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Intel Makes Leap in Device to Aid Impaired Readers

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:03:59 +0000

Despite all of the advances in digital technology, too few high-tech products have emerged to help the blind read books or other paper documents, or to make reading such texts easier for people with impaired vision or language-related learning disabilities.

A few years back, a breakthrough was made with text-to-speech software that could be installed on a specific mobile phone, but with limitations due to the phone’s small screen and buttons, and restricted processor power.

[ See post to watch video ]

Now, Intel (INTC), the giant chip maker, is attacking this problem with a new product: the Intel Reader. It’s a chunky, book-size device with a computer-grade processor and a large, forward-facing screen that can be viewed easily while its downward-facing camera is shooting text for translation into audio and giant text. It also has raised buttons that are easy to find via touch.

I’ve been testing the Intel Reader with books, newspapers, magazines, bank statements, menus and even cereal boxes. My results were decidedly mixed. In some cases, especially with books and certain magazine articles, it worked pretty well, often almost perfectly. In others, it did a poor job. I also found that it takes a lot of practice to learn how to aim the Reader’s camera properly.

However, an important caveat is in order. I have full, normal vision and no learning disabilities, so I can’t put myself in the place of someone who is unable to read paper documents, or who struggles to do so. For them, the limitations I found in this product might easily pale when compared with its liberating benefits. More information is at reader.intel.com.

When it worked as promised, the Intel Reader was a delight. It would start reading the text to me in under a minute, while displaying the words on the 4.3-inch screen in an easily adjusted font size that could allow as little as one word to fill the display. I also could switch to a view of the photo of the whole page, and zoom in to focus on a portion of the text. It holds multiple texts and has an easy interface with large menus that the machine can read to you.

But the Reader is relatively big and expensive. It costs a whopping $1,500 and is available from only a limited number of retailers who specialize in products for special-needs consumers. By contrast, the competing cellphone product, called the KNFB mobile reader, is much smaller because it uses a standard Nokia (NOK) mobile phone. It can be purchased through Amazon.com (AMZN), also for $1,500.

The Intel Reader

The Intel Reader is a special-purpose computer that weighs 1.4 pounds and is dominated by the roomy horizontal screen, with control buttons to the right and below. Along the bottom edge is a five-megapixel camera with flash.

The Reader’s second-most-prominent feature is a large, bright-blue “shoot” button, which occupies all of the diagonally cut upper right hand corner. You press this easy-to-find button twice to take a picture of the text that the Reader will then convert.

Both the text on the screen and the speed of the audio reading can be adjusted with prominent, raised buttons. Other buttons begin and end playback, and navigate through the menus.

The Reader uses the same Intel Atom processor found on netbook computers, and can hold 600 processed pages that you can transfer to and from a PC or Mac. It also can convert your processed pages into audio files for playback on a portable audio player.

The Reader can capture two book pages at a time. Intel also sells a $400 stand to make book conversion faster and easier.

In my tests, my biggest problem was aiming correctly. The Reader automatically corrects the curvature and orientation of pages. But in many of the items I captured, the first and last few words were either garbled or skipped. The company admits there is a learning curve to the Reader, and I did get better with time.

The Reader did a great job with pages from the new Ken Auletta book, “Googled,” and a fair job with pages from the first Harry Potter book. To my surprise, it didn’t stumble so much with the made-up words in the latter book, but with common ones like “magic.” In the book about Google (GOOG), the reader’s robotic voice kept pronouncing MySpace as “mizzpizz.” And it often pronounced the word “I” as “one.”

The device was excellent at reading a menu from a local bakery, even down to the tiny type, but it utterly failed to make sense of a simple summary statement from my bank, or the front of a box of Cheerios.

Newspapers were a particular challenge. The Reader frequently picked up fragments of adjoining articles or picture captions, or got completely flummoxed. In one case, it got permanently stuck trying to process an article. Intel says that was a rare bug it will fix.

On balance, I’d recommend the Reader, provider the user understands its limitations and is willing to tackle the learning curve.

