’d sliced open the package, and then accused me of lying about using it, because the battery had blister pack scuff marks on it. I was out 50 bucks, but more important, Fry’s had just lost a longtime customer. I’m not universally enraged, however. I’ve got warm feelings for Target, which sold me the supercute Firefly kids’ phone for $70, with an easy and cheap pay-as-you-go service. And Newegg .com and Directron seem to be far better than Fry’s for buying DIY PC components. More on how all that works out in an upcoming column. I’m also super-happy with this issue. Not only are we bringing you the latest advice on securing your PC and your family, but we’ve got a tremendous feature on the Web’s future. You’ll also find a hands-on analysis of online movie services, a look into where your PC really comes from, tests of the first Vista–specific PCs and notebooks, and more. Happy reading, happy computing, and I hope that when the sun comes out, I’ll be in a better mood! Q

TALK TO THE CHIEF You can contact Jim Louderback at Jim_Louderback @ziffdavis.com For more of his columns, go to go.pcmag.com/ louderback

APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 13

FEEDBACK

KEEPING UP TO SPEED

I am a computer novice. In grad school we learned Fortran and made our own punch cards, and when hand-held calculators were invented, they were

You can find our technology encyclopedia at www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia. This resource includes definitions and explanations of tech terms, file formats, and more. Even we editors here at PC Mag need to look up a term now and again.—Erik Rhey,

$150 plus! I bought my first PC about 12 years ago

senior editor

but was never exposed to some of the elementary

CLARIFICATIONS ON THE GREEN PC

concepts. I subscribed to PC Magazine because of my interest and in the hope that I would learn some of the things I missed. I have a home business, so most of the hardware and software that is used in large businesses remains a mystery to me, especially because I was never exposed to previous generations of equipment.

I believe there are others like me out there. Perhaps a regular feature in the magazine could be a glossary of terms, such as JPEG or PDF. A running history of computer development and evolution would also aid me and other users tremendously.—Jim Roberts

ABORT, RETRY, FAIL BY DON WILLMOTT

Thanks for that hard-hitting update.

Sober surfing at the Holiday Inn in Runcon, England. We approve!

Attempt it? We can’t even pronounce it!

I thought your Build It article “The Green PC” (February 20, page 77) was a great piece and a good starting point for my next PC. There is one element of the article, however, that I felt was incomplete. Why isn’t that low-power, efficient LCD drawing juice from the power supply unit? The brick that came with the monitor is plugged in full time and drawing power even when the display is off. Plug the monitor into the PSU and the brick isn’t even needed. You need no electricity to run it, and there’s one less piece to recycle or landfill, less weight to ship, and so on. I have six bricks and related power cords jammed in behind my computer: the monitor, the printer, a separate scanner, the firewall/router, a print server and an Ethernet switch. The brick for the external hard drive is plugged in only when I do backups. Why can’t these peripherals run off the PSU? Some time back, Bill Machrone came at this same topic when he noticed that in the middle of the night his house was not dark but aglow with LEDs from things supposedly off or at least on standby. I agree that we throw away too much energy. The green PC is an excellent start.—Howard Reinholdt The main reason the PSU provides power only for the parts inside the PC has to do with the architecture of the computer, which dates back to the late 1970s and early 1980s. Manufacturing plants, product designers, and PC makers are all accustomed to the current limitations of an internal PSU.

Sounds like these flowers are edible.

CORRECTIONS & AMPLIFICATIONS

ARF NEEDS YOU! If your entry is used, we’ll send you a PC Magazine T-shirt. Submit your entries via e-mail to [email protected]. Ziff Davis Media Inc. shall own all property rights in the entries. Winners this issue: Thomas Bradshaw, Al Cowell, George Neil, and Patrick Watts.

In our feature story “The Best Free Software” (February 20), we incorrectly cited the name and URL of one of the free games. The correct name is Nexuiz (www.nexuiz.com).


But it will take just one (or maybe two, or three) inventive PC makers to break this mold. Imagine an all-in-one Gateway with a highly efficient power supply that doubles as a power strip. It could be done, and the planet would thank us.—John Brandon Regarding your green PC story: I thought the piece was very informative, especially about what components to select and why. It provided useful information for my future green and very quiet PC. But I have two questions for the author, John Brandon: 1. Is integrated video adequate? I understand the considerable power savings, but everything I read always says to use a separate video card. Will this Intel motherboard/video run the fancier Vista 3D version? 2. Why such a huge power supply? All the components add up to only 120 watts peak. Surely a 350-watt supply or so would have sufficed in the green PC you built. —Gary Auclair

Those are good questions. Building a green PC is certainly a balancing act between power and environmental impact. The Intel DG965SS motherboard with integrated graphics is capable of running Windows Vista Aero—and it supports 3D graphics. Now, “support” is different from “good performance.” The latest ATI and nVidia cards are much better options for games. And the DG965SS does not support DirectX 10 games such as Flight Simulator X. It will, however, meet the needs of most Windows Vista users. As for the power supply, the 80-Plus certification means the PSU will be highly efficient and will use only the power it needs. Having the extra wattage available is not so much an environmental issue as a way to add more expansion cards down the road, extra hard drives, and even an extra CD burner. We made this choice to ensure that the PC has a long shelf life and is not limited in any way. With this, users would be less likely to dispose of it in favor of a better-performing rig.—John Brandon

THE TOASTY LAPTOP In your Feedback section of February 6, a reader questioned the designation of the Dell XPS M1710 as a laptop because of its size, weight, and how it heats up. As a 68year-old owner of an M1710, I enjoy sitting back in my easy chair with it in my lap. Its warmth is like having a comforter to relieve the arthritis in my legs. Now you know: It’s not only a fast machine, it’s also a warming pad.—Bill Gustafson Although a desktop replacement notebook does have the added benefit of warming up your lap, you should abide by the dictum of all things in moderation. This position is not the most ergonomically sound and may cause mild burns.—ER HOW TO CONTACT US We welcome your comments and suggestions. When sending e-mail to Feedback, please state in the subject line of your message which article or column prompted your response. E-mail [email protected]. All letters become the property of PC Magazine and are subject to editing. We regret that we cannot answer letters individually.

Special Advertising Supplement

The Most Flexible Solution for Recovering Lost Data Enhancements to R-Studio from R-Tools gives users added capabilities to retrieve damaged files

T

HE MOST INNOVATIVE SOLUTION

recovering business-critical data lost to a host of threats just got better. R-Tools, the leader in smart data recover solutions, has launched R-Studio 3.6. this newest version of this business continuity solution now allows users to preview almost all major file types before they are actually recovered, even if the prescribed application is not installed. For example, users of R-Studio 3.6 can preview a .pdf file regardless of whether Adobe Reader is installed. These latest enhancements further build upon the lengthy list of capabilities of R-Studio as the ideal solution for recovering essential data that otherwise would be lost forever to viruses, malicious attacks, hardware failures, and operating system crashes. Plus, R-Studio is a Microsoft Vista-ready application. FOR

Bundled with R-Studio 3.6 is R-Studio Emergency Version, allowing users to recover data even when Windows cannot be booted due to system file corruption or deletion. R-Studio 3.6 is one product on a fast-growing list of business continuity solutions from R-Tools, a list that now includes the recently released R-Mail for Outlook. This handy utility restores deleted information and repairs damaged Microsoft Outlook files when Outlook cannot open them, allowing users to first preview recovered messages before recovering the information completely. Meanwhile, R-Tools also offers R-Mail for Outlook Express, which reconstructs accidentally deleted email messages or damaged

.dbx files. Other exceptional business continuity solutions from RTools include R-Word to recover damaged Microsoft Word files; R-Excel to reconstitute valuable Microsoft Excel files that are corrupted or attacked; and R-Wipe & Clean to automatically keep disks free and clear of data clutter. To learn more about any of these R-Tools solutions designed to keep your business up and running smoothly, visit www.r-tt.com.

R-Tools Technology Inc. www.r-tt.com

FRONTSIDE

WHAT’S NEW FROM THE WORLD OF TECH

Video DRM Foiled Again Hackers cracked the protections on HD DVD first, and then Blu-ray fell. Have the new formats failed?

I

S DOOMSDAY NEAR FOR DRM? TWO BREAK-

through hacks earlier this year have some experts believing it might be. The most recent, in February, cracked the universal code for decrypting DRM on all HD DVD and Blu-ray discs. And back in January, hackers posted codes for decrypting dozens of movies in both formats. How did they do it? Here’s a closer look at what they did, and what it all could mean for DRM down the road. Illustration by Christian Northeast

In both cases, the hacks led to the current ability to gain universal access to HD DVD and Bluray content. In the first, back in December, a video hacker named Muslix64 found an HD DVD’s Title Key, which tells the software player the title of the DVD. But having the Title Key is only one step in the process. There are two additional codes used by the Advanced Access Control System (AACS), the copy-protection system common to both HD DVD and Blu-ray discs: the Volume Unique Key and the APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 21

FRONT SIDE

Processing Key. Unlocking each movie means hacking into a software video player to get each individual Title Key, which then can get the Volume Unique Key and Processing Key to gain full access to the disc’s contents. Muslix64 got the Title Key for one HD DVD movie thanks to a flaw in the InterVideo software player. Basically, the app stored the Title Key in its memory, making it accessible to those who know where to look. Mu sl i x6 4 t hen posted a gener ic ut i lity called BackupHDDVD, a video player that could copy HD DVD data to a computer’s hard drive if the user knows the Title Key. At that point, he had only posted one Title Key, but it opened the floodgates. By January, members of the Doom9 forum had extended the technique to Blu-ray discs and posted more than 125 keys for HD DVD movies and 40 keys for Blu-ray movies. The attacks in January and December required that the specific keys for each movie title be dredged from a player’s memory. But in February, a hacker named Arnezami obtained a player’s Processing Key, giving BackupHDDVD and other programs the ability, essentially, to mimic a valid player and unlock the necessary keys for any current movie title. According to Nate Lawson, senior security engineer for Cryptography Research (a company that makes encryption for Blu-ray discs), the hacks do not mean the copy-protection system for all discs is broken, but that hackers have taken the upper hand. “As long as they can find keys, the content can be copied,” Lawson says. Full-length HD movies have already been posted online, but as they can weigh in at anywhere from 15GB to 50GB, online piracy might not yet be a dire threat for movie studios. Moreover, Hollywood still has weapons in its arsenal. Unlike the technology that protects standard DVD movies, the people who developed the AACS could make future versions that would prevent movies from playing on compromised players. Another defense is a technology from Cryptography Research called BD+, which adds a cryptological barrier to playing Blu-ray discs but also leaves information about the player and the disc encoded in the video stream, which could help catch hackers. The added protections could mean that movie studios will be more likely to release fi lms on Blu-ray, making HD DVD the loser in the high-definition format war. The real battle, however, will be in convincing consumers that the more expensive format is worth the money.—Robert Lemos 22 PC MAGAZINE APRIL 10, 2007

Music 2.0 The technology of Web 2.0—combined with the potential demise of DRM—spells more freedom and autonomy for music lovers.

W

ERE MUSIC LOVERS TO RELY SOLELY ON THE WORDS OF

critics, Nirvana’s groundbreaking 1991 album, Nevermind, would never have made the impact on the world that it did. In one of the music press’s biggest gaffes, Rolling Stone editors gave the album a paltry three stars. In the olden days, music fans would use those reviews (and radio airplay) to decide what to buy—often getting burned in the process. Now, with the rise of Web 2.0 technologies and the potential demise of DRM, the “Music 2.0” revolution is liberating fans, letting them connect directly to artists who match their tastes without having to rely on “experts.” In terms of music discovery tools, Pandora was a trailblazer. Part of the Music Genome Project, Pandora lets you create stations based on one band or musician. From there, the site plays other songs based on common traits in rhythm, harmony, vocals, and so on, disregarding genre. Musicovery, similar in concept, also automatically selects songs based on their properties, but the ones it relies on are more traditional and specified by the user—tempo, mood, era, and so on. Selected songs are presented as interconnected nodes. To share your new findings, services such as LastFM, Goombah, and TagWorld have entered the fray. LastFM and TagWorld let you create stations based on one artist and make recommendations that you can share with other registered users. Goombah examines your iTunes library and matches it to those of 20 other users so you can peruse and play their collections. Aaron Jentzen, music editor for the Pittsburgh City Paper, points out that there is still a portability problem. “You spend a lot of time in front of a little screen. How do you blast your favorite songs out of your stereo while you wash your car on a summer day?” Part of this problem is that DRM restricts how music fans can use and share songs. As a result, they are getting fed up and downloading less. And the industry is getting the message. Steve Jobs, Dave Goldberg (head of Yahoo! Music), execs at EMI, and other industry leaders have come out against DRM, saying it is stifl ing both music fans and profits. The elimination of DRM is the last hurdle to the full-scale sovereignty of digital music.—Matthew Tait Illustration by Jesse Lefkowitz

Q&A

MARK CUBAN The owner of the Dallas Mavericks and cofounder of HDNet talks about producing and broadcasting HD content.

Q: When you refer to content as being shot for HD, what does that mean?

A: There are a lot of people who shoot their programming in HD but don’t optimize for HD. Compare this with HDNet and, at most, five other networks. This is an important distinction. We don’t have anyone with a 4-by-3 standard TV watching our programming because everyone has a widescreen TV. We pro-

vide programming that is shot in 16-by-9 ratio and designed to fill that frame and be heard in at least 5.1 digital sound.

at what we call Ultra HD—very close to HDCam quality—that is almost lossless and can be stored hard drives.

Q: Do you really need a 5.1 sound system for HDTV?

Q: What is the biggest obstacle to wider HDTV adoption today?

A: If you don’t have a full sound s y s tem , you a re def i n itely missing out on a big part of the HDT V experience. Besides, most PCs these days come with 7.1 surround-sound cards anyway. Any geek worth his salt who has integrated full fidelity sound knows exactly what I’m talking about.

A: It is all about time. No different from the old PC days of the 1980s. Once PCs broke the $1,000 barrier, people found ways to get them into their homes. HDTV will become ubiquitous if only because analog TVs are going away. We are quickly getting to the point where you can’t buy an analog-only TV set anymore.

Q: What about picture quality? Should we wait for 1080p TV sets to come down in price?

Q: What are your thoughts on Microsoft’s Vista?

A: Technology will always get better and cheaper, but the picture quality of any TV capable of 1,920-by-1,080 far exceeds the signal it gets from any TV source. We are already looking

A: Conceptua lly, Vista wi ll help H DT V, but t he whole Vista DRM thing is ridiculous and will be outdated in three years anyway, and this will only hurt Vista as a media platform. —David Strom

TOP 7 TECH QUOTES OF ALL TIME The personal1 ket computer maris about the same size as the total potato-chip market. Next year it will be about half the size of the pet-food market and is fast approaching the total worldwide sales of pantyhose.—James Finke, president of Commodore International (1982) are 2 Computers useless. They can only give you answers.—Pablo Picasso do not fear com3 Iputers. I fear the lack of them.— Isaac Asimov

ONLINE ADVERTISING: PUTTING ON THE BRAKES

According to a study by eMarketer, although Internet advertising will continue to grow until 2010, the rate of growth shows a sharp decline. In contrast, the growth rate for advertising in other media (such as print, radio, and TV) will hit 0 percent in 2008 and actually drops into the negative range in 2009 and 2010. GROWTH RATE

computer 4 Maybe science should be in the College of Theology.—R. S. Barton, software engineer hacker does for 6 Alove what others would not do for

35%

money.—Laura Creighton, programmer and founder of AB Strakt

30%

25%

Internet ads

20%

successful 7 Atool is used to do something

15%

undreamed of by its author.—S. C. Johnson, founder of S. C. Johnson Wax

10%

Ads in other media

5%

Source: Aquarionics.com 0%

-5%

2005 *Estimated

2006*

2007*

2008*

2009*

2010*

Source: eMarketer, 2006.


FRONT SIDE

BEST OF THE INTERNET

BUBBLEPRICE www.bubbleprice.com This site estimates the investment capital your next Web product will be eligible for. Our best result: “Phototube.io.us, your roll-your-own, Web 2.0 Social Network with its innovative revenue model based on maximizing users, is entitled to approximately $11,992,500 in startup investment capital.”

G E A R LO G

A LASER THAT’S NOT FOR POINTING CROSSLOOP www.crossloop.com This free utility is a secure screen-sharing program. Install it on two computers and one of them can see and control the screen of the other. It’s great for amateur tech support.

In case you missed the memo, real lasers are now for sale on the Web. No, I’m not talking about the kind that can make a harmless red dot on someone’s forehead from 50 meters away (or more). These are semidangerous red, green, and blue lasers than can burn holes in trash bags, cut black electrical tape, and even cauterize small cuts on your body. Wicked Lasers (www.wicked-lasers.com) is

selling a whole line of handheld lasers, with prices starting at $99. They also sell a line of laser accessories, including convex lenses and protective goggles, which also happen to look ultra cool. If you don’t believe what you’re reading, check out the site’s video gallery. You can see the lasers burn through all sorts of unfortunate items. How can any of this be legal?—Lance Ulanoff

F UTU R E WATC H

ONE DISPLAY, THREE IMAGES INDIE SUPERSTAR www.indiesuperstar.com This site features videocasts of news from the world of gaming. You can watch the casts from YouTube or download them. They cover both big-name games and off-the-cuff indie titles.

No matter how big the vehicle, car designers barely have room for one LCD screen in the dashboard’s center console. But what if the driver, front-seat passenger, and backseat passengers all want to view different content? Sharp has proposed a solution: the Triple View. The display works by using an optical parallax barrier, a technology that controls which pixels on the display are seen from the left, center, and right. Each viewer sees one-third of the display’s pixels. Effectively, the driver could see navigation instructions, the


front-seat passenger might see information on restaurants or tourist attractions, and passengers in the back (they don’t have to be exactly centered) could see a movie. According to Sharp, the company has already used the technology to develop 3D LCDs as well as a Dual View display for cars from Toyota and Opel. Dual View is also being shown on prototype backseat entertainment systems by makers such as Visteon and Delphi. Sharp says Triple View could follow Dual View to market by a year or two if there’s enough interest.—Bill Howard

CONNECTEDTRAVELER

ROAMING PAINS

IF YOU’RE HEADED TO . . . BARCELONA, SPAIN The Casa Camper hotel (www.camper.com) fuses high tech and high touch, with free Wi-Fi, an LCD TV in every room, and a German water-recycling system that uses grease-eating bacteria to clean used shower water for its toilets. If you can’t afford Camper’s $270-per-night rates, the Aparthotel Silver (www .hotelsilver.com) has kitchens in every room, a free PC in the lobby, Wi-Fi on three floors, and good, old-fashioned familystyle service for only $100 a night. Point your cell phone to wap.tmb.net for maps and public-transit directions to anywhere in the city.—Sascha Segan

QUITE A CARD The Sierra Wireless AirCard 875 gives your laptop the ultimate in international connectivity: I got online in Spain at speeds over 300 kilobits per second, with peaks above 650 Kbps. It works also on Cingular’s HSDPA high-speed network here at home. Beware the monthly fees, though: An international, 100MB data plan costs $139.99 a month.

For an international roaming death match, I had five different cell-phone solutions face off: Cingular and T-Mobile subscriptions from the U.S.; Vodafone and Explorer SIM cards purchased through www .telestial.com; and a “Happy Mobile” SIM Card purchased at a Phone House store in Barcelona. The T-Mobile SIM made calls for 99 cents a minute on the first try, but data service required half an hour on the phone with tech support, and the rates were terrifying: $15 per MB. The Cingular card didn’t work at all for the first day because of “provisioning problems,” and its rates are even higher: $1.29 a minute and $19.50 per MB for data on normal phones. With a $69.99-a-month international BlackBerry plan, though, roaming with Cingular’s new BlackBerry 8800 is about as good as it gets for business travelers, and my BlackBerry kept me connected all week. The other cards are better bets for infrequent travelers who need to make calls, but I couldn’t configure data services on any of them. The Explorer card ($49), which gives you an Estonian phone number, worked on the first try. Incoming calls are free and outgoing calls are 60 cents a minute. The Vodafone card ($59) charges less per minute and theoretically offers data, but that required talking to tech support in Spanish, which I don’t speak. No va. Happy Mobile was the cheapest—$13 for the SIM, including $6.50 in call credit, and local outgoing calls were only 20 cents a minute—but it had no data service and required waiting on line at a store for half an hour. My conclusion? Local SIMs are the best for cheap, simple calling. Go to Telestial if you don’t want to bother standing at a store. And for data, unless your business has an international roaming data plan, just get a subscription for some Wi-Fi hot spots—it’ll save you both cost and grief.

WONPRO TO RULE THEM ALL? I got to Barcelona with five gadgets and found one free outlet in my hotel room. The Wonpro power strip came to my rescue: It’s a truly international strip that can take six U.S. devices and plug them into any European outlet, or vice versa, without blowing out from the voltage as a U.S. strip would, or requiring a half-dozen plug adapters like a European strip. Find it at www.wonpro.us. APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 25

TECHNORIDE

MINI COOPER $18,700 to $39,100 l l l l m

MILEAGE 32 mpg city/ 40 highway

PROS The $1,400 audio package provides lifetime satellite radio, HD radio, and more speakers. Engines are quicker and more fuel-efficient. Cockpit is roomier. Car feels more solid. Navigation gets real-time traffic.

CONS $600 Bluetooth. Guilt-by-association BMW-based navigation system. Eight-inch speedometer mounted in center of dash. Tiny backseat.

NEED MORE REVIEW? Check out Bill Howard’s extended analysis of the MINI Cooper at go.technoride.com/ minicooper

PERFORMANCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND COMFORT

O

VER THE PAST FIVE YEARS, THE REBORN

MINI Cooper made driving fun again for 177,000 buyers in the U.S. Now, a much-needed front-to-back redesign gives the 2007 MINI a healthy dose of new technology and more comfort for long-distance driving. A MINI Cooper is still a hoot to drive, especially if you pop for the turbocharged Cooper S—the base Cooper can’t get out of its own way on hilly roads. Believe it or not, you’d feel comfortable (and safe) taking the new MINI cross-country. The cockpit is more refined, there’s more room for driver and passenger (the center console was narrowed), and this iteration feels quieter and more relaxing. For entertainment options, you get an AM/FM radio, a CD player with MP3 and WMA capability, a linein jack, and (optionally) Sirius Satellite Radio, HD Radio, and iPod compatibility.

The MINI also offers a Bluetooth phone kit that’s $600 on its own or part of a $1,400 convenience package. For navigation, MINIs use the same Siemens VDO technology as BMW, earning them criticism from users for the stiff learning curve. BMW incorporated its own variable valve lift (Valvetronic, in BMW jargon) and variable valve timing (Vanos) for the MINI engines. In addition to six airbags, MINI provides ABS (anti-lock brakes), EBFD (Electronic Brake Force Distribution) to assist in panic stops, and CBC (Cornering Brake Control). DSC (Dynamic Stability Control) is optional. ASC+T (Automatic Stability Control + Traction) comes standard on the MINI Cooper S. The new MINI is so improved and the old MINI retains so much value (meaning it’s not cheap) that the way to go is with a new MINI Cooper. It packs a solid dose of technology that doesn’t overpower the fun of driving.—Bill Howard

CLEAR CHANNEL UPGRADES REAL-TIME TRAFFIC FEED

CAR SECURITY AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

Real-time traffic information should take a big leap forward in accuracy soon, when Clear Channel and its partner Inrix start feeding traffic flow information from 625,000 transponder-equipped vehicles into their Total Traffic Network. This move may begin to resolve concerns that real-time traffic flow information now is too little, delivered too late. “Clear Channel’s RDS [radio data service] customers will have available almost ten times the coverage that they had available before this announcement,” says Inrix CEO Bryan Mistele. “It’s pretty exciting stuff.”—BH

According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, a car is stolen every 26 seconds in America. SID Protect has adopted a different approach to theft prevention: The SID antitheft device uses biometric fingerprint technology to ensure that only authorized users can operate the vehicle. The car’s owner and up to 20 users can be stored on the device. The SID does not replace the ignition key, which a registered user must have to start the vehicle. But even if the key is stolen, the SID will keep your car safe and secure from nonregistered users.


—Errol A. Pierre-Louis

FIRST LOOKS OUR RATINGS KEY: l l l l l EXCELLENT l l l l m VERY GOOD l l l m m GOOD l l m m m FAIR l m m m m POOR

COMPUTING’S NEW LOOK We have a lot of new choices to make. Vista or no Vista, new PC or upgrade, boxers or briefs (just to make sure you were paying attention). The biggest computing question, however, may be what kind of PC you should buy. All-in-one PCs, on the Windows side, have gone from disappointing to remarkable in a very short time. Just look at this Vistarunning HP TouchSmart: It almost dares you to reach out and touch it. We did. Our review is on page 30. Whatever PC you decide on, it won’t have enough storage for the long haul. Think 80GB is enough? Wrong. It’s time to consider external storage options from Iomega, LaCie, and Western Digital. Naturally, we have the reviews for these, as well as for new spyware blockers, cameras from Canon and Nikon, and 21 other life-altering products.

INSIDE 30 HARDWARE 34 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS

42 NETWORKING 44 SOFTWARE 46 BUSINESS 53 THE BEST STUFF


F I R ST LO O KS HARDWARE

HP TouchSmart IQ770 PC $1,800 direct l l l l m

BOTTOM LINE HP is calling its new TouchSmart IQ770 PC a “perfect kitchen PC.” It’s that, and more: It will find a place in the den, bedroom, or anywhere else you use a shared computer. go.pcmag.com/ hpiq770pc

ALL ABOUT VISTA For news, reviews, and analyses of Microsoft Windows Vista, check out our coverage on go.pcmag.com/vista. For full reviews of the products featured, check out our “go” links.

VISTA DESKTOPS AND LAPTOPS

PUTTING VISTA PCS TO THE TEST

W

INDOWS VISTA IS HERE. THE

long-awaited operating system now graces many (if not most) new desktops and laptops. We managed to get our hands on some of the first systems releasing with the Vista OS, and what we found may surprise you. For starters, Vista isn’t necessarily the performance upgrade from XP that one might expect for desktops. And on laptops, systems under Vista sometimes ran slower than they had been running under XP. Confused? Don’t worry, we break down the performance results for you. We should note from the get-go that the Vista-equipped systems (both desktops and laptops) were not tested against one another. Rather, we compared each system’s performance under Vista against its performance under XP. Thus, Editors’ Choices were awarded for their category (e.g., all-in-one desktops or ultraportable laptops), not in comparison with one another. We expect to use BAPCo’s SYSmark 2007


(with Vista support) when it is released this year. For battery rundown tests on laptops, we plan to use BAPCo’s MobileMark 2007, an industrystandard benchmark test that will have Vista support when released. In the meantime, we ran a lengthy DVD to test laptop battery life informally. DESKTOPS: FASTER, BUT . . . With certain excep-

tions, the desktops received less of a performance “hit” than laptops when switching to Vista. Two of the desktops we tested—the HP TouchSmart IQ770 PC and the Dell Dimension E521—came with 2GB of system memory. The gaming-oriented Gateway FX530XT (Vista) came with 4GB of RAM, an amount that can now be fully addressed by Windows Vista. Windows XP (in both Home and Pro editions) has trouble recognizing all 4GB, even though the OS “supports” a max of 4GB. 3DMark06 was one of the few tests that ran on all three desktops. On the E521, Vista performance lagged behind that of XP by a barely significant 10 percent. On the FX530XT, which came with a dual

Gateway FX530XT (Vista) $4,120 direct; $4,500 with a 24-inch widescreen LCD monitor l l l h m

BOTTOM LINE Gateway delivers an overclocked quad-core gaming box with Vista. In the tradition of “kitchen sink” gaming PCs, the FX530XT has a lot of features that will put a dent in your newPC laundry list. go.pcmag.com/ fx530xtvista

ATI CrossFire card, the system under Vista actually outperformed the same system under XP at both resolutions. Since the IQ770 also ran 3DMark06 well, we surmise that 3DMark under Vista was a priority for the ATI and nVidia driver developers. Things were less hunky-dory on the actual games. We had problems running Prey on all the Vista desktop systems on account of crashes and hangs. Company of Heroes ran on all three desktops, but on the FX530XT, the dual-card CrossFire yielded disappointing numbers. The single-card Radeon X1300 on the Dell E521 worked fine, albeit slowly. The fact that the Dell E521 got approximately the same score under both OSs shows that at least for single-card systems, Vista doesn’t slow performance down too much. The desktops’ multimedia tests weren’t affected by the graphics driver issue: Running Vista on the FX530XT and the E521 showed parity or slight improvement over XP on the Windows Media Encoder 9 test and Photoshop CS2 test. The Gateway’s CineBench score shot up by about 8 percent, which could be attributed to Vista’s more efficient memory management with 4GB of system RAM, as well as its improved “pre-caching” optimization.

