So, like a shark, Apple (AAPL) must keep moving. This week, it is introducing two new products designed to consolidate and increase its position as the leader in this new generation of hand-held computers. I’ve been testing both and I like them a lot, with some minor caveats.

One of the new products is a refreshed model of the iPhone itself, called the iPhone 3G S. It looks the same, but offers more speed, more memory, more battery life, and a few new features, including video recording and a better camera for still photos.

The second is OS 3.0, the third version of the iPhone’s operating system, which comes on the 3G S and also can be installed on all prior iPhones and Touches. It includes a much longer list of added features, some innovative and some long overdue catch-ups to other phones. These include such widely requested capabilities as cut, copy and paste; systemwide searching; a wider virtual keyboard; and a feature called MMS that allows users to send photos and videos directly to other phones without using email.

Apple last week also made a bold business move to complement these new products. It decided to keep making the current model, the iPhone 3G, and to slash its price by 50%, to $99. That’s an unheard-of price tag for a pocket computer of this power and versatility, and gives millions of additional consumers a reason to choose the iPhone instead of a competitor.

In my tests, both the new phone and the new operating system performed well, with a few small exceptions. I believe the two strengthen the iPhone platform, make it likely the iPhone will continue to attract scads of apps, and are good for consumers.

But I also regard these changes as more evolutionary than revolutionary, and I don’t think this latest iPhone is as compelling an upgrade for the average user as the 3G model was last year for owners of the original 2007 iPhone.

Current iPhone owners can get an improved product by merely sticking with their existing phones and upgrading to the feature-laden new operating system, which is free (it costs $10 for iPod Touch owners), rather than shelling out at least $199 for the new iPhone 3G S. And many new iPhone buyers can opt for the $99 3G model, which is not only cheaper, but also greatly improved by the new OS 3.0.

On the other hand, power users will crave the new model’s much-better performance, battery life, storage and other features. And some will want the new model because, unlike the current model, it’s capable of handling a new cellular network feature that, in the next few years, will offer double the current data speeds.

The new, free operating system is available for download starting June 17. The iPhone 3G S will go on sale June 19 for $199 for a version with 16 gigabytes of memory, and $299 for 32 gigabytes of memory. Those memory capacities are double the amounts offered on the previous model last year at the same prices, and far exceed the built-in memory on most competing smart phones.

These prices are for new U.S. customers on the AT&T network, plus current owners who are eligible for what AT&T (T) calls a “standard” upgrade. If you already own an older iPhone, you could pay $200 more to upgrade, depending on how far along you are in your two-year service contract and how much you spend monthly. But AT&T, stung by criticism in recent days, has just decided to offer the lower, new-customer prices at launch to iPhone 3G owners eligible for upgrades at any time up to Sept. 30 of this year, even if they were originally told they’d have to pay the $200 premium.

Before I detail the new features and how they worked in my tests, let me state up-front what the new iPhone and its new operating system don’t deliver. The iPhone still lacks a physical keyboard. It still can’t run more than one third-party app at a time, as the Pre does. Its otherwise excellent Web browser still can’t play videos created in Adobe’s Flash software, which is widely used on the Web. And it still isn’t available on any U.S. carrier besides AT&T.

Also, AT&T won’t enable MMS until late this summer, even though dozens of other iPhone carriers in other countries are doing so immediately. And AT&T hasn’t set a date by which it will offer tethering, a new iPhone feature that allows the device to be used as a modem for a laptop. Other carriers in other countries are allowing this right away.

Here’s a rundown of the most important new features of both the new hardware and software, and how they performed in my tests.

The iPhone 3G S

Speed: To me, this is the most important feature of the new iPhone 3G S. In fact, the “S” in the name stands for speed. During my week of testing, the new model proved dramatically snappier in every way than my iPhone 3G. Its processor is 50% faster than in the prior model, and it sports a new graphics chip.

Applications opened much more quickly. Web pages loaded far faster. The camera was ready to use almost instantly. And I never once saw the occasional, annoying iPhone behavior where you strike a key while typing and it sits there, seemingly stuck, before you can continue.

Cellular-data speeds were about the same, but in repeated testing on different Wi-Fi networks, the 3G S racked up speeds 30% to 50% faster than on the 3G running at the same time on the same networks.

Battery Life: On my 3G iPhone, I usually could make it through the day, but it was often a close call, with the battery indicator winding up in the red. By contrast, the new model did much better, never hitting the red zone and rarely requiring interim charging at the office or in the car, even though, because I was testing it, I was pounding it much harder than usual, making more voice calls, playing lots of videos and music, trying numerous apps, constantly downloading email from two accounts, and syncing two calendars over the air.

Apple claims about the same talk time for the new model as on the old, and about the same Web-surfing time over the cellular network. But it says the 3G S gets about 50% more battery life when playing videos or surfing the Internet over Wi-Fi and 25% more time — an astounding 30 hours — for continuous music playback.

Memory: With the new 32-gigabyte model, I was able to store over 3,000 songs, more than 1,600 photos, 74 videos, 67 applications, 400 emails, nearly 1,000 contacts, months of calendar data, and dozens of documents, and still have 5 gigabytes left over—more than most phones offer out of the box.

Camera: The new model’s camera has a 3 megapixel resolution, up from 2 megapixels, and has autofocus and a feature that lets you tap the screen to change the focus to an object or person in the background of a shot. It still lacks zoom or a flash, though it does better in low light. It also has a macro feature for close-up shots. In my tests, all of this worked, but I didn’t think the pictures it took were dramatically better than those on the old model, and it can’t compete with phones like Nokia’s (NOK) new $700 N97, which has a 5-megapixel camera with zoom.

