SHOOT, SCAN, PRINT: 30 TIPS FOR DOING IT RIGHT FIRST LOOKS: 17-INCH NOTEBOOKS TWO NEW Find the Best The Secrets of Broadband ISPs Anonymous Mail www.pcmag.com HELP SERVICES: WHO YOU GONNA CALL? T H E I N D E P E N D E N T G U I D E TO T EC H N O LO GY SEPTEMBER 16, 2003 BUILD YOUR OWN PC! PLUS CREATE A CUSTOM, KILLER SYSTEM EASILY…AND SAVE BIG $$$ FILE-SHARING SERVICES AMERICA ONLINE 9.
MICHAEL J. MILLER Forward Thinking F I G H T I N G T H E OS WA R S : T H R E E P E R S P EC T I V E S MICROSOFT HAS A MONOPOLY on the desktop—a court-certified one with Windows and a de facto one with Microsoft Office—and I’m not seeing much action against this. Although Apple has a small but loyal following, it doesn’t seem to want to take on Microsoft directly. And Linux remains a niche player on the desktop.
Forward Thinking MICHAEL J. MILLER distributor under the GPL, so SCO gave away any rights it had. He also said that SCO has seen the code for years but didn’t raise any copyright issues until now. Mills made clear that IBM does not provide a Linux distribution but instead supports other companies’ distributions. He has seen no change in customers’ plans due to the SCO suit. The case is scheduled to go to court in 2005, and I expect that a resolution will take years.
䊛 Contents.1 SEP TEMBER 16, 2003 VOL. 22 NO. 16 www.pcmag.com 75% of PC Magazine readers have high-speed Internet connections at home, according to our latest survey. 30 First Looks 30 Blubster 2.5 31 Filetopia 3.04 32 Morpheus 3.2 32 Spy Sweeper 2.1 33 AOL 9.
Contents.2 SEP TEMBER 16, 2003 H A R D WA R E T I P S 95 Shoot, Scan, Print You bought it, you love it, but are you getting the most out of it? Maximize the use of your printer, scanner, or digital camera with our 30 tips. From setup to final print, scan, or shot, we help you along the way.
w w w. p c m a g . c o m /p i p e l i n e T E C H N O L O G Y T R E N D S & N E W S A N A LY S I S IGNORING THE TIDE Even as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) faces off with online musicswapping sites, two-thirds of the 2,515 Americans surveyed who trade music online say they don’t care whether the music is copyrighted, according to a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
PIPELINE Ordered to Pay Up ad Robin Hood’s booty of choice been copies of Microsoft Office, he might have been involved in the largest recovery ever achieved under California’s antitrust laws—one that partially benefits lower-income students. A superior court judge has granted preliminary approval of a $1.1 billion settlement between Microsoft and California consumers and businesses, and claimants could begin collecting money as soon as September.
PIPELINE Head Here More Than a DVD Player Gateway will continue to blur the lines between computers and consumer electronics with the Gateway Connected DVD Player. This progressive-scan set-top player will recognize DVD, CD-R/-RW, MP3, and Kodak Picture CD discs. But it will also double as a digital-media hub, meaning you can stream photo, music, and video files from your PC to it (via either wired Ethernet or wireless 802.11b) for playback through your home entertainment center.—Jamie M.
HANDS-ON TESTING OF NEW PRODUCTS 33 34 34 36 AOL 9.
w w w. p c m a g . c o m /f i r s t l o o k s WHAT THE RATINGS MEAN 40 Microsoft Windows Powered PCS Phone SH-G1000 by Hitachi 42 Dell Latitude X300 42 HP Compaq Business Notebook nc4000 chines accessing our client, we couldn’t get correct originating IP addresses. But whether this real-time privacy would do much good in the face of a peer list obtained with a legal injunction is another question. If you’ve ever used a popular file-sharing app, Blubster will feel familiar.
Morpheus 3.2 While the Gnutella network can be considered a veteran, having been launched not long after Napster, it is usually populated by well under 200,000 users, light years away from Kazaa or FastTrack’s nearly 4 million. Being susceptible to incomplete or fake files hasn’t helped. The new Morpheus 3.2 hopes to give it a boost with features designed More important to this story’s theme—Morpheus is not anonymous by default. To make Morpheus 3.