LAPTOPS: TAKE IT SLOW Overall on laptops, we

Dell Dimension E521

found that Vista is slower on specific tasks, such as 3D gaming scenarios and scripts from an industrystandard photo editor. The slowdown could result from a combination of early code, premature graphics drivers, and, perhaps, the resource-intensive Aero-dynamic GUI. There are other tasks where Vista does live up to the hype, such as video encoding, which takes advantage of higher-end, dual-core CPUs. We even nixed the rumor that Vista’s interface would drain more battery life. We were lucky enough to get laptops with graphics solutions from three of the major graphics chipset providers: AMD/ATI, Intel, and nVidia. These graphics chipsets are midrange to entrylevel at best. We also downloaded the latest drivers on the laptop maker’s site. In a nutshell, the nVidia GeForce Go 7600 in the HP Pavilion dv9000t (Vista) and the integrated Intel GMA 950/945 in the Gateway NX570X managed to keep 3D performance under Vista close to that under XP, whereas the ATI chipset in the Dell Inspiron E1705 (Vista) is still in need of another driver update. All three systems failed to run Prey, one of the more graphically demanding OpenGL games in the

$834 direct; $1,064 with a 20-inch widescreen LCD monitor lllhm

BOTTOM LINE Our first mainstream Vista desktop, the Dell Dimension E521, is a solid entry point for Vista Home Premium. Its dual-core CPU, discrete graphics, 2GB of RAM, and large, fast hard drive make for a good Vista experience. go.pcmag.com/delle521

BENCHMARK TESTS: DESKTOPS Products are listed in alphabetical order.

denotes Editors’ Choice.

Q XP Q VISTA

3D

b High scores are better c Low scores are better

3DMark06 b

Resolution >>

1,280 x 1,024

GAMING (FPS)*

MULTIMEDIA

Company of Heroes b 2,560 x 1,600

1,280 x 1,024

2,560 x 1,600

Windows Media Encoder 9 c

Photoshop

CS2

0X/0X

0X/8X

0X/0X

High

min:sec

CineBench 9.5 b

Dell Dimension E521

1,361 1,236

N/A N/A

10.8 10.8

N/A N/A

1:58 1:55

552 557

1:17 1:20

Gateway FX530XT

7,201 10,160

4,036 6,391

90 46.8

22 N/A

0:57 0:51

1,556 1,682

0:29 0:28

HP TouchSmart IQ770

N/A 2,296

N/A N/A

N/A 22.7

N/A N/A

N/A 2:10

N/A 440

N/A 1:38

Anti-aliasing/ Anisotropic fi ltering >>

Action Set c min:sec

N/A—Not applicable: The product could not complete this test. For details about the processors and graphics chipsets in these desktops, go to go.pcmag.com/vistapcs. *None of these desktops were able to run Prey under Windows Vista. Only the Gateway FX530XT could run Prey under Windows XP; it achieved 133 fps at 1,280 x 1,024 and 69 fps at 2,560 x 1,600.


F I R ST LO O KS HARDWARE

HP Pavilion dv9000t (Vista)

Dell Inspiron E1705 (Vista)

Gateway NX570X

$2,569 direct

$1,715 direct

$1,350 list

l l l l h

lllhm

llllm

BOTTOM LINE Ready to jump on the HD DVD bandwagon? The dv9000t has the best playback software and features of any desktop replacement laptop. go.pcmag.com/hpdv9000tvista

BOTTOM LINE The Dell Inspiron E1705 is one of the more obvious choices for those shopping for an affordable desktop replacement laptop. With Vista Home Premium, the choice is that much clearer. go.pcmag.com/delle1705vista

BOTTOM LINE A budget-friendly price, a stable design, and fine performance make the Gateway NX570X a compelling choice for your next business laptop. go.pcmag.com/nx570x

market, under Vista. Company of Heroes, part of the “Games for Windows” initiative, however, is Vista-ready, and it’s likely to be even faster when a DirectX 10 version comes out later this year. On the Photoshop CS2 test, the NX570X was significantly slower under Vista than under XP. Given that its integrated graphics and Vista’s hardcore interface are competing for system memory, the unit’s mere 1GB of RAM widened the performance gap in XP’s favor. The Dell and HP systems each came in with 2GB of RAM. Vista is supposedly optimized for high-end systems. This rings true with the results we got when encoding a WMV-HD file to MPEG-2. Vista finished faster across the board, taking advantage of the Mobile Intel Core 2 Duo processor on all three laptops. As we’ve noted, MobileMark 2007, an industrystandard battery benchmark test, was not available

in time for this story. Instead we used a somewhat arcane but effective method to test battery life: running an extremely long DVD movie in the system. These tests showed that battery life differences were negligible under Vista and XP. Even though Vista is power-hungry, it seems to have strong powermanagement capabilities. Overall, Vista is off to a tentative but encouraging start. Most of the performance lag we saw, particularly on games in the laptop systems, can be attributed to needing driver upgrades for components. As component manufacturers roll out parts optimized for use in the new operating system, you can bet we’ll see greatly improved performance. In the meantime, the new features, snappy new interface, and some of the remarkable new systems running Vista are strong reasons to upgrade to the new OS.—Cisco Cheng and Joel Santo Domingo

BENCHMARK TESTS: LAPTOPS Products are listed in alphabetical order.

Q XP Q VISTA b High scores are better c Low scores are better


3D

GAMING (FPS)*

3DMark06 b

Company of Heroes b

MULTIMEDIA

BATTERY

Resolution >>

1,024 x 768

Native

1,024 x 768

Native

Anti-aliasing/ Anisotropic fi ltering >>

Windows Media Encoder 9 c

0X/0X

0X/4X

0X/0X

0X/4X

min:sec

CineBench 9.5 b

min:sec

hr:min

Dell Inspiron E1705 (Vista)

1,349 928

935 720

11.9 11.4

3.7 3.5

1:38 1:37

607 605

1:06 1:16

2:40 2:33

Gateway NX570X

265 260

209 209

6 N/A

2 N/A

1:48 1:42

601 607

1:47 2:14

3:59 3:55

HP Pavilion dv9000t (Vista)

2,495 2,415

1,787 1,749

32.9 32.2

20.7 18.9

1:41 1:35

607 605

1:11 1:12

1:52 1:49

Photoshop CS2 Action Set c

Battery rundown score b

N/A—Not applicable: The product could not complete this test. For details about the processors and graphics chipsets in these laptops, go to go.pcmag.com/vistapcs. * None of these laptops were able to run Prey under Windows Vista. Only the HP dv9000t could run Prey under Windows XP; it achieved 42.6 fps at 1,024 x 768 and 30.2 fps at native resolution.


ble T ilta ch n 2 .5-oi r LCD col

CANON PIXMA MINI260

MINI TO THE MAX

M

INI IN NAME ONLY, THIS LITTLE NUMBER IS NOT

much smaller than most small-format ink jet printers, and it’s larger than thermal-dye units. Still, at 4.8 pounds and equipped with a handle, it’s quite portable. Using an optional battery ($79.99 direct), you can print photos at outdoor gatherings. The mini260 quickly prints photos at or near true photo quality. With Canon’s $27.99 100-print pack, cost per photo is 28 cents, par for small-format printers. Apart from being easily scratched, prints are durable. Canon claims a 100-year lifetime for them in dark storage (such as albums), 10 years exposed to air. The mini260’s menu system could be better. Cropping is the only editing feature on the Edit menu; red-eye reduction and the like are on the Advanced menu. A command on the Special Photo Print menu (similar to the Variations option in Adobe Photoshop) lets you print a page of nine thumbnail-size samples, each with different adjustments and settings chosen by the printer. You can then pick which sample to print at full size. The mini260 has the features and quality to make it worth considering. Those on a budget should compare the Epson PictureMate Pal, which, while lacking some of the mini260’s niceties, offers similar speed and print quality at lower cost.—M. David Stone

>>For more: go.pcmag.com/mini260

EPSON STYLUS PHOTO RX580

Contro rotatels wt heel change mo settings enu

Canon Pixma mini260 $179.99 direct lllhm

PROS Good speed. Prints from computers, memory cards, and cameras. Optional Bluetooth adapter. Optional battery. CONS Prints scratch easily from casual handling.

Flatbed scannetircal at 1, 20 0-dpi op resolution

RX FOR PHOTO BLUES

E

NDOWED WITH A MODEST NUMBER OF FEATURES FOR

an all-in-one, all this photo printer offers is printing, copying, and scanning—and the printing is sluggish, to boot. But text output is very good, and its photos are dazzling. The prints are water- and smudgeresistant, and Epson’s new Claria inks give them a claimed lifetime of 200 years in dark storage, as in an album, or 98 years framed behind glass. Text printing was very good, with most business fonts easily readable at 4 points and all standard fonts well seen at 6 points. Graphics were good enough for distribution to business clients. As for photos, every one of our test shots was suitable for framing, with only one photo having a flaw worth mentioning (a monochrome print had a slight tint). The RX580 may be a good Rx for your photo blues, but other all-in-ones are better overall. The Canon MP600 offers similar output quality, faster speed, and more features, including an extra paper tray, for the same price. Still, the RX580’s output, especially photos, is stellar, and it would be a good choice for printing to ink jet–printable optical discs.—MDS >>For more: go.pcmag.com/epsonrx580

Four-arrow menu controller Epson Stylus Photo RX580 $199.99 direct llhmm

PROS High-quality output, particularly for photos. Prints from cameras and memory cards. Prints on optical discs. CONS Relatively slow. No fax features. No scan-to-e-mail feature. No automatic document feeder. APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 33

F I R ST LO O KS CONSUMER ELECTRONICS

ers Stereo speeall-k w e provid und balanced so

Plenty of inputs plus two HDMI ports

PIONEER ELITE PRO-940HD PLASMA TV

GAZE UPON PLASMA PERFECTION

Pioneer Elite PRO-940HD Plasma TV $3,300 list l l l l h

PROS Excellent multimedia file support. Very good image color and contrast. CableCARD slot. CONS Expensive. Slightly softer image quality compared with some plasma TVs.

P

IONEER PLASMA TELEVISIONS HAVE

proven to be consistently capable of accurate and pleasing video reproduction, and this new model doesn’t disappoint. The Elite PRO-940HD, a premiumpriced 42-inch panel, possesses near-perfect imagery and network-friendly multimedia features that are simple to configure and impressively responsive. The TV is also stylish, with a glossy frame that is attractively beveled along its perimeter. In fact, with just minor differences between light and dark levels measured at the center, edges, and corners of the screen, the PRO-940HD’s picture was among the most consistent I’ve seen. The set’s screen material was also significantly darker than the inexpensive plasma TVs I’ve reviewed lately,


helping it deliver better apparent black levels in a well-lit room. This trait was especially noticeable in the black bars of letterboxed movies. Keep in mind that screen color becomes less of a factor in a dimly lit environment. The PRO-940HD’s picture exhibited good detail and color quality right out of the box. I especially appreciated its “pure” picture preset, which gives you factory-calibrated imagery with minimal video processing—ideal for high-quality video sources such as HD DVD and Blu-ray movies. It may cost more than most 42-inch plasmas, but the PRO-940HD earns our Editors’ Choice for providing solid performance in an attractive and functional product.—Robert Heron >>For more: go.pcmag.com/pro940hd


NOKIA 5300 XPRESSMUSIC

Rubber s bumper

ows Syncs w/Windr ye a Pl ia Med

CHAT AND GROOVE

N

OKIA’S LATEST MUSIC PHONE (AVAILABLE THROUGH

T-Mobile) is cute, fun, and blessedly simple to operate. If you seek a slick, tunes-oriented cell phone, you’re in luck. Crafted with rounded corners and boldly marked rubbery buttons, the 5300 has solid reception and sound quality. And its 320-by-240 color screen is positively gorgeous. But the 5300’s true strength is its music player, which syncs beautifully with Windows Media Player and MTP-compatible music services such as Napster. You can store your music on a microSD card up to 2GB in size, and you can transfer songs to PCs and Macs via a standard mini-USB cable. Navigating to your music library isn’t exactly iTunes-intuitive, but once you get the hang of the menu you can sort MP3, AAC, and WMA tracks in various ways and sync your playlists, too. The 5300 also has a built-in FM radio. Music through the mono speaker sounds loud, but I suggest using wired headphones, or better yet, Bluetooth ones—which the 5300 supports. With a top-notch screen and bold, easy-to-use buttons, the Nokia 5300 XpressMusic is definitely a terrific mobile companion to a Windows-based music experience.—Sascha Segan

Nokia 5300 XpressMusic $279.99; $99.99 and up with contract llllm

PROS Cute. Fine music player. Compatible with Windows Media music stores. Easy to use. Terrific screen. CONS Popular apps such as Opera Mini are blocked. Battery life could be better. Voice dialing is poor.

>>For more: go.pcmag.com/nokia5300

Weighs a hefty 5.6 ounces

i-mate JAQ $489 (unlocked) l h m m m

PROS Roomy touch screen. Built-in document editing. CONS Huge, chunky profile. No camera. Noisy keyboard. Poor voice quality. Middling performance.

Almost h one-inc thick

I-MATE JAQ

OLD-SCHOOL, SLOW, AND OVERSIZE

T

HE JAQ ATTEMPTS TO DISTINGUISH ITSELF AMID AN

increasingly crowded field of consumer-oriented, unlocked smart devices—and it fails miserably. It’s hard to find a smartphone that makes a Treo look svelte. But sadly, the JAQ does just that; in fact, it’s so big that it’s difficult to hold. Worse, the device’s keyboard consists of stiff, raised keys that produce noisy clicks. Still, the phone qualifies as a full pocket PC: It sports a 2.8-inch touch screen, and you can view, edit, and save Microsoft Office documents right out of the box. Though the JAQ is a globe-trotting quad-band world phone, audio quality through the handset’s earpiece was awful. Voices sounded tinny and harsh. I was also not impressed by the weak speakerphone. Powered by a 200-MHz TI OMAP850 CPU, the JAQ has just 28MB free to run applications, and its performance is pretty pokey. That said, I managed to wring a solid 9 hours 9 minutes of talk time out of the phone’s battery. Lacking HSDPA support, built-in Wi-Fi, or a fast processor, the JAQ is a decidedly last-generation product. Numerous devices offer way better speed and audio, as well as slimmer designs.—Jamie Lendino, frequent contributor >>For more: go.pcmag.com/jaq


No info el pan

NIKON D40

THE COMMON MAN’S CAMERA

N

IKON CONTINUES TO IMPROVE AND HONE

its entry-level D-SLR offerings. Compact, light, and easy to use, the company’s latest advanced shooter is held back by minor missteps. A 6-megapixel camera, the Nikon D40 boasts a 3X optical zoom lens with a range spanning 18mm to 55mm. What I really like about the device—aside from its small size and inexpensive price—are the extensive help guides in the menu. Nikon is the only manufacturer I know to take extra care in thinking of the average Joe and Jane photographer. In addition, the camera stores photos on standard SD and high-capacity SDHC cards. The D40 did make some stumbles. Though color in my test images was vibrant and picture quality sharp, simulated daylight shots had a reddish cast. Moreover, the higher the ISO, the more the flash tended to blow out highlights. Autofocus points are helpful when capturing action shots; sadly, this camera offers only three. Although the Nikon D40 has some wonderful features and is certainly on a par with most entry-level D-SLRs, a few shortcomings keep it from earning an Editors’ Choice.—Terry Sullivan >>For more: go.pcmag.com/d40

Steady burst mode

l Helpfu o inf on butt

Nikon D40 $599.95 list llllm

New compact form factor

PROS Compact form factor. Light. Easy to use. Helpful guide features. Very inexpensive for a D-SLR. CONS Performance isn’t quite as good as that of other entry-level D-SLRs. Only three AF points. Flash shots could be better.

Still glass invcludes iewfind er CANON POWERSHOT SD900 DIGITAL ELPH

STYLISH SHOOTER DOESN’T SATISFY

U Canon PowerShot SD900

Digital Elph $499.95 list l l l m m

PROS Excellent image quality and performance. Effective face detection. Steady burst mode. CONS Menus hard to navigate. Mediocre video quality. Not enough manual capabilities.

NFORTUNATELY FOR CANON'S NEW DIGITAL ELPH, MEGAPIXELS

aren’t the only measure of a camera. If they were, this one would be a walk-off winner, but I was a little disappointed with this highest-megapixel member of the PowerShot family. With a slick brushed-metal finish, the SD900 Digital Elph is both chic and comfortable to hold. Its 10MP sensor allows this small camera to capture lots of image data for printing or cropping. I wasn’t impressed by the 3X optical zoom lens (7.7mm to 23.1mm), though, since I prefer a wider angle of view. Like most ultracompacts, this one limits your manual settings. Even so, there wasn’t much in the way of on-board help or shooting tips. The quality of the burst mode was impressive: Though not super fast, it’s as steady as a D-SLR’s. Overall, photos were very sharp, and flash illumination was good, though slightly uneven. And I was pleased to find that shutter lag was virtually nonexistent. The SD900 features a high-resolution movie mode (1,024-by-768), but the frame rate is a pokey 15 frames per second, resulting in jerky action scenes. For smoother performance, you must rely on the camera’s standard VGA movie mode. Even though it doesn’t quite have the right stuff to earn an Editors’ Choice, Canon’s PowerShot SD900 is a solid and pleasing camera.—TS >>For more: go.pcmag.com/sd90 APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 39


der-like Darth-Vaid sa helmet h bewoofer su booming JBL SPYRO

FLOWER POWER THAT ROCKS

W JBL Spyro $129.95 list l l l h m

PROS No distortion at maximum volume. Powerful subwoofer. Ideal for pop, rock, or rap. Small desktop speakers save space. CONS No visual meter for volume. Touch-sensitive volume controls are not sensitive enough. Lightweight speakers jostle easily.

Despite theer funky flow spyro motif, the wer delivers po

ITH SATELLITE SPEAKERS VAGUELY RESEMBLING

blossoming flora, the Spyro speakers are pretty darn adorable—maybe too much so. My immediate fear was that most of the price tag went into the wild design and not the audio performance. Thankfully, I found that wasn’t the case. I was pleasantly surprised to hear this system deliver crisp highs and booming lows. In fact, the Spyros had no problem handling the thunder of the seriously loud Queens of the Stone Age. They rocked at maximum volume without distortion. Ah, but the design. Surely, these playful looks will attract some folks, offputting as they are to me. But everyone will likely be a bit annoyed by the Spyro’s volume control. It’s jumpy and—like Harman Kardon’s SoundSticks II (PC speakers that I love)—has no visual meter, so changing the volume requires more effort than it should. For most people, however, the tiny size and powerful output of these upward-angled desktop speakers should offset this annoyance. Overall, the Spyros hold their own in terms of performance and are a convenient choice for the consumer who has minimal desk space but still wants to rock out.—Tim Gideon

>>For more: go.pcmag.com/spyro

AUDIO TECHNICA AT-LP2DA

DON’T SCRATCH, RIP IT

P Audio Technica AT-LP2Da $199.99 direct l l l h m

Break between tracks

PROS Making WAVs and MP3s of your records is pretty simple. The Remove Clicks feature helps decrease crackle sound. CONS Initial setup isn't as simple as plugging in and loading software. Recording process can be time-consuming. 40 PC MAGAZINE APRIL 10, 2007

EOPLE HAVE BEEN MAKING MP3S OF THEIR

records for a while now, so Audio Technica isn’t exactly breaking new ground. That said, the AT-LP2Da—which consists of a turntable, Cakewalk recording software, and cables for connecting to your PC—is a great idea. It provides you with all the materials necessary to record vinyl with minimal headache. And at $200, it’s relatively inexpensive as well. The software is pretty intuitive, so users will rarely need to consult manuals. The only real pain concerning setup involves getting your PC’s audio settings correctly configured to work with Cakewalk. Sadly, this process isn’t explained in the documentation. Once you clear that small hurdle, however, making WAV or MP3 files of your LPs is easy. Keep in mind that file-naming must be done manually to ensure that the artist, album, song title, and track order information is properly displayed. Admittedly, the included turntable isn’t the best in the world, but it’s still cheaper than repurchasing all your albums. You can always upgrade, of course, but the warm sound of vinyl crackle coming from your MP3 player should be enough to put a big fat smile on your face.—TG

>>For more: go.pcmag.com/atlp2da

Just 3.9 ounces

MIO DIGIWALKER H610

COMPACT AND SUPER-TALENTED

D

Stor datae extra SD ca on rds

ON’T LET THE H610’S DIMINUTIVE SIZE FOOL YOU.

Here’s a GPS that boasts a wealth of travel tools, games, and multimedia features. Oh, and yes, it’s also great for navigation. Of course, the device’s tiny size means a small screen—2.7 inches—that’s a bit difficult to read when it’s mounted on the dashboard. But the H610 is not just for cars: It also features bicycle and pedestrian profiles. For travelers of all stripes, the H610 packs in handy apps such as a world clock, weather forecaster, and a currency converter. Media mavens will appreciate the included photo viewer, full-featured audio and video players, wide file format support, and built-in equalizer. The H610 is based on the latest SiRFstarIII receiver, and it performed comparably to other Tele Atlas–based devices. Unique to the H610, however, is a nifty tilt/zoom feature that automatically zooms and flattens your 3D view as you approach a turn. I was also impressed with the comprehensive POI database and its extensive search options. Moreover, you don’t have to worry about sharing space on the SD card with applications or map data. The H610’s 2GB on-board memory contains all of the program, map, and POI data, so the SD card can be dedicated to your multimedia files. Overall, I found the Mio DigiWalker quite easy to use and loaded with useful travel features—Craig Ellison

Mio DigiWalker H610 $499.99 direct llllm

PROS Comprehensive 11 million POI database. Unique features include automatic tilt/zoom and a safety camera database. Full-featured multimedia players. CONS Relatively small screen. No text-tospeech.

>>For more: go.pcmag.com/mio610

Adapts otuond backgr noise PLANTRONICS DISCOVERY 665

ADAPTIVE AUDIO STYMIED BY MIC

U

SING A BLUETOOTH HEADSET IN NOISY

environments can be challenging. Plantronics tries, with some success, to solve this problem by arming its Discovery 665 mobile headset with a new technology called AudioIQ. A subtle but welcome refinement, AudioIQ dynamically adjusts the headset’s volume to adapt to outside noise. It’s a pretty neat trick. Voices became louder and clearer when I walked outside, making them more audible, and quieted down when I walked back inside. Unfortunately, the 665’s microphone performs worse in noisy areas such as

jammed city sidewalks, and my callers were unable to hear me during our conversations. Still, the 665 headset fits in the ear very comfortably. The three buttons on the device are relatively large and easy to use: a Call Control button, which doubles as a power and pairing button, as well as Up and Down volume keys. Pairing the 665 with several handsets proved painless. Battery life disappointed, however, at just 2 hours 50 minutes of talk time. AudioIQ is a neat new technology, but it doesn’t completely overcome this headset’s microphone problems.—Sascha Segan >>For more: go.pcmag.com/discovery665

Plantronics Discovery 665 $149 list lllhm

PROS Comfortable to wear. Tiny size. Easy to use. CONS Poor voice transmission in noisy situations.


F I R ST LO O KS NETWORKING

Linksys CIT310 Dual-Mode Cordless Phone for Yahoo! Messenger with Voice $99.99 list l l llm

PROS Dual phone. Attractive design. You can get to local weather and search via the handset. CONS No Mac support. PC has to be on and logged in to Yahoo! Messenger.

One button isto dedicated lls landline ca

The other makes calls using Yahoo! Messenger

DECISIONMAKING 101 Some considerations for IP phone services.

1 2 3 4 5

Use VoIM to try out IP calling without giving up your traditional phone service. Cordless dual phones handle standard analog phone service and VoIM. There are models for Skype, Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger. Check e911 (emergency calling) support before buying. If you drop VoIM, the dual phone will still handle analog service.

LINKSYS CIT310 DUAL-MODE CORDLESS PHONE FOR YAHOO! MESSENGER WITH VOICE

YAHOO! MESSENGER DUAL PHONE

O

VER THE LAST FEW MONTHS, I’VE SEEN A

lot of phones tailored to Skype, but few for other popular services. The Linksys CIT310 Dual-Mode Cordless Phone is a noteworthy exception, letting Yahoo! Messenger users make free voice calls to one another as well as place calls to and receive them from landline phones (for a fee). The phone builds in a number of cool features specifically designed for the service, and it looks good. And dual-phone capability means that you can place calls over a standard landline as well as Yahoo! Messenger. With the latter, making calls to and receiving them from regular phone numbers requires a Yahoo! Messenger with a Voice Phone In and Phone Out account, respectively. You purchase credits online with a credit card. Setup is fairly simple, though less so than with the Linksys CIT400 or the spiffy, iPodesque Netgear SPH200D, neither of which requires a PC. After you insert the bundled CD into your PC, a simple wizard leads you through the quick installation: It took me just a minute or two. When prompted, you plug the


phone base station into a USB port on your PC, then log in to Yahoo! Messenger. If you don’t have an account, you can sign up and download the software using the wizard. Once you complete the installation, a task tray icon shows you when you can use the phone. The base station must be connected to a PC logged in to Yahoo! Messenger to make calls through the service, but not for standard landline calls. I found sound quality to be fairly good for Yahoo! Messenger calls to other members of the service, for calls to regular phone numbers, and for landline conversations. The phone has one button for placing landline calls and another dedicated to Yahoo! Messenger calls. The online interface is easy to navigate, if not quite as intuitive as some others. An Extras menu has two features I particularly like: One gives weather info for your ZIP code; another lets you query Yahoo! Local using the handset. Yahoo! Messenger users will find this phone a compelling choice at a reasonable price.—Davis D. Janowski >>For more: go.pcmag.com/linksyscit310

The phones may look different on the outside

But inside, ost they're alm identical

Linksys CIT400 iPhone Dual-Mode Internet Telephony Kit for Skype

Netgear SPH200D Dual-Mode Cordless Phone with Skype

$179.99 list

$199.99 list

l l l l m

llllm

PROS No PC needed. Dual phone. Easy to set up and use. CONS Expensive. Lackluster design. Requires a router.

PROS No PC needed. Attractive design. Dual-mode capability. Easy to set up and use. CONS Expensive. Requires a router.