Video: The new video recorder worked well, even in low light, and lets you post videos directly to YouTube, among other places. You can also trim your videos right on the phone. This all worked well, but the videos aren’t high definition, and pale in comparison to those on the latest HD model of the popular $229 Flip pocket camcorder.

Voice Control: By simply holding down the new iPhone’s home button, you can dial contacts and control music playback by uttering voice commands. The phone will even tell you which song is playing. Like most voice-recognition systems, this one isn’t perfect. But it worked most of the time.

Compass: I don’t consider this important for most users, but it did work when I was walking or driving. It can orient maps in the direction you’re heading.

Small Touches: You can optionally turn on a new battery indicator that shows a precise percentage of battery life left. The screen has a new coating that resists oil and grease from fingerprints.

Downsides: The new phone crashed on me twice during my tests. Once, the voice-control feature killed the sound on the built-in iPod, requiring a reboot. But I couldn’t replicate this problem. Another time, the phone froze while downloading a TV show. Apple blamed this on a prerelease server issue, and it didn’t happen again.

iPhone Operating System 3.0

Copy, Cut and Paste: Apple is late with this common feature, but it’s the best implementation I’ve seen on a phone. In a text page, you just double tap on a word, and it is selected with little handles around it that let you expand or contract the selected area. Then, you just click on a copy icon that pops up over the selection. To paste, you tap elsewhere in the page, or even in another app, and a paste icon pops up. Click that icon, and the selected text is pasted in. It worked well in all my tests.

The feature works a bit differently for some Web pages, where you hold down your finger over an area and it selects a whole block of text, like a paragraph, but still has the handles that allow adjusting the selection. It also allows copying and pasting photos. You can also just select a word or a section or a whole page of text and delete it. And if you want to undo a paste, just shake the phone.

Some Web pages and third-party apps don’t yet support this feature, but most do.

Search: Before, you could search only in the Contacts app. Now, there are search features in Mail, Calendar, the built-in iPod and Notes. And there is a way to search the whole phone at once. You just hit the home button, slowly, twice, and a special search screen appears. Type in any phrase, and it brings up every instance in multiple apps.

This is another catch-up feature, but it works well. For instance, when I searched for the word “Phil,” it brought up songs by Phil Collins, a note about Philadelphia, calendar items mentioning people named Phil or Phillips, emails to or from people with those names, and contacts for people named Phil or Phillips.

In email, the search function will even find messages that aren’t on your phone but that are stored on the servers of certain email services. For instance, I was able to almost instantly find emails from two years ago stored on Google’s (GOOG) Gmail.

One downside — in email, search looks for words only in email headers, not in the body of the messages.

Landscape Keyboard: In older iPods, the only built-in program that supported a wider, landscape keyboard, which is better for thumb typing, was the Web browser. Now, you can turn the phone horizontally and use a landscape keyboard in the Mail, Messages and Notes programs as well.

Find My iPhone: If you belong to Apple’s $99 a year MobileMe service, you can now locate a lost iPhone on a map on any computer, send the iPhone a message saying how to return it to you, and cause it to emit a beep, even if the sound is turned off. I tested this and it worked well. You can even remotely wipe all your data off the phone.

Voice Memos: The OS includes a Voice Memo app that lets you dictate reminders or other messages, and then edit and email them. I found it worked well.

Navigation: Another catch-up feature, turn-by-turn navigation with voice prompts, is also now supported. I tested this with a third-party app called Gokivo, and it did OK, though the developer admits to a prerelease bug I encountered.

Auto-Authentication: In the new OS, the iPhone can remember your log-in credentials for commercial Wi-Fi hotspot services, so you don’t have to enter them again and again. Unfortunately, in my tests with the AT&T Wi-Fi service, this failed repeatedly in several Starbucks (SBUX) shops. Apple blames a glitch in my prerelease phone’s SIM card.

Push Notification: To make up for its lack of multitasking, the new iPhone OS has a feature where third-party apps can notify you of new events, like a sports score, or a new invitation to an online game. I tried this with a game called TapTap Revenge, and it worked fine.

Stocks: The built-in stock application now has much more detailed data, including market cap, news headlines and price/earnings ratio for each stock.

MMS and Tethering: I couldn’t test these useful features because my tests were all done on AT&T, which hasn’t rolled them out.

Minor Touches: You can now move an icon among screens with one continuous motion, instead of stopping at each screen. And there are two more screens to house icons. You can finally synchronize Notes with your PC or Mac. You also can now maintain both calendars and contacts synced wirelessly with online services and those synced via cable with your computer. And you can play games and transfer files wirelessly over Bluetooth with other iPods or Touches that are nearby.

Bottom Line: Both the new iPhone and iPhone OS are packed with features that make a great product even better. But, for many users, the software may be enough of a boost to keep them from buying the new model.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090520/sharing-where-you-are-when-you-care-to-share/ http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090520/sharing-where-you-are-when-you-care-to-share/#comments Thu, 21 May 2009 01:02:03 +0000 Nick Wingfield http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090520/sharing-where-you-are-when-you-care-to-share/ There’s a tendency in the Twitter era for people to share copious details of their lives with online pals. One way to do that is through new mobile-phone services that let people share their physical locations using the tracking technology inside modern cellphones.

While these location-sharing services have some interesting possibilities, they also raise some disturbing implications for privacy — or maybe it just seems that way if, like me, you’re over 35 years old. Lately I’ve been testing a cellphone location-sharing service that I found simple, useful and non-creepy enough that I can imagine people thirtysomething and older using it.

Send a ‘Glympse’ to share your location

The free service is called Glympse, from a company of the same name that has designed it to share your location with friends and colleagues in small increments of time — glimpses, as the name implies, of your whereabouts. Glympse just released a test version of the service as an application for the G1, a phone offered by T-Mobile that runs Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system.