FIRST LOOKS AOL 9.0: Custom-Tailored for Mass Appeal BY MARGE BROWN merica Online is serious about maintaining its lead in the battle for ISP supremacy. AOL 9.0 Optimized elegantly incorporates more custom sign-on information, communication options, security and parental controls, and productivity features to entice the 24 million existing subscribers—not to mention prospective users—to participate in the AOL community. Perhaps the most noticeable feature is the customizable welcome screen. AOL 9.
FIRST LOOKS Large-Screen Notebooks Push the Limits of Portability BILL HOWARD fter Apple introduced its innovative PowerBook G4 with a 17-inch screen earlier this year (First Looks, May 27), it was only a matter of time before other PC makers got hold of wide-screen panels. HP and Toshiba have recently introduced such models. But unlike the large though still portable 7-pound G4, these newer entries—at around 11 pounds—are best thought of as transportable machines to replace a desktop PC.
FIRST LOOKS Top-of-the-Line Point-and-Shoot BY LES FREED he new 5-megapixel Canon PowerShot G5 cuts to the front of the line in Canon’s lineup of point-andshoot digital cameras. At $800, this isn’t the camera to get your mom started in digital photography. But the G5 will appeal to hobbyist shutterbugs who can’t afford the $1,500 price that digital SLRs command. The G5—and similar cameras like the Nikon Coolpix 5700 and the Olympus Camedia C-5050— have a lot to offer displaced 35mm SLR users.
FIRST LOOKS Gateway’s All-in-One Gets a Boost BY JOHN DELANEY ll-in-one PCs aren’t a big slice of the market, but they have a devoted audience among home and SOHO buyers. Gateway has just introduced the fourth generation of its space-saving machine. The Gateway Profile 4X brings Pentium 4 (with Hyper-Threading) power and a host of other improvements to the platform.
FIRST LOOKS Palm’s T2 Terminates the Original Tungsten BY BRUCE BROWN n true summer sequel fashion, Palm has replaced the original Tungsten/T—its mainstay PDA for professionals—with the new Palm Tungsten/T2 ($400 street). Unlike as in Hollywood, this follow-on is better in almost every way. For starters, the T2 has double the memory (32MB) of the T. The increased memory pays off quickly.
FIRST LOOKS Dell, HP Take On the IBM X31 BY BILL HOWARD ltraportable notebooks—those weighing between 3 and 4 pounds—make up a small but growing part of the portable landscape, especially among executives who always carry machines with them. Our favorite such machine to date is the IBM ThinkPad X31 (“Notebooks, Notebooks, Notebooks,” May 27), which packs a 12.1-inch screen, a full-size keyboard, and good battery life into a 3.6pound package.
FIRST LOOKS IBM’s Sphere of Influence BY RICHARD V. DRAGAN imed squarely at larger companies, IBM’s Web- A Sphere Commerce Professional Edition 5.5 ($80,000 per CPU) offers a truly scalable plat- form for e-business. If you can get over the initial sticker shock, this package is remarkably deep: IBM has bundled many advanced capabilities in the core product, the database instead of DB2, for example—in the set-up utility.
FIRST LOOKS If It Sounds like Spam... BY CADE METZ here’s more than one way to skin a spammer. To spot spam, Audiotrieve’s InBoxer for Outlook enlists some of the same language recognition technologies that the company has used to filter information from audio and video streams. InBoxer isn’t a cure-all, but it joins a short list of personal software packages that can filter most spam from your in-box with only a modicum of hassle.
“Do you really think blogs will counterbalance the tremendous power and influence of organized propaganda systems?” A P P L E FO R T H E ST U D E N T “BACK TO SCHOOL” (August 19, page 90) is a great guide to buying PCs for students, but I feel you misrepresented Apple in your findings. Your choice to review the highend desktop iMac, with its 17-inch LCD screen, made it the most expensive of the systems you reviewed. And you were quick to point out its “hefty price tag.
w w w. ex t re m e te c h . c o m • BILL MACHRONE ExtremeTech The Vacation Column ere I am on family vacation, with two computers, three guitars, an electric bass, and two amps. Obviously we’re not backpacking through Europe, and we didn’t get on a plane. We drove to a rented beach house with our gear, plus the requisite shorts, bathing suits, and sand chairs—and a stack of books. Vacation is a time to kick back, but it’s not a time to do nothing.