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.

Motorola's Droid Is Smart Success for Verizon Users

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:10:06 +0000

Verizon Wireless customers tend to love the company’s fast 3G network. But many tech-oriented Verizon loyalists gripe about the carrier’s high-end smart phones, which haven’t matched the cachet and versatility of the Apple iPhone sold by AT&T (T). In fact, some Verizon customers have switched to AT&T simply to get an iPhone.

[ See post to watch video ]

But this week, Verizon (VZ) is rolling out a device that finally gives it a more credible alternative. This new $200 phone is the Motorola Droid and it’s the first Verizon model to run Google’s (GOOG) Android smart-phone operating system. I’ve been testing the Droid, and while it has some significant drawbacks, I regard it as a success overall. It’s the best super-smart phone Verizon offers, the best Motorola (MOT) phone I’ve tested and the best hardware so far to run Android. I can recommend the Droid to Verizon loyalists who have lusted for a better smart phone, but don’t want to switch networks.

Like the iPhone, the Droid is really a powerful hand-held computer that happens to make phone calls, and is a platform for numerous third-party programs, or apps. Currently, Android offers over 12,000 apps. That is just a fraction of the 100,000 apps available for the iPhone, but it’s well above what the newer BlackBerry or Palm (PALM) phones offer.

The Droid is also the first phone that runs the 2.0 version of Android, which sands off some of the rough edges of Google’s platform and adds some features—notably, a free voice-prompted turn-by-turn navigation program. Android still isn’t as slick or fluid as the iPhone’s OS, in my view, but it has some functionality Apple (AAPL) omits, including the ability to run multiple third-party apps simultaneously.

The Droid is a handsome, squared-off device with a gorgeous, huge, high-resolution screen, bigger and sharper than the iPhone’s. There’s also a slide-out physical keyboard. It’s only a tad longer and thicker than the Apple product. But it’s 25% heavier, which makes it less comfortable to carry around in a pocket.

The Droid also has a higher-resolution camera than the iPhone’s: five megapixels versus three megapixels. And the camera has a flash, which the Apple lacks. In my tests, pictures came out OK, though not dazzling, and videos I shot were quite good.

Motorola’s Droid

The Droid’s large 3.7-inch screen looked great, but it lacks multitouch features, such as two-finger zooming, and it seemed less responsive than some other touch screens I’ve tested.

Battery life is listed at a whopping 6.4 hours, and, in my tests, the Droid easily lasted through the day on a single charge. Phone calls were crisp and clear, and I never suffered a dropped call. Verizon’s network was speedy and reliable for Web surfing, email and social networking. I copied some songs and videos onto the Droid by plugging it into a computer, and all played properly.

The Droid, whose $200 price comes only after a $100 mail-in rebate, requires a minimum $70 monthly service plan for two years, and text messaging costs extra. It comes with 16 gigabytes of memory, in the form of a removable card, and can handle up to a 32-gigabyte card.

Unfortunately for lovers of physical keyboards, I found the one on the Droid to be pretty awful. It has flat, cramped keys that induce too many typing errors, yet lacks auto-correction. I found myself using the virtual on-screen keyboard, which was pretty fast and accurate for me, and did include auto-correction.

Another downside: The Droid’s screen has only three panels for displaying apps, versus 11 on the iPhone, and some large apps, called widgets, hog much of the space on these panels.

Like the Palm Pre, the Droid tries to integrate social networking with contacts, though in a more limited way. It handles Google’s Gmail and Facebook, as well as Microsoft Exchange for corporate email and data. A nice feature lets you tap a contact’s picture and get instant options for ways to communicate.

The Droid can do some cool tricks with a couple of $30 optional docks, one for the car and one for the desk or nightstand. When placed in the car dock, the phone automatically displays a horizontal view with large buttons, including one for the built-in navigation system. In my tests, this navigation system worked pretty well, even showing photos of certain intersections. But it also gave me a couple of bad directions, such as sending me the wrong way at a fork in the road.