The company will release versions of Glympse for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, iPhone and Nokia (NOK) phones in the coming weeks. Users can download the Glympse software onto G1 phones through Android Market, the online clearinghouse for applications for Android phones.

I used Glympse on an iPhone and a G1 and, for comparison, tried out a couple of other location-sharing applications, Google Latitude and Loopt. When you start the Glympse application, it identifies where you are on a map using a combination of location technologies in cellphones, including GPS satellites, Wi-Fi hot spots and phone towers.

Your location isn’t shared with others until you “send a Glympse” to someone. The software allowed me to send a Glympse with my location for selected chunks of time lasting anywhere from zero minutes to four hours. Picking zero minutes shared only my location at the moment of sending, while selecting four hours meant the recipients of my Glympse could track me for that period of time, wherever I went.

The sender of a Glympse can address it by entering a recipient’s email address, or a mobile-phone number for a text message. Recipients get a message with a link to a map on a Web page. A nice thing about the service is that it doesn’t require recipients to have the Glympse software, though the experience is richer when they do.

Sending a Glympse can be helpful anytime a friend, family member or colleague is expecting you. You can send a Glympse that lets a friend know you’re stuck in heavy traffic (although it’s wise to do that before you’re on the road to stay safe and, in some states, to avoid breaking the law). Parents can insist that teens send a Glympse when they go out for the evening.

Bryan Trussel, the CEO of Glympse, sent me several Glympses with short messages like “late lunch meeting” and “headed home” to explain where he was going. On the G1, I could see an icon representing Mr. Trussel moving around a map as he drove through the streets of Redmond, Wash., including his speed. I was also able to see traffic conditions, which would have been helpful if he had been running late. Glympse gave me a similar view of his location through a Web browser running on my PC. On the iPhone, the experience was more static, forcing me to reload a Web page to get a fresh view of Mr. Trussel’s whereabouts. Glympse says it will fix this so users of the iPhone can watch someone’s location in real time.

I encountered a bug with the service when I sent a couple Glympses to my own cellphone and that of a colleague — both BlackBerrys and neither of which had Glympse software. Both Glympses linked to high-level maps suggesting I was somewhere in North America, which wasn’t very helpful, even if it was technically accurate. The company couldn’t figure out what the problem was, and it eventually stopped happening for me too.

Once a Glympse expires, the service no longer tracks the sender’s location. It will show the sender’s last known location for 48 hours after the Glympse expires. Glympse may some day use your location information to target advertising to you, but the company isn’t doing that for now.

I’m far more comfortable with this form of finite location-sharing than the approach used by other services. Google Latitude lets you share your location to only a list of friends. It gives you the option of turning location sharing off or, through a “city level” option, it reveals only your general whereabouts. Loopt similarly allows you to set options to show, or hide your location from all or some online friends. A feature called Loopt Mix lists strangers you can send messages to in your general vicinity — many of whom seemed to be looking for romantic partners in my area.

Despite these controls, I easily forgot I was sharing my location with these two services. This might be fine for someone who enjoys being tracked down by friends during a night out on the town or is diligent about changing privacy settings when they want to go stealth.

I’m too lazy to manage my privacy so closely though. I don’t mind giving friends a look at my location, but only if I know the invitation isn’t open-ended.

• Email nick.wingfield@wsj.com.

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http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090506/quickoffice-brings-editing-to-iphones-but-put-it-on-hold/ http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090506/quickoffice-brings-editing-to-iphones-but-put-it-on-hold/#comments Thu, 07 May 2009 01:04:03 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090506/quickoffice-brings-editing-to-iphones-but-put-it-on-hold/ I am typing these words in a full-fledged word processor on an Apple iPhone. It’s a third-party app that allows you to edit, format or create Microsoft Word and Excel documents, and then send them back to a PC or Mac where they can be opened in Word or Excel. Oh, and it has cut, copy and paste in its word processor — a capability long missing from the iPhone that isn’t due from Apple (AAPL) itself until this summer.

Devotees of older smart phones, tired of iPhone hype, will be quick to note this is no innovation. Devices like Windows Mobile phones, Palm (PALM) Treos and BlackBerrys have made these abilities available for years. But, for the 37 million iPhone and iPod Touch owners, it’s potentially a major step forward, closing a hole in a hand-held computing platform that is otherwise more elegant and versatile than any other.

This new app, called Quickoffice, has some nice features. Its cut, copy and paste function is very well designed. It can save files locally on the phone. It has a built-in email function for sending files to others, and it can upload or download files to and from a PC or Mac, or to and from online storage.

But there’s a catch. While Quickoffice, which is also available on other platforms, did work OK in my tests, it has some major drawbacks that keep me from recommending it right now. The product’s maker, Quickoffice Inc., acknowledges these and is working to fix them by summer. But, especially because Quickoffice costs $19.99, a Rolls-Royce price in the iPhone’s app store, you might want to hold off on buying it until the fixes are in place.

In particular, Quickoffice can’t simply load and edit any Word or Excel file you receive as an email attachment. The company claims this is a built-in iPhone limitation, but it’s still a big problem for users. Instead, to get files into Quickoffice for editing, you have to transfer them using a Wi-Fi network from your PC or Mac, or from the iDisk online storage feature of Apple’s MobileMe Web service, which costs $99 a year.

Also, amazingly, Quickoffice shipped without any automatic typo-correcting function or spell checker. For various technical reasons, it couldn’t even use the one built into the iPhone. So, you have to do a lot of correcting of typos once the file gets onto a computer. For instance, the first words of this column, as originally created in Quickoffice, read: “I am typing these words in a full-feledged word pricessor … ” I had to clean them up in Word on my laptop.