John C. Dvorak DivX Reloaded he revolutionary DivX technology first emerged as a spoof of a failed scheme of the same name and has slowly usurped the MPEG-4 initiative. For all practical purposes, it has become MPEG-4. DivX can turn a 4.7GB DVD into a 700MB disc with no degradation in quality. The implications are huge. The technology has been flying under the radar for a while, but that will end in a few months, when DivX-compatible DVD players will flood the market.
Inside Track JOHN C. DVORAK T he Comic Book Connection. Fans of The Simpsons are familiar with the oafish nerd who owns the town’s comic book store. Can you imagine him designing and selling his own x86 chips? That seems to be the story behind the VDragon, a CPU out of China supposedly developed by Culturecom Holdings, a former comic book publisher. The Chinese have been chatting up an x86 chip of Chinese design called the Dragon. Critics say it is roughly the equivalent of a slow 486.
B I L L H OWA R D On Technology The Next Big Thing: Megaportables ortable computers are again closing in on and surpassing the 10-pound mark. At a time when almost every feature that road warriors desire can be slid, snapped, or screwed into a notebook of 5 pounds or less, a compelling case can be made for heavier notebooks. And the heavier the better.
w w w. p c m a g . c o m /s o l u t i o n s 15 Great Excel Tips Use these little-known functions to make your formulas more useful than ever. BY HELEN BRADLEY Microsoft Excel is jam-packed with functions that perform a range of handy calculations and tests. We take a look at 15 Excel functions you may not know about and show you some clever ways to put them to work on your data. Two words of warning: First, some of these functions work only when the Analysis ToolPak add-in is enabled.
SOLUTIONS Show m with h 62 Hardware: Universal Plug and Play. 64 Office: Customize fonts on your own. 68 Security Watch: Anonymous e-mail. 70 Internet Business: Amazon everywhere.. 73 User to User: Tips and tricks. M A K I N G T E C H N O L O G Y W O R K F O R YO U column A and sales figures in columns B and C, the function =VLOOKUP("Seattle",A2:C15,2, looks for Seattle in column A of the data table (A2:C15) and returns the corresponding value from column B (the second column in the table).
SOLUTIONS | HARDWARE Universal Plug and Play: Networking Made Easy points in order to facilitate true peer-topeer networking. When a device is added to a UPnP network, its first step is to obtain an IP address. Once this is accomplished via its internal DHCP client, the device advertises its presence, providing a descripImagine adding devices—from PCs to consumer electronics— tion of itself and its services. A control to your network, with zero configuration! By Stephen J.
SOLUTIONS | OFFICE DIY Fonts Create custom characters using Windows’ Private Character Editor. By Lamont Wood E ver come across a document that uses a corporate logo for bullets or custom icons for notes or chapter headings and wish you could do it yourself ? Customized drop caps, section dividers based on corporate logos or pure F8FF (63,743). This block of 6,400 codes corresponds to the Private Use Area in Unicode and is at your disposal.
SOLUTIONS w w w. p c m a g . c o m /s e c u r i ty wa tc h T H E LO O KO U T WINDOWS SERVER 2003 FLAW Hiding Your Identity Anonymous remailers let you communicate on the Internet without exposing who you really are. By Sheryl Canter Y ou may know anonymous remailers from their somewhat shady association with spam, terrorists, child porn rings, and so on. But remailers—tools that let you send e-mail and post to newsgroups without revealing your identity—have practical and legitimate applications.
SOLUTIONS Amazon Everywhere With Web services technology, mini Amazon.coms are popping up all over the Web. By Jim Akin G iving away the store is usually bad business, but Amazon Web Services (AWS) considers this its mission statement. Amazon.com debuted AWS in July 2002, announcing that the service would use XML-based Web services technology to make the contents of its multimillion-item catalog freely available for use by any Web site or software application. Since then, Amazon.