LINKSYS CIT400 IPHONE DUAL-MODE INTERNET TELEPHONY KIT FOR SKYPE

NETGEAR SPH200D DUAL-MODE CORDLESS PHONE WITH SKYPE

SIMPLE DUAL-MODE CALLING

SIMPLE DUAL-MODE CALLING, PT. II

T

HIS PHONE SYSTEM MAY NOT BE MUCH TO LOOK AT,

A

LTHOUGH ITS EXTERNAL HOUSING IS DIFFERENT FROM

but it has dual-mode capability, which means you can make both traditional analog calls and VoIP phone calls via Skype. Another plus: Setup could hardly be easier, in large part because the phone requires no PC for Skype calls. At the heart of the base station, a 168-MHz ARM9 CPU running Linux does the necessary processing. And since all the operating software resides in firmware, you have no software to load. After connecting the base station’s Ethernet port directly to your router or broadband modem, you power up the smart base station, which connects wirelessly with the handset, then goes onto the Internet and connects with the Skype service automatically (you’ll have to log on, of course). In addition to its Ethernet port, the base station has a standard RJ-11 receptacle for hooking to your traditional analog phone service. If you want to share your broadband connection with a PC and you have a cable or DSL modem that integrates a multiport switch, you’ll need no further equipment. If not, you’ll need a router. In my testing, making calls was easy thanks to the intuitive interface, and the sound was reasonably good on both Skype and regular landline calls.—DDJ

that of the Linksys CIT400—and to me, more attractive—the two phones bear such striking similarities that they almost certainly come from the same manufacturer (the makers would neither confirm nor deny). Each phone builds in dual-mode capability, so you can make calls over a traditional landline and via Skype. Neither phone requires a PC, because its base station integrates a processor and firmware instructions for processing Skype calls. Both make setup extremely easy. And as with the Linksys CIT400, if you want to share your broadband connection with PCs, you’ll need a router. Once you’ve plugged the base station’s Ethernet port into your router or broadband modem, simply power up the base station, and it will connect directly with the Skype service on its own. You just log on, or, if you don’t have an account, create one (you can do this from the handset keypad, but it will be easier from a PC keyboard). The base station also has a standard RJ-11 port for connecting to your traditional analog phone line. I found call and sound quality good over both Skype and landline services. The Netgear edges out the otherwise very similar Linksys in terms of looks , but will cost you a little more.—DDJ

>>For more: go.pcmag.com/linksyscit400

>>For more: go.pcmag.com/netgeardualmodeskype APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 43

F I R ST LO O KS SOF TWARE

’s raser : SpyEt feature! bes ills itself It k

SPYERASER 1.1

SpyEraser 1.1 $39.95 direct l m m m m

PROS Scans very quickly. CONS Poor spyware blocking and removal. Kills innocent processes, including itself. False positives. Cryptic messages.

SHOOT ’EM ALL. SHOOT YOURSELF. REPEAT.

U

NIBLUE SYSTEMS MAINTAINS THE

handy ProcessLibrary.com Web site, which helps users identify those mysterious processes that crop up in your Task Manager. The company’s WinTasks utility lists and identifies all running processes, with an option to kill unwanted ones and block them from launching in the future. Parlaying that technology into a full antispyware utility should be

easy, right? Apparently not. Uniblue's SpyEraser 1.1 just doesn’t cut the mustard. The program did a seriously poor job of removing both spyware and keyloggers from infested systems. Its real-time protection comes nowhere near what the best products offer, and it did an even worse job of protecting a clean system. When I scanned a pristine setup, SpyEraser reported finding nine high-risk threats. Dozens of other products had scanned the same system without reporting anything but a few “suspicious cookies.” After stumbling through the log—written in something approximating English—I determined that SpyEraser’s reports were false positives. Worst of all, during the removal process, SpyEraser frequently killed off innocent products, including Windows Explorer, the Paint accessory, and . . . itself. Restarted, the utility simply produced the same result. Uniblue reps recognized this behavior but thought they’d fixed it. They sent a newer version of the application. Same problem. Do yourself a favor: Pay $10 less and get Spy Sweeper or Spyware Doctor.—Neil J. Rubenking >>For more: go.pcmag.com/spyeraser1_1

SAFEND PERSONAL PROTECTOR

PODSLURPING PLUG

T

g Connecstuincking data s requires device ntials crede

Safend Personal Protector Free lllmm

PROS Controls removable devices. Can remember to block or allow specific devices. CONS Doesn't control CD/DVDs, SD cards, floppies. No config options other than deleting all custom settings.

HE ENTERPRISE-SCALE SAFEND PROTECTOR LOCKS

down the endpoints of a company’s network: removable media, USB ports, wireless—everything. Now you can get a taste of this protection for your home computer using Safend Personal Protector. SPP manages USB, FireWire, and PC Card devices to block podslurping—unauthorized copying of data to external storage. Although far less ambitious than its big brother, SPP is free (for now). Using the program couldn’t be easier. SPP asks for confirmation the first time it sees a new device, much the way a personal firewall asks you to confirm network access for a new program. Naturally, you have to validate your authority by supplying a Windows Administrator–privileged username and password. One warning: Don’t try SPP on your new Vista system. The utility supports XP and Windows Server 2003 only. The software performed near-perfectly in testing. I ran into just one small quirk: SPP viewed a pair of physically identical USB drives as the same device. The problem occurred because these were older drives lacking the unique serial number current standards require; modern drives don’t have the same problem. SPP doesn’t block data copying to removable media, such as memory cards, writable CD/DVDs, and floppy disks, though Safend plans to extend protection to these devices in a future version.—NJR >>For more: go.pcmag.com/safendpersonal


Listen to your tu nes from any Inte connected PCrnet-

MP3TUNES OBOE LOCKER

A WINNING COMBO FOR MUSIC LOVERS

O

FFERING FREE MUSIC STORAGE MAKES A SITE ATTRACTIVE.

Upping that to unlimited storage, as MP3tunes.com recently did for its Oboe Locker users, puts it over the top. When you first create your account, the service allots you just 1GB and sticks you on a waiting list where you may sit for a few weeks before you get unlimited space. You can bypass the wait by signing up for Oboe Premium ($39.95 a year). At present, the no-cost plan remains ad-free, but the company plans to change that at some point. After sign-up, you download Oboe Sync, a desktop-based app that supports the three major OSs. The software will proceed to upload all your tracks—or those you designate—from your PC to your locker. The process can take hours, depending on how much music you have. Later, when you add music to your locker or PC, the application will update both. Once you’ve put tunes in your locker, you can listen to them on any PC with an Internet connection, either using a browser or with an iTunes or Winamp plug-in. I’d advise doing the latter whenever possible; I encountered some hiccups using the browser-based player. But hiccups or no, this service is well worth checking out—Brian Heater

>>For more: go.pcmag.com/mp3tunes

MP3tunes Oboe Locker Oboe Free (10MB per-file limit); Oboe Premium, $39.95 yearly (50MB per-file limit) llllm

PROS Unlimited storage. Allows music access from a variety of devices. Good sync capabilities. Plug-ins for iTunes and Winamp. CONS Initial upload can be lengthy. Clunky music-player UI. Some music-player bugs.

number a s t r o p Sup truments of ins es guitar besid GUITAR PRO 5

STRIKING A NEW CHORD WITH GUITAR TABS

T Guitar Pro 5 $59 direct; upgrade, $29.50 l l l l m

PROS Simple interface. High-quality printed output. Terrific WAV-file output. CONS Tab templates and traditional scores don’t always match. Sampled-sound and MIDI lines don’t match perfectly.

HIS UPDATE TO THE LEADING TABLATURE-EDITING SOFTWARE

adds a slew of enhancements. Guitar Pro 5—which also supports bass, banjo, drums, and other instruments—can display both tabs and standard music notation on the same page, perform bidirectional conversions between the two, and export in multiple formats including ASCII tabs, WAV, and MIDI. It provides a more accessible interface than the pricier Cakewalk Pro Audio without sacrificing features, and unlike most ASCII tab-editing programs, Guitar Pro formats printed output so that no lines of music get broken across pages. The software also supplies a metronome and a digital tuner. Sonically, I give the product high marks. A new playback system—the Realistic Sound Engine (RSE), based on recorded samples and digital modeling— represents a massive improvement over the program’s older MIDI sound (still present in this build). Occasionally, though—especially if the pitch changed considerably—I’d encounter odd variations in volume between notes, which produced an unnatural sound. Overall, however, I consider Guitar Pro 5 a worthy update to the best guitar tablature-editing software on the market. The RSE sounds aren’t perfect, but they’re a huge improvement over the MIDI versions of past builds, and the printed output looks great. For guitarists ready to step up from freeware, this is the program to get.—James Mendelson

>>For more: go.pcmag.com/guitarpro5 APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 45

F I R ST LO O KS BUSINESS

ity Capace shows g gau much how space driveailable is av

Western Digital My Book Pro Edition

Has port for USB 2s .0 FireWire 40 , FireWire 80 0, 0 in back

$330 direct l l l l m

PROS Comes with all the necessary cables, including FireWire 800. Handy front-mounted capacity display. Triple interface: USB, FW400, and FW800. Dantz Retrospect Express software has more features than you get with simple “one-click” backup software. Threeyear warranty. CONS Capacity display requires driver.

WESTERN DIGITAL MY BOOK PRO EDITION

MY BOOK OF THE MONTH

S

TORAGE CAPACITY, VERSATILITY, AND

style define this spacious external hard drive. Its half-terabyte (500GB) capacity should allow more than enough room for most multimedia collections. Though it’s not the largest drive out there, the My Book Pro’s combination of storage space, performance, connection methods, backup software, and sleek look net it our Editors’ Choice. The My Book Pro’s metallic case is a good match for the MacBook Pro or the PowerBook G4, as well as aluminum cases on high-end Windows PC towers. A capacity gauge with a circular LED on the front panel lets you know how much space you have left in the drive without your having to right-click on your hard drive icon (though you 46 PC MAGAZINE APRIL 10, 2007

have to install a driver for this feature to work). The My Book Pro runs a solid backup software program (Dantz Retrospect Express). The drive is compatible with three of the most common connection interfaces—USB 2.0, FireWire 400, and FireWire 800—and includes cables for all three. FireWire 800 tested the fastest, taking only about two-thirds as long to download a 1.2GB test file as either of the other methods. If you have music, photos, or video to store, the My Book Pro is a sleek and spacious choice that works with several interfaces, including the scorching FireWire 800. It’s one “book” that can be judged by its cover, with its performance every bit as good as its looks.—Joel Santo Domingo >>For more: go.pcmag.com/westmybookpro

LACIE SAFE HARD DRIVE 500GB

HARD-DRIVE LOCKBOX

W

LaCie SAFE Hard Drive 500GB

HETHER YOU HAVE PRIVATE PERSONAL INFORMATION OR

business documents that you want to keep from prying eyes, the LaCie SAFE Hard Drive is a good choice. It can ably serve as a personal lockbox for your sensitive files or as a way to grant selected access to data on a shared computer. It can protect a lot of secrets with its 500GB capacity, though data transfer is limited to USB 1.1 and 2.0. The SAFE provides biometric security by means of a fingerprint reader. It can store fingerprints for up to five users, for whom you can grant either readwrite or read-only access. The fingerprint reader was finicky, and sometimes it would take several scans of a finger to gain access. For physical security, the safe provides a cable-lock port, plus an internal drive lock, which prevents a thief from cracking the case, removing the drive and putting it into another case. Designwise, the SAFE is uninspired—a blocky metal slab with rounded corners and an indentation with the fingerprint reader on top. Maybe, though, that’s a fitting design for a vault that can safeguard half a terabyte of your precious data.—Joel Santo Domingo

$250 direct lllhm

PROS Secure data storage. Security works independent of driver software. Large capacity. CONS Relatively uninspired design. Fingerprint reader is finicky.

Cable lock port in back

>>For more: go.pcmag.com/laciesafe500

rint Fingerepr read

IOMEGA REV LOADER 560

ALTERNATIVE FOR OFF-SITE BACKUP

T

Iomega REV Loader 560

Storage d k s for under $1 aisG B

$1,500 street; single 70GB disk, $60; 4-pack, $210 lllhm

PROS Very portable. Faster than tape. CONS High start-up cost compared with external hard drives.

APE HAS BEEN GIVING WAY TO THE EXTERNAL HARD

drive as the preferred backup medium in small businesses. But if you need off-site copies of your data, hauling home a heavy, fragile hard drive seems less than ideal. Instead, to complement (or possibly replace) your external hard drives, consider the Iomega REV Loader 560, a device that holds up to eight removable 70GB disks, each housed in a shock-resistant plastic case about the size of a 3.5-inch floppy disk. At $1,500 (street), the REV 560 does cost far more than an external hard drive, but when you need more capacity, you don’t have to purchase and install an entire hard drive—you just buy more disks. A four-pack gives you 280GB for $210, so incremental costs don’t hit you too hard. The included software will span media for backups requiring more than 70GB. If you just want to copy files to and from a REV disk, you can use normal drag-and-drop. The device’s currently active disk (which you select via an integrated LCD interface) shows up as a drive under My Computer in Microsoft Windows. When it comes to keeping a lot of data off-site, the Iomega REV Loader 560 makes the process almost painless. —Robert P. Lipschutz >>For more: go.pcmag.com/revloader560 APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 47

F I R ST LO O KS BUSINESS

r ates you r e d o c A colorability level vulner PERIMETER ESECURITY VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT

ARE YOU AN EASY TARGET?

M Perimeter eSecurity Vulnerability Assessment Four IP addresses: $100 monthly; with consulting, $150 monthly lllhm

PROS A simple—and for now, free—first step in assessing your network security. CONS Supplies just one part of the security puzzle solution.

OST SMALL BUSINESSES KEEP ANTIVIRUS APPS CUR-

rent and have firewalls. But do these ensure security? Perimeter eSecurity Vulnerability Assessment, which externally probes a network to identify potential weaknesses, can identify holes that attackers might use. It can’t find every risk, but it’s still useful. Such tests won’t benefit networks that don’t use public IP addresses, have no externally facing servers, and allow remote access only over secure virtual private networks. But many companies host their own Web or e-mail servers or allow unsecured remote access for employees working off-site. For a limited time, Perimeter techs will do a free vulnerability assessment of up to four IP addresses and consult with you about the results. They can also walk you through fixing the problems. You can sign up at www.perimeterusa.com. On our well-secured office network, the scans identified no vulnerabilities. A probe of a different network showed potential vulnerabilities. Perimeter has over 50 on-demand services leveraging commercial, open-source, and home-grown technologies, including endpoint security, e-mail security, and content filtering—all brought together in a portal for management and reporting. The assessment won’t solve all your security problems, but it’s a great first step—especially while it’s free.—Robert P. Lipschutz >>For more: go.pcmag.com/perimeteresecurity

NETWORK MAGIC 4.1

SIMPLE NETWORK MANAGEMENT

T

Map shows asllon the device k your networ

RYING TO SHARE FILES AND PRINTERS,

troubleshoot connectivity, and manage software and antivirus updates on a home network can be a nightmare. Network Magic 4.1 eases the burden. The Premium edition, reviewed here, improves on the sharing capabilities of the free version and offers parental controls and a Network Advisor feature. Upon installation, you’ll see two desktop icons: one for the Network Magic console and the other for browsing shared folders. The Network Tasks section of the simple interface includes connectivity, sharing, and protection features. The Network Map view shows all devices on the network and their properties, reports whether PCs have out-ofdate patches or antiviruses, and lists the applications used and Web sites visited. With some routers, you can allow access, via the Web, to files on the network. The Network Advisor has potential,


but it currently displays little more than news and some links to Network Magic help. The troubleshooting tools will reinitiate a TCP/IP connection and even walk you through rebooting your router and reconnecting your computers—a very useful feature for the less tech-savvy. The features I personally like most—the network map and security health—are available in the free version, which I recommend for everyone. But concerned, non-techie parents will find the added features in Network Magic's Premium version useful.—RPL >>For more: go.pcmag.com/networkmagic4_1

Network Magic 4.1 Premium: on 3 computers, $29.99 direct; on 5 computers, $39.99; free version available. lllhm

PROS Simple to use. Gives a useful network overview. Keeps machines updated. CONS Can’t fully manage most routers and NAS devices.

THE BEST STUFF EDITORS’ CHOICES IN KEY CATEGORIES

ALL-IN-ONE DESKTOP HP TouchSmart IQ770 PC Attractive all-in-one design with integrated touch screen. TV controls on the screen bezel. Wireless everything. Integrated IR receiver for MCE remote. ATSC/HDTV tuner. $1,800 direct Hewlett-Packard Development Co. go.pcmag.com/ hpiq770pc NOTEBOOK HP Pavilion dv9000t (Vista) Loaded with the über edition of Vista. Rewarding HD experience. HDMI port for HD output. Best deal out there for an HD DVD laptop. Innovative remote fits in Express Card slot. Built-in remote sensor. Lighter than the competition. $2,569 direct Hewlett-Packard Development Co. go.pcmag.com/ hpdv9000tvista

HDTV Sharp Aquos LC-32D40U Superb color quality. Two HDMI inputs. Backlit remote. $1,299 list Sharp Electronics Corp. go.pcmag.com/ 32d40u

EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE Western Digital My Book Pro Edition Comes with all necessary cables, including FireWire 800. Handy front-mounted capacity display. Triple interface: USB, FW400, and FW800. Dantz Retrospect Express software has more features than do simple “one-click” types of backup software. Three-year warranty. $330 direct Western Digital Corp. go.pcmag.com/ westmybookpro DIGITAL CAMERA (SUPERZOOM) Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ50 Innovative feature set. Zoom-and-focus ring. Includes a hot shoe. Has optical image stabilization. Supports RAW format. $649.95 list Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. go.pcmag.com/fz50

LCD MONITOR (BUSINESS) Samsung SyncMaster 305T Fine image quality. Fast response time. Ultrahigh native resolution. $1,999.99 list Samsung Electronics America Inc. go.pcmag.com/ samsung305t PHOTO INK JET PRINTER Canon Pixma iP4300 Fast. High-quality output. Two paper trays. Automatic duplexing. Prints directly from cameras. $99.99 direct Canon U.S.A. Inc. go.pcmag.com/ canonip4300 VOIP PHONE GE DECT 6.0 Wireless Handset for Skype Makes Skype and standard calls. Small and light. $149 list Thomson Inc. go.pcmag.com/ geskype6_0

CELL PHONE Sanyo SCP-8400 for Sprint Excellent reception. Fine speakerphone. Real Web browser. $279.99 list Sprint PCS go.pcmag.com/ scp8400 TAX SOFTWARE TurboTax Home & Business 2006 Easy and thorough. Imports from Quicken, QuickBooks. $89.95 direct Intuit Inc. go.pcmag.com/ turbotaxhome06 APPLICATION SUITE Microsoft Office 2007 The Office you’ve been waiting for. Revolutionary new Ribbon interface. Dazzling new graphics engine. From $149 Microsoft Corp. go.pcmag.com/ office2007 SECURITY SUITE Norton Internet Security 2007 Firewall protects without annoying. Great antispyware. $69.99 direct Symantec Corp. go.pcmag.com/ NIS2007

MORE ON THE WEB We’ve got 87 Product Guides and thousands of up-to-date reviews on the Web. See them all at go.pcmag.com/guides


1989

2 5 Y E A R S O F P C M AG A Z I N E YEAR EIGHT

THE TECHNICHAL EXCELLENCE AWARDS What’s the worst snafu in the history of PC Mag? There’s no contest: In January of 1989, we misspelled the word “technical.” In big, bold letters. On the cover of the magazine. No, really. We did. The cover centered on a model in a very 1980s white tux, and she held a plaque that read, “Fifth Annual Awards for Technichal Excellence.” Our only defense is that, strictly speaking, the misspelled word wasn’t part of the cover text. “The art department actually had a plaque engraved and photographed a model holding it,” says then editor-in-chief Bill Machrone. “Nobody could proof that. It was a photograph. There is no control point for engraving.” Yeah, that’s it! It’s the engraver’s fault. WHAT ABOUT ’82 TO ’88? Our 25th-anniversary extravaganza continues online. For more old-school PC Mag, reader letters, and other memorabilia, log on to go.pcmag .com/pcmag25

Fred Cohen, around the time he took home the international Information Technology Award for his work on computer viruses.

INNOVATORS FRED COHEN

F

RED COHEN INVENTED THE COMPUTER

virus. But he also taught the world how to fight it. In 1983, as a graduate student at the University of Southern California’s school of engineering, Cohen studied with Leonard Adleman—famously, one of the three founding fathers of the RSA (Rivest-ShamirAdleman) encryption. One afternoon, in the middle of Adleman’s lecture, the idea of a parasitic software application magically popped into his head. “I was sitting in class and suddenly said to myself, ‘Aha. You can do this,’” Cohen recalls. “I asked to do some experiments, got permission to do them, demonstrated the feasibility of a virus, and showed how quickly it could spread. Then I went to work on how to defend against the thing.” This became the basis for his USC dissertation, and over the next few years, he published more than 30 journal articles on the subject. “I wrote the first virus scanner—if you want to call it that—


the fi rst integrity checker, and the fi rst integrity shell,” he says. “Basically, every defense that we use today was demonstrated through my papers and experiments.” And, yes, he was the first person to use the term computer virus—at least in print. “The term was suggested by Len Adleman,” he continues, “but I published it under my name.” Through the mid-1980s, his work went largely unnoticed. But later in the decade, as the first real-world viruses hit PCs and mainframes, the industry sat up and took notice. In 1989, with more than 30 known viruses in the wild and new companies such as McAfee and Trend Micro beginning to fight them, Cohen was awarded one of the industry’s highest honors, the international Information Technology Award. Yes, he invented the computer virus. But we can be glad he had the idea before someone a little less, shall we say, principled.—Cade Metz

PRODUCT FLASHBACK

IN 1989...

POQET PC $1,995 (in 1989)

• The Berlin Wall comes down.

l l l l m

SPECS 1 by 8.75 by 4.25 inches, 640K of ROM, 64K to 512K RAM, DOS 3.3, word processor, spreadsheet, personal database, BASIC.

• Intel unveils the 486 processor. • Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini calls for the assassination of Anglo-Indian novelist Salman Rushdie.

PROS Fits inside your coat pocket, takes AA batteries, and runs DOS. CONS That ridiculous name.

• The PCMCIA trade association is founded.

BOTTOM LINE If this Microsoft Windows thing doesn’t pan out, the Poqet will rule the world. . . .

I

F THE DIMINUTIVE POQET PC DELIVERS ON

its immense promise, it will be a special product, similar in impact to the original IBM PC and the first Compaq transportable. With its incredibly compact, 1- by 8.75- by 4.25-inch (HWD) footprint and negligible 1-pound weight, the Poqet fits within some inside jacket pockets, making it convenient to use in places where the smallest laptops are impractical. And it runs DOS. Poqet Computer’s ambitious designers have attempted to do more than merely create a tiny DOS container, however. Almost as revolutionary as its size is the Poqet’s complex power-management scheme. The Poqet runs on two AA batteries— that’s right, the same ones that sell for a couple of bucks at the corner drugstore.

It may use the same batteries as your Walkman, but the Poquet PC has a much smaller appetite, according to its designers, who project a battery life of approximately 100 hours when the system is perfected. Taking a very aggressive approach to minimizing power consumption, the Poqet powers down the 80C88 processor whenever power needs are small, such as between keystrokes. The preproduction unit we saw did not incorporate all the anticipated power-management technology, however, and we observed less spectacular battery performance. . . . But the preproduction unit comes very close to realizing the potential of its design. If the production-level release incorporates the changes its manufacturer promises, it’s bound to change the way that many people look at personal computing.— Jonathan Matzkin, PC Magazine, November 14, 1989

DO YOU REMEMBER? When We Banned People from the Cover That tuxedoed model to your left? She was the last living organism to appear on our cover for more than a decade. In the summer of 1989, we unveiled our second major redesign, and with it came the decision to ban people from each and every cover. How come? In the words of former editor-in-

chief Bill Machrone: “(a) You put stars on the cover of a magazine, and in our industry, there were no stars. Except for Bill Gates—and we couldn’t have him on every cover. And (b) When we did put people on the cover, we were really bad at it.”

The Dawn of ARF The redesign also brought one of our most popular (and most last-

ing) columns: Abort, Retry, Fail? Named after the old DOS error command, the original ARF was little different from the ARF of today. With a wonderfully irreverent tone—unusual for the PC Mag of the late 1980s—it poked fun at PC-related curiosities, misconceptions, oversights, typos, and other snafus. But, no, it didn’t mention our Technichal Excellence Awards.

READERS RESPOND It’s 1981. My boss gives me—and two others—a mission: Find a way to utilize these new small computers in field construction offices. We relied on a very few magazines and books to unclutter the gibberish and settle on Apple III computers with 256KB of memory (Wow!), a 10MB Corvis hard drive (Wow! Wow!). Uh-oh. It’s New York. I work for a state agency. And IBM comes out with a micro-computer. We’re ordered to switch from our lovely Apples with that beautifully intuitive interface to IBM and that thing called DOS.

How will we survive? Then the savior appears. After buying out newsstands of promising computer magazines, one stands out as the clear winner: PC Magazine. In those days, you were less about high-tech and side applications and very into how that damn box worked, how to understand DOS and make it work for you, how to get inside and keep it running. Your magazine made the transition easy. Happy anniversary, and thanks for all the help over the years! —John LiMarzi, Mahopac, New York

• The Exxon Valdez hits a reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, spilling up to 30 million gallons of oil. • The first Macintosh portable debuts. • Actress Kim Basinger buys the town of Braselton, Georgia, for $20 million. • GRiD Systems introduces the first pen-based PC. • Pete Rose is banned from baseball. • Creative Labs unveils the first SoundBlaster sound card. • Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus—better known as Milli Vanilli—are stripped of their Best New Artist Grammy award after admitting that someone else recorded their debut album.

I Remember That Ridiculous Cover! You subscribed back in 1989? We want to hear about it—as long as you avoid any mention of our Technichal Excellence Awards. Please send your memories to [email protected] with PC Mag Anniversary in the subject line. And make sure they’re spelled correctly.


LANCE ULANOFF

Commercials Reborn

W

HEN TIVO, REPLAY-

TV, and other digital video recorders launched in the late 1990s, the prospect of people using the technology to skip commercials panicked the TV networks—not to mention marketing and advertising firms. Companies selling everything from aspirin to futons scrambled to find new ways of getting their products in front of television viewers. Subtle product placements soon gave way to blatant in-show promotions. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is a prime example. It’s a show brought to you by Sears and jam-packed with references to

People are so interested in the latest “Crazy Thing Mel Gibson Said” video that they’re willing to sit through a commercial first—at least a short one.

MORE FROM LANCE When he’s not surfing YouTube, Lance writes a weekly column for our Web site. For the complete collection, log on to go.pcmag .com/ulanoff

Sears (and its product partners). In other words, it’s the nadir of television. Meanwhile, the broadband revolution has turned millions of PCs into portable, instant video-viewing portals. You can watch video not just on YouTube but on Google Video, Yahoo! Video, and many other popular sites. Initially, videos tended to be simple, viral, low-quality, quirky, and usually funny. They weren’t professional, but they were popular, serving to validate the idea of online video. In previous years, major networks and media outlets had failed miserably in their attempts at online video. I remember when the now-defunct CNN Financial Network would take every single clip that ran on the air and post it to the Web. That was nearly five years ago, at a time when a far smaller percentage of the population had broadband. Even when I appeared on the network, I had no idea why it expended so much energy doing this. The audience needed to make it a viable business simply wasn’t there. Today, all the pieces are in place, and consumers are beating a steady path to an ever-growing number of online video sources. In the end, it could mean new life for commercials.