The Quickword app on iPhone

And, while you can view a text or spreadsheet file in landscape mode, you can do only limited editing of text documents in this mode, and no editing at all of spreadsheet documents viewed in landscape.

Quickoffice for the iPhone consists of three modules. One is Quickword, the word processor. The second is Quicksheet, the spreadsheet program. These two, also separately available from the app store at $12.99 each, can handle standard Microsoft (MSFT) .doc and . xls files, but not Microsoft’s newer .docx and .xlsx formats. The third module, called Quickoffice Files, merely transfers and displays files, but doesn’t allow editing or creating them. It handles a much wider variety of file types, and is sold separately for $1.99.

Cut, copy and paste is implemented nicely. You simply double-tap to select a word or triple-tap to select a paragraph. Small dots appear at either end of the selection, allowing you to expand or contract the selected section of text. Once your selection is done, you can then cut it or copy it, or change its formatting. To cut or copy your selection, you just choose cut or copy from a popup menu. To paste, you tap once elsewhere in the document, and then select Paste from a popup menu. You can paste text copied or cut from one Quickword document into another, but not into any other app on the iPhone. (Apple will add that ability this summer.)

Quickword is the better of the two main modules. It has an impressive suite of features, including the ability to bold or italicize characters, change fonts and colors, create bullet points, and undo or redo changes. All of this formatting was retained correctly when I transferred the files to a computer, and vice versa. Quickword doesn’t have every feature of Word on a computer, but its feature set is strong.

Quicksheet has 125 functions. It also does formatting of cells well, and has undo and redo. Again, it isn’t as powerful as Excel, but its capabilities are decent. Unfortunately, unlike in the word processor, I found some problems in Quicksheet. In one simple spreadsheet I imported, it failed to properly display text that stretched across multiple cells, and failed to do a simple recalculation that worked perfectly in Excel. Also, it lacks cut, copy and paste.

Getting documents into the app is a pain. Unless you have a MobileMe account, on either Windows or Mac, you have to type a geeky numerical address into a Web browser and then choose a file from your computer using the browser page that comes up.

Quickoffice is an OK start, but it needs a lot of work.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090506/quickoffice-brings-editing-to-iphones-but-put-it-on-hold/feed/ 6 http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090415/latest-mobileme-takes-out-glitches-and-eases-syncing/ http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090415/latest-mobileme-takes-out-glitches-and-eases-syncing/#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2009 01:02:04 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090415/latest-mobileme-takes-out-glitches-and-eases-syncing/ Apple Inc. last summer brought out a promising new service called MobileMe designed to synchronize email, contacts and calendars among any combination of its own Macintosh computers and rival Windows PCs, plus Apple’s iPhones and iPod Touch devices. It also offered online email, contacts and calendar, online photo galleries, syncing of Web bookmarks and 20 gigabytes of online storage.

The main idea was to replicate for consumers the kind of seamless, over-the-air email, plus contact and calendar updating, available to corporate users via systems like Microsoft’s (MSFT) Exchange.

The only problem was that MobileMe, which costs $99 a year after a 60-day free trial, and is available at MobileMe.com, was so buggy and ragged that I couldn’t recommend it. Apple (AAPL) pledged it would fix MobileMe. So, I have just spent a few weeks testing it again on multiple Windows and Mac computers, and an iPhone.

This time, my verdict is different. Apple has fixed all of the speed and reliability issues I encountered last year. In my new tests, MobileMe’s email was prompt and reliable. I was able to add, delete or edit a contact or calendar entry on one device, and see these changes almost immediately on all the others, and on the MobileMe Web site. The Web-based photo gallery, which can also house videos, worked fine on both Windows and Mac, and I was able to upload photos to it from my iPhone. The file storage also worked well, and now has a feature that allows you to share files too large to email. And each MobileMe account works with an unlimited number of computers, iPhones and Touches.

But there is one major caveat. While MobileMe works with Windows, it works better with Macs. The main reason for this is that, as I noted last year, its synced calendars and contacts show up in an odd manner in Microsoft Outlook, the most popular calendar and contact program in Windows.

Apple acknowledges the Outlook problems, which show up only in a mixed environment of Macs and Windows PCs, and pledges they will be fixed by the fall. The company says that if you are using MobileMe solely on Windows PCs, with or without an iPhone, the Outlook problem shouldn’t appear in most cases.

Apple’s MobileMe

There are other drawbacks for Windows users. While the Web version of MobileMe works fine on Windows in the Firefox Web browser, or with the Windows version of Apple’s Safari browser, Apple warns that it might not work properly in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7. The site worked well in the new Internet Explorer 8.

In both versions of IE, my tests showed that another MobileMe feature, bookmark syncing, didn’t work as advertised. Some bookmarks didn’t appear at all; others were listed alphabetically instead of in their original order. Apple is promising to fix this problem as well.

Some features are available only on Macs. For example, you can upload photos and videos to your MobileMe galleries directly from Apple’s iPhoto and iMovie programs. On Windows, you have to upload these using the MobileMe Web site.

The Outlook problem works this way. If you have a mixed group of Macs and PCs, and your Mac’s calendar isn’t named Calendar, its information won’t sync with the main calendar in Outlook. It will appear as a separate calendar that requires extra steps to make visible. Worse, if your Mac or iPhone address book contains subgroups of contacts, these appear as separate address books, which require extra steps to make visible and may not properly sync up the same names as the Mac contact groups.