SOLUTIONS w w w. p c m a g . c o m /u s e r to u s e r PC MAGAZINE’S COMMUNITY OF EXPERTS AND READERS FIGURE 1: In REGEDT32, each root key appears in its own subwindow. You launch it from the Start menu’s Run dialog—just like the more familiar REGEDIT. It has a rather oldfashioned look and each root key appears in its own subwindow (Figure 1). Select the window for HKEY_LOCAL_ FIGURE 2: REGEDT32’s ability to change security permissions makes it both powerful and dangerous.
SOLUTIONS many Web pages are designed with no thought “Too that someone might want to print them.” page again—and you will be able to create PDF files whenever you want! To use PDF995 without the display of ads requires registration ($9.95), but try it for free first. CONN CLISSMAN Put Google in IE’s Search Bar In “Change IE’s Default Search Engine” (User to User, May 27, page 74), you explain how to set Internet Explorer’s default search engine.
Build Buy or initiative, you can build a top- of-the-line screamer or a budget- BY BILL MACHRONE ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN RITTER C omputer prices are low, and manufacturers’ offerings are comprehensive, so building your own PC may seem like a peculiar notion. But component suppliers’ business is booming, and increasing numbers of people are building their own machines, so there must be something to it. Indeed, in the early dawn of PC history, building a computer was the only way you could get one.
COVER STORY upgrade or service the machines. In fact, upgrading is an excellent stepping stone to building a whole machine. Once you’ve traversed the shoals of adding an optical drive or more memory, or replacing a hard drive, working inside the case isn’t nearly as daunting anymore. Some of us at PC Magazine have been building machines for years, having started back in the soldering-iron days, but we decided to take a fresh look at the DIY scene.
knotty problems. Our sister Web site, ExtremeTech.com, has a very active discussion forum that welcomes questions; you’ll find knowledgeable answers there. While using discussion boards for tech support often means waiting a day or more for the answer you need, it’s inherently less frustrating than being on endless hold or getting caught in menu hell on vendor support lines.
BUILD OR BUY: HIGH END What We Spent s you can see from the table below, we were very cost-conscious when we built our budget system. Using state-of-the-art components for the high-end system gave us considerably less latitude, but you’re still getting a lot for the money. Our comparison systems were not identically configured, but the differences affected price and storage capacity more than performance.
Install the CPU 2 1 3 Lift the ZIF (zero insertion force) lever so you can install the CPU. Align the Pentium 4 chip so that the corner with the two missing pins lines up with the corresponding corner on the CPU socket. Insert the CPU and lock down the ZIF lever. 5 4 6 Apply a tiny amount of heat-sink paste if needed. (Some heat sinks already have thermal tape attached and don’t need paste.
BUILD OR BUY: HIGH END Install the Motherboard 1 One of the joys of building your own machine is selfexpression. We’re using the Super Flower case, as decorated by the folks at CaseArts—a sure cure for the beige blahs. 2 This case has a slide-out motherboard tray and a removable hard drive bay. Features like these make construction and upgrades easier. 3 4 Make sure you install the ATX I/O shield before installing the motherboard.
Install the Hard Drives Locate the ICH5R SATA connections. Connect one SATA cable to each connector. Not only is Serial ATA faster than parallel ATA, but the cables are far smaller, improving airflow and serviceability within the case. Install the drive bay into the case. In addition to the two superfast SATA hard drives, we’ve also installed a single 200GB Maxtor hard drive for storing large multimedia files.
BUILD OR BUY: HIGH END Install the Graphics Card PERFORMANCE TESTS DIY Does Well We kept the official tests for our DIY systems simple: Business Winstone 2002 and Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2003. These test suites give a comprehensive overview of a system’s performance. Business Winstone measures the speed of tasks such as word processing, spreadsheets, and everyday interactions with the PC, while Content Creation Winstone evaluates the speed of streaming, compression, and file conversion.