Virtually all the major television news networks—ABC, CNN, FOX, NBC, and their cable affiliates—now deliver video clips to the Web. CNN Pipeline, the first 24-hour video news channel, launched almost a year ago, and FOX now offers a wide range of clips in Flash video format. In 2004, PC Magazine launched DL.TV, our technology-related IPTV show. What many of these services have in common is what precedes the video clips: 10- to 30-second commercials. Sometimes they’re exactly the same commercials you’d find on broadcast television. But there’s a big difference. As noted, countless viewers skip commercials on time-delayed and recorded DVR TV. But online video won’t let you do that. This is kind of obvious. What’s less obvious is the reason viewers are more likely to watch commercials on the Web than on any other medium: On the Web, they have more power to choose the content they’re interested in. The clips they select to download or stream and view are the ones they really want to see. Often they select the clips that are currently most popular. People are so interested in the latest “Crazy Thing Mel Gibson Said” video that they’re willing to sit through a commercial fi rst—at least a short one. The content clips are only a few minutes long, and because they’re often consumed at work, the viewer has nowhere else to go while the commercial plays. This is a truly captive audience. With the networks and other online video providers exercising so much control over the video feeds, via Flash-based and other proprietary players, don’t expect this to change anytime soon. In fact, you’ll start seeing the same sort of video advertising on YouTube (or GooTube, as people like to call it these days). Not even Google can avoid this trend. Those consumer eyeballs are way too valuable. I predict that people will accept commercials attached to viral videos more readily than they do banner, box, or text ads spread throughout a site. There will be an outcry, but that will fade because no one wants to miss this day’s must-see video or the latest directorproduced Lonelygirl15 episode. Soon the days of downloadable, watch-at-yourleisure MPEGs and AVIs will be distant memories. Then the Web will have completed its transformation into our new mass-consumption televisionviewing portal. Remember, you can’t touch that dial. There isn’t one. Q

D A N C O S TA

DRM Is Dead

S

TEVE JOBS MADE HEADLINES IN

February when he came out against digital rights management (DRM), the copy protection schemes forced onto music tracks by the big record labels. Yes, RealNetworks’ CEO, Rob Glazer, and Yahoo! Music’s Dave Goldberg have made similar statements, but Apple is the dominant player in digital music, and an open letter from Jobs means something else entirely. You can read his whole missive on Apple’s Web site, but the key point is this: “DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy.” Big words for a guy who’s sold more than a billion DRM-protected songs. DRM isn’t necessarily a bad idea. If you believe that a song has any value at all, then it follows that artists should be paid for the work. Digital rights management is just a way of making sure that happens. Unfortunately, as currently designed, DRM doesn’t prevent people from stealing music, and it makes life harder for consumers who want to play by the rules and purchase music legally. Music unprotected by DRM is always available from other sources. Grabbing free music from P2P sharing services such as BearShare, BitTorrent, eMule, or LimeWire is simple. With a broadband cable connection, you can download a track in about 30 seconds and an entire album in less than 5 minutes. Sure, the RIAA can sue a handful of students each year and shut down a P2P network every six months, but this is just legal Whac-A-Mole. It doesn’t solve the problem. There’s no way for the record industry to retain complete control of distribution in the digital world. The major companies shouldn’t even try. In the end, they just foul things up. I have two digital music libraries. One contains unrestricted MP3s—tracks I’ve burned from CDs and, yes, downloaded from P2P networks. The other holds DRM-protected songs I’ve downloaded from iTunes. The problem is that I can’t take any of my iTunes songs and put them on the cheap, unbranded flash player that I like to go running with. (Running with a hard drive player is just asking for trouble.) At the same time, the CD industry is dying. Although roughly 95 percent of all music is still sold on CD, these sales dropped 7 percent in 2005 and 5 percent in 2006, according to Nielsen Sound-

Scan. I don’t know anyone under 30 who buys CDs (except PC Mag audio analyst Tim Gideon, who likes to hang out in record stores). In fact, I don’t know anyone who’s even the slightest bit technologically sophisticated who still buys CDs. The music industry’s traditional business model is no longer viable. It was the product of a world in which there was limited access to music, and that world no longer exists. Some companies are actually starting to realize this. Thomson Multimedia has endorsed a policy of distributing unprotected but watermarked MP3s. Even Sony has said that various DRM schemes will be less important in the future. The big four record labels should assume that no matter what they do, some people will grab the songs for free—but others will gladly pay. One way to succeed in this new world of audio abundance is with a flat licensing fee, which services

Sure, the RIAA can sue a handful of students each year and shut down a P2P network every six months, but this is just legal Whac-A-Mole. It doesn’t solve the problem. such as Urge and Rhapsody already offer for unlimited access to their robust music catalogs. These services could be opened up so that you could play tracks on any device, move songs from system to system, and keep them forever. You may not be able to sell me a track for 99 cents, but if you can give me anytime access to a vast library of high-quality tracks that I can play on my MP3 player, home stereo, or phone—that would be worth paying for. Even with one common licensing plan, multiple service providers could compete on interface, ease of use, and a host of add-ons that could range from merchandising to concert discounts. They could leapfrog the P2P networks with convenience and security. Since the current DRM schemes don’t stop people from stealing music and actively deter legitimate shoppers from buying music, perhaps it’s time for something new. Everyone who understands how digital media flows online knows this. So does Steve Jobs. If the major labels want to continue being major players in the music industry, they’d better come up with something new. Or someone else will. Q

ATTENTION MUSIC EXECS If you happen to work for a major record label, please take note: Dan was only joking about downloading free songs from P2P services. For more from Dan, log on to go.pcmag.com/costa and www.gearlog .com/costaliving


SASCHA SEGAN

Death to the Fax Machine!

T

HAT’S RIGHT: I HATE FAX MA-

chines. In the 21st century, they’re an anachronistic 20thcentury technology—on a par with telex. Or Western Union telegrams (although somehow less charming). Yet the standalone fax machine—generating reams of less-than-convenient paper documents while you wait impatiently for pages to feed one-byone—somehow refuses to die. I bought an apartment recently. At one point in the process, I had to fax someone 75 pages. It took an hour. Many of those pages, amazingly, were printouts of Web sites. Now, there are plenty of alternatives to using a standalone fax. Ink jet printers have built-in faxes. The first PC fax modem came out

There are plenty of alternatives to using a standalone fax. Ink jet printers have builtin faxes. The first PC fax modem came out in 1985, for heaven’s sake. Better yet, haven’t these people heard of e-mail?

KEEP IT DIGITAL You’ll find more from Sascha at go.pcmag .com/segan. But please, when sending his columns to others, use e-mail—not a fax machine.

in 1985, for heaven’s sake. Better yet, haven’t these people heard of e-mail? At first, I thought that signatures might have to be faxed to be legal. As a product reviewer, I sign all sorts of loan agreements, and though they’re sent over e-mail, I’m always instructed to print them out, sign them, and fax in return. Ditto for many of the documents involved in my home purchase. But Ethna Piazza, a tech-focused lawyer and partner at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP, told me that e-signatures of various sorts are perfectly legal. Every time you click “buy” on an online shopping site, for example, you’re executing an e-signature, she said. And although e-mail isn’t the best medium for executing contracts, it’s possible to agree officially to something over e-mail. Many people just don’t have faith that e-mail is official and formal enough, or they don’t know the proper way to send and phrase things. It turns out that the fax is an indictment of the entire tech industry’s shortcomings. That isn’t what


Christy Stevenson, senior product manager for fax machines at Brother, told me, but it’s what I took away from our chat. Think about it. Fax machines sell for $80 a pop. They don’t get viruses or spyware. Their interface is a phone keypad, plus one button. (Yes, I know they have more buttons, but nobody uses them.) When they don’t work, the reasons are usually pretty obvious. And they feed stacks of paper. Setting up a fax modem is a nightmare, which is why nobody does it. “One-button” PC-based solutions usually involve drivers, incompatibilities, and dialog boxes. Never mind that you have to stand there, feeding every page into whatever scanner you’re using. The best solutions are the Webbased faxing services, such as Send2Fax and eFax, but those cost money, use oddball file formats, or have truly awful customer service. (One of them lost several of my important financial documents during my home purchase.) What’s more, Web-based faxing services don’t get around the signature problem. I know I could scan in my signature and use Adobe Acrobat or Photoshop to paste it into documents. But that feels like a very twiddly, very geeky solution to a problem that should be simple to solve. Without a truly usable online sign-and-fax solution, reams of contracts and other important documents remain locked in paper form, unsearchable and difficult to file. Piazza also pointed out that there’s still a certain level of irrational anxiety over electronic transactions in the nontechie world. Few people worry about waiters jotting down their credit card details or grocery stores tracking their purchases through “loyalty cards,” but the idea of personal information being stolen online whips most Americans into a froth of hysteria. Faxing seems safer. And, thanks to a fear of malicious hackers, it seems weirdly more trustworthy. Thus, the request to fax printouts of Web sites to my bank. In other words, the tech industry has a long way to go to make software usable for the average person—and to give people faith that their transactions will be safe and secure. Maybe we should look at faxes as the canaries in the coal mine of e-business. If working and living online truly becomes easy, reliable, and safe—not just for people who can fix their own Windows problems—we’ll be able to cast those groaning relics back to the 20th century. Q

I N S I D E T R AC K BY JOHN C. DVORAK

W

HEN WILL IT END? DEPT.: In the middle

of 2005, when many ill-fated Windows Vista features were still on the table, a number of Web sites ran stories about

how Microsoft was rethinking the Windows Registry. Does that mean it’s still rethinking the Registry? Does it mean we’ll have to wait another five years to get an OS without this clunky thing? Well, maybe not. Various third-party products are bypassing the Registry all on their own. The most interesting among them is MojoPac, available at www.mojopac.com for $49.95. With MojoPac, you can install software applications on a USB device that virtualizes the Registry. The company seems most proud of the fact that you can avoid traveling with your laptop by loading Microsoft Office and all your Office docs onto an Apple iPod. Plug your iPod into any computer anywhere,

and bingo, you’re running Microsoft Word or typing on an Excel spreadsheet. Not everything works with the MojoPac, but an astonishing number of programs do. That includes the Adobe Creative Suite as well as Microsoft Office. This idea of running programs on exterior devices was first promoted by Migo Software’s Migo (www.migosoftware.com), a tool that virtualizes your PC on USB key drives. You can load Microsoft Word and Outlook files on a Migo-equipped key drive, for instance. Then you can open them up no matter where you are—assuming you can find another machine that uses Word and Outlook (a reasonable assumption). Attach your key drive and Migo poaches Word and Outlook from the machine’s hard drive, opening these apps on a virtual desktop that looks exactly like your PC desktop back at the office. When U3 came along (www.u3.com), it allowed whole applications to run from USB devices within virtualized memory. Unfortunately, this didn’t work unless apps were specifically tweaked for the platform. With MojoPac, only some apps work, but you don’t have to tweak them. There’s also a fourth player in this space, called Ceedo. You’ll find a free download at its Web site (www.ceedo.com). Again, it creates a kind of virtualized registry. As you look over these tools, you can’t help but see an unintended consequence. The idea of application portability will certainly undermine software sales. Using the Registry, Windows can make sure an application is installed only once. If

you’re dealing with high-cost apps prone to piracy, such as Adobe CS, MS Office, and Autodesk, it’s easy to control unauthorized installs on machines spread throughout an office. With a virtualized registry, however, you can put these apps on a key drive and pass them around the office as needed. “Hey, does anyone have a copy of Illustrator that I can use?” In fact, the Microsoft notion of something called application manifests that sit alongside applications, without using a registry of any kind, would hurt software sales in much the same way. Thus, we’re not seeing it in Vista. With no registry whatsoever, you could even install software CD-ROMs and pass them around as needed. This would be perfect for situations where large offices use some very expensive software, but use it only occasionally.

The irony is that early USB key drives were used as copy-protection dongles. Now these things are a way of moving apps from machine to machine. Ha. When analyzed in hindsight, the Windows Registry looks like an excellent way of maintaining control. This may be the reason that Vista still has it, and it may be the reason that Microsoft seems to have dropped rumored development of a USB standard that would essentially clone the U3 platform. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. The virtualized systems cited above will continue to improve, and unless software vendors start blocking installs on USB devices, these tools will soon turn all apps into portable apps. The irony is that early USB keys were used as copy-protection dongles. Now these things are a way of moving apps from machine to machine. Ha. Personally, I think this is how apps should work. A single license should be installed only once or twice on any given device, and it should run on only one machine at a time. But you should also be able to move it from machine to machine as necessary. The software people have relied on the idiotic single-CPU license for years, and they’re already struggling with dual-core licenses. Let’s get back to simplicity. Some licenses are actually violated in the strictest sense of the term when software is run on dualcore or dual-processor machines. Once the big boys realize what’s going on here, this new breed of portability is going to drive them crazy. Q

WANT MORE DVORAK? John writes a weekly column for our Web site, too. go.pcmag.com/dvorak You can e-mail him at [email protected]


BUY I NG G U ID E

Security Super Guide The best ways to protect your PC, and your identity. B Y N E I L J. RU B E N K I N G

L

ET’S FACE THE FACTS HERE, PEOPLE,

the world has become a pretty scary place. In the salad days of your youth, all you had to worry about was the health and well-being of your family and locking your doors at night. Not anymore. Today, you need to worry about security in a whole different arena: your PC. Spyware, adware, viruses and Trojans are lurking online, waiting Illustration by Quickhoney

to infest your computer. All could easily cripple your PC if you’re not careful. Worse yet, hackers could steal important personal information. If that’s not enough to send you hiding under the covers, you also have to fi nd a way to keeps your kids safe online. Scary? You bet. Unmanageable? Not at all. Pull the covers off you head and listen to us. Our super security guide will help you wise up and stay safe. APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 65

SIGNATURE-BASED PROTECTION Traditional anti-

P revx1 Easily scans your system for, finds, and destroys malware and suspicious files.

Stomping Spyware

A

VIRUS IS SOFTWARE THAT CAN REPRO-

duce itself—simple! There’s no similar definition for spyware. In fact, we use it as a catch-all term for many kinds of malicious software. Adware programs pop up ads in your face, sometimes even when you don’t have a browser open. Adware may also watch your online activities, profiling you for targeted advertising or more sinister purposes. Literal spyware gathers information about you and what you do with the computer, possibly enabling identity theft. Trojan horse programs pretend to be useful, but when brought inside the gates, they get nasty. They may let hackers incorporate your computer into a Denial of Service attack, or turn your system into part of a spam-spewing bot network. Keyloggers are the ultimate spies, recording everything you type (including passwords). All of these are lumped under the term spyware—which means antispyware has one heck of a big job.

spyware programs work the same way as traditional antivirus programs, by matching programs against a database of known “signatures.” A full scan checks every file against the signature database; real-time scanning checks any file that gets accessed. Merely opening a folder can trigger some on-access scanners; others wait until a program tries to launch. Some traditional antispyware protectors also try to catch spyware by detecting its behavior. This easily degenerates, however, into nagging the user about perfectly ordinary programs. I consider behaviorbased warnings valuable only if they specifically identify the program or the behavior as malicious. The Editors’ Choice for this type of protection is shared by two products, Spy Sweeper ($29.95, www .webroot.com) and Spyware Doctor ($29.95, www .pctools.com). Both of them do very well in testing, removing almost all spyware from infested test systems and keeping almost all spyware samples from installing on a clean system. Both offer multiple levels of protection, including blocking access to known spyware sites, preventing spyware from configuring itself to launch at start-up, and stopping spyware from installing in the browser. Webroot currently offers a version that incorporates antivirus (licensed from Sophos); PC Tools is building virus support into Spyware Doctor 5.0. PROTECTION WITHOUT SIGNATURES The problem with signature-based antispyware is that some genius has to capture a threat and develop a signature for it before you’re fully protected. During the gap between appearance of a new threat and publication of its signature your security can be compromised. Many companies have devised ways to protect against these zero-day threats. We use the umbrella term “non-signature anti-malware” to describe them. (Malware means any software devised for malicious purposes—viruses, spyware, or what have you). Primary Response SafeConnect ($24.95, www .sanasecurity.com), our Editors’ Choice in this

TOP 10 SECURITY THREATS

10

SPAM MAIL While it’s annoying, it’s not a security threat unless it comes with a malicious payload. Your e-mail service may filter out spam automatically. If not, Outlook’s built-in “Junk E-Mail” filter is as effective as the spam protection in many suites.

9


PHISHING MAIL Phishing messages pretend to be from eBay, PayPal, your bank, or the like. If you log in to their fake sites, they steal your username and password and you’re sunk. However, both IE7 and Firefox 2 have phishing detection built in.

8

WIRELESS ATTACK If you’re not careful, anybody in range can mooch bandwidth from your wireless network and can rummage through your files, because they’re inside your network. Your router’s WPA/ WEP encryption can stop the mooching— but you have to use it.

7

HACKER ATTACK Hackers don’t care about your puny computer enough to attack it directly. They might broadcast a network virus or release a Trojan, but a personal attack is highly unlikely. Your security suite’s firewall and malware protection should keep you safe.

6

WEB EXPLOITS Some Web sites include malicious code to exploit vulnerabilities in your browser or operating system. Just visiting the site can infect or damage your system if the vulnerability hasn’t been patched, so keep Automatic Updates on.

ANTISPYWARE APPLICATIONS Products are listed in alphabetical order within type.

STANDALONE

denotes Editors’ Choice. Scores are on a scale of 1 (worst) to 10 (best).

SPYWARE REMOVAL

SPYWARE BLOCKING

KEYLOGGER REMOVAL

KEYLOGGER BLOCKING

CyberDefenderFREE 2.0

6.5

5.5

5.6

4.4

ewido anti-spyware 4.0

5.3

6.5

3.1

4.4

Max Secure Spyware Detector 2.0

8.5

5.5

6.3

3.8

Spy Sweeper 5.2 with Antivirus

9.0

8.3

8.8

8.8

Spyware Doctor 4.0

9.3

8.5

8.8

9.4

Cyberhawk Pro 2.0

2.8

8.5

5.0

8.8

Prevx1 Individual

7.8

8.8

6.9

7.5

Primary Response SafeConnect 2.1

5.3

8.0

10.0

10.0

AVG Internet Security 7.5

6.3

8.0

6.3

6.9

BitDefender Internet Security v10

6.0

7.0

3.8

5.6

BullGuard Internet Security 7.0

5.5

7.0

3.1

6.3

CA Internet Security Suite 2007

8.8

4.8

8.1

3.1

F-Secure Internet Security 2007

7.8

9.0

5.6

9.4

McAfee Total Protection

6.0

8.8

3.8

6.9

Norton Internet Security 2007

8.3

7.5

10.0

9.4

Outpost Firewall Pro 4.0

7.8

7.0

9.4

10.0

Panda Internet Security 2007

7.8

8.0

4.4

5.0

PC-cillin Internet Security 2007

5.5

8.5

3.8

6.9

Windows Live OneCare

6.5

6.0

2.5

1.9

ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite 7

9.3

9.5

8.1

6.9

NON-SIGNATURE

SUITE

category, monitors every running process, correlating hundreds of behaviors associated with malicious software. When the verdict is guilty, it terminates the process and deletes the executable file, along with any ancillary files that its analysis has identified as part of the malicious software. And in testing, it was just about as accurate as the best signature-based products. Prevx1 Individual ($24.95, www.prevx.com) performed almost as well. Using one of these products alongside a traditional

antispyware product should give a full spectrum of protection. It’s worth noting that the antivirus component of Norton Internet Security 2007 ($69.95, www .symantec.com), another Editors’ Choice, will soon combine both approaches. It already uses signatures to protect against both viruses and spyware. It will add the new SONAR (Symantec Online Network for Advances Response) technology for behavior-based zero-day protection.

5

3

ADWARE Simple adware pops up ads that get in your face. More sinister adware shadows your online activity, phones home, and tailors ads for you. Up-to-date antispyware is the solution.

4

VIRUSES Viruses are insidious. They hide and use your computer to infect other computers. At some predefined point they strike. Modern antivirus programs are quite good, but add a non-signature antimalware program to help with brand-new threats.

SPYWARE/TROJANS Spyware spies on everything you do and steals private information. Trojan horse programs pretend to be useful but can turn your computer into a spam-spewing zombie. Antispyware plus non-signature antimalware should keep out these threats.

2

IDENTITY THEFT It’s not just about your computer when they use your credit cards, divert your paycheck, and change your vehicle registration. A fullpowered security suite should block all computer-related avenues for identity theft.

HOW WE TESTED For more information on how we put this chart together head over to go.pcmag.com/ spychart

1

SOCIAL ENGINEERING The number one threat to your computer’s security is—you! Use common sense. Don’t take programs from strangers, don’t go to “iffy” Web sites, and if your security software pops up a warning, READ IT before you click.


Scanning for Nothing

W

HAT WOULD YOU LOSE IF YOUR

computer’s data got wiped out by a virus? How much would it cost you to replace it? Could you restore the system to full operation yourself, or would you have to pay a technician? After meditating on these questions you may be ready to spring for a full-scale security suite. But if you’re feeling lucky (or broke), you can put together a pretty decent protection collection for free.

FREE ANTIVIRUS The A’s have it when it comes

A ntiVir This app works well with other security software.

Avast! The only 64-bit compatible free antivirus solution.

to free antivirus protection—you won’t go wrong with AntiVir, avast!, or AVG. To be specific, try AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic (Avira GmbH, www.free-av.com), avast! Home Edition (Alwil Software, www.avast.com), or AVG Free Edition (Grisoft, www.grisoft.com). Products from all three vendors received the Virus Bulletin’s VB100% award and certification for virus detection from ICSA Labs. All of the above offer on-demand and onaccess scanning, and both AntiVir and AVG can schedule scans, but avast! cannot. The user is able to scan an e-mail stream directly with AVG and avast!, but AntiVir does not have this option. Avast!, with its skinnable interface, is definitely the best-looking; AntiVir has a retro look and AVG’s interface is strangely boxy. AntiVir is known for its ability to coexist with other on-access scanners. FREE FIREWALL If you get all security patches through Automatic Updates and keep the firewall that’s built into Windows XP and Vista turned on, you’re decently protected against outside attacks. A router with Network Address Translation adds further protection. However, the XP firewall doesn’t protect against programs that misuse your Internet connection, and the Vista firewall’s outbound protection (turned off by default) isn’t the same as that of a typical personal firewall. The free edition of ZoneAlarm (Check Point Software, www .zonealarm.com) does everything a f irewall m u s t , b ut d o e s n’ t go above and beyond. It doesn’t include the Pro version’s SmartDefense


Advisor, so a new installation will have to ask you about every program the first time it tries to reach the Internet. The advanced program control or OSFirewall found in the Pro version are also not available, but it does the basic job. The current Editors’ Choice for free firewall is Comodo Personal Firewall (Comodo Group, www.comodo.com). It does bombard the user with confirmation pop-ups at first, but at least it can preconfigure access for thousands of known programs. FREE ANTISPYWARE Unfortunately, there isn’t a standout choice for free spyware protection. Spybot and Ad-Aware, once the champions of spyware protection, just can’t keep up with the current onslaught. Microsoft’s Windows Defender (built into Vista and OneCare) seems to be backsliding—at least, when I retested it recently it did worse than previously. And though Tenebril’s SpyCatcher Express turned in a decent performance in 2005, my tests weren’t as stringent then. Your free antivirus’s real-time protection will block some spyware installations, and you can choose whichever free spyware program seems best to you. But do supplement your protection by running the scan-only free version of Spy Sweeper (Webroot Software, www.webroot.com) or Spyware Doctor (PC Tools, www.pctools.com). Don’t worry if they find suspicious cookies. However, if the report says you have actual malicious software, you’ll need to either bite the bullet and buy the full product or go for free expert help. How do you get that free help? Visit www .spywarewarrior.com, www.temerc.com, www .bleepingcomputer.com, or one of the many other sites that host the HijackThis! (HJT) utility. Download HJT and run it—just save a log, don’t take any action. Upload your log to the help forums at the site where you downloaded HJT. The experts will take it from there, offering specific and individualized cleanup instructions. After logging and cleanup, you’ll have the cleanest computer in the neighborhood.

AVG Lets you create useful backup disks that will bail you out if a virus disables your system.

Picking Parental Control

U

NLESS YOU HAVE KIDS OR YOUR CAT

can type, parental control won’t help you. Even if you do have kids, software can’t totally control them. Older kids may work around the software, or simply visit a friend whose computer isn’t controlled. Add to that the built-in parental control of Windows Vista and you can see why I don’t cover it exhaustively. But if you do need parental control software, here are some features to look for and a sampling of products to illustrate them. Different settings for different users are a must, if only to let grown-ups surf without limits. Some products, like Vista’s built-in and Webroot Child Safe ($39.95, www.webroot.com), tie configuration settings to Windows user accounts. Others, such as Safe Eyes ($49.95, www.safebrowse.com), our Editors’ Choice in this category, define their own user accounts. And some, like ContentProtect ($39.99, www.contentwatch.com), let you swing either way. Web filtering should keep your kids from accidentally or deliberately visiting inappropriate sites. Most products maintain a database that matches known sites with specific categories—if the category is banned, the site will be blocked. ContentProtect is unusual in that it analyzes every page, so a brand-new porn site, or an inappropriate page on a normally safe site, could be blocked. Possibly more important for reining in technology is some form of scheduled access control. Typically you’ll define

C ontent Protect This solution will block all kinds of content.

Safe Eyes With Safe Eyes, users control every minute of their children’s time online.

a weekly schedule of available times in half-hour increments. Child Safe and Vista let you schedule overall computer use. ContentProtect, Safe Eyes, and Child Safe let you schedule specific time on the Internet. Child Safe additionally allows scheduling individual applications. And all but Vista offer a daily or weekly maximum on top of the time-of-day scheduling. If you were always home supervising the children, you wouldn’t need this software. In the real world you may be at the office. If the kids go ape on the Internet, what can you do? Both ContentProtect and Safe Eyes can send you a real-time notification of violations and let you manage their configuration remotely, though ContentProtect’s remote changes don’t take effect immediately. On the flip side, your older child may have a legitimate reason to access a blocked site or may need an extension on allowed time to finish homework. That’s easy to fix with remote management in Safe Eyes. Child Safe instead offers one-use passwords “loaded” with a time extension or a fixed time with no Web filtering.

PARENTAL CONTROL

Webroot Child Safe

Windows Vista

N/A

N/A—not applicable


35

71

11

PROGRAMS LAUNCHED

IM CONTENTS

MANAGE SETINGS REMOTELY

NOTIFY PARENT OF VIOLATIONS

SET DAILY OR WEEKLY MAXIMUM

WEEKLY SCHEDULE

INDIVIDUAL APPS

Safe Eyes 2006

INTERNET USE

CONTENT CATEGORIES

40

NO LIMIT ON NUMBER

SITES VISITED

ACTIVITY MONITORING

VIOLATIONS

ContentProtect 2.0

PROGRAMSPECIFIC

WINDOWS


ALERTS & REMOTE ACCESS

TIME CONTROL

OVERALL COMPUTER USE

WEB FILTERING

BASED ON CATEGORIZED LIST

USER ACCOUNTS

BASED ON REALTIME ANALYSIS

Products are listed in alphabetical order.

If your teen calls with a tale of woe, you just hand over the necessary password. You’ll have to think hard about just how much privacy your child should have on the computer. All four products mentioned here will log all violations and also log all Web sites visited. Safe Eyes, Child Safe, and Vista log all programs launched. ContentProtect, SafeEyes and Vista can log instant message conversations. Just knowing that their every online action is logged may be enough to keep some youths in line. Of course, the software has to be ruggedized and tamper-resistant; if not, budding hackers will dismantle it. Web filtering and Internet time scheduling have to be browser-independent. Otherwise, kids will just download a non-supported browser. A savvy teen might try to disable filtering or other protection by killing a process in Task Manager— the software you choose can’t let that happen. The products I’ve mentioned here successfully resisted my hack attacks in testing. No matter how thoroughly you lock down the home computer, older kids will find some way to get unlimited access at a friend’s house, an Internet café, or the like. One critical facet of parental

control is clear communication with your kids. Let them know what is and isn’t allowed, and why. Be sure they understand that “new friends” in chat rooms may not be what they seem. If you manage this well enough, you may not need parental control software at all.