When placed in the desktop dock, the Droid displays the time and a different row of large icons from when it’s in the car dock, including music and an alarm clock.

I ran into one odd flaw with my test Droid, and with a second test unit tried by a colleague. Neither could send a photo via multimedia messaging to either my iPhone or her BlackBerry. Verizon was able to send pictures this way to my iPhone from other Droids, and it suspects some flaw in our test units.

The Droid is potentially a big win for Verizon, Motorola and Google, as well as for loyal Verizon customers.

Find Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com

The CLIQ, Storm2 Join Long Parade of iPhone Threats

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 02:02:09 +0000

(See Correction & Amplification below.)

It’s raining smart phones. No, make that super-smart phones, the type of hand-held computer, like Apple’s iPhone or the models powered by Google’s Android software, that browse the Web well, have sophisticated communication functions and are made to run a wide variety of modern third-party apps. This holiday season, new super-smart phone models seem to be appearing weekly.

[ See post to watch video ]

So far, the king of this new field, in my view, remains its pioneer, the iPhone. Apple’s phone has its limitations, but its design, usability and versatility have kept it ahead. There’s a well-equipped iPhone model available for as little as $99, and the platform offers a staggering 85,000 downloadable apps. By comparison, there are around 10,000 apps for Android, 3,000 for the newer models of the Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry, a few hundred modern apps for phones running the latest versions of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Mobile software, and even fewer than that for Palm’s (PALM) Pre and its soon-to-be released little sibling, the Pixi.

But nobody is conceding the game to Apple (AAPL). A flood of new Android models is upon us, and RIM, which has a fanatical following for its BlackBerry models, is still potent despite the disappointment surrounding its first touch-screen model, the Storm.

Motorola CLIQ

I’ve been testing two new contenders, and both represent second chances of sorts. One is the revised version of the BlackBerry Storm, called the Storm2, from Verizon (VZ). The other is the first super-smart phone from Motorola, the fading former phone leader. It’s an Android-based model called the CLIQ, which will be offered by T-Mobile.

Here’s a quick look at these two new pocket computers.

Motorola CLIQ

The CLIQ is a hefty slider phone, with a touch screen on top and a slide-out physical keyboard underneath. It has a smaller screen than the iPhone or Storm, and comes with just two gigabytes of memory versus 16 gigabytes for the $199 iPhone. But the CLIQ claims six hours of talk time, an hour more than Apple’s device, and, unlike the iPhone, it has a removable battery and expandable memory. It also has a higher-resolution camera—five megapixels versus three megapixels.

It boasts all of the standard Android features. But what sets the CLIQ apart is that it’s built around the idea of consolidating all your communications and social networking, and making them easy to access. Motorola (MOT) does this with special software called Blur, part of which exists on the device itself and part on a special Motorola-run server.

Blur takes the form of special on-screen widgets. One constantly displays your own status on various services, such as Facebook and Twitter. Another, called Happenings, shows your friends’ latest updates on social-networking services, without requiring you to enter separate apps. A third, called Messages, offers a quick snapshot of current emails and text messages from all your accounts. Each entry in your address book also displays the person’s social-networking status and information.

In my tests, all of these Blur features worked nicely and proved handy, except that I couldn’t get it to consolidate both of my Gmail accounts.

My biggest gripe was with the physical keyboard, which I found cramped and hard to use. The top row is too close to the bottom of the screen and, on the bottom row, I kept hitting the symbols key when I was aiming for “M” or “N.” So I found myself constantly resorting to the virtual on-screen keyboard, which worked pretty well.

BlackBerry Storm2

The original Storm, RIM’s first phone without a physical keyboard, didn’t convert droves of traditional BlackBerry lovers. This was partly because it had an odd typing mechanism where the whole screen moved with each tap on the virtual keyboard. Also, the phone lacked Wi-Fi and, when held vertically, the device offered only a cramped on-screen keyboard with multiple letters on each key.