Budget C WALK ON THE MILD SIDE onfiguring a budget machine is easier than creating a high-end system in some ways and more difficult in others. You need to factor cost into each decision, but small changes to the system’s overall performance are not as important, since bragging rights are not at stake.
BUILD OR BUY: BUDGET Installing the Memory 1 2 Align the DDR memory module so that the notch at the connector edge lines up with the key in the socket. Flip out the retainer clips on the sides of the socket. Push the DIMM straight down until you see and feel the clips snap into place. Since this motherboard supports dual-channel memory, we installed a second module. Install the Motherboard The mounting points in the chassis are typically threaded brass standoffs.
BUILD OR BUY: BUDGET Install the Hard Drive 1 2 Ensure that the master/slave jumper on the hard drive is set correctly for your configuration. Remove the drive bay from the chassis and slide the hard drive in so that the connectors face the inside of the case. Align the sidemount holes with the holes in the drive bay. Screw in the hard drive, using the screws supplied with the case. 4 3 5 Install the drive bay into the case. Connect the power and IDE cables to the hard drive.
BUILD OR BUY: BUDGET Install the Floppy Disk Drive 2 Slide the drive bay into the case and snap it into place. 1 3 Remove the floppy disk drive bay from the case by pulling back on the latch and sliding the bay out. Install the floppy disk drive into the removable bay and fasten it into place with small screws. Attach the small power connector and the twisted end of the floppy disk drive’s data cable to the drive. The other end goes into the floppy disk drive connector on the motherboard.
TIPS AND TRICKS Shoot, Scan, Print final art tk Get the most out of your digital-imaging gear Have you considered putting vodka in your printer? Or that your scanner might support resolutions as high as 2,800 dots per inch, but performance might improve at lower resolutions? Or that not using your camera’s zoom lens might result in a better close-up? * We’ve tested printers, scanners, and digital cameras since they arrived on the scene, and in that time we’ve amassed a wealth of inside knowledge about ho
height) to exactly what you need (such as a 1.5- by 2.5-inch photo for a newsletter), then set the resolution according to the chart “Size Matters.” Create Better Scanned Images [ B y S a l l y W i e n e r G r o tt a] 1 UNLOCK THE SCANNER HEAD On the bottom or side of many scanners is a dial or slide for locking and unlocking the scanner head—the imaging sensor arm you see tracking with a light that does the actual scanning.
TIPS AND TRICKS ...unlock the head or you’ll hear a grating sound as the gears get chewed up... NO DESCREENING SCANNERS are a great way to preserve some of the stunning pictures published in newspapers or magazines. But their high resolution will pick up artifacts of the printing process itself that are invisible to the naked eye. We’ve descreened the image on the left to smooth out the dots laid down by the printer. On the right, the same image sans descreening. scanner.
...printing directly from a camera is simpler but isn’t any cheaper... closer to your subject. Virtually all point-and-shoot cameras perform better at their widest settings. Zoom lenses suffer from light fall-off at longer focal lengths, so cameras must switch to slower shutter speeds to compensate. A long lens plus a slow shutter speed usually results in blurry pictures. If you must zoom, use a tripod, or brace the camera on a railing or other solid structure.
TIPS AND TRICKS Make Better Printouts 20 BUY TWO INK TANKS AT A TIME Always keep a spare ink cartridge on hand. Murphy’s Law dictates that you’ll run out of ink when it is least convenient and when stores are most likely closed or difficult to get to. Get into the habit of buying two at a time and you’ll always have at least one spare in the drawer.
TIPS AND TRICKS ...light sanding with fine sandpaper can remove the tough, oxidized outer layer from a rubber pickup roller... cartridges include the ink jets—as most do—you can get a fresh set of unclogged printheads just by putting in new cartridges. Some printers use separate printheads, however, and replacing these as well as the ink can be expensive. Before you throw away either ink cartridges or separate printheads, make a last-ditch effort to revive them.