C hild Safe Remote management options let you adjust the parental controls from anywhere.

Suite Spot

S

ECURITY SOFTWARE HAS TO MANEUVER

deeply inside the operating system’s innards. When Windows opens a file, the antivirus wants a look at it, as does the antispyware. If a program calls on Windows to make a network connection, the firewall has to decide whether or not to allow it. At every turn, the security software needs to monitor and possibly modify what the operating system is doing. The more programs you have sinking their hooks into Windows, the greater the chance that they’ll conflict or that their combined scrutiny will put a drag on system performance. That’s why most users should choose a security suite rather than piecing together a collection of separate elements. At a minimum your suite should offer firewall, antivirus, and antispyware, fully integrated with no duplication of effort to lessen its impact on performance. The firewall should block external attacks and control how programs use your Internet and network connections. The best will go further and block techniques that circumvent basic controls. Most suites also offer some form of spam filtering, private data protection, and parental control. Too often, though, the spam protection is no better than Outlook’s built-in “Junk E-Mail” filter. The parental controls tend to be rudimentary—usually just Web filtering, with no time-scheduling or other advanced features.

Norton Internet Security 2007 ($69.99, www .symantec.com) is our Editors’ Choice, with the new ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite 7 ($69.95, www .zonealarm.com) a close second. Possibly inspired by Microsoft’s pricing for OneCare, all but two of the suites offer a “three-pack” or similar multiple license. A half-dozen include multiple licenses in the base price; the rest charge a little extra. It’s a great deal for the modern multicomputer household. NORTON INTERNET SECURITY 2007 NIS 2007 is one slick piece of work. It takes full responsibility for identifying malicious software and keep-

N orton Internet Security 2007 Our current Editors’ Choice for security suites.


EXPERT VIEW BY NEIL J. RUBENKING

Z

ENOUGH WITH THE QUESTIONS! JUST DO IT!

oneAlarm 7 has added new features to cut back on firewall confirmation pop-ups, but it still asks questions nobody can understand. Norton Internet Security 2007 makes all the decisions itself without getting in your face. I know which style I like better. The alleged better security provided by Vista’s User Access Control comes with the added burden of having to constantly confirm that, YES, I really do want it to do what I just asked it to do. Who’s in charge here? It doesn’t have to be this way. Antivirus programs don’t ask whether you want to repair a virus infection—they just do the job. But many antispyware programs ask how to handle a threat even though they rate it “extreme risk.” Unless the found item is the self-contained ad-displaying portion for a free ad-supported kiddie game or something equally innocuous, just whack it! I also see way too many programs that yammer at you when harmless programs do reasonable things, like add themselves to the start sequence. They may think this makes them look helpful; it doesn’t. Users quickly learn to just click Allow and move on. Microsoft isn’t helping this situation, not one bit. Back in the day, they told XP users to stick with Limited user accounts for security. That way, if malicious software tried to, say, overwrite parts of the operating system, it would fail because the user isn’t authorized to do that. Unfortunately, there were just too many normal activities that flopped dismally under Limited accounts. Now Vista is supposed to make it feasible for everybody to run as a Limited user—they even changed the name to Standard user. If some valid action requires an Administrator’s permission, why, the Standard user can just get an Administrator to c’mon over and authorize it. Even Administrators run at the Standard privilege level. Vista asks them to confirm with each and every function they try that needs elevated privileges—though it spares them having to enter a password for each one. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but the closer Vista got to final release the more UAC pop-ups appeared. The dozenth time an Administrator has to trek across the cube farm because a user wants to set the clock, adjust the overall font size, or look (just look!) at processes in Task Manager, she’s going to give serious thought to awarding everybody full Administrator privileges. Right. Just like what happened with XP. Those brand-new Administrators will quickly grow accustomed to merrily clicking away the UAC boxes without reading them. Trying to train the vast hordes of computer users to micromanage security is like trying to teach a pig to sing: It wastes your time and annoys the pig. The right place for that sort of decision-making is in the software itself. Designers need to work toward making security software more self-directing—or find a different line of work. Yes, it does require superb accuracy on the part of the software. Users will wail to high heaven if a security suite mistakenly nukes their brandnew copy of Myst 9. But it’s the only way to go. Symantec has the right idea—when NIS 2007 finds a program that’s not on its naughty or nice list, it decides for itself and takes action.

Symantec has the right idea with its nice and naughty list.


Z oneAlarm Pop-ups like this one walk you through the setup of your firewall and help with configuration.

ing it from harming your computer. The firewall lets known good programs run and smacks down known bad programs, naturally. For unknown software it makes the decision itself by analyzing the program’s behavior; it won’t ask you any incomprehensible questions. NIS 2007 also resisted all my attempts to disable its protection the way malicious software might: It’s as tough as ZoneAlarm, which is saying a lot. This version was completely redesigned to avoid the system performance problems that tarnished the reputation of previous versions. Whereas ZoneAlarm licenses virus protection from a third party, NIS uses Symantec’s own Norton AntiVirus, which is certified for virus detection and removal by the major independent labs. Virus and spyware protection are fully integrated, and in testing it handled spyware almost as well as the best standalone products. As part of the streamlining process, Symantec pushed less-important suite features completely out of the default installation. If you want antispam, parental control, or privacy protection, you’ll need to download a separate add-on pack. Symantec also trimmed features from these second-tier elements. In testing, the spam filter let tons of spam into the inbox, but it marked a significant number of valid messages as spam—not good! The parental control system no longer has per-user settings. Now one size fits all, and there’s no way to temporarily override it. NIS 2007 gives you world-class firewall, antivirus, and antispyware protection, without any incomprehensible firewall pop-ups.

SECURITY SUITES Products are listed in alphabetical order. PRODUCT

denotes Editors' Choice.

OVERALL

FIREWALL

ANTISPYWARE

ANTIVIRUS

ANTISPAM*

PRIVACY/PARENTAL*

PRICE

3-PACK

AVG Internet Security 7.5

l l h m m

l l h m m

l l h m m

llllm

lllhm

N/A

$52.95

$74.95

BitDefender Internet Security v10

l l l m m

l l h m m

l l h m m

llllh

llhmm

lllmm

$69.95

same1

BullGuard Internet Security 7.0

l l l m m

l l l m m

l l h m m

llllm

llmmm

N/A

$59.99

$59.99

CA Internet Security Suite 2007

l l l m m

l l h m m

l l h m m

llllm

llllh

llhmm

$49.99

n/a

F-Secure Internet Security 2007

l l l h m

l l l l m

l l l m m

llllm

lhmmm

lllmm

$59.90

same

Kaspersky Internet Security 6

l l l h m

l l l l m

l l l h m

llllh

llhmm

N/A

$79.95

n/a

McAfee Total Protection

l l m m m

l l l h m

l l m m m

llllh

lllhm

llmmm

$79.99

$99.99

Norton Internet Security 2007

l l l l h

l l l l h

l l l l h

llllh

llhmm

llhmm

$69.99

same

Outpost Firewall Pro 4.0'

l l l h m

l l l l m

l l l m m

N/A

N/A

N/A

$39.95

$79.952

Panda Internet Security 2007

l l l h m

l l l h m

l l l m m

llllm

llmmm

llhmm

$49.95

same

PC-cillin Internet Security 2007

l l l m m

l l h m m

l l h m m

llllh

llllm

lllmm

$49.95

same

Windows Live OneCare

l l h m m

l l h m m

l l m m m

llllm

N/A

N/A

$49.95

same

ZoneAlarm Internet Security

l l l l h

l l l l l

l l l l m

llllh

llllm

llllm

$69.95

$99.95

* The Antispam and Privacy/Parental suite elements were given less weight than the others. N/A—not applicable: The product does not have this feature. 1 BitDefender "deal" is two installations for two years. 2 Outpost family pack is five installations.

ZONEALARM INTERNET SECURITY SUITE 7 Zone-

Alarm is probably the first personal firewall you ever heard of, and the ZA suite’s firewall is still at the head of its class. In recent years antispyware has been this suite’s Achilles heel. That problem is more than solved in Version 7; in testing it blocked and removed spyware better than the best standalone antispyware products (and better than NIS 2007). Check Point Software (the current publisher of ZoneAlarm) is now partnering with Kaspersky Labs for virus protection. As with NAV, Kaspersky’s antivirus is fully certified by the independent labs for virus protection and removal. ZA’s firewall automatically configures permissions for any program in its vast SmartDefense Advisor database, but if an unknown program tries to access the Internet or your network it will still ask you whether or not to allow it. The suite does now include an initial Auto-Learn mode that cuts down the initial flood of pop-ups but temporarily reduces security. Its advanced OSFirewall module detects suspicious program behaviors, which is fine, but it reports its findings in pop-up warnings that can be highly obscure. You do get top-of-theline spam filtering, licensed from MailFrontier.

Starting with Version 6.5, ZA has included Identity Theft Protection as part of the suite. You get a year of credit card protection from Identity Guard (normally $29.95). The Identity Guard service will handle lost card notifications and warn you if your accounts show up on hacker sites. If you’re victimized despite all precautions, the service will help you recover from identity theft. Q

Z one Alarm Offers free identity theft protection with its Suite.


Web 3.0 The Internet is changing . . . again.

J

BY CADE METZ UST IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, THE WEB NOW has version numbers. Nearly three years ago, amid continued hand-wringing over the dot-com crash, a man named Dale Dougherty dreamed up something called Web 2.0, and the idea soon took on a life of its own. In the beginning, it was little more than a rallying cry, a belief that the Internet would rise again. But as Dougherty’s O’Reilly Media put together the first Web

2.0 Conference in late 2005, the term seemed to trumpet a particular kind of online revolution, a World Wide Web of the people. Web 2.0 came to describe almost any site, service, or technology that pro-

moted sharing and collaboration right down to the Net’s grass roots. That includes blogs and wikis, tags and RSS feeds, del.icio.us and Flickr, MySpace and YouTube. Because the concept blankets so many disparate ideas, some have questioned how meaningful—and how useful—it really is, but there’s little doubt it owns a spot in our collective consciousness. Whether or not it makes sense, we now break the history of the Web into two distinct stages: Today we have Web 2.0, and before that there was Web 1.0. Which raises the question: What will Web 3.0 look like? 74 PC MAGAZINE APRIL 10, 2007

Illustration by Magic Torch


Y

ES, IT’S TOO EARLY TO SAY

for sure. In many ways, even Web 2.0 is a work in progress. But it goes without saying that new Net technologies are always under development— inside universities, think tanks, and big corporations, as much as Silicon Valley start-ups—and blogs are already abuzz with talk of the Web’s next generation. To many, Web 3.0 is something called the Semantic Web, a term coined by Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the (first) World Wide Web. In essence, the Semantic Web is a place where machines can read Web pages much as we humans read them, a place where search engines and software agents can better troll the Net and fi nd what we’re looking for. “It’s a set of standards that turns the Web into one big database,” says Nova Spivack, CEO of Radar Networks, one of the leading voices of this new-age Internet. But some are skeptical about whether the Semantic Web—or at least, Berners-Lee’s view of it—will actually take hold. They point to other technologies capable of reinventing the online world as we know it, from 3D virtual worlds to Webconnected bathroom mirrors. Web 3.0 could mean many things, and for Netheads, every single one is a breathtaking proposition.

Tim, Lucy, and the Semantic Web The Semantic Web isn’t a new idea. This notion of a Web where machines can better read, understand, and process all that data floating through cyberspace—a concept many refer to as Web 3.0—fi rst

entered the public consciousness in 2001, when a story appeared in Scientific American. Coauthored by Berners-Lee, the article describes a world in which software “agents” perform Web-based tasks we often struggle to complete on our own. The article begins with an imaginary girl named Lucy, whose mother has just been told by her doctor that she needs to see a specialist. “At the doctor’s office, Lucy instructed her Semantic Web agent through her handheld Web browser,” we read. “The agent promptly retrieved information about Mom’s prescribed treatment from the doctor’s agent, looked up several lists of providers, and checked for the ones in-plan for Mom’s insurance within a 20-mile radius of her home and with a rating of excellent on trusted rating services.” That’s quite a mouthful, but it only begins to describe Berners-Lee’s vision of a future Web. Lucy’s Semantic Web agent can also check potential appointment times against her mother’s busy schedule, reschedule other appointments if need be, and more—all on its own, without help from Lucy. And Lucy is just one example. A Semantic Web agent could be programmed to do almost anything, from automatically booking your next vacation to researching a term paper. How will this actually work? In Berners-Lee’s view, it involves a reannotation of the Web, adding all sorts of machine-readable metadata to the humanreadable Web pages we use today (see “Questions of Semantics,” opposite). Six years after the Scientific American article, official standards describing this metadata are in place—including the Recourse Description Framework (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL)—and they’re already trickling into

AN IDIOT’S GUIDE TO WEB 3.0 What will Web 3.0 look like? Who knows? But here are a few possibilities.

THE SEMANTIC WEB A Web where machines can read sites as easily as humans read them (almost). You ask your machine to check your schedule against the schedules of all the dentists and doctors within a 10-mile radius—and it obeys. 76 PC MAGAZINE APRIL 10, 2007

THE 3D WEB A Web you can walk through. Without leaving your desk, you can go house hunting across town or take a tour of Europe. Or you can walk through a Second Life–style virtual world, surfing for data and interacting with others in 3D.

THE MEDIA-CENTRIC WEB A Web where you can find media using other media— not just keywords. You supply, say, a photo of your favorite painting and your search engines turn up hundreds of similar paintings.

THE PERVASIVE WEB A Web that’s everywhere. On your PC. On your cell phone. On your clothes and jewelry. Spread throughout your home and office. Even your bedroom windows are online, checking the weather, so they know when to open and close. Illustrations by Magic Torch

real-world sites, services, and other tools. Semantic Web metadata underpins Yahoo!’s new food site. Spivack’s Radar Networks is building a kind of Semantic Web portal. A development platform, Jena, is in the works at HP. And you’ll find Semantic Web structures in Oracle’s Spatial database tool. The problem is that a complete reannotation of the Web is a massive undertaking. “The Semantic Web is a good-news, bad-news thing,” says R. David Lankes, an associate professor at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies. “You get the ability to do all these very complex queries, but it takes a tremendous amount of time and metadata to make that happen.”

The Other Semantic Web As a consequence, many researchers take a very different approach to the Semantic Web. Rather than calling for an overhaul of Web formats, which would involve hundreds of thousands of indepen-

dent sites, they’re building agents that can better understand Web pages as they exist today. They’re not making the pages easier to read, they’re making the software agents smarter. One early example is the BlueOrganizer from AdaptiveBlue (www.adaptiveblue.com). In certain situations, when you visit a Web page, this browser plug-in can understand what the page is about, automatically retrieving related information from other sites and services. If you visit a movie blog, for instance, and read about a particular film, it immediately links to sites where you can buy or rent that film. “It’s what you might call a top-down approach,” says Alex Iskold, the company’s CEO. “Web pages already contain semantic data. We can understand them, so why shouldn’t computers? Why not build a technology that can parse and process existing services and databases?” Of course, that’s easier said than done. Countless companies offer tools similar to BlueOrganizer—

QUESTIONS OF SEMANTICS improve this, with things like tagging. But if you typed “polish” and I typed “polish,” how do we know we’re talking about the same thing? You might be talking about a language and I might be talking about something that goes on furniture. On the other hand, if those two names are precisely identified, they don’t accidentally overlap and it’s easier to understand the data we’ve published. So the technology of the Semantic Web is, in a sense, the technology of precise vocabularies.

Tim Berners-Lee isn’t the only man behind the Semantic Web. His 2001 Scientific American article, which introduced the concept to the world, was actually written in collaboration with two other eminent researchers, Ora Lassila and Jim Hendler. Six years on, we tracked down Professor Hendler, now director of the Joint Institute for Knowledge Discovery at the University of Maryland and still one of the driving forces behind this next-generation Internet.

Q: Does the Semantic Web idea predate your now-famous Scientific American article—or was that the first mention? A: That’s the first time the term was coined and printed in a fairly accessible place. Recently, we’ve been looking for the absolute earliest use of the term Semantic Web, and it seems to go a bit further back, to a few small things Tim had written. He and some colleagues were using it locally within MIT and the surrounding community in the late nineties.

Jim Hendler database to some other value in some other database. To use a simple example, if your driver’s license number is in one place and your vehicle identification number is in another, there should be a way of linking those two things together. There should be a way for machines to understand that those two things are related.

Q: The Semantic Web can be a difficult concept to grasp. How do you define it? A: What the traditional Web does for the

Q: Why is this so necessary? A: Right now, it’s very difficult to browse

text documents in our lives, the Semantic Web does for all our data and information. Today, on my Web page, I can build a pointer to another Web page. But I can’t link data together in the way I can link pages together. I can’t point from a value in one

data on the Web. I can use a search engine that gives me the results of a query and draws them as a list, but I can’t click on one of those values and see what it really means and what it’s really related to. Today’s social networking is trying to

Q: And this, in turn, would allow a machine to go out across the Web and find the things we’re looking for? A: Yes. It’s very hard for this to happen with just language descriptions. Our idea is to have machine-readable information shadowing the human-readable stuff. So if I have a page that says, “My name is Jim Hendler. Here’s a picture of my daughter,” the machine realizes that I’m a person, that I have a first name and a last name, that I’m the father of another person, and that she’s a female person. The level of information a machine needs would vary from application to application, but just a little of this could go a long way—as long as it can all be linked together. And the linking is the Web part of the Semantic Web. This is all about adding meaning to the stuff we put on the Web—and then linking that meaning together. APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 77

including Claria’s PersonalWeb—but these aren’t that different from the old Amazon.com “recommendation engine,” which suggests new products based on your surfing and buying habits. We’re a long way from agents that can think on their own. In the near term, the Semantic Web may require the sort of metadata Berners-Lee proposes. “Automated agents are worth striving for,” says Pattie Maes, an MIT Media Lab veteran who founded the Lab’s Software Agents Group. “But it’s hard to say what’s better—tags built into Web pages or tags that are, in a sense, inferred by machines.”

Semantics and Search The Semantic Web, like Web 2.0, is a nebulous concept. “Considering that the very word semantic is all about meaning, it’s ironic that the term Semantic Web is so ill defined,” says Radar Networks’ Spivack. Some, like Spivack, fall into the Berners-Lee camp. Others, like AdaptiveBlue’s Iskold, believe in the artificial-intelligence method. And then there are the others: the semantic searchers. Rather than providing automatic information retrieval, semantic search engines seek to improve on the Google-like search model we’ve grown so

LOOK, MA, NO KEYWORDS!

Y

Three new Web services reinvent the way we look for music and images. ou won’t search for media with keywords in the future—you’ll search for media with media. To find an image, you’ll supply another image. To find a song, you’ll supply another song. Don’t believe it? Three new services—image-crunchers Like.com and Polar Rose, and music-matchmaker Pandora—have already taken the first steps toward this new breed of media search. Today, when you search the Web for music and images, you’re merely searching for the words that surround them. When you visit Google Image Search and type in “Steve Jobs,” you aren’t really looking for photos of Apple’s CEO. You’re looking for filenames and captions that carry those keywords—“Steve” and “Jobs”—hoping the right photos are somewhere nearby. There’s a sizable difference between the two. On any given image search, Google turns up countless photos completely unrelated to your query, even as it misses out on countless others that may be a perfect match. In the end, you’re relying on Web publishers to annotate their images accurately, and that’s a hit-or-miss proposition. The situation is much the same with MP3s, podcasts, and other sound files. When trolling Web-based music services, you can run a search on “Elvis” or “Jailhouse Rock.” But what if you’re looking for music that sounds like Elvis? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could use one song to find other similar songs? Ojos and Polar Rose are tackling the image side of the problem. Last spring, Ojos unveiled a Web-based photosharing tool called Riya (www.riya.com), which automatically tags your pictures using face recognition. Rather than manually adding “Mom” tags to all your photos of Mom, you can show Riya what she looks like, and it adds the tags for you. The service is surprisingly accurate, gaining a huge following from the moment it hit the Web, but Ojos quickly realized that the Riya face-rec engine—which also identifies objects and words—could be used for Web-wide image search. That’s a mammoth undertaking, but, with an alpha service called Like.com, the company is already offering a simple prototype. Today, Like.com is little more than a shopping engine. You select a photo of a product that best represents


At Like.com, one image is a gateway to all sorts of others. what you’re looking for, and the service shows all sorts of similar products. But it’s an excellent proof-of-concept. Meanwhile, Polar Rose (www.polarrose.com) recently introduced a browser plug-in that does face recognition with any photo posted to any Web site. For the moment, it’s just a means of tagging images automatically—much like Riya. But unlike Riya, it already works across the length and breadth of the Net. The closest equivalent when it comes to audio is Pandora, from a group of “musicians and music-loving technologists” called the Music Genome Project. Since its inception in 2000, the group has analyzed songs from over 10,000 artists, carefully notating the music makeup of each track. Using this data and a list of your favorite artists, Pandora can instantly construct a new collection of songs that suit your tastes. Again, this is hardly a Web-wide search engine, and unlike the image services from Ojos and Polar Rose, it relies heavily on up-front human input. But it’s a step in the right direction. True media search is closer than you think.—CM

accustomed to. The idea is to move beyond mere keyword searches to a better understanding of natural-language queries. “Right now, search engines can’t tell the difference between Paris Hilton and the Hilton in Paris,” says Jeff Bates, cofounder of Slashdot, one of the driving forces behind Web 2.0. “There’s millions of dollars being spent trying to better optimize search, and that’s a big part of what the Semantic Web will be.” This kind of natural-language processing has been in development for years, but it, too, has found its way onto the public Web. Several start-ups, including Powerset and TextDigger, are hard at work on semantic search engines based on the opensource academic project WordNet. It should be noted, however, that natural-language search could very well play a role in the Berners-Lee Semantic Web. His is merely a framework to enable all sorts of apps, and semantic search might be one of them.

A Web Beyond Words Though Web 3.0 is most often associated with the Semantic Web, the two are far from synonymous. Countless other concepts are poised to play a role in our online future, and many go beyond semantics, using space, images, and sound. One possibility is the so-called 3D Web, a Web you can walk through. Many see this as an extension of the “virtual worlds” popping up on today’s Internet. In the future, they say, the Web will be one big alternate universe reminiscent of Second Life and There.com. But others scoff at this notion, claiming it’s just a less-efficient version of today’s Internet. They see the 3D Web not as an alternate universe but as a re-creation of our existing world. On the 3D Web, you could take a virtual stroll through an unfamiliar neighborhood shopping for houses or visit famous sites you’ve never seen. Google Earth already offers an experience not far removed from this. “Today, with a service like Google Earth, you can zoom in on Seattle and see how tall the buildings are,” says Syracuse University’s Lankes. “It really isn’t that much of a leap to actually put you, or your avatar, in Seattle and let you walk around.” The trouble is, 3D only goes so far. It doesn’t enhance the very 2D world of words, pictures, and video. For many, the more interesting idea is a mediacentric Web, offering not just language-based search but pure media search. Today we depend on keywords even when searching for images, videos, and songs—a woefully inadequate system. Companies like Ojos and Polar Rose are working to reinvent media search, hinting at a world where we search for media with other media—not just keywords (see “Look Ma, No Keywords!” opposite). Then there’s the Pervasive Web, a Web that’s everywhere. Today’s Web already extends beyond

VERSIONS 4, 5, 6… Is it too early to talk about Web 4.0? Of course not. According to Danish editor Jens Roland, who’s been tracking the increasingly common practice of assigning version numbers to the World Wide Web, at least one Internet pundit is already discussing Web 38.0. Roland hastens to point out that this discussion is most likely tongue-in-cheek. But even as Web 2.0 continues to mature and an assortment of ideas called Web 3.0 hits our collective consciousness, some people are actually giving serious thought to version 4.0. Go ahead. Google it. One of the first and most visible Web 4.0 pundits is Seth Godin, a technology-minded marketing guru with seven books to his name, including Seth Godin Unleashing the Ideavirus, billed as the most popular e-book ever. What does a marketing guru have to do with the future of Net? Everything. After all, these Web-wide version numbers have so much to do with spin. Godin envisions Web 4.0, or Web4, as a place where you have even tighter online connections to your friends, family, and colleagues. “There are so many things the Web can do for me if it knows who my friends are, where they are, what they’re doing, what they’re interested in, how they can help me—and vice versa,” he says. On his future Web, if you start typing an e-mail proposing a particular business deal with Apple, a window pops up, telling you that one of your colleagues is already in talks with Apple. If you miss an airplane flight and book a new one with your cell phone, it automatically sends messages to the friends you’re meeting for dinner, letting them know you’ll be late. It sounds a lot like the Semantic Web—with less privacy. Will this actually happen? Will people relinquish that much information about their private lives? Who knows? It’s just an idea. Of course, people like Seth Godin know a thing or two about spreading ideas.—CM

the desktop, to cell phones and handhelds, but it might extend even further—into our everyday surroundings. At the MIT Media Lab, Maes is toying with the idea of Web-connected bathroom mirrors. As you brush your teeth in the morning, there’s the latest news. Meanwhile, with his blog, the End of Cyberspace, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang of the Institute for the Future envisions the Web automating much of what goes on in the home. Your windows, for instance, could automatically open when the weather changes. With help from mesh networks—wireless networks consisting of tiny nodes that can route data to and from almost anywhere—the possibilities are nearly endless.

MORE FROM THE FUTURE For more on the Semantic Web, and all the other future Webs, log on to go.pcmag .com/web3

Tomorrow’s Web, Today In some respects, Web 3.0 is nothing more than a parlor game. Ideas tossed out here and there. But at the very least, these ideas have roots in current trends. Many companies, from HP and Yahoo! to Radar Networks, are adopting official Semantic Web standards. Polar Rose and Ojos are improving image search. Google and Microsoft are moving toward 3D. No one can predict what Web 3.0 will look like. But one thing’s for sure: It’ll happen. Q APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 79

Movie download sites eliminate the trips to the video store and the wait for Netflix mail. Is there a catch?

C

BY MICHAEL MUCHMORE

THE BIG SCREEN Your clunky CRT TV just doesn’t cut it anymore. Is it time for an HDTV? go.pcmag.com/hdtv

HANCES ARE THAT YOU’VE WATCHED

those amusing three-minute viral videos on YouTube and other sites. Cute. But what if you’re in the mood for some longer-format entertainment at a higher image quality, maybe even featuring professional talent? The Internet can help there too. I spent an exhausting week watching movies from five ondemand and download services: Amazon Unbox, CinemaNow, MovieFlix, Movielink, and Vongo. Each has a somewhat different take on what your online movie experience should be. They vary significantly in what they offer, how you should pay, and whether you subscribe to a film library, rent, or purchase the content. Read on to see which service works best.

Unbox Amazon’s video download service—launched last fall—claims to offer DVD-quality video that’s easy as taking a disc out of a box. Unbox offers TV shows 80 PC MAGAZINE APRIL 10, 2007

for $1.99 and movies for rental at $2.99 to $3.99 or download at about $15. The selection of over 2,400 movies includes recent popular DVD releases. To use it, I downloaded the 3.8MB Unbox video player, which installed .Net Framework 2.0—meaning it requires Microsoft Windows XP or Vista. As you’d expect from a shopping powerhouse like Amazon, the categorization and recommendation features stand out. Getting a movie into your player is smooth—you don’t have to figure out which directory you should save it in. You can pause a download in process from the desktop tray if you need bandwidth for other actions—a nice touch. Movies take from 20 minutes to an hour to download, depending on the speed of your broadband connection (and the film’s length). Movies you’ve bought or rented appear in the player’s right pane. You can fast-forward and rewind even before the whole movie’s been downloaded, using controls that autohide at the bottom during full-screen play. I bought Superman Returns and then used Amazon’s RemoteLoad option to downIllustration by Alex Eben Meyer

load it to my work PC. The faster download speed at my office meant that I could watch the movie after just a few minutes. The 2.5-Mbps bit rate of Unbox movies is about half that of an actual DVD, but the service uses the same VC1 codec that powers HD DVD content. And indeed, the picture quality was the closest to DVD quality of any of the services I reviewed. Unbox also claims the broadest support for portable devices, including most PlaysForSure gadgets. It’s definitely one of the best services I tested. And although using it takes different skills from opening a DVD box, it really isn’t that much harder.