However, MobileMe now finally does a fast, reliable job of syncing calendar and contact items. In my tests, I was repeatedly successful in doing this in a variety of scenarios. I added a new phone number to a contact on my iPhone and, a minute or two later, it was added to that contact in Outlook, in the Mac’s Address Book program and in the Web-based MobileMe address book. I then changed the contact again in Outlook, and again in the Web-based address book, and the changes appeared everywhere else.

The same process worked with calendar items. None of this required cables (though, for Windows computers, you must first download and install a MobileMe control panel that runs in the background). The only glitch I ran into, which Apple is promising to fix, is that when I switched my iPhone to sync with MobileMe, it wiped out all the custom ringtones I had assigned to particular contacts.

Apple’s $99 price may seem high, given that you can get some features for much less, even free. And MobileMe lacks some obvious features, like online backup or automatic syncing of all files. Also, there’s no way to create limited access to allow an assistant or family member to use just your MobileMe online calendar.

But MobileMe finally does give consumers the main email, contact and calendar convenience corporate users rely upon daily.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090415/latest-mobileme-takes-out-glitches-and-eases-syncing/feed/ 7 http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090401/network-hard-disk-by-western-digital-offers-easy-backup/ http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090401/network-hard-disk-by-western-digital-offers-easy-backup/#comments Thu, 02 Apr 2009 01:02:04 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090401/network-hard-disk-by-western-digital-offers-easy-backup/ External hard disks that can be attached directly to a home network for use by multiple computers have been around for a few years now. They’re valuable tools, making it likelier that all your files on every machine will be backed up, and allowing music, photos, videos and other files to be accessible all over the house.

But, unlike external drives that just plug into a single PC, these stand-alone, networked hard disks have tended to be techie products. Too often, they require a deeper familiarity with networking and file-sharing procedures than most folks possess. And some are aimed only at Windows or only at Macs, leaving out mixed-machine households.

Now, there’s a new networkable hard disk that, in my tests, proved so simple that anyone who can plug in a cable can use it, with no setup or knowledge, provided your computers have the most current operating systems. It works concurrently and seamlessly with both Windows PCs and Macs, and can even stream music to Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes program installed on either platform.

In addition, it can stream music, photos and videos to a TV, if you have a compatible add-on box attached, such as an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. Its contents also can be accessed over the Internet from any major Web browser.

The product is the My Book World Edition, from Western Digital (WDC). This second version of the World Edition sells for $230 for a model with a capacity of one terabyte (roughly 1,000 gigabytes) and $450 for two terabytes. It’s available from various retailers, or at westerndigital.com.

Western Digital’s new My Book World Edition

The My Book World Edition isn’t flawless. Its Internet remote-access feature isn’t great, and it’s more complicated to use on computers running older operating systems, like Windows XP or Apple’s Tiger. It’s also sluggish with older PC hardware. But for its basic functions — backup, centralized file storage and sharing, streaming of music and other media — the My Book World Edition is simple and speedy on relatively new computers with current operating systems.

I tested the My Book on my home network, using several Macs running Apple’s Leopard operating system, as well as Windows PCs from Dell (DELL), Sony (SNE) and Lenovo. Some of the latter were running Vista, some XP and one was using the prerelease version of the new Windows 7 operating system. I also tested it with an Xbox 360.

To start, I just plugged the My Book into an electrical outlet and connected it to my home network’s router with a standard networking (Ethernet) cable. Almost immediately, all of the Macs, and all of the Windows PCs running Vista or Windows 7, displayed an icon called MyBookWorld, making it appear like a regular hard disk on the computer.

Opening the icon revealed two folders, one called Download and one called Public. The latter folder contained three subfolders: Shared Music, Shared Pictures and Shared Videos.

Without installing drivers or any other software, I could copy files onto the My Book from the Windows PCs and Macs. I copied some Microsoft Word and PDF documents, plus several hundred songs, photos and videos. This copying process went quickly, almost as quickly as with a directly connected hard disk. And I was able to open, display or play the files on the My Book on all of my test machines, Mac and Windows.

Then, I opened Apple’s iTunes on all my test machines, and discovered a MyBookWorld entry on the left-hand side, from which I could play the songs on the shared drive. In the case of songs from the iTunes store, however, the machine had to be registered to my iTunes account.

Next, I installed Western Digital’s backup program on several of the computers. It comes in Windows and Mac versions, works automatically, and allows you, via a simple interface, to select which folders or which types of files you want backed up automatically. It worked fine.

For my tests, I then hooked up an Xbox to my TV set, navigated to the media section of the Xbox, selected My Book from a list as my media source, and was able to play on the TV all music, display all photos and watch any videos that were compatible with the Xbox.

I also tried accessing my files over the Internet from remote PCs and Macs, using a free service Western Digital offers called MioNet that merely requires a Web browser. It worked on Windows and Mac, but it was so slow as to be painful, so I would only count on it in emergencies.

I also don’t recommend buying the My Book for use with older PCs running Windows XP. With XP, the shared drive isn’t immediately visible; you have to install the included software to get it to show up. That’s not a big deal on a newer XP computer, but on an older XP laptop I tried, that installation was painfully slow, and so was using the My Book.

When used with modern operating systems, though, the My Book World Edition is the simplest, speediest networkable hard disk I’ve tried.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090401/network-hard-disk-by-western-digital-offers-easy-backup/feed/ 5 http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090318/microsoft-ups-ante-with-new-browser/ http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090318/microsoft-ups-ante-with-new-browser/#comments Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:02:03 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090318/microsoft-ups-ante-with-new-browser/ The Web browser is arguably the most important piece of software on a computer. No longer just a tool for perusing or searching for information, it has become, for many people, their principal communications medium, their photo album, their newspaper, social club, bank and shopping mall.