BROADBAND Broadband 102 Reviewed in this story BY CADE METZ 104 105 106 107 107 108 109 111 111 105 105 106 107 109 110 Broadband providers promise fast AOL for Broadband (C-) Charter Pipeline (C) Comcast (D) Cox (A+) EarthLink (A-) Optimum Online (B) Road Runner (A) SBC Yahoo! (D+) Verizon (C) Reader Survey Results Readers’ Choice Summary of Features Where’s the Butterfly? Switching ISPs: Easing the Pain Cheap Dial-Up P C M A G A Z I N E SEPTEMBER 16, 2003 www.pcmag.
Scorecard a ccording to the online research firm Nielsen//NetRatings, 63 percent of all home Internet users in the United States still connect via ordinary dial-up modem. This puts the country well behind such nations as Canada and South Korea. In Korea, according to that country’s Ministry of Information and Communication, over 70 percent of home users have broadband connections.
ON L I N E MORE ON THE WEB broadband connection, or to rewhatever is available. place an existing one, we proOur survey should help you To keep up with our ongoing coverage of high-speed vide an in-depth study of choose a service provider. We Internet connections, visit www.pcmag.com/broadband.
BROADBAND R E A D E R S U R V E Y R E S U LT S Likelihood to recommend Length of time with provider (years) 2.1 C B 4.8** C B 2.5 A A 2.5 C A 1.9 C C C 2.2 A C C B 2.1 A A A A A 2.6 B B B B B 1.4 A A C A A A 3.1 A C C A A A A 1.9 C C C C C C C 2.0 B C C C B C B B 2.5 A B C C A A A A 2.2 C C C C C C 2.9 C A C C C C 2.2 A A A A A 2.6 B B C B B 2.1 2.
ter’s tech support couldn’t diagnose the problem remotely. Charter scheduled a second technician to visit, but we had to wait a week for him to arrive. The company did knock a week’s worth of fees off the second month’s bill. When the tech arrived, he made a quick diagnosis—a faulty modem. Modem replaced, we had everything working in minutes, at download speeds ranging from 831 to 886 Kbps. Our technical-support experiences were, on the whole, pain-free.
T H E S U RVE Y BROADBAND What kind of access do you use? 12/01 33.6K modem or slower 12/02 If broadband were available in your area, would you get it? 81% 19% 3% 2% 1% 56K modem 49% 32% 24% Cable modem 30% 42% 50% If you can get broadband, why don’t you? DSL 17% 21% 22% I don’t need it Wireless local loop 1% 1% 1% Satellite 1% 1% 1% ISDN 0% 1% 0% Percent on broadband: 48% 66% Percentages may not add up to 100 because of rounding.
T H E S U RVE Y How much time do you spend online at home? What kind of home network do you have? Average hours per month BROADBAND USERS Wired 34% DIAL-UP USERS Wireless 34% Wired 15% Wireless 5% Broadband 61 Dial-up 43 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 Why did you decide to get broadband? Faster access to the Web None 32% None 80% File downloading or file sharing Total respondents with home networks: 56% Always-on connection to the Internet Reader survey scores Faster access to e-mail SATIS
BROADBAND Switching ISPs: Easing the Pain a ccording to an old proverb, “A move is as bad as a fire.” Your furniture gets damaged, possessions get lost, and you lose time getting organized. Moving to a new ISP isn’t nearly as disruptive, but it’s seldom problem-free. Here are some suggestions for making the transition as painless as possible.
dresses, with 5MB per box (the least here) and just 5MB to 10MB of server storage space for a personal Web page, and it lacks pop-up–blocking and parental-control software. Yet good speed, reliability, and service seem to be more than adequate compensation for the shortfalls. Testing the Road Runner cable service in Tampa, via cable provider Bright House Networks, we experienced quick download speeds and friendly customer support.
T H E S U RVE Y BROADBAND How do you protect yourself online? 93% 92% Antivirus software 47% Hardware firewall 60% 45% 30% 26% 22% Antispam software Avoid opening unknown/ unsolicited e-mail Not online enough to need protection Disconnect from the Internet when not using it 0% 3% Faith in my fellow humans 2% 2% 61% 61% 61% Other BROADBAND 5% 5% 2% 2% I was a victim of identity theft 2% 2% DIAL-UP 20% 40% tech support both by phone and by Web; although the reps were polite and ultimately
NETWORKING Innovative standards, technologies, strategies, and products will push networking—for the home as well as What’s I n the not-so-distant future, many of us will make regular video phone calls to farflung friends using our TVs. We’ll stream video through the air of our homes, glitch-free. Businesses will meld IP telephony seamlessly into enterprise-level applications and will have completely automated, intelligent storage systems.