BlackBerry’s Storm2

The Storm2 fixes all those flaws. The screen now stays still when tapped, providing tactile feedback electronically instead of mechanically. This allows for faster, smoother typing. The new model also has Wi-Fi. And you can now use a full, albeit squeezed, virtual keyboard in vertical mode.

In addition, while the dimensions haven’t changed, the Storm2 looks sleeker and has a few user interface refinements, like an on-screen Send button.

Overall, I found the Storm2 worked well in my tests. Battery life was decent, with 5.5 hours of claimed talk time, and typing was much improved, though I doubt it will satisfy lovers of physical keyboards.

The browser is still inferior to Apple’s, Google’s and Palm’s. And the traditional BlackBerry interface cries out for a major overhaul in a touch device like this, especially when you add a lot of apps. RIM’s menu and folder metaphor seems tired on this device.

Verizon hasn’t set a launch date or price for the Storm2, but it’s likely to appear in November at around $200.

The super-smart-phone war is still in its early stages. There are more and even better devices on the way, and Apple will have plenty of clever competition.

Corrections & Amplifications

The Motorola CLIQ comes with two gigabytes of memory and the $199 iPhone comes with 16 gigabytes. A previous version of this column incorrectly expressed these figures as megabytes, not gigabytes. An earlier version of this column also mistakenly stated, based on a BlackBerry fact sheet, that the Storm2 will ship with two gigabytes of memory. Wednesday night, after the column was published, the company said the Storm2 will actually ship with 18 gigabytes of memory.

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.

A Windows to Help You Forget

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 01:02:03 +0000

In just two weeks, on Oct. 22, Microsoft’s long operating-system nightmare will be over. The company will release Windows 7, a faster and much better operating system than the little-loved Windows Vista, which did a lot to harm both the company’s reputation, and the productivity and blood pressure of its users. PC makers will rush to flood physical and online stores with new computers pre-loaded with Windows 7, and to offer the software to Vista owners who wish to upgrade.

[ See post to watch video ]

With Windows 7, PC users will at last have a strong, modern successor to the sturdy and familiar, but aged, Windows XP, which is still the most popular version of Windows, despite having come out in 2001. In the high-tech world, an eight-year-old operating system is the equivalent of a 20-year-old car. While XP works well for many people, it is relatively weak in areas such as security, networking and other features more important today than when XP was designed around 1999.

After using pre-release versions of Windows 7 for nine months, and intensively testing the final version for the past month on many different machines, I believe it is the best version of Windows Microsoft (MSFT) has produced. It’s a boost to productivity and a pleasure to use. Despite a few drawbacks, I can heartily recommend Windows 7 to mainstream consumers.

Like the new Snow Leopard operating system released in August by Microsoft’s archrival, Apple (AAPL), Windows 7 is much more of an evolutionary than a revolutionary product. Its main goal was to fix the flaws in Vista and to finally give Microsoft customers a reason to move up from XP. But Windows 7 is packed with features and tweaks that make using your computer an easier and more satisfying experience.

The new taskbar shows small previews of many windows and allows for larger previews.

Windows 7 introduces real advances in organizing your programs and files, arranging your taskbar and desktop, and quickly viewing and launching the page or document you want, when you want it. It also has cool built-in touch-screen features.

It removes a lot of clutter. And it mostly banishes Vista’s main flaws—sluggishness; incompatibility with third-party software and hardware; heavy hardware requirements; and constant, annoying security warnings.

I tested Windows 7 on 11 different computers, ranging from tiny netbooks to standard laptops to a couple of big desktops. These included machines from Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Dell (DELL), Acer, Asus, Toshiba and Sony (SNE). I even successfully ran it on an Apple Macintosh laptop. On some of these machines, Windows 7 was pre-loaded. On others, I had to upgrade from an earlier version of Windows.