And, among Web browsers, by far the most popular is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, or IE, which comes on every new Windows computer. So when Microsoft (MSFT) changes Internet Explorer, those changes affect vast numbers of people, and the Web itself. This week, Microsoft is changing its browser in a major way. On Thursday, the company will release IE8, the biggest overhaul of Internet Explorer in years.

I’ve been testing IE8 for months, first using its prerelease versions and, more recently, the final version. I’ve found it to be a big improvement over its predecessor, IE7, and a much closer competitor to its main rival, Mozilla’s Firefox. IE8 is more stable than IE7, more compatible with industrywide Web standards, and packed with new features that improve navigation, search, ease of use, privacy and security.

Some of these features can’t be matched out of the box by its main rival browsers. For instance, related tabs are color-coded, the search field can show images along with text, you can get instant fly-out maps of place names in Web pages, and you can easily hide your tracks online from the prying eyes of advertisers.

But, in my tests, IE8 wasn’t as fast as Firefox, or two other notable browsers — the Windows version of Apple’s (AAPL) new Safari 4 and Google’s (GOOG) Chrome. IE8 loaded a variety of pages I tested more slowly than any of the other browsers, and it grew sluggish when juggling a large number of Web pages opened simultaneously in tabs.

For that reason, I can’t say that IE8 dethrones my previous browser champ, Firefox. If you’re a light-duty user and attracted to the new IE’s strong suite of fresh features, you might prefer it to Firefox. But if you would be bothered by the speed difference, or the slowdown I saw under a heavy load, Firefox would still be better.

The new IE8 lets you see images in results from the built-in search box and quickly switch sources.

Microsoft is making IE8 available, free, at noon EDT Thursday, for both Windows XP and Windows Vista, at microsoft.com/ie8. A version also will be tailored for the forthcoming Windows 7, the next edition of the company’s operating system. But that version won’t be available until the next prerelease iteration of Windows 7 comes out. It will also be automatically offered via the Windows Update system over the next few months.

Unlike its competitors, IE8 won’t be available in a Macintosh version, though I found it worked fine on a Mac that is running Windows alongside the Mac’s own operating system.

Favorites and Tabs

This new Internet Explorer looks a bit different, right away. It finally displays, by default, the old Links bar, now renamed the Favorites Bar. This is a toolbar near the top of the screen where you can store your most-used Web sites or folders containing groups of frequently visited sites, for convenient access. It’s like the Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox or the Bookmarks Bar in Safari. This bar was available in older versions of IE, but was hidden unless you turned it on.

And this Favorites Bar has a couple of nice features. There’s a one-click button that will add any Web site to the bar, as opposed to adding it to the longer Favorites list of less-frequently visited sites. And, to help fit as many sites as possible on the bar, IE8 has a command that automatically condenses the titles of the entries.

There are also big changes in the way tabbed browsing works. In IE8, tabs you open from links on the same Web site are grouped together and color-coded. And when you have too many tabs to see at once, you can click on a button to see mini images of the pages they represent, or, alternatively, you can get a quick text list of all of them.

In addition, when you create a new, empty tab, IE8 displays a number of choices inside the page. These include the ability to reopen tabs you’ve closed or to perform various actions on text you’ve copied, such as emailing or blogging it.

There also is an optional Suggested Sites feature, which pops up a list of other Web pages that might be similar to, or related to, the page you’re viewing. This feature doesn’t always do a great job, but when it works, it’s handy. For example, when I was reading the BBC’s Web site and clicked Suggested Sites, IE8 listed a variety of other British news sources I hadn’t bookmarked.

Addresses and Search

Like the other major Web browsers, IE8 now also makes smart suggestions about what you might be looking for when you type something into its address bar or its search box. In the address bar, these are based on your history and your Favorites. In the search box, they are based on suggestions from whatever search engine you choose to view in the box, plus your history. All of these suggestions are organized nicely. (If you are using Windows XP, you must install Microsoft’s desktop search product for all of these features to work.)

But the IE8 search box does two cool things the other browsers don’t. First, it allows search engines to show images in the search results that drop down from the box, something Microsoft calls Visual Search. With some providers, like Google, you don’t see images, at least not today. But with others, such as Wikipedia and Amazon (AMZN), images show up.

Microsoft’s new browser IE8 includes a feature called Accelerators, which can perform specific tasks on Web pages.

Second, and more important, IE8’s search box lets you switch search providers on the fly by just clicking on an icon at the bottom of the results list. So, for instance, you could type in Red Sox, see the results in, say, Google, and then without retyping your search term, almost instantly get different results from Yahoo (YHOO) or from Microsoft’s Live Search engine, by just clicking their icons.

Surfing Tools

IE8 includes a new feature called Accelerators, which can perform specific actions on any text you select in a Web page, often without taking you to a new page. When you select text, a light-blue icon appears near it. When you click on that icon, you get a list of options. For instance, you can translate the text to another language, email it, blog it or, if it’s a place name, map it.

Depending on which company’s services your chosen accelerator is using, these actions can happen right on the page you’re viewing, in a fly-out panel. For example, I selected the word “Beijing” in a news story, chose Map with Yahoo from the Accelerator list, and got a map showing Beijing in a small window atop the same page.

When you install IE8, Microsoft suggests you use its own set of accelerators, but gives you the option to choose from Google, Yahoo and other competitors. A full list of accelerators, search engines and other add-ons for IE8 is at ieaddons.com at the bottom left of the page.

Another nice feature is called WebSlices. This requires some effort on the part of Web page publishers and is on only a small number of pages right now. But it allows a user to add to her Favorites bar a constantly updating section of a Web site, complete with graphics, by just clicking a green icon that appears on the site. For instance, I added to my Favorites bar a slice that shows the top stories on digg.com.

