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Apple’s new Time Capsule packs both a giant hard disk and a speedy Wi-Fi wireless router into one slender case, allowing computers to easily back up their hard drives wirelessly.
Lenovo’s thin and light ThinkPad X300 is an innovative laptop that will be perfect for many mobile PC users. But its file-storage capacity is low and its price tag is high.
The hard drive is being challenged by the solid-state drive for its role as the principal storage device in computers, but current SSDs offer much lower capacity and have much higher prices.
“Multitouch,” the iPhone-style interface that lets users manipulate lists or objects without a mouse or keyboard, is catching on. Rival companies are scrambling to add multitouch features to laptops and other digital gadgets.
Apple’s MacBook Air is a beautiful, amazingly thin computer, but one whose unusual trade-offs may turn off some frequent travelers. It’s impossible to convey in words just how pleasing and surprising this computer feels in the hand. But there’s a price for this laptop’s daring design: Apple had to give up some features road warriors consider standard in a subnotebook, and certain of these omissions are radical.
A tiny new computer called the Eee PC is better than competing products in certain respects, such as text entry and price. But it still has too many compromises to pry most travelers away from their larger laptops.
Every average consumer using a computer should at least look at the Mac, suggests Walt Mossberg. Here’s a quick guide — a sort of Mac FAQ — to shopping for a Macintosh.
Gateway One is striking like the iMac but offers smaller screens and lower resolution — huge factors in an all-in-one machine — for prices that can exceed the iMac’s, says Walt Mossberg. Video
Apple’s new version of OS X, called Leopard, builds on Apple’s quality advantage over Windows, says Walt Mossberg. Leopard is better and faster than Vista, with a set of new features that make Macs even easier to use.
It’s time for Walt’s annual fall PC buyer’s guide and, surprisingly, 10 months after Microsoft’s Vista operating system emerged, Vista is still the biggest puzzle in consumers’ computer-buying decisions.
Walt reviews Linux’s relatively slick Ubuntu variation and finds the alternative operating system too rough around the edges for the vast majority of computer users. (Video)
Edited by Walt and written by Katie Boehret, this is a guide to gadgets, web services and other consumer technologies.
Ethics Statement
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