Home Networking TVs, stereos, and PCs will no longer simply coexist; they will communicate. I n the next year or two, home networks, once reserved for alpha-male geeks and work-at-home computer professionals, will have moved into the mainstream. Take a walk through any consumer electronics store and you’ll likely find an aisle devoted to home-networking equipment. And broadband providers are supplying more innovative products directly to consumers.
NETWORKING Wireless Fully managed wireless networks and streamed HDTV are not far away. P oll a dozen experts about the future of wireless networking technology and you’ll get at least a dozen answers. But it’s a safe bet they’ll all agree that wireless networks in the near future will be based on 802.11 technologies. 802.11 refers to a group of wireless networking standards: 802.11b, 802.11a, and 802.11g (in order of IEEE ratification). The public began embracing 802.
Security New regulations and threats will force companies to rethink their ideas about IT. A lthough the tech industry has languished in the past few years, recent events, threats, and legislation have buoyed the area of information security. The events of September 11, 2001, highlighted the importance of business continuity planning. Code Red and Nimda demonstrated vulnerabilities in commonly used products. And violations of privacy and shareholder trust have led to increased government regulation.
NETWORKING Storage Intelligent systems and cheaper SANs will help businesses of all sizes. D ata storage has become both a critical corporate asset and a major IT management headache. Companies have seen their storage needs double or triple annually as they digitize documents and rely increasingly on messaging, e-commerce, and rich media applications.
NETWORKING Enterprise After years of anticipation, IP telephony and Video over IP will finally make a big splash. E nterprise networking encompasses a wide spectrum of applications and components, from backbone infrastructure to an end user’s desk. Today the question is often not how to expand the infrastructure but how to harness its full potential, making it efficient, productive, and able to eke out some ROI.
w w w. p c m a g . c o m /a f te r h o u r s T E C H N O L O G Y O N YO U R T I M E Traveling Music BY BILL HOWARD he average southern Californian wastes 136 hours a year stuck in traffic jams. The rest of us aren’t far behind. So why not give your quantity time on the road a little more quality? Here, we evaluate eight products that give you more choice in music via in-car hard drives and satellite broadcasting. You can use some of them at home or in your vacation cabin as well.
AFTER HOURS Kenwood KTC-H2A1 Here2Anywhere card–size remote? It does. The player provides virtually every feature you’d want if you were upgrading your existing car radio or CD player. The display is big and readable. The removable faceplate is a restrained black and silver, unlike too many replacement radios that are vying, Kenwood KTC-H2A1 style-wise, for the affections of the 2 Fast 2 Furious crowd.
AFTER HOURS A True Laptop Case Your search for the perfect laptop backpack may be over. The Higher Ground Gear Laptrap has a wonderful slim-line design, with plenty of storage compartments but not the bulk of other bags. The details make all the difference—reinforced stress points, comfortable handles, a breathable backpack harness, and an attractive duo-color design.
AFTER HOURS Consumer Tech Support QUICK CLIPS Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided By Marge Brown As a PC Magazine reader, you’ve undoubtedly received panicked calls from friends and relatives begging for your help in fixing a misbehaving PC. If someone’s abusing the privilege a little too often, though, you could kindly recommend a consumer technical-support service.
SPECIAL EDITION: THE DAFFIEST DIALOGS EVER!!! J By Don Willmott J Caught in the jaws of a dilemma. (Earthlink) J Yes...wait...no...wait...yes...umm.... J (Bonsai) J How reassuring! (Print Shovel) J J Some? All? Yes? No? Who knows? (VMware) J J (Unknown source) J J J Strange—the error’s unexpected, but they have a number for it. J This is why we’ve never been particularly fond of tip-of-the-day boxes. (Microsoft Visual C++) Yeah, yeah. Duplicates. We get it.