CinemaNow Next, I tried out one of the biggest, baddest services of the bunch. CinemaNow offers a whopping five different ways to get and pay for your movies: free, subscription, rent, buy, and burn to DVD. To help cut down on the confusion, the tabbed page for each section has a “Learn How It Works” button. CinemaNow claims more than 4,000 featurelength films, television programs, and music concerts from top licensors such as 20th Century Fox, Disney, MGM, Miramax, NBC Universal, and more. Since the service includes adult content, it also provides parental controls. CinemaNow requires Internet Explorer and Microsoft Windows Media

Player 10, but you don’t need a separate player to use it—you just have to download an ActiveX control. Free movies come from independent sources rather than the big studios (surprise, surprise), and they’re stream-only. The free area is accessible and well organized; you just won’t find movies you’ve heard of. Free flicks stream at 300 or 700 Kbps; neither delivers spectacular quality, but video at 700 Kbps is watchable if the screen isn’t too huge. During fast pans, I saw the jitter of lost frames in the free 2004 comedy Baptists at Our Barbecue . . . but mostly the quality was fine. (Oh, and I heartily endorse this charming comedy pitting Mormons against Baptists.) The subscription selections weren’t much better, though you don’t have to put up with the annoying ads that come with free movies. Skip that deal for the rental option, which nets you better quality (there’s a premium 1.5-Mbps bit rate), more choices, and more in-demand movies. Rental fees range from 49 cents to $3.99. At the time of my review, Little Miss Sunshine was available for rent via Netflix, but though CinemaNow would sell me a downloadable version for $14.95, it wouldn’t let me rent it. New releases seem to be staggered, even within the service. To download a rental, you have to pick a directory for the movie file—something poorly explained. Once you click Watch Now, you have 24 APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 81

Amazon Unbox

CinemaNow

TV shows $1.99, movie rentals $2.99–$3.99

Free for some movies; $29.95/month subscription

llllm

llllm

PROS Excellent image quality; portable device support; recent and popular releases; ability to watch on multiple PCs. CONS No free or subscription content.

PROS Burns real DVDs—sort of; decent amount of free content. CONS Picture quality not so great with free and subscription content; complicated membership strata.

hours to complete your viewing. But be warned: You can watch rented movies only on one PC; I started Office Space on a PC at work, thinking I could continue at home. No luck. Buying movies in CinemaNow usually costs $14.95, and they take about an hour to download. You can watch a movie after receiving 10 percent or so of it and view a completed download offline. The movie choices were quite up-to-date: Jackass Number 2 was already available, and buying the 1.5GB file meant that I could watch the movie on more than

The Burning Question

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inemaNow is the only one of all the services I looked at that lets you burn Hollywood content. Downloading a movie for burning to DVD gives you something physical and permanent, of course, but it offers the hope of another, more salient perk: the highest- quality image. To download a movie for burning from CinemaNow, you first have to download the 12MB DVD-burning software. The burn feature has a telltale beta tag floating near it, which scared me. In my opinion, software is either released and functional, or it’s unfinished. If it’s not ready for public use, why make it publicly available? I DOWNLOADED THE SOFTWARE ANYWAY. The download preview works only after the movie’s been completely downloaded and is being converted to a VTS, or video transport stream, the basic file format for video on DVDs. You can play these downloaded, high-quality .TS files from your hard drive without burning them, of course. When I did so, Windows Media Player opened the file and played it successfully, as if it were a physical DVD. But you’ll need a DVD decoder plug-in, which costs $15 to $20 separately or comes with commercial software packages such as WinDVD or PowerDVD. After my system rejected a few DVD blanks, I coaxed CinemaNow into burning a DVD successfully. As advertised, the disc included menus and special features, and it was playable on my normal DVD player. But the picture just wasn’t of first-rate DVD quality. Was it worth the time and effort? Not yet. Perhaps when this beta software goes final, CinemaNow will have improved the video quality and compatibility. Let’s hope so.


one PC, over and over and over again. If only it were worthy of multiple viewings!

Vongo Vongo boasts over 2,000 titles, but has only just over 100 of them available for rental from 99 cents to $3.99. And it doesn’t have any free movies, either; to access the other 1,900, you subscribe for $9.99 per month. There’s no way to own a movie permanently or burn it to a DVD. To join up, you begin the eight-page registration process, which tests your bandwidth and patience. I noted with dismay that the user license states that the company can use personally identifiable information about you for marketing. Boo! The $9.95 per month membership gives you lots of movies from Starz Entertainment and also streams the Starz channel—unsurprising, as the service was built by Starz. It also lets you watch movies on up to three separate devices, PCs, or gizmos running Version 2 of Microsoft Portable Media Center. At present, that pretty much limits you to Toshiba’s Gigabeat S series. The Vongo software client lets you preview and select the movies you want to watch. It also shows you the download file size and format, but not the bit rate. There are only four categories: action, anime, comedy, and drama—far fewer than on some of the other services. The browsing panel adds kids & family, romance, sci-fi & horror, and Starz Channel to that list. I noticed that recent releases Jackass Number 2 and Little Miss Sunshine weren’t available on Vongo, but I did find some older mainstream flicks: Pretty Woman and Sleepless in Seattle, for example. When you click Watch Now, Vongo’s player appears. Blowing a film up to full-screen size still

18

Unbox player

2.5 Mbps

Win XP

Portable Media Center

None

14

iTunes

1.5 Mbps

Win 2000, XP, Mac OS X*

iPod

Weak

MovieFlix

Movielink Vongo

†

FREE MOVIES

ADULT CONTENT

Apple iTunes CinemaNow

BURN MOVIES TO DVD

MOVIE PURCHASE

Amazon Unbox

MOVIE RENTALS

SUBSCRIPTION

ONLINE FILM SERVICES COMPARED SUBGENRES

PLAYER/ DOWNLOAD MANAGER

BIT RATE

OSs SUPPORTED

MOBILE DEVICES

PARENTAL FILTER

18

ActiveX Control

300–1,500 Win XP Kbps

None

Adequate

36

RealPlayer

225 Kbps

Any

None

Weak

24

Movielink player

1.3 Mbps

Win XP


None

7

Vongo player

1.4 Mbps

Win XP


Adequate

Listed in alphabetical order. † You can back up a file in its native Windows Media (WMV) format. * iTunes fi lm service is compatible with 10.3.9 or later.

doesn’t let you fast-forward or reverse, and the progress-bar slider can’t change your position in the movie until the whole shebang has downloaded. Your only choices: pause and stop. The resolution was decent for Tsotsi, and the picture quality was quite satisfying. But I saw banding in other movies, even on my 19-inch LCD. At $9.99 per month, the subscription choice is the way to go: The number of titles is plentiful enough to keep you entertained for hours. But it would have been nice if Vongo had thrown in a few free movies, as CinemaNow and MovieFlix do.

MovieFlix MovieFlix offers a large collection of free and subscription movies, but no current blockbusters. Most of its films are faded around the edges, but for the cheapest monthly fee of any service I used, it can still deliver some entertainment. MovieFlix has no software to download: It relies on its Web site and RealPlayer to deliver movies. (And this reviewer ain’t a big fan of Real’s pop-ups, messages, calls home, and other baggage.) If you pay the $7.95 monthly membership fee, you can use Windows Media Player instead, though WMP couldn’t find the MovieFlix server, even after I granted access through my firewall. The interface is unsophisticated—primarily a large list of genres. Clicking one yields an alphabetical text-and-link list, without thumbnails. And when I say the films aren’t major movies, I mean it. Titles such as the animated Aquarium of the Aliens and Nightmare Castle leapt out, as well as lots of other stuff you haven’t heard of from the 1930s to the 1960s. Even member favorites had titles like Son of the Sheik and Zoltan, Hound of Dracula. Unlike the other sites here, there are no downloadable rentals: MovieFlix is purely a streaming service. But you can fast-forward and use the progress indicator right away, without waiting for the

entire movie to download. I watched streams at 200 Kbps and 225 Kbps, which is lower than any other service, but that’s the price of instant gratification; most services make you wait while the beginning of a film downloads. That bit rate doesn’t lend itself to full-screen viewing on a 19-inch display, let alone on a large TV. As you might expect for such a bare-bones service, there’s no support for portable devices, or even for offline viewing. Parental controls seem limited to a “Family Filter,” which you turn on and off—but how can you prevent a child from turning it off after you turn it on? MovieFlix doesn’t offer in-demand recent hits or the ability to download films, but for a quick entertainment fix, you can’t beat the price.

Movielink Movielink has a fine selection of recent titles. It should, as it’s a joint venture of Metro-GoldwynMayer, Paramount, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal, and Warner Bros. Movielink doesn’t re-

Vongo $9.99 per month lllhm

PROS Previews help you pick movies; good selection of films included with subscription. CONS Player doesn’t fast-forward or rewind; top blockbusters not available; no free movies; no permanent ownership.


Movielink

MovieFlix

Generally $3.99 for rental and $9.99 to purchase

Free or $7.95/month premium access lllmm

l l l h m

PROS Cheap and decent free selection; can rewind and fast-forward right away; no extra software download. CONS Picture quality worse than other sites; no new popular movies in library; weak parental controls.

PROS Decent selection of recent DVD releases; no monthly fee. CONS No free movies; no subscription option.

quire subscription fees or monthly charges; it offers movies in just two ways, for rental or purchase. Some movies will be available only as purchases and others just as rentals, depending on what Hollywood’s distribution gods have deemed fair. Movies for rent were mostly $2.99 or $3.99; most films cost $9.99 to buy, but some were as high as $19.99. And some of the $9.99 ones seemed overpriced (old movies you could find cheaper in the video store’s bargain bin). Double-check those prices, though. Renting top current films—Superman Returns, for example—showed up in my cart at half the price the catalog page showed. Movielink offers a few free samples. Like Vongo, the service uses client software (Movielink Manager), which you download before watching your first film. It’s a very quick download and install, but necessary updates to Media Player made the

download take a bit longer, with an irritating three restarts required. As for picture quality, the site explains, “Movielink uses a minimum encode rate of 1.3 Mbps and a peak of 4 Mbps, with sound encoded at 96 Kbps. The 1.3-Mbps movie download file contains more visual information than the 300-Kbps streamed movie file and is therefore of better quality.” Digital rights management prevented me from viewing content in Winamp, so I can’t verify this data. Superman sure looked good, however. As with Vongo, Movielink movies can be downloaded for Portable Media Center devices. Unlike Vongo’s, the Movielink Manager software doesn’t provide previews; you have to download those separately. Still, I like Movielink: Its picture quality was pleasing, the software worked well, and the title selection is good.

EVEN NEWER DOWNLOAD OPTIONS Not even a Kenyan marathoner could keep pace with the world of online video. While I was working on this story, three new services debuted. What will tomorrow bring? Microsoft Xbox Live Marketplace

Netflix Watch Now

Wal-Mart

Jaman

AVAILABILITY:

Announced in November 2006.

Announced in early January.

Rolled out beta nationally in February.

Beta testing as of February.

COST:

Hard to say. Videos sell for “points,” and $1 buys 80.

Free to subscribers.

Varies. TV shows cost about $2, movies up to $20.

Free during beta. Then $1.99 to rent, $4.99 to buy.

HIGH-DEF?:

The only game in town.

No.

No.

Supposedly.

SELECTION:

Very, very limited: A good selection from CBS, 84 movies and 3 music videos.

Not a lot: the 25 most popular films, some classics, TV shows, and documentaries.

Thousands available, movies and TV—a bigger launch than any other service’s.

Over 1,000 feature-length international and American independent films.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

Controlling playback isn’t easy, selection is glaringly poor, and Microsoft’s points system is guaranteed to confuse.

Installing the Viewer takes about 10 seconds; then movies start almost immediately. Picture quality and sound are very clear.

The Windows-only software downloads pretty quickly.

The company’s Cascade Network delivers movies via peer-to-peer—we’re skeptical about the speed. For now, it sounds intriguing.


Apple iTunes Apple’s iTunes 7 introduced the ability to download and watch video with the same software used to deliver digital music. Consistently with Apple’s music policy, you can’t rent a video; you can just buy, download, and own it. And there’s no way to burn your movies to playable DVDs, though you can create nonplayable backups. Feature-length films go for $12.99 the week they’re released on iTunes, $14.99 thereafter, and $9.99 when they’re no longer considered new releases. There are no free movies, even though iTunes has a small selection of free music and TV episodes. To check the service out, I bought the Kevin Costner action vehicle The Guardian. On my fast Internet connection, I could start watching it a couple minutes after the download began, and the 1.5GB file took a half hour to arrive completely. (Your mileage may vary.) iTunes has standard pause, fastforward, rewind, volume, and full-screen buttons, all of which are available even if you’re watching the movie before the download is complete. The chapter-selection button is a nice touch that I haven’t seen in other players. Resolution is restricted to 640 pixels wide, with the height determined by the film’s aspect ratio; The Guardian was 640-by-346. This, combined with a 1,500-Kbps bit rate, made for decent picture quality—a little better than broadcast, but not as good as DVD. I saw some blockiness on ocean waves, and imperfections became very apparent when I stretched the display across two monitors. Conversely, films should look excellent on an iPod screen. Finally, the parental controls in iTunes’ Edit/ Preferences dialog let you limit previewing or buying movies, but if a movie has already been purchased, anyone can watch it, regardless of its rating. You pay near-DVD prices for the portability and on-demand access you get from iTunes movie downloads, but you also get less-than-DVD picture quality and DRM tacked on. Ho-hum.

Final Thoughts: Give It a Shot! So what’s the verdict on Internet-delivered cinema? Sure, these services will save you a trip out to the store, but downloading a movie usually takes at least an hour—chances are that you could rent a DVD faster. The selection of movies and the picture quality aren’t near what you get with Netflix or the brick-and-mortar rental store either. The average bit rate for a DVD is 5 Mbps; the best any of these services offer is Amazon Unbox’s 2.5 Mbps, and most of the others are much lower. Unless you have a T3 connection or better, don’t plan on doing much online while using these services besides downloading and watching your movie: They needed all the bandwidth I could give them. Another consideration is that videos lon-

Apple iTunes

ger than an hour take up some serious disk space; you’ll want a fairly beefy hard drive if you plan on storing multiple movies this way. Getting the signal from your PC to your bigger-screen television is a challenge too. I ended up buying an AverMedia QuickPlay, which did the trick after some picture stretching and positioning in the graphics adapter’s control panel. There are definite advantages to online video stores, of course, most notably the ease of access and the pajama factor—no need to get dressed or head outside! It’s simply not the same way you’re used to getting your movie fix. But as you can try many of these services by renting a movie for a couple bucks (or even free), it’s worth checking them out to see whether this new way of getting feature-length entertainment is for you. Broadband cinema is on the other end of your Ethernet cable. Q

$9.99–$14.99 per movie download lllhm

PROS Current DVD selections; previews; fast-forward and rewind during download; plays on video iPods. CONS No free movies; player prone to crashing; picture quality just okay; weak parental controls; no subscription or rental options.

Why Pirates Do It Better

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ant a comprehensive download service with every movie you could ever hope for? Want high-quality digital files, even high-definition ones with Dolby surround sound? Hate the digital rights management schemes that prevent you from watching movies on all of your computers and burning films to take with you? Have we got the service for you! And the price can’t be beat either . . . it’s free! THERE’S JUST ONE CATCH, OF COURSE: IT’S ILLEGAL. In spite of all the progress studios and networks have made over the past few years in improving quality, availability, and ease of access to online video, the limitations of today’s services are enough to turn even the most straitlaced citizen into a digital pirate. Hollywood needs to unencumber our favorite movies and shows, and stop treating customers as criminals. Why does movie availability fluctuate, and why do downloads expire? If we’ve bought a film, why can’t we burn a backup to DVD? Or share it with our friends? And the only way to get certain films is by downloading them from services such as BitTorrent, which is a slow, laborious process. If you’ve missed an episode of your favorite TV show, a quick trip to The Pirate Bay will help you catch up with Jack Bauer or Simon Cowell. Of course, unless broadband speeds vastly improve, or fiber’s prevalence quintuples, high-definition video may help Hollywood in an unexpected way. Pirating a 350MB file split among a handful of others around the globe is already a slow process; doing the same with a 7GB HD movie could take days. If an online service were to improve the selection and the ease of use, it could win this battle by dint of sheer convenience. Hollywood, answer our challenge!—Jeremy A. Kaplan APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 85

What’s Inside Your Laptop? We reveal the components inside a typical notebook PC—and where they come from. BY DYLAN TWENEY

H

E R E AT PC M AGA ZI N E , W E ’ V E BE EN

prying open notebooks ever since notebooks existed. We can’t help it—we’re just curious. But this kind of curiosity is hard on the computers themselves. (To the many manufacturers whose fine products we’ve destroyed over the years: We’re sorry. Really.) If you’re curious too,

put down your screwdriver and take a look at the following pages. By focusing our attention on one small part of your computer, we aim to show you what’s inside a typical notebook, where all those parts come from, and what materials they’re made of. And we look at the hazards some of those components may present. The big picture is one of a strikingly global production chain. APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 87

This is the story of how quartz becomes a computer, and it’s a story that—for the typical notebook computer—stretches across nearly every continent, dozens of countries, and literally hundreds of different companies. At its center is the heart of every computer, the microprocessor—a tiny flake of silicon whose millions of microscopic, precision-engineered circuits do computational work that would have been unthinkable just 30 years ago. But before it becomes a microchip, that little bit of silicon starts out the same way a gravel road does: as a pile of rock chips, hammered out of an open-pit quarry by dynamite and heavy machinery. Just who ultimately transforms that silicon into a PC might surprise you. “HP or Dell computers basically don’t have anything HP or Dell inside them,” says Eric Williams, an assistant professor of civil engineering at Arizona State University who has done extensive research into the PC supply chain. “[Those companies are] designers of computers, purchasers of components, and assemblers. They may even contract out the assembly.” It would be impossible to trace in a magazine article the origin of every single component in your notebook, because it contains hundreds of parts, including microchips, the hard drive, the battery pack, the LCD, circuit boards, resistors,

INSIDE A MICROPROCESSOR

A modern CPU is a three-dimensional complex of circuits, all resting on a thin substrate of silicon. One chip may contain up to 20 separate layers. ALUMINUM-COPPER ALLOY Metal on the CPU’s surface protects the components inside and provides electrical connections to the chip.

COPPER Metal circuits embedded in each layer form connections among components and between layers. SILICON OXIDES Often doped with fluorine or carbon, these layers provide insulation between circuits.

TRANSISTORS Microscopic electronic components made of polysilicon, silicon oxide, and ions (of boron or phosphorus). SILICON WAFER A chip is built on a substrate of extremely pure, monocrystalline silicon. POLYSILICON Produced from trichlorosilane (a volatile silicon-based liquid) and hydrochloric acid. Leading producers: Japan, U.S.

COPPER Copper sulfide and oxide ores, taken from open pit mines, are refined through a multistep process. Leading producers: Chile, U.S. Source: IBM


capacitors, wires, and even the pieces of metal and plastic that make up the casing. But we can take a look at the web of production leading up to one component—the CPU—and use that to shed some light on just how global the PC industry has become.

Birth of a Microchip All microprocessors begin life as a pile of quartz chips, plus a source of carbon—usually charcoal or coal. Quartz, whose main ingredient is silica, is one of the most abundant minerals on the Earth’s surface, and it’s mined all over the world. Charcoal is similarly widespread; all you need is wood and an oven to make it. This fundamental simplicity means silicon could be produced almost anywhere. In practice, however, the major producers of silicon are industrialized countries where there’s a market for the metal, led by China, the United States, Brazil, and Norway. So let’s say our CPU starts life as a pile of quartz and carbon in a factory in Brazil. After being heated in an electrical furnace to 2,000º C, the silica and carbon react to form molten silicon and carbon dioxide. Impurities are skimmed off the top of the silicon, and it’s further purified by bubbling oxygen and other gases through the liquid. Afterward, the silicon metal is poured into ingots for sale. At this point, industrial-grade silicon is about 95 to 99 percent pure. But it needs to be far purer than that before it is usable in the electronics industry. So silicon metal next travels to a refi ning company, such as Germany’s Wacker Chemie or U.S.–based Dow Corning. It’s combined with hydrochloric acid to form trichlorosilane, a volatile liquid that is repeatedly distilled and purified. Afterward, the trichlorosilane is converted to polysilicon (a form of silicon that’s 99.9999 percent pure) and hydrochloric acid. The United States is the leading producer of polysilicon, followed by Japan.

Assembling the Circuits Next, the block of polysilicon journeys to a wafer fabrication facility. Silicon wafers are the foundation on which all microchips are built. Each is a thin, circular plate of extremely pure silicon, typically 150mm, 200mm, or 300mm in diameter and between 0.5mm and 0.75mm thick. Japan is the largest producer of silicon wafers, with the U.S. coming in second. At the wafer factory, polysilicon is melted in a fused silica crucible and then carefully crystallized into cylindrical silicon ingots. The ingots are sawn into thin circular wafers, which are polished until they’re extremely flat. Finally, silicon wafers are shipped to the chip foundry, where they will be made into microprocessors.

WHAT—AND WHERE— A LAPTOP COMES FROM This Dell Latitude D600 was reaching the end of its useful life, so we hastened its demise and cracked it open. But please, don’t try this at home. You’ll ruin the notebook—and some components, such as the battery, may be hazardous when opened. LCD South Korea Most large LCDs are currently manufactured in Japan and South Korea; China dominates the market in smaller LCDs, such as those used in notebooks. This Samsung LCD panel was made in South Korea.

GRAPHICS SYSTEM Taiwan Dell tricked out this notebook with an ATI Mobility Radeon 9000, which, like most graphics chips, was built by a semiconductor foundry (under contract to ATI—now part of AMD) in Taiwan.

CPU Chandler, Arizona This Intel Pentium M chip was probably made in Chandler, Arizona, then shipped to Cavite in the Philippines for packaging. About half of Intel’s CPUs are from Arizona and Oregon; the rest are made in Ireland and Israel. Most AMD CPUs are made in Dresden, Germany.

HARD DRIVE Thailand Our 40GB hard drive, an IBM Travelstar, was built by IBM System Storage (now Hitachi Global Storage Technologies) in Thailand. Other main sources of hard drives include Japan, China, the Philippines, and Malaysia.

PCTEL MODEM China Before the near-universal adoption of 802.11b, laptops had dial-up modems, and most still have them. This one was made in China, as are many other add-on boards (such as wireless cards).

CASE Taiwan No statistics are available on where laptop housings are made, but it’s likely that they originate in Southeast Asia (the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan) or China. Taiwan is the world leader in the assembly of notebook computers, supplying PCs to many of the major notebook brands.

CHIPSET Malaysia The Intel 855PM chipset in this notebook could have originated in Kulim, Malaysia, where Intel assembles many of its chipsets, or in Cavite, Philippines.

BATTERY Japan Many lithium ion notebook batteries, like several other computer parts, are made in Taiwan. But Japan is also a major producer of batteries, including the Sanyomanufactured one in this Dell laptop.

MOTHERBOARD China Taiwan is the undisputed leader in motherboard manufacturing, although Taiwanese companies utilize factories throughout Southeast Asia. Mexico is another motherboard center.

RAM Boise, Idaho Currently, most notebook and PC memory is made in South Korea, Singapore, and the United States. This notebook’s DDR memory is from Micron, which means it was probably made in Boise, Idaho.


In the entire PC production chain, this is the one step in which the United States still has a stake in production. Intel makes about half of its CPUs in the U.S., although it is expanding production to overseas factories in Leixlip, Ireland, and in Jerusalem. AMD makes the majority of its chips in Dresden, Germany. Once complete, the wafer contains hundreds of tiny, rectangular chips (complex ones at that! See the graphic “Inside a Microprocessor” on page 88). The chips are tested for flaws while still on the wafer. Then, in Intel’s case, whole wafers are shipped overseas to processing plants in Malaysia or the Philippines, where they’re sawn apart before being tested again and assembled into the familiar ceramic packages with wires sticking out of them— what most of us would recognize as “chips.”

THAT’S WHAT LITTLE NOTEBOOKS ARE MADE OF Not sugar and spice, but a variety of decidedly more industrial substances make up today's computers. Here’s the material composition of a typical notebook. PLASTICS

COMPONENT

METALS

AMOUNT (KG)

acrylonitrile butadiene styrene resin steel

OTHER

1.01 0.63

copper

0.41

glass

0.34

acrylic resin

0.17

nickel

0.16

aluminum

0.15

epoxy resin

0.15

polyvinyl chloride

0.13

polycarbonate

0.08

cadmium

0.07

ferrite

0.07

polyoxymethylene

0.07

stainless steel

0.04

polypropylene

0.03

styrene-butadiene rubber

0.02

tin

0.02

silicon

0.02

polyethylene terephthalate

0.01

lead

0.01

TOTAL

3.59

Source: Eric Williams, Arizona State University


From CPU to PC The next step in the assembly of a notebook is placing the chip on a printed circuit board—the notebook’s motherboard. This final leg of the journey begins, most likely, in a factory just outside of Shanghai, China. Circuit boards are typically made of epoxy and glass or ceramic, upon which circuits made of copper paths have been etched using a process similar to the one used in microchip fabrication, except on a far larger scale. Taiwan entered the motherboard manufacturing market in the late 1970s and quickly dominated the industry. But Taiwanese manufacturers now outsource most of the manufacturing of their boards to China, where labor is cheaper. In addition to the CPU, a motherboard uses hundreds of other components, including transistors, resistors, diodes, LEDs, capacitors, and more, all of which are plugged or soldered into place. These are mostly made in China, from a wide variety of materials. For example, transistors and diodes are usually made of silicon or germanium, whereas light-emitting diodes use different compounds, depending on their color (aluminum gallium arsenide for red light, indium gallium nitride for blue). Additional components, such as modems and wireless cards, may be plugged into the motherboard. A hard drive, optical drive, battery pack, LCD, keyboard, and track pad are all added. The notebook’s external casing is snapped and screwed into place. For almost all of these components, the primary suppliers are in China or Southeast Asia (see the graphic on page 89 for more detailed info). The fi nal step is adding the branding: the logo identifying a notebook’s ostensible “manufacturer.” The fi nished notebook is then shipped to a distribution point in the U.S., Europe, or Asia, depending on where it will be sold.

Toxic Electronics? The list of substances that go into a notebook is long, and many of the chemicals used, such as beryllium, lead, chromium, and mercury compounds, are toxic or carcinogenic to humans. But how much of a risk are these chemicals in reality? The answer depends on what you mean by risk. For PC users most of these chemicals are not hazardous, since they’re present in very small amounts and are well contained within the notebook’s plastic and metal housing. The standout exceptions are brominated flame retardants (BFRs), which are used in plastics. Computers and consumer electronics products a ppear to emit BFRs for some time, and in one recent study, BFRs were found in dust samples taken from dozens of different office environments. The toxicity of BFRs hasn’t been established, but some people are urging manufacturers to play it

TOXICS IN YOUR PC? PCs contain a wide range of potentially hazardous chemicals. Although many of these compounds are not dangerous to you as a user (unless you eat your PC), they can still cause environmental problems if your computer isn’t properly recycled. Never take an old PC to the dump—look for local recycling programs or see if the manufacturer will take it back (many now will). CHEMICAL

WHERE USED

TOXICITY

RISK TO USER

Hexavalent chromium

Hardening and corrosion protection for steel plates

Can cause DNA damage and asthmatic bronchitis

Moderate. It’s easily absorbed through the skin, so limit your contact with steel parts.