In most cases, the installation took 45 minutes or less, and the new operating system worked snappily and well. But, I did encounter some drawbacks and problems. On a couple of these machines, glacial start-up and reboot times reminded me of Vista. And, on a couple of others, after upgrading, key features like the display or touchpad didn’t work properly. Also, Windows 7 still requires add-on security software that has to be frequently updated. It’s tedious and painful to upgrade an existing computer from XP to 7, and the variety of editions in which Windows 7 is offered is confusing.

Finally, Microsoft has stripped Windows 7 of familiar built-in applications, such as email, photo organizing, address book, calendar and video-editing programs. These can be downloaded free of charge, but they no longer come with the operating system, though some PC makers may choose to pre-load them.

In recent years, I, like many other reviewers, have argued that Apple’s Mac OS X operating system is much better than Windows. That’s no longer true. I still give the Mac OS a slight edge because it has a much easier and cheaper upgrade path; more built-in software programs; and far less vulnerability to viruses and other malicious software, which are overwhelmingly built to run on Windows.

Now, however, it’s much more of a toss-up between the two rivals. Windows 7 beats the Mac OS in some areas, such as better previews and navigation right from the taskbar, easier organization of open windows on the desktop and touch-screen capabilities. So Apple will have to scramble now that the gift of a flawed Vista has been replaced with a reliable, elegant version of Windows.

Here are some of the key features of Windows 7.

New Taskbar: In Windows 7, the familiar taskbar has been reinvented and made taller. Instead of mainly being a place where icons of open windows temporarily appear, it now is a place where you can permanently “pin” the icons of frequently used programs anywhere along its length, and in any arrangement you choose. This is a concept borrowed from Apple’s similar feature, the Dock. But Windows 7 takes the concept further.

For each running program, hovering over its taskbar icon pops up a small preview screen showing a mini-view of that program. This preview idea was in Vista. But, in Windows 7, it has been expanded in several ways. Now, every open window in that program is included separately in the preview. If you mouse over a window in the preview screen, it appears at full size on your desktop and all other windows on the desktop become transparent—part of a feature called Aero Peek. Click on the window and it comes up, ready for use. You can even close windows from these previews, or play media in them.

I found this feature more natural and versatile than a similar feature in Snow Leopard called Dock Expose.

You can also use Aero Peek at any time to see your empty desktop, with open windows reduced to virtual panes of glass. To do this, you just hover over a small rectangle at the right edge of the taskbar.

Taskbar icons also provide Jump Lists—pop-up menus listing frequent actions or recent files used.

Desktop organization: A feature called Snap allows you to expand windows to full-screen size by just dragging them to the top of the screen, or to half-screen size by dragging them to the left or right edges of the screen. Another called Shake allows you to make all other windows but the one you’re working on disappear by simply grabbing its title bar with the mouse and shaking it several times.

File organization: In Windows Explorer, the left-hand column now includes a feature called Libraries. Each library—Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos—consolidates all files of those types regardless of which folder, or even which hard disk, they live in.

Networking: Windows 7 still isn’t quite as natural at networking as I find the Mac to be, but it’s better than Vista. For instance, now you can see all available wireless networks by just clicking on an icon in the taskbar. A new feature called HomeGroups is supposed to let you share files more easily among Windows 7 PCs on your home network. In my tests, it worked, but not consistently, and it required typing in long, arcane passwords.

Touch: Some of the same kinds of multitouch gestures made popular on the iPhone are now built into Windows 7. But these features won’t likely become popular for a while because to get the most out of them, a computer needs a special type of touch screen that goes beyond most of the ones existing now. I tested this on one such laptop, a Lenovo, and was able to move windows around, to resize and flip through photos, and more.

Speed: In my tests, on every machine, Windows 7 ran swiftly and with far fewer of the delays typical in running Vista. All the laptops I tested resumed from sleep quickly and properly, unlike in Vista. Start-up and restart times were also improved. I chose six Windows 7 laptops from different makers to compare with a new MacBook Pro laptop. The Mac still started and restarted faster than most of the Windows 7 PCs. But the speed gap has narrowed considerably, and one of the Lenovos beat the Mac in restart time.