Speed and Stability

Microsoft claims IE8 is very fast, but in my tests, speed and performance were its worst attributes. Using two computers, one running Windows XP and one running Windows Vista, I timed the loading of a half-dozen popular Web sites, plus two folders containing numerous news and sports sites. I repeated the test in IE8, and in Firefox, Safari 4 and Chrome. In every case, IE8 loaded the pages and folders more slowly than most of the other browsers, and in most cases it came in dead last.

In some instances, the differences were tolerable — a few seconds. In others, primarily the folders containing nine or 21 sites, respectively, IE8 took two or three times as long as one or more of the other browsers to complete the task. Microsoft conducted its own tests, which show IE8 winning similar tests, but I rely on mine, which I also use when evaluating its competitors. You can judge for yourself.

IE8 never totally crashed on me. This is partly because when one tab crashes, it’s designed to leave the others unaffected. However, in my tests on both machines, I found that IE8’s general operating speed — things like opening menus or switching among tabs — slowed down noticeably when I had 15 or 20 sites opened in tabs, even after they finished loading.

Security and Privacy

By contrast, IE8 shines in the areas of protecting you on the Web. Like other browsers, it warns you when a Web site you’ve reached might be a phishing page, designed to steal your identity, or a page that’s known to distribute malicious software. And, like others, IE8 allows you to conduct a private browsing session that won’t leave any history or other evidence on your own PC.

Color-coded tabs make it easy to organize searches.

But IE8 also has a feature, called InPrivate Filtering, that the company says will optionally allow you to surf multiple Web sites without leaving the kinds of tracks on Web servers that allow advertisers and others to know where you’ve been and what you did there. I was unable to test the effectiveness of this feature, but assuming it works, it’s a step forward in privacy.

Compatibility

IE8 had good compatibility with most Web sites I visited. But in some cases, it didn’t render a page properly. This is mainly because some sites were designed for older versions of IE, which used proprietary page-rendering features that made some sites look good only in IE. With the new version, Microsoft is moving away from those proprietary features.

To solve this problem, IE8 includes a compatibility button you can click that will cause the browser to behave like older versions of IE and render the page properly. You have to click the button only once for each page, and IE8 will automatically do it for you on subsequent visits.

Bottom Line

Internet Explorer 8 is a well-done advance on an important product used by most people to surf the Web. If it were faster, I would say it was the best browser currently available for Windows. But even so, it will be an improvement for current Internet Explorer users, and might even tempt some folks to switch.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090318/microsoft-ups-ante-with-new-browser/feed/ 7 http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090304/new-safari-browser-succeeds-at-speed-flops-on-features/ http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090304/new-safari-browser-succeeds-at-speed-flops-on-features/#comments Thu, 05 Mar 2009 02:02:03 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090304/new-safari-browser-succeeds-at-speed-flops-on-features/ Apple’s Safari browser has always been speedy and has introduced its share of innovations. While it is mostly used on Apple’s own Macintosh computers, with which it is bundled, Safari also comes in a Windows version and it is the browser on the iPhone as well.

Last week, Apple released a new version 4 of Safari, for Mac and Windows, that it claims is the world’s fastest browser, and that has a number of new graphical features Apple says will make it easier to navigate the Web. Safari 4 is labeled as a beta, and both the Windows and Mac versions are free downloads at apple.com/safari.

I’ve been testing the new Safari on both operating systems, comparing it with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. My verdict is that Safari 4 really is significantly faster than its rivals, but that its user-interface changes are a big disappointment. They either add relatively minor eye candy, are catch-ups to features introduced by rivals, or actually make the browser harder to use.

First, let’s talk about speed. I tested Safari 4 on multiple Macs, and on multiple Windows PCs running Vista and XP. I did these tests on three different networks — a fast fiber-optic service, a typical hotel Internet connection, and a relatively slow cellphone data card.

On each type of connection, I timed the loading of a variety of common Web sites, like Facebook, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and Major League Baseball, both individually and in folders that opened multiple sites simultaneously in tabs.

The results were striking. In nearly every case, Safari 4 was much faster than any of the other browsers. In many of my tests, it required only a third or a half of the time to load a given page, or a group of sites, as the other browsers did, even though all were running on the same computer and the same Internet connection.

I was especially interested to see that Safari 4 for Windows blew away Google’s Chrome in my tests, even though both browsers share some open-source technology managed by Apple but licensed to others.

In some cases, where the new Safari’s speed advantage was just a few seconds, that quickness may seem unimportant. But, when opening a large number of pages in tabs, it really makes a difference. For instance, on my fastest test network, Safari 4 for Windows fully opened a folder of 21 news sites in 43 seconds, while it took the new IE 8 over two minutes to perform the same task.

I wish I could be more enthusiastic about the other changes in Safari, but I can’t. Apple’s worst decision was to move the tabs that represent open pages to the very top edge of the browser screen, above all the toolbars and menus, instead of below the toolbars and menus, where they have traditionally resided.

This move was copied from Chrome, and Apple says it makes the tabs easier to discover. But I disagree strongly. Apple’s implementation, in my opinion, makes the tabs harder to see and use on a crowded computer screen and separates the tabs too much from the content in the pages they represent. This is a particular problem in Vista, whose translucent window title bars can make the tabs almost impossible to read.

In another unfortunate choice, Safari 4 has done away with the progress bar that shows how much of a page has loaded. The company says it did this because Web pages are now so complex that the bar was no longer fully accurate. But I believe users like to see where they are in the page-loading process, even if it’s only a rough approximation.