Beryllium

Motherboards and connectors

Carcinogenic

Low.

Lead

Solder; CRTs (a typical monitor contains 4 to 8 pounds of lead)

Toxic to kidneys and to nervous and reproductive systems

Low.

Brominated Plastic casing flame retardants

May be an endocrine disruptor

Unknown—BFRs are widespread in the dust found in offices and on computers.

Cadmium

Resistors; infrared detectors; some semiconductors

Linked to kidney damage

Low.

Plastics

Casing; other parts

PVC can form dioxin when burned; can be hard to recycle

Low—unless your notebook catches on fire.

Mercury

Fluorescent lightbulbs in LCDs; some switches

Can cause brain damage

Low. To avoid exposure, try not to break the LCD screen.

Source: Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition

safe and eliminate them. “We want companies to go completely bromine-free and use compounds that do not off-gas,” says Ted Smith, the founder of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, an environmental advocacy organization. Apart from user risk, the use of toxic chemicals in notebooks is a concern because of the risks that these chemicals pose to factory workers—and the environmental damage the chemicals may cause if the computer winds up in a landfill. As a result, the SVTC urges users not to throw out their PCs, and its Computer Take Back Campaign has been pressuring manufacturers to recycle old computers at the end of their useful lives. (Some, including Dell, already do.) For more information and to fi nd a local recycler, visit the group’s site, www.computertakeback.com.

in the Asian manufacturing base that they’ll continue to be made there for a long while.” Whether that represents a triumph or a failure of American industrial ingenuity depends on your perspective. But one thing is sure: Even if you never take your new notebook on a plane, it’s already a well-seasoned world traveler. Q

A LITHIUM ION BATTERY

Most modern notebook batteries use lithium ion or lithium ion polymer technologies. Here’s what a typical lithium ion battery pack looks like—on the inside. VOLTAGE REGULATOR CIRCUIT Regulates the voltage supplied by the battery to ensure consistent current.

CELLS Six or more cells are wired together within a typical battery pack.

The Well-Traveled Notebook The end result of this long production chain is that a supposedly American product from a company such as HP, Dell, or Apple is actually built overseas, almost entirely from overseas components. In fact, “original design manufacturers,” or ODMs, for example Taiwan’s Quanta Computer, Compal Electronics, and AsusTek, handle an increasing amount of the design work, too, leaving their U.S. partners to do little more than advertising, shipping, and billing. According to market analysis firm iSuppli, 82.6 percent of the notebook PCs made in 2006 were assembled by Taiwanese companies, and more than 85 percent of those were built in the greater Shanghai area. “What’s happened is the Taiwanese ODMs started off in printed circuit-board assembly and motherboard manufacturing in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and they’ve just been climbing that value chain ever since,” says Michael J. Palma, an analyst for IDC. “Laptops are now so embedded

TEMPERATURE SENSORS Protect against overheating by cutting off the current if the temperature gets too high.

ANODE (NEGATIVE POLE) Typically made of carbon. CATHODE (POSITIVE POLE) Made of lithium cobalt oxide. INSULATING LAYER Separates the anode and cathode. COBALT Usually produced as a by-product of nickel and copper mining. Leading producers: Congo, China, Zambia, Russia, Australia.

Within cells, three layers are coiled together in a tight spiral. A liquid organic solvent containing lithium ions acts as the electrolyte between layers. LITHIUM Extracted primarily from the water of lithium-rich mineral springs. Leading producers: Chile, Argentina. APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 91

Tune In Digital broadcasting and higher-definition signals are revolutionizing television. Can they do the same for another traditionally analog medium—the radio?

R BY DAN EVANS

ADIO IS RADIO IS RADIO.

Right? The world first tuned in to FM in 1961, and terrestrial transmissions haven’t changed much since. Though PCs followed Moore’s Law, it seems radio technology had been grandfathered under some other statute and allowed to continue at its pedestrian pace—call it Winchell’s Walk. And to be fair, there hasn’t been much call for better radio. After all, traditional FM and AM signals work just fine. Sure, you can buy more advanced radios and tuners, but they’re essentially the same technology. HD Radio, the trademarked name for digital radio, represents the next generation of tradi tional AM/FM radio. In many ways, it’s like the jump cellular phone carriers made from analog to digital networks: By moving to a digital spectrum, a terrestrial radio station gains clarity, efficiency, and functionality. The quality of a digital AM broadcast is markedly improved over analog, almost to the level of an FM station. This lets AM programmers move beyond low-fidelity programming like talk radio and play more music, whereas a digital FM station’s sound quality becomes as clear as that of a compact disc. There is also none Illustration by Raymond Beisinger

to Digital Radio of the static that usually comes with an analog broadcast. Sound quality isn’t the only advantage to digital radio; if you’ve rented a car recently, you may have noticed the extra information provided by the car radio. Digital audio lets a station embed information along with its audio feed. Right now it’s simple data such as station identification or artist information, but radio stations plan to get a whole lot more sophisticated very soon. And the doubling or even quadrupling of bandwidth means a number of new stations, potentially broadening your listening options. Sounds great, right? Not so fast.

HD RADIO STATIONS BY STATE HD Radio stations are popping up all over the country. Naturally, the states with the highest populations and, consequently, the greatest number of radio listeners have the most broadcasters. # of stations 0

We Want the Airwaves Like anything else in this world, digital radio doesn’t come for free. To take advantage of this new digital audio, you’ll have to buy a new digital receiver. And the pool of available devices is fairly limited. There are over 1,000 analog radio products on the market, but you’ll find no more than a smattering of consumer-level digital models. On the other hand, unlike satellite radio, HD Radio’s archrival, that’s the only expense you’ll dole out. There is no monthly fee; once you have the radio, you’re good to go forever. The HD Radio standard in the U.S. is owned by one company: iBiquity Digital, formed in 1991 as a partnership between CBS, Gannett, and Westinghouse. This consortium, originally USA Radio

120

Digital Partners, developed what’s called the in-band on-channel (IBOC) broadcasting technology. This process lets digital signals travel alongside analog ones on a radio broadcast frequency. To this day it remains the basic tenet behind HD Radio broadcasting (see the diagram on page 94). In the United Kingdom, digital radio has found a firm foothold because the technology is stan-

HOW HD STACKS UP AGAINST SATELLITE (AND YOUR iPOD) HD Radio and satellite radio take on the reigning digital music champ, the Apple iPod. HD Radio

Satellite

iPod

Winner

COST

Buying a new radio will cost you at least $200, but that’s a onetime fee.

XM Radio and Sirius are both subscription-based services, so you’ll pay monthly or yearly fees in addition to similar hardware costs.

For just $249, you can buy a 30GB model and listen to your music library. But Apple lacks a subscription service.

HD Radio

CONTENT

The sound is clearer, but it’s still terrestrial radio—with all of the advertisements you’ve come to know and love.

Anything you want, anytime you want it. XM has over 170 channels, and Sirius has over 130.

You program the iPod yourself (be DJ for a day!), but options are still limited by space.

Clearly, satellite

THE FUTURE

HD Radio is in the early stages of development. Next-generation radios will feature time shifting and traffic information.

Satellite seems to have hit its apex in terms of hardware. The industry is now looking to leverage its content in other ways.

Judgment withheld until we get our hands on the iPhone.

HD Radio


DIGITAL RADIO: HOW IT WORKS

Digital and analog radio transmissions are actually quite similar—beasts of the same herd, as it were. Here’s a look behind the music. A radio station is retrofitted to let it transmit digital signals alongside analog ones.

The digital signal, including music and data, is compressed with a proprietary codec.

Both analog and digital signals are transmitted along the same frequency.

Both types of signal bounce off buildings and other objects. But digital receivers reduce the static this causes in analog signals.

Bookshelf bass The renowned audiologists at Cambridge SoundWorks drew out the best HD sound possible for the Radio 820HD ($299.95 list), due out in April.

Receivers ignore inappropriate transmissions, pulling down only an analog or digital signal.

dardized and open, in much the same way that high-definition television was rolled out. The new digital standard was introduced for public use by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), and competition in the marketplace led to a variety of choices and great hardware and programming options. In the U.K. 4.7 million digital receivers have been sold since 1999. In fact, these actually outsold traditional radios last year. U.K. enthusiasts of DAB (digital audio broadcasting), which is the standard for much of the rest of the world, liken the phenomenon to that of the digital camera overtaking the traditional film camera in popularity. Many of the digital radios sold in the U.K. have TiVo-like functionality, letting you time-shift programs, save interesting broadcasts, and bookmark your favorite stations.

Two for One It costs a radio station about $100,000 to retrofit its equipment to broadcast HD Radio. Once it has made the initial investment, a station can then multicast, or broadcast one or more secondary radio stations, called HD2 channels, on the same frequency. FM HD Radio stations broadcast at 150 kilobits per second; of this available bandwidth, they use only 96 Kbps for their digital audio programming. So unlike traditional FM stations, the new HD stations can split their bandwidth to broadcast an entirely different station simultaneously on the same assigned FM band. This lets broadcasters expand their programming without licensing additional frequencies or spectrums. These additional stations are easy to suss out on digital radios and can provide cool alternative programming. For example, WKTU-FM in New York City is primarily a Top 40 or dance music station. When the station’s program directors realized that the last country music station in the city was closing its doors a few years ago, they decided to use a secondary HD station to fill the void. Now KTU’s HD2 station provides the only full-time country music radio in the city. “If you look at all the different radio stations going up around the country, there’s about 500 different multicasting stations on the air,” says Jeff Jury, COO of iBiquity. “You’re going to see an explosion of innovation. I know there are stations up in Detroit that have turned over their second channels to college kids.” Though there are clear upsides to HD Radio, critics point to digital cable as an example of another superior technology that was supposed to have a tremendous impact on a traditional analog medium—and took years to make even a tiny dent. The advantages to digital cable are obvious (clarity and two-way communication leap to mind), but the service didn’t take off until cable providers began to bundle it with other services. Studies show the industry-wide penetration of digital cable has increased from 30 percent in 2005 to 41 percent in 2006, largely fueled by the greater availability of digital video, data, and voice bundling options. But HD Radio has an impressive track record so far, growing from 11 stations in 2002 to 624 in 2005— and over 1,100 today.

Satellite Radio Isn’t Going Anywhere With the advent of HD Radio, satellite radio, once the new digital kid on the block, is being made to look like last year’s news. But that industry, which really didn’t take off before 2002, has grown rap94 PC MAGAZINE APRIL 10, 2007

e? A car stereo remot

Car tunes The JVC KD-HDR1 ($329.95 list) bangs out 200 watts of HD Radio. Add an extra cable and you can plug in your iPod, too.

1,200

500 multicast stations on air

1,000

800

66 multicast stations on air

600

400

200

Dec. 31, 2005

0

Dec. 31, 2006

Sound quality isn’t the only advantage to digital radio. Broadcasters are developing lots of plans for using its information-embedding capacities. “The way the system is designed isn’t just for radio as you know it today; we anticipate there being a lot of new services on it, because it’s a big data pipe,” says iBiquity’s Jury. “One of the first is going to be traffic, because you have some big broadcasters that are now working to deliver traffic [reports] over the analog system—like Clear Channel, the biggest broadcaster, [which recently] announced that they’re moving that service over to HD Radio.” Clear Channel has in fact recently signed a deal with Microsoft to revive the software giant’s innovative but commercially unsuccessful venture, the MSN Direct service. The partnership was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2007 and will “introduce opportunities for consumer electronics companies and automotive manufacturers to offer MSN Direct content in HD digital radio format on their devices in 2008.” The HD Radio industry is gearing to make its mark in 2007—the jump from novelty to necessity that satellite radio took in 2002. To that end, the HD Digital Radio Alliance is preparing a $250 million advertising campaign to get the word out about its products. At this year’s CES, there were about 40 different HD Radio products on display, and evangelists predict quantum growth in the number of digital radios purchased next year, boldly anticipating a tenfold increase in 2007. With over 1,100 stations online now, the Alliance expects that number to hit the 2,000 mark this summer. Will it be a very digital summer? Q

Dec. 31, 2004

What’s Next for HD

HD RADIO STATION GROWTH IN U.S.

Dec. 31, 2003

both Sirius and XM claim this merger will not mean higher subscription fees.

Dec. 31, 2002

idly and doesn’t see that growth stopping anytime soon. According to Chance Patterson, vice president of corporate affairs at XM Satellite Radio, the rate of change in satellite radio is exponential. “We’ve gone from having radios in the car—where you needed basically a chipset the size of a shoebox in your trunk—to handheld portable units that have built-in antennas, MP3 integration, and builtin batteries.” Now that satellite radio has been around for a few years, it has the advantage of incumbency. Industries and partners that wouldn’t touch the nascent technology years ago are climbing into bed every day. Satellite radio is available in 140 new car models out of the factory, from manufacturers such as Honda, Hyundai, General Motors, Nissan, and Toyota. The industry also has exclusive partnerships with pretty much every major sport in the country; this alone garners hundreds of thousands of new subscribers every year. By contrast, HD Radio just announced its first big auto deal: availability as a factory-installed option in current BMWs. Satellite radio’s proponents don’t think they have much to fear from HD Radio. And their reaction sounds a bit like that of traditional radio broadcasters when satellite launched in 2001. “We have 15 million subscribers, about 30 million listeners every week—we’re doing that because of content. Sound quality is great and all that, but, basically, HD Radio is just an upgraded sound system,” says Patterson. As this article went to press, XM and Sirius, the two major satellite radio providers in the U.S., announced tentative plans to merge. This would create one giant satellite radio provider. It remains to be seen if the FCC will allow this to come to pass, for antitrust reasons. In a joint statement

High fidelity The ADA Tune Suite Quadritune ($2,999 list) uses independent tuner modules. It comes with an AM/FM and an HD Radio or satellite tuner. APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 95

BUILD IT

The PC Subwoofer Kill the clutter and boost your bass the do-it-yourself way: Follow this step-bystep guide and turn an old computer into a thumping subwoofer!

Photograph by Andrew Machrone.

BY BILL MACHRONE

H

OW MANY USELESS PCs DO YOU HAVE SITTING AROUND?

Whether they’re too old and slow or simply stopped working one day, cast-off tower and minitower machines are a plague on the land. So I decided to repurpose one by stripping it to its essential form—an empty box—and rebuilding it as a selfpowered subwoofer. This is an inherently bad idea. Metal clangs and vibrates; speaker cabinets should be nonresonant. PC cases have more holes in them than the Godfather’s enemies; speaker cases need to be airtight. Metal is inconvenient to work with; wood cuts easily. None of those practical considerations matter once you get the burning desire to mod a PC case in a totally unusual way. If you’re like me and, for whatever reason, can’t resist the temptation, here’s how it’s done. I had a number of dead PCs in the basement, including a tall, thin tower and a couple of short, squat Hewlett-Packard machines. I chose an HP for its case’s wider front panel, because I wanted a front-firing speaker. APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 97

BUILD IT

PARTS LIST HARDWARE PC case ....................... free Tang Band W6-1139SG speaker ....................... $40 Dayton SA70 subwoofer amplifier ..................... $50 Sheet-metal screws ............................ $3 Vinyl damping sheet ............. $9 Foam-core sheet .............................. $7

The first step is to select a speaker. The predetermined size and shape of the case places some serious constraints on what will fit. A 6- or 6.5-inch speaker will fit on the front of many machines; an 8-inch speaker would have to be side-mounted. Bigger is generally better when it comes to subwoofers, but I decided to go with the front-firing speaker. The typical minitower has about three-quarters of a cubic foot inside; the volume is important when calculating how a speaker will perform in a given

enclo sure. I used a freeware program, WinISD (from www.LinearTeam.org), to evaluate a bunch of different speakers after browsing catalogs and Web sites. I looked first for a low resonant frequency and a large excursion—the maximum distance that the speaker cone can travel, which is given as Xmax. I picked a few likely candidates and loaded into WinISD their Thiele-Small parameters, which are a bunch of measurements that are useful in predict-

PREPARE THE CASE

Polyester stuffing ..........................$4 Grille-cloth remnant ......................... $5 TOTAL .........................$118 TOOLS 4- or 4.5-inch angle grinder Dremel or similar rotary tool Utility knife Electric drill Glue gun Large scissors

1

Tear it up. Once I had the three major ingredients in hand, it was time to attack the case, stripping out everything that I could and sealing up the holes. Disassembling a PC when you don’t have to care about putting it back together is fast and fun.

2

Make your mark. I used the Dayton plate amplifier as a rough template to determine where I had to cut the chassis. I knew I’d have to fill some gaps, but there would be plenty of time for that.

ls Cutoff whefeety sa require t. And equipmen t the don’t twisit wheel, or tter! could sha

3 98 PC MAGAZINE APRIL 10, 2007

Slice and dice. An angle grinder with a cutoff wheel is the right tool for the job, but I quickly realized that I was in some danger of setting the basement on fire, despite a clear path and a concrete floor.

4

Grind safely. I took everything outside to the driveway. You know you’re giving a good show when the neighbors come out to watch; you get extra points if somebody says, “Can I try that?”

ing a speaker’s performance. The speakers in the 6-inch range were a pitiful lot overall when it came to moving large amounts of air, but I became intrigued with the Tang Band W6-1139SG subwoofer, which has a freakishly large 13mm Xmax. What it gave up in surface area could perhaps be replaced by sheer pumping action! The price was agreeably low, too, at around $40 from Parts Express (www.partsexpress .com), a favorite supplier of DIY speaker components and materials.

The next challenge was an amplifier. I wanted the subwoofer to be self-powered, but finding a small amp that would fit into the available space was tough. Parts Express came to the rescue with its Dayton SA70 70-watt, plate-style subwoofer amp. It had sufficient power, adjustable crossover frequency and volume, a variety of inputs, speaker pass-through, and auto power-on. And it actually fit the back of the Hewlett-Packard case. At $50, it was a bargain. I was ready to begin.

PREPARE THE SPEAKER AND BAFFLES

WE BUILT IT. YOU WIN IT!

5

Position your speaker. I cut a piece of foam-core board to fit over the front of the chassis and cut a hole so I could test-fit the speaker. I’d intended to use thin plywood but quickly realized that once glued to the metal, foam core is sufficiently structural and absorbs vibration well.

6

To describe our former editor-in-chief Bill Machrone as “handy” is like calling the Eiffel Tower “tall.” When he first suggested turning an old PC case into a subwoofer, no one suspected that Bill would pull out his router, drill, and angle grinder to transform his superannuated HewlettPackard into . . . this. And though he’s the first to admit that the PC subwoofer won’t precipitate sleepless nights at Yamaha or Infinity, it’s still an impressive achievement. In spite of our awe, we can’t keep all this fun to ourselves. One lucky reader will become the proud owner of this creation! Simply visit our Web site and enter your name for a chance to win this one-of-a-kind subwoofer. But don’t ask us for tech support if it breaks. Just because Bill can build it doesn’t mean he’s going to maintain it.

Damp the noise. Using the World’s Largest Scissors, I cut foam core to fit a variety of nooks and crannies. I left the drive-bay frame in place; it doesn’t take up much of the interior volume, and the frame adds some structural strength.

go.pcmag.com/ diysubwoofer

7

Measure your material. The sides of the PC fit tightly, but they rang like gongs when the speaker was playing. I measured them for heavy vinyl sound-damping material, which is also available from Parts Express. It’s cheap, at $9 per foot.

8

Silence the walls. This is the same stuff you’d install in your car’s doors if you were doing a stereo upgrade. The World’s Largest Scissors cut it easily. The vinyl is self-adhesive, so press it in place. The side panels’ sound went from “bwonng” to “thud.” APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 99

BUILD IT

The Limits of DIY

T

HE GREAT THING ABOUT DOING IT

yourself is that there are no limits. Whatever strikes your fancy, you just do it. For example, I gave serious consideration to reworking the HP power supply so it would provide more power on the +/- 12-volt circuits and to building my own subwoofer amp. Given the ready availability of

powerful integrated-circuit amplifier modules, it wouldn’t have been all that difficult. But the Dayton power plate was like having cinnamon doughnuts already on the counter when you’re hungry for breakfast—compared with making eggs Benedict from scratch. I actually bought two of the power plates and was planning to build a second subwoofer with an

TIE IT ALL TOGETHER

OTHER PROJECTS! More interested in a Media Center PC? Or a home server? Or the best gaming rig money can buy? See all our projects at go.extremetech .com/diy

9

Make space for a speaker. I think I used just about every sharp object in the shop to trim away various parts of the front bezel. This was going too slowly by hand, so I resorted to the milling machine.

11 100 PC MAGAZINE APRIL 10, 2007

Add the speaker. I bonded the foam core to the front of the machine, installed the bezel, then installed the speaker. I positioned it so the holes were over sheet metal. I drilled, and then fastened it with sheet-metal screws.

10

12

Cut a hole in the box. I needed a different approach for the front-panel insert. A Dremel with a cutoff wheel made a nice opening to expose the speaker. The cutoff wheel essentially melts through the plastic; a foot-operated speed control is very handy for controlling the process.

Mount the amp. Time to drill the mounting holes for the amplifier. It came with a nice, thick gasket, so the sheet-metal screws ensured a tight seal.

entirely different design—a transmission line. Unlike the time-honored port-tuned enclosure, the transmission line uses internal baffles to direct the sound from the rear of the speaker down an evertapering path. Because of the length and the degree of taper, the back wave of the speaker is never reflected; reflections are the enemy of accuracy and a smooth low end. Sealed speaker boxes are accu-

rate, but they’re inefficient, so you get less loudness per watt. Transmission-line enclosures are accurate and efficient. By the time the wave comes out the other end of the line, it reinforces the wave coming from the front of the speaker. I realized, however, that if anyone else was crazy enough to try to build this subwoofer, they’d likely have much more success with a port-tuned enclosure.

FINE-TUNING

When calculating the port length, make sure it’s shorter than the enclosure’s depth!

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15

Create a port. I constructed a tuned port or vent out of foam core. I used the old woodworker’s trick of making masking-tape hinges for the corners, so all I’d have to do was apply the glue and fold the foam core into a rectangular tube.

Slow down sound. Loosely stuffing a woofer with polyester batting helps performance. It slows the speed of sound in the box, making the enclosure seem larger. It also damps standing waves that may cause poor response.

14

16

Calculate the depth. The front-panel USB ports make a great spot for the vent. I typed the height and width dimensions of the box into WinISD, and it calculated the length of the tube needed to tune the enclosure. Purists may blanch at the crudeness, but it works rather well.

HP versus DIY? To finish up the project, I glued the CD-ROM doors closed to prevent rattles. The flipped HP logo says only “dy,” but that’s close enough to DIY for me.


ker would An 8-inch spn eloauder. have bee

p looks bad, That bumly dB. but it’s on 2 8dB 7dB 6dB 5dB 4dB 3dB 2dB 1dB 0dB -1dB -2dB -3dB -4dB -5dB -6dB -7dB -8dB -9dB -10dB -11dB -12dB -13dB -14dB -15dB -16dB -17dB -18dB -19dB -20dB -21dB -22dB -23dB -24dB -25dB -26dB -27dB -28dB -29dB -30dB -31dB -32dB -33dB -34dB 10Hz

30Hz

50Hz

TUNE IT BY EYE WinISD creates interactive graphs that help you to predict a speaker’s response. At left: a frequencyresponse graph charting output given a variety of signals—a measure of a speaker’s accuracy. At right: a soundpressure level chart detailing how much noise the speaker emits at a certain input frequency.

100Hz

300Hz

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1kHz

102dB 101dB 100dB 99dB 98dB 97dB 96dB 95dB 94dB 93dB 92dB 91dB 90dB 89dB 88dB 87dB 86dB 85dB 84dB 83dB 82dB 81dB 80dB 79dB 78dB 77dB 76dB 75dB 74dB 73dB 72dB 10Hz

30Hz

50Hz

100Hz

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1kHz

Predicting Performance

T

HE TRICK TO BUILDING A GOOD SUB-

woofer enclosure is figuring out how a given speaker will perform before you even start on the box. I had selected the Tang Band speaker based on its low resonant frequency and huge excursion, but how would it play in the threequarters of a cubic foot that my HP chassis offered? Based on the speaker’s published specifications and the physics of the box, WinISD predicted that the Tang Band would have a few bumps in its response curve, both undershooting and overshooting perfection (+/- 0 dB). Because the size of the box was predetermined, I adjusted the tuning frequency to minimize the deviation to +/- 2 dB, an acceptable amount for this application. The yellow line shows the Tang Band’s predicted response; the green line is that of an inexpensive 8-inch Dayton subwoofer I included for comparison. The Dayton’s response is smoother, but both run out of gas below 40 Hz. WinISD also predicts the sound pressure level at the industry-standard 1 watt of power. When you switch to the sound-pressure level (SPL) view, the 8-inch Dayton speaker is noticeably louder than my 6.5-inch one. In a more conventional cabinet, the Dayton would have been a better choice. DIYers take note: WinISD is a lot of fun to play with. It lets you adjust the box volume and the tuning frequency independently; the results show interactively in the gain and SPL graphs. Its data library includes thousands of speakers, and you can add your own easily. The Vents tab lets you select the number, shape, and size of the vents. It calculates their proper length for the tuning frequency you’ve selected. The Mach number turns red if it gets too high—an undersize vent will make whistling sounds as the air rushes in and out. WORTH ALL THE WORK? HMM... Before I could call it a day, there was one final task for the World’s Largest Scissors: cutting a couple of pieces of Fender-amplifier–style grille cloth, one for the speaker and one for the vent. The Fender grille


cloth gives the system a bit of a retro look. To add a bit more polish, I made up a logo plate for the back. The concept of making a subwoofer from a PC case was (ahem) sound, but unfortunately, the reality fell somewhat short of perfection. The cabinet’s metal sides aren’t rigid enough to stand up to the sound pressure generated by the little Tang Band speaker—you can feel them flex on the low notes. That huge Xmax is no joke; this thing is a serious air pump. Despite extensive bonding and laminating with acoustically dead materials, a few rattles remain. I’m sure I can track them down with the glue gun, some more insulation, and maybe a couple of sheet-metal screws, but I never expected this speaker to come anywhere close to the performance of one with a wood or fiberboard cabinet. This is the ideal project if you enjoy an unusual conversation piece—and splinters, burns, the stench of overheated plastic, and a variety of assaults on your eardrums. If you’re seeking audio nirvana, however, look to more traditional cabinet materials. Q

YOU BUILT IT!

Reader Michael Modee is a systems engineer who claims that case modding is just “a hobby for me.” That didn’t stop him from tricking out this Legend of Zelda–themed case for his nephew this past Christmas. Small PCs like this one are particularly well suited to case modding . . . so how have you used yours? Send us a photo at [email protected].

SO LUTIO N S AS K N E IL

Q

INVASION OF THE BROWSER SNATCHER

Windows Update changed my browser to Internet Explorer 7 one day. It screwed up the PCMag.com discussion forums. The compose box is tiny, and the format buttons

are gone. What can I do?—Puzzled Reader

NEED ANSWERS? Each issue, PC Magazine’s software expert, Neil J. Rubenking, tackles your toughest software and Internet problems. Send your questions to [email protected]

Some sites don’t display correctly in Internet Explorer 7. A Microsoft-supplied utility may help you work around this problem.

A

Microsoft did indeed push out the update to Internet Explorer 7 via the regular Windows Update channel. On at least some systems, the update process is arduous, requiring a reboot and then completely taking over the computer for 15 to 20 minutes. If you use a default browser other than IE, you may fi nd the default set back to IE after the update. That shouldn’t be a problem: Just launch your regular browser, and when it asks to make itself the default, click Yes. It’s true, though, that some pages don’t display correctly under IE7, including PC Magazine’s discussion forums. Microsoft recognizes the problem and has provided the User Agent String Utility 2 (search on the name at www.microsoft .com/downloads). You have to download the UAS utility from IE7 because it requires “Windows Genuine Advantage” validation. When you run UAS, it launches an instance of IE7 that lies to Web sites, claiming to be IE6. In many cases —including that of the PCMag.com forums—this is enough to fi x any problems.

AUTOMATE TASKS AT SHUTDOWN

Q

Windows offers the Startup folder, which lets you specify tasks or applications to execute at start-up or log-on. Is there an equivalent for shutdown or logoff? I would like to copy some files I update during the day to a network location before I log off and go home at night.—Hanns Ewald

A

You can find a variety of small utilities that will automate tasks at shutdown, but for a straightforward task like the one you’ve described, you really don’t need them. Just create a simple batch file to copy the updated files and end it with a command that shuts down the computer. You just have to remember to end your session by launching this batch file rather than by tapping the power button or shutting down via the Start menu. Open a Command Prompt window and determine the exact commands needed to copy the desired files. Use the XCOPY command, as it handles big files better than plain COPY. If you back up the same files every day, you can hard-code the full path for those files in the command. For each file you’d use a command like XCOPY /Y C:\BIG\BIG.DAT \\REMOTEPC\BACKUPS. The /Y command line switch automatically answers yes if XCOPY asks whether to overwrite an existing file having the same name. If you’ve mapped the network drive to a local drive letter, the command might look like XCOPY /Y C:\ BIG\BIG.DAT G:\BACKUPS. It may be that the set of files that need backup changes every day. In that case, establish a folder that holds only those files and copy all files from that folder: XCOPY /Y C:\ BIG\*.* G:\BACKUPS. When you’ve verified the commands needed to back up your files, launch Notepad and enter those commands into a new document. Save it on the Desktop as “MyBackup.bat”—include the double quotes, so that Notepad won’t be tempted to rename it MyBackup.bat.txt. Launch the batch file and verify that it does the job correctly. Now open it in Notepad again and add this command at the end of the file: SHUTDOWN -S -F -T 60 -C “Shutting down in 60 seconds”

Once the files have been copied, this line will start a 60-second countdown and then shut the system down. If you have a change of heart, quickly click Start, then Run, and type SHUTDOWN -A.Q 104 PC MAGAZINE APRIL 10, 2007

S O LUTIO NS AS K LOYD

R

FIRST, A CORRECTION.

ecently, I replied to a question about “stealthing” TCP port 443 (January 2007) because of security concerns. My answer was only partially correct. If you’re host-

ing an SSL-enabled application, then you’ll

NEED ANSWERS? ExtremeTech.com’s editor, Loyd Case, tackles hardware problems each issue. Send him your toughest at [email protected]

want to have port 443 open for outbound requests. Otherwise, you can go ahead and hide port 443. Inbound traffic on port 443 can be blocked without any adverse consequences. Any traffic coming in from the SSL-enabled Web site would come in on a randomly generated port. If you have a newer router with full support for stateful packet inspection, this is probably no big deal, but older routers may not support SPI. So it’s best to make this port inaccessible from the outside, unless you’re hosting an SSL-capable app. Consult your router’s documentation on how to do this. Thanks to Ted Lavino and Ken Yannacci for pointing this out and supplying the details.

ADDING USB

Q

I have an older laptop with only one USB port, yet I need to manage a memory stick and two other USB devices through that one port. I need a solution that won’t block other ports on the back of the laptop. What’s the easiest solution?—Karl Love

A

That’s simple: You need a USB hub. On the other hand, it can be somewhat more complicated, depending on those “two other USB devices.” As you load up USB devices on a hub, the combined power draw can exceed USB specs. If all three of your devices together draw

If USB devices connected through a hub draw too much power, you need a powered hub. For portability, the CyberPower Systems Hub 420 MP uses batteries.

more than 400 mA of current, the bus might shut down. In that case, you need a powered USB hub. That can present a problem for you, because as a laptop user, you may not always be near a power outlet. Some devices, such as the CyberPower Systems Hub 420 MP (www.cyberpowersystems .com/CPH420MP.asp), offer battery-powered USB hubs. That solves your problem, but it means one more thing to carry around.

DELAYED FLIGHTS

Q

Microsoft Flight Simulator X is running somewhat slowly on my machine, even with the quality setting reduced a little. I have a Dell XPS Gen 2 desktop with 1GB of RAM, an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card, and a Pentium 4 3.2-GHz processor. What kind of software or driver upgrades or changes to settings or hardware can I make?—Peter Voth

A

Flight Simulator X is one of those games that will force many users to upgrade. It’s what the industry likes to call a “forwardlooking application.” Basically, the system that can run FSX in all its glory hasn’t been built yet. In the short term, you’ll have to lower your expectations a bit. FSX is highly CPU-dependent, so if you scale back features that place heavy demands on the CPU—such as air, sea, and land traffic and weather—you’ll see much better performance. At that point, the sim won’t look terribly different from Flight Simulator 2004. In your particular case, you may have to wait a while for a fully Vista-capable multicore system to become available, then upgrade to that. Make sure that system includes a DirectX 10 graphics card.

MOTHER OF AN UPGRADE

Q A

Can I upgrade from an ATX to a MicroATX motherboard?—David Berger

It may sound odd to “upgrade” from a fullsize ATX motherboard to a MicroATX board, but it’s certainly possible to do that inside an ATX case. Most of the screws in the board line up with standard ATX mount points, although several don’t—but most cases have mount holes for MicroATX boards. You’ll have to move the standoffs from the original mount points to the holes for the MicroATX board. If you have one of the (very) rare cases without MicroATX mounting holes, though, you’ll need to find a new case. Q APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 105

SOLUTIONS BUSINESS

S M B B O OT C A M P

Raise Your Profile If a potential customer doesn’t know your name, can he find you? ALOHA WHISTLER ACCOMMODATIONS Size: 15 full-time employees Challenge: Increase traffic to Alohawhistler .com

Solution: Redesigned the site using search engine optimization techniques for better visibility through search results

Results: From February 2006 to January 2007, 35 percent traffic increase; 50 percent reduction in pay-perclick advertising

BY MATTHEW D. SARREL

F

or more than 25 years, Aloha Whistler Accommodations has managed condos and rental properties in and around Whistler, in British Columbia, Canada. The company focuses on ski-in/ski-out and larger rental properties, providing personal attention for both the home owner and the vacationer. From the moment the company went online in 1994, increasing visibility was the primary goal. “Travelers consult the Internet, so building our Internet presence quickly became a priority,” says Gordon Huxtable, vice president in charge of guest and owner relations. At first, a pay-per-click campaign brought more visitors to the site. Then Huxtable began to think about boosting traffic further by devoting some resources to SEO, or search engine optimization—tweaking site code to increase search hits. In 2005, Huxtable turned to the Custom Fit Communications Group Inc. (www .customfitonline.com) to help redesign the site from the ground up to be more search engine–friendly. Results have been very good. Not only is overall page traffic up by 35 percent, but Aloha Whistler’s front page abandonment rate has plummeted from 78 to 32 percent, and traffic resulting from search engine results has jumped from 5 to 25 percent of overall traffic. In fact, the traffic improvements from search engine optimization led to Aloha Whistler’s reducing pay-per-click spending by approximately half.

HOW YOU CAN DO IT, TOO

SEO is all about using keywords effectively in the structure and content of your Web site. Focus on creating keyword-rich content in a well-made site. For more tips, see go.pcmag.com/seobootcamp.

<TITLE>Whistler Accommodation, Whistler Condo Rentals | Aloha Whistler

TITLE TAG: By far the most important element on your Web page. Place important keywords near the beginning. Whistler Accommodation - Condos, Chalets and Townhomes Aloha Whistler Accommodations - Est. 1979

HEADING TAGS (H1 AND H2): Search engine bots consider headings a good indicator of page content. Make sure your headings are informative, not, for example, “Click an item below for more information.” Mentioning specific information is a wiser choice. ski-in ski-out accommodations and experienced, dedicated staff make Aloha Whistler the right choice for your best Whistler accommodation

HYPERLINK TEXT: Use keywords prominently in your hyperlink text to boost your rankings.


<META name="keywords" content="whistler accommodation, accommodations, accomodations, acomodations, condos, chalets, cabins, whister, whisler, bc, b.c., canada, private hot tubs"> <META name="description" content="Whistler accommodations offering luxury Whistler condos, chalets and home accommodation

METATAGS: Although metatags are frequently ignored to thwart keyword stuffing, it is still important to use yours to describe page content with keywords or phrases. A description tag should be no more than a sentence or two, a keywords tag 20 words or fewer. Note the deliberately misspelled keywords. snow.php >

ALT TAGS: Only Google and AltaVista support them, but alt tags still provide information to search engine bots that can’t otherwise read images.

SOLUTIONS BUSINESS O F F I C E 2 0 07

Introducing PowerPoint 2007

L

OVE IT OR HATE IT, POWERPOINT IS HERE TO STAY.

Luckily (for the lovers and the haters) this new update has lots of features that will make the job of creating presentations much easier. Text treatment is improved, and you can now kern text and create outline text with one color for the outline and another for the fill color—without having to use WordArt. Text can have glows, bevels, and reflections applied to it. If you make a mess of your font choices, the new Clear All Formatting button

removes formatting from selected text or a selected placeholder. You can add your own placeholders to slide masters, which can now include multiple layouts. This lets you create custom looks for text, chart, and table slides, each inheriting basic formatting from the slide master. And PowerPoint now shares a charting engine with Excel—including convenient table styles. And for widescreen display, you can select the new 16:9 and 16:10 slide size options, which display in letterbox format on smaller monitors.—Helen Bradley

Graphic starting to look like a Pollock? Click here to start fresh.

FRAMING SMARTART Set to become a much used feature in PowerPoint, SmartArt lets you select from a wide range of diagram styles to enhance your text. Start from scratch and type the text into a special text box or convert selected bullet text into a SmartArt object.

SIMPLER SELECTION The new Selection pane shows a list of objects on the current slide. Use it to alter their order—the topmost object in the list is on the topmost layer of the slide. You can also change the visibility of objects or rename them (making them easier to identify when creating custom animations, for example).

New formats for images in the Picture Tools tab offer a range of effects for making circular and oval photos, adding frames, rotating the image to interesting angles, and adding reflections and shadows.

RECOLORING Use the Recolor tool to tint photos and clip art, giving them a sophisticated monochromatic look that matches the slide’s color scheme. Just select the photo and sample variations from the Recolor list; the image on the slide changes as you hold your mouse over each color. APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 107

SOLUTIONS BUSINESS

SECURIT Y

The Art of Fighting Spam BY RUSSELL MORGAN

WANT MORE? Find Russell Morgan’s column online at go.pcmag.com/ bizsolutions Russell Morgan is the president and founder of the Information Technology Solution Providers Alliance (ITSPA), a national nonprofit organization of technology experts headquartered in Portland, Oregon.

There are two challenges here: stem the flow of spam, and keep employees from clicking through the spam.

A

F T E R B E I N G T H WA RT E D BY S O F T-

ware filters designed to screen out unwanted e-mail messages and attachments, hackers struck back. Now spam is on the rise again. Part of the problem stems from the everevolving nature of spam, which has led to a new generation of junk mail referred to by some as Spam 2.0. Determining that spam filters couldn’t differentiate between a photo of a family member or a photo of a stock quote or pill, spammers developed new automated ways to penetrate the technology industry’s latest attempts at computer security. Networks of hijacked personal computers— called botnets—coordinate millions of compromised PCs and network connections to send huge volumes of spam and viruses. This new breed of spam is confounding computers by bypassing and contaminating spam filters. One common technique to bypass text filters involves embedding text into images. Also, using software that changes a few pixels in each junk e-mail message allows spammers to avoid detection by systems that identify and block multiple copies of the same message. A little common sense goes a long way in dealing with spam avoidance. Instruct users not to use the preview window in their e-mail clients, and not to open messages that are clearly spam. These messages may contain Web bugs that can report back to spammers, confirming addresses as live and active. At this point, it’s head-smackingly obvious to most of us, but remind users never to respond to spam.

Your IT department or provider may have a favorite spam blocker. If you’ve refused the option in the past, think about reversing that decision. Pretty much every spam blocker does at least a decent job of stemming the tide. While spam has now become a daily waste of time and energy for most of us, malware—which includes adware, spyware, and more—is a hidden threat that is usually more difficult to detect and even harder to remove. Although it’s more commonly reported as a consumer problem, spyware invades business computers just as easily, collecting personal information, changing computer configurations, delivering unwanted advertising, and generally slowing down systems. Users introduce spyware by several means: typically by downloading freeware or shareware applications that include invisible malware “payload,” but also by clicking through spam messages. These can lead users to Web sites that perform “drive-by downloads,” discreetly installing malware on their systems. Aside from being invasive and damaging, malware makes it extremely hard to return your computer settings to your original preference and is often difficult to remove from computer systems. Again, your IT department or provider should supply you with information on the latest antispyware programs. See go.pcmag.com/security for more information about various malware, as well as antimalware product recommendations. TIPS TO HELP KEEP SPAM AND SPYWARE AT BAY • Make sure to apply patches and upgrades to your

e-mail server as soon as they become available, or hire a solution provider to maintain your e-mail server on your behalf. • Ask your IT department or solution provider to set up a spam trap to track how you are being spammed. They may recommend a managed services solution, such as Postini or MailRoute, that catches unwanted messages at another site— your ISP’s site, for example—and holds it until you review and approve messages you want and remove those you don’t. • Use antispyware and antivirus programs on your server and on any of your mobile devices that may connect to the Internet. • Educate your employees to be skeptical, training them to download only from reputable Web sites and delete spam e-mail without ever previewing or opening it. Q 108 PC MAGAZINE APRIL 10, 2007

SOLUTIONS HOME

I P O D H AC K

Copy Music from Your iPod

T

HE GOOD NEWS FOR APPLE IS THAT PEOPLE THINK

the iPod is pretty, and they’ll continue to buy it for a long time. Truth be told, the iPod is a good player. Putting music onto it, whether from your own CD collection or purchased from iTunes, is extremely easy. But that ease of use hits an abrupt wall when you try to take that music off your iPod and move it onto another computer. Why, you may reasonably ask? Well, there’s the piracy issue. The RIAA doesn’t want stealing music to be that easy, even on a small scale; ergo, Apple doesn’t want that.

1

But what about those times when you legitimately need to get songs off your iPod? What if your PC dies, or you want to transfer songs from your home PC to your work one? The worst case here is if you haven’t backed up your music and your PC dies. Guess what? iTunes won’t let you download your purchases again. So back ’em up to CD or DVD. And if you need to get those songs off your iPod, try this hack. There are also a few cheap software options to get the job done.—Hadley Stern, freelance writer and author of iPod & iTunes Hacks (O’Reilly)

WINDOWS, MEET IPOD. IPOD, WINDOWS The easiest way to get the files off your iPod is simply to make your files visible. To begin, make sure your iPod is set up to work as a storage device. Open up iTunes with your iPod plugged in and go to Preferences. Under Options, select Enable Disk Use. Now your iPod will show up as a storage device in Windows Explorer.

2

3


SUDDENLY I SEE Since the music files your iPod plays are invisible files, you won’t be able to get to them without a little hackery. Select your iPod in Windows Explorer, then click Tools | Folder Options, then View. Select Show hidden files and folders, then exit the dialog.

SNAG THOSE FILES On your iPod, you will notice that within a folder called iPod Control is a series of folders with obscure names such as D1, D12, and so on. Your MP3 and MP4 files are scattered about in those folders. You can now copy those to your hard drive and then reimport them to iTunes.

V I S TA T I P

RAW IMAGES

4

SOME PRECISION, PLEASE Because iTunes scatters the files all over your iPod, this method works fine if you just want to dump everything onto your PC. A number of shareware applications will help you pick and choose. Music Rescue ($20, www.kennettnet.co.uk/ musicrescue) is one such app. Music Rescue displays your iPod in a look similar to iTunes’— you can see your songs and playlists. To copy files, select them in the main window and click Copy. When prompted, choose [your music folder]/iTunes as the target, then let the transfer begin.

IT’S YOUR MUSIC, AFTER ALL For what it’s worth, Apple does make it easy to transfer songs that you buy from the iTunes store. Once you’ve downloaded the songs and synced them to your iPod, the first time you attach the iPod to another machine, you’ll get this nifty pop-up window. Note the second part of the message: Apple will let you move the purchased music files to another desktop. You can play them on up to five machines, turning iTunes authorization on and off as needed.

Vista’s new Photo Gallery is powerful and flexible, but out of the box, it works with JPEG and TIFF images only. If you’re hooked on RAW files, you’ll be dismayed when you first open your Photo Gallery and don’t see your images. Fortunately, Microsoft has a solution. Camera vendors can provide a codec (much as video and audio vendors have been doing for years) that lets Vista view, open, and annotate proprietary formats such as RAW files. Choose File | Update from the Photo Gallery menu and you’ll be directed to a Web site for each type of RAW image Vista has found on your system. When you download the codec, you’ll be able to see your RAW images alongside JPEGs and TIFFs.—David Cardinal, freelance writer

IE7 TIP

IE WITHOUT ADD-ONS

Some Internet Explorer add-ons, such as the Flash player, have become ubiquitous, and you’re likely to get them just by browsing. Others, such as ieSpell, which spell-checks your text input, need to be downloaded specifically. Microsoft hosts a large gallery of free (mostly) add-ons for IE7 at www.ieaddons.com. But add-ons can cause trouble or crashes, so Microsoft has provided a simple way to browse without them. Right-click on the IE shortcut icon and select the Start without addons option. You can also manage which addons are enabled, in Tools | Manage Add-ons, after you’ve started IE7.—DC APRIL 10, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 111

SOLUTIONS SECURITY

A Storm Blows Through the Web BY L ARRY SELTZER

WHERE’S STORM NOW? Just a few weeks after the Storm worm hit, the biggest virus story we’ve heard in over a year, it’s blown over. Storm doesn’t even make Postini’s list of the top 20 viruses these days. We can downgrade Storm to a light breeze, but don’t let your guard down: There are holidays, natural disasters, and other news events all the time, representing more opportunities to entice users to click on dangerous mail attachments.

STAY SAFE! Larry Seltzer’s Security Watch is updated every Tuesday. Read it at go.pcmag.com/ securitywatch

M

ORE THAN A YEAR HAD PASSED SINCE

a conventional worm received as much attention as did the Storm worm, so named for its initial hook of e-mails with subject lines related to inclement weather. But the large number of copies circulating didn’t mean large numbers of users were compromised by the worm, although Symantec did raise the threat to a Category 3 (out of 5). Before it infected a system, the Storm Worm (which Symantec calls Trojan.Peacomm) was what can now be called an “old-fashioned” mail worm. It spread through spam with an executable file attached. The file names listed by Symantec as being in use are: FullVideo.exe Video.exe GreetingPostcard.exe FlashPostcard.exe GreetingCard.exe FlashPostcard.exe FullNews.exe

Full Story.exe Read More.exe FullClip.exe MoreHere.exe ClickHere.exe ReadMore.exe

The subject lines used in the e-mails are too numerous to list here. Originally, they focused on news events, such as the weather, Saddam Hussein, and criminals at large. Later ones focused on romance.

Once a system became infected, the worm got more interesting, although it was hardly unique. A rootkit was added to the code being spread, albeit one with flaws that make it possible to detect with standard Microsoft Windows tools. Storm also created a peer-to-peer network for bot communications, eschewing the usual IRCbased communications. According to Symantec, it used the Overnet P2P protocol, which is based on the eDonkey system. The best advice for blocking Storm is advice you should have been following for years: Block executable attachments at the gateway or have your e-mail program block them. Run antivirus software and keep it up to date. Don’t click on attachments that you weren’t expecting, attachments whose content you’re unsure of, or attachments from people you don’t trust to follow the preceding advice. Q

SECURIT Y TIP

SCAM: PUMP AND DUMP There’s a reason for all that spam you’ve been seeing pitching penny stocks. It’s so the spammer can make money on the price rise after the spamming campaign. It’s called “pump and dump,” but some spammers get even slimier. Consider what Aleksey Kamardin and his accomplices did: They hacked into the trading accounts of innocent parties, selling their holdings and using the proceeds to buy shares in Thomas Equipment, a firm whose stock in one day soared from 26 cents to 80 cents a share. Karmadin and his gang did the same thing 13 other times. According to the SEC, at least 27 accounts and 14 companies, at brokers E-Trade Securities, Scottrade, TD Ameritrade, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Charles Schwab, were involved. Even Thomas Equipment was a victim. It wasn’t uninvolved in the scam, but now its stock is valued even lower than before, stuck at 13 cents a share and with trade restrictions placed on it by some brokers. Authorities did not provide details about how the scammers were able to do this, but in all likelihood the victims’ systems had been compromised with keyloggers to capture their entry of usernames and passwords. 112 PC MAGAZINE APRIL 10, 2007

VIRUS ACTIVITY We've seen an enormous jump in virus activity since last year—but a relatively larger jump from December to February. Mega-antispam company Postini attributes the rise to the criminal organizations now involved in virus development and deployment, including ever-cleverer social engineering (used in developing spam subject lines) and virtual armies of compromised PCs, "botnets" using spare cycles to deploy more infectious spam. 100M On the heels of severe weather in Europe, the Storm worm bumped activity up even further. 80M

60M

Data as of February 15.

The Happy New Year virus drove average virus activity up by a factor of 20.

40M

20M September

October

November

December

January

February

2006

2006

2006

2006

2007

2007*

Source: Postini Inc., 2007

J O H N C. D V O R A K

The Consensus on Vista

T

HERE ARE TWO BASIC TYPES

of computer users: the cutting-edge type and the consensus type. Personally, I’m a consensus type—even though that’s not as cool as the other kind. Without explanation, I’m sure every reader already knows what I’m talking about. Cutting-edge types are the people who go out and buy all the latest gadgets, everything that gets chatted up on the boards and blogs as being cool.

If you practice consensus computing, you can’t brag about owning the latest tech widgets, but there’s less chance of developing ulcers and repetitive-strain injuries.

DVORAK LIVE ON THE WEB John gets cranky with his motley band of geeks each and every Wednesday. Log on to CrankyGeeks.com at 2:30 p.m. EST for live crankiness—or download less-thanlive crankiness at your convenience.

Half the time the stuff doesn’t work, and half the time it does. But even when it works, it’s agonizing in one way or another. Indeed, consensus computing is the way to go. The idea here is that the general public comes to an agreement about what to buy and what to use and how to use it. That may sound boring, but it sure saves time, money, and hassle. If you practice consensus computing, you can’t brag about owning the latest tech widgets, but there’s less chance of developing ulcers and repetitive-strain injuries. Windows Vista really shows us the difference between the two approaches. The cutting-edge folks were running Vista before it was even released. “Are you on the beta test program?! Do you wanna be?” they’d ask me, panting like dogs and jumping around. Generally speaking, a true cutting-edge type is constantly jacked up about how great something is. “It’s really neat!” the early Vista users would say. “I like it!” But the cutting-edge types say this about everything—unless a product doesn’t work at all. “When are you going to get it? Why aren’t you using it? What are you waiting for?” A consensus type waits for the consensus, which comes mostly from other consensus types who’ve taken a chance and ventured into the realm


of the cutting-edge folks. Whatever the cuttingedge folks say is generally discounted as the ramblings of lunatics. Slowly, a consensus forms and we have our marching orders. And the orders are: “Don’t do anything! Yet.” The Vista rules are pretty straightforward. Now, when people ask me about Vista, I throw out the consensus litany, and it makes me sound both smart and reasonable. On the top of the list is this edict: Do not upgrade old systems to Vista. Though I’m not convinced that upgrades are as bad as everyone says, it’s generally a good policy to stick with your old OS if your machine seems to be doing fine. Microsoft Windows XP is quite solid. In other words, you shouldn’t get Vista unless you buy a new machine where it comes preloaded. This brings us to edict number two: Wait until Vista Service Pack 1 is released. That may seem overly cautious, but it’s not a bad idea. The thinking here is that Vista was forced out of the lab and Microsoft hasn’t actually finished it yet. The consensus believes the real OS is SP1, and that will arrive sooner rather than later. Not listed in the consensus litany is my personal addition: Do not run Vista without a new hybrid hard drive, or HHD. These drives, rarely discussed since they’re not widely available, are a must if you want to get the most out of Vista. Vista is specifically designed to talk to these new drives, and its performance with HHDs is rumored to be phenomenal. Another way of boiling down the Vista consensus is simply to say, “Wait six months.” That’s what the consensus says about everything. It’s never a bad policy unless there’s some new feature that you have to have now or you’ll be out of business fast. Generally, not many people are in that position. Over the past five or six OS releases from Microsoft, going back to DOS, the cutting-edge types were often in control. People were lined up in the stores at midnight for Windows 95, as this sort of thinking dominated the PC world back then. Those days are over. After the miscue of Windows Me and all the delays with Vista, it looks as if the consensus folks are now in charge, telling you what not to do. This may not be good news for Microsoft, but it’s good news for users. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go shopping for a new horseless carriage. Q

PC Magazine - April 10 2007

PC Magazine - April 2011

Maximum PC (April 2007)

SERVO Magazine - April 2007

PC Magazine Office 2007 Solutions

PC Magazine Digital Edition, April 2011

PC Magazine Windows Vista Solutions (PC Magazine)

PC Magazine Wireless Solutions

PC Magazine 2011-01

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PC Magazine wireless solutions

Inked Magazine (April 2010)

Guns Magazine April 2011

ArtReview Magazine, April 2010

PC Magazine Windows XP Solutions

PC Magazine Windows XP Solutions

EDN Magazine April 21, 2011

Tile Magazine March-April 2011

SERVO Magazine - February 2007

SERVO Magazine - June 2007

Elektor Electronics (April 2007)

MSDN Magazine (August 2007)

Python Magazine (October 2007)

SERVO Magazine - May 2007

SERVO Magazine - March 2007

SERVO Magazine - January 2007

SERVO Magazine - July 2007

CG Arena April 2007

Inked Magazine, 2008 4, April

EDN Magazine April 7, 2011

PC World Magazine (US version), August 2011

PC Magazine - April 10 2007

PC Magazine - April 2011

Maximum PC (April 2007)

SERVO Magazine - April 2007

PC Magazine Office 2007 Solutions

PC Magazine Digital Edition, April 2011

PC Magazine Windows Vista Solutions (PC Magazine)

PC Magazine Wireless Solutions

PC Magazine 2011-01

PC Magazine - February 2011

PC Magazine wireless solutions

Inked Magazine (April 2010)

Guns Magazine April 2011

ArtReview Magazine, April 2010

PC Magazine Windows XP Solutions

PC Magazine Windows XP Solutions

EDN Magazine April 21, 2011

Tile Magazine March-April 2011

SERVO Magazine - February 2007

SERVO Magazine - June 2007

Elektor Electronics (April 2007)

MSDN Magazine (August 2007)

Python Magazine (October 2007)

SERVO Magazine - May 2007

SERVO Magazine - March 2007

SERVO Magazine - January 2007

SERVO Magazine - July 2007

CG Arena April 2007

Inked Magazine, 2008 4, April

EDN Magazine April 7, 2011

PC World Magazine (US version), August 2011

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