I am not alone in this sentiment. Already, Apple-oriented Web sites which normally defend the company’s every move are publishing instructions on how to hack Safari 4 to restore the old tab system and the progress bar.

The new graphical features are just OK. Now, when you open a new tab, without specifying a Web address, Safari fills the formerly empty space with a gorgeous graphical representation of your most-visited Web sites. You can simply click on any of these to go right to that page. It even indicates when a page has changed since you last viewed it.

This is nice, but it copies a feature already in Chrome, and I believe most people won’t see it much, since they usually know in advance which site they want to view in a new tab.

Apple has also adopted “cover flow,” iTunes’ visual method for navigating albums, for the bookmark organizer in Safari. It shows a preview of each page in your bookmark list. Again, this is fine, but not a big deal.

Safari 4 also catches up to its rivals by offering suggestions of what you are looking for when you type in a Web address or search term. This worked well, but not any better than it does in other browsers.

Finally, the Windows version of Safari now looks and works much more like a standard Windows program than a Mac program. It has traditional Windows-style buttons and behaviors, which Safari lacked before.

Overall, Safari 4 is a mixed bag. The speed is great, but the design changes range from mildly interesting to downright annoying.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090304/new-safari-browser-succeeds-at-speed-flops-on-features/feed/ 15 http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090211/sonys-vaio-p-has-sportscar-looks-without-the-power/ http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090211/sonys-vaio-p-has-sportscar-looks-without-the-power/#comments Thu, 12 Feb 2009 02:08:03 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090211/sonys-vaio-p-has-sportscar-looks-without-the-power/ Of the most famous computer makers, only two, Apple and Sony, primarily aim their products at consumers, instead of the generally conservative IT departments of big companies. So, it’s no surprise that these two tech giants often turn out especially stylish and daring hardware designs.

But Sony (SNE), unlike Apple (AAPL), isn’t especially skilled at software and doesn’t make its own operating system. This situation partly explains why Sony’s latest gorgeous, daring laptop, the shockingly tiny Vaio P, turns heads everywhere, but is pretty frustrating to use.

I love the look and feel and boldness of the design, but can’t recommend this sleek machine for most users because it is very slow and has poor battery life. Oh, and it sells for double or triple the price of other small laptops, commonly called netbooks.

The Vaio P is mainly undone because it comes with Vista Home Premium, the edition of Windows that is sluggish and a memory hog. Most competing small notebooks ship with the more nimble, but older, Windows XP. And the Vista problem is made worse by the processor inside the machine, which is an especially slow version of the Intel (INTC) Atom chip often used in netbooks.

While I was testing the Vaio P, which costs between $900 and $1,500, nearly everyone who saw it asked to try it. That’s because it doesn’t look like any other laptop I’ve seen. It’s long, narrow and very thin — with roughly the same footprint as one of those plastic folders waiters use to bring you the check at a restaurant. It can be tucked into the pocket of an overcoat or a pair of cargo pants, and comes in several handsome colors.

Sony’s Vaio P “lifestyle” computer

These unusual dimensions allow for only a small eight-inch screen, which is much wider than it is tall. But the Vaio P’s screen boasts very high resolution, so that it can display almost as much of a typical Web page or document as the more common 13.3-inch screens on larger laptops.

Sony also has done a great job with the keyboard on the Vaio P. Its keys are surprisingly large and well-spaced for such a tiny computer, with a wide space bar, and large “Enter” and “Backspace” keys. Instead of a touch pad, it uses a midkeyboard pointing stick.

And this little laptop is packed with nice features, including a built-in 3G cellular modem to supplement its Wi-Fi and free GPS for mapping. The P also comes standard with two gigabytes of memory. The $900 base model comes with a small 60-gigabyte hard disk; and the $1,200 midrange model has a 64-gigabyte solid state drive — which is more durable and uses less power. The top model, at $1,500, comes with a more reasonably sized 128-gigabyte solid state drive.

There are two USB ports, but the Ethernet and external video ports are relegated to a little module that snaps on to the power adapter. All models come with a quick-start system that brings up a stripped-down Web browser and media player without waiting for Windows to load. This is a boon, but it’s crudely designed.

Sony positions the Vaio P as a “lifestyle” computer, a companion to your main computer that’s almost as portable as a smart phone, but can do more. Unfortunately, once you actually start using it, that promise is dashed by its awful performance.

In my tests of the Vaio P, programs launched painfully slowly, delays were common and start-up and reboot times were glacial. I timed a reboot at nearly four minutes, and had to give up on an attempt to open 15 Web sites simultaneously in tabs in the usually speedy Firefox Web browser. Video playback was choppy.

There are some other problems that can’t be blamed on Vista. The speakers are worse than those on some cellphones. And the tiny mouse buttons are so close to the bottom edge of the keyboard that they are easy to hit accidentally. Also, I couldn’t get the GPS to work.

Using my tough battery test, in which I turn off all power-saving features, I got less than two hours, even on a solid-state model, suggesting a typical battery life of maybe 2.5 hours. Sony sells a double-sized battery, but it adds a bit of weight and bulk to the sleek box, and costs $129.

I also tested two experimental configurations of the Vaio P, which show that there’s hope for it in the future. One of these models had been tweaked by Sony to turn off many of Vista’s performance-sapping and power-hungry features. This box ran better, though still not great. Sony plans to offer a software download that will make these tweaks automatically.

Much better was a Vaio P with the forthcoming version of Windows, called Windows 7, installed. This version of Windows, likely to ship by this fall, made the Vaio P perform acceptably, despite its wimpy processor. Everything was much snappier, and reboot times were cut in half.

The Vaio P may be a beautiful device that’s just ahead of its time. Even if you can afford it, I’d advise waiting for the version with Windows 7.

• Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

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