Nagging: In the name of security, Vista put up nagging warnings about a wide variety of tasks, driving people crazy. In Windows 7, you can now set this system so it nags you only when things are happening that you consider really worth the nag. Also, Microsoft has consolidated most of the alerts from the lower-right system tray into one icon, and they seemed less frequent.

Compatibility: I tried a wide variety of third-party software and all worked fine on every Windows 7 machine. These included Mozilla Firefox; Adobe (ADBE) Reader; Google’s (GOOG) Picasa and Chrome; and Apple’s iTunes and Safari.

I also tested several hardware devices, and, unlike Vista, Windows 7 handled all but one smoothly. These included a networked H-P printer, a Canon (CAJ) camera, an iPod nano, and at least five external flash drives and hard disks. The one failure was a Verizon (VZ) USB cellular modem. Microsoft says you don’t need external software to run these, but I found it was necessary, and even then had to use a trick I found on the Web to get it to work.

System Requirements: Nearly all Vista PCs, and newer or beefier XP machines, should be able to run Windows 7 fine. Even the netbooks I tested ran it speedily, especially with the Starter Edition, which lacks some of the powerful graphics effects in the operating system. (Other netbooks will be able to run other editions.)

If you have a standard PC, called a 32-bit PC, you’ll need at least one gigabyte of memory, 16 gigabytes of free hard-disk space and a graphics system that can support Microsoft technologies called “DirectX 9 with WDDM 1.0.” You’ll also need a processor with a speed of at least one gigahertz. If you have a newer-style 64-bit PC, which can use more memory, you’ll need at least two gigabytes of memory and 20 gigabytes of free hard disk space. In either case, you should double the minimum memory specification.

Aero Peek lets you see your desktop by making your windows transparent.

Installation, editions and price: There are four editions of Windows 7 of interest to consumers. One, a limited version called Starter, comes pre-loaded on netbooks. A second, called Professional, is mainly for people who need to tap remotely into company networks (check with your company to see if you need this). A third, called Ultimate, is mainly for techies who want every feature of all other editions. Most average consumers will want Home Premium, which costs $120 for upgrades.

The system for upgrading is complicated, but Vista owners can upgrade to the exactly comparable edition of Windows 7 while keeping all files, settings and programs in place.

Unfortunately, XP owners, the biggest body of Windows users, won’t be able to do that. They’ll have to wipe out their hard disks after backing up their files elsewhere, then install Windows 7, then restore their personal files, then re-install all their programs from the original CDs or downloaded installer files. Then, they have to install all the patches and upgrades to those programs from over the years.

Microsoft includes an Easy Transfer wizard to help with this, but it moves only personal files, not programs. This painful XP upgrade process is one of the worst things about Windows 7 and will likely drive many XP owners to either stick with what they’ve got or wait and buy a new one.

In my tests, both types of installations went OK, though the latter could take a long time.

Bottom line: Windows 7 is a very good, versatile operating system that should help Microsoft bury the memory of Vista and make PC users happy.

Correction: The edition of Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system aimed at business users is called Windows 7 Professional. This week’s Personal Technology column erroneously stated it was named Business.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

HTC's Hero May Be Your Scene

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 01:02:02 +0000

Super-smart phones based on Google’s Android operating system have been relatively slow to take off since the first one appeared a year ago. Despite Google’s iconic brand, they have yet to develop the strong bond with U.S. consumers achieved by the Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry or the Apple (AAPL) iPhone. And, after a year, Android has less than 10% of the 85,000 apps the iPhone now offers.

[ See post to watch video ]

But Android is beginning to blossom in the market for this class of device, which is really a hand-held computer that performs many laptop-like functions.

In August, T-Mobile began offering a new $200 myTouch Android phone. Motorola (MOT) will shortly launch a new $200 Android model called the CLIQ. And, on Oct. 11, Sprint (S) will start selling perhaps the most unusual Android phone so far, the $180 HTC Hero. I’ve been testing the Hero, a touch-screen phone without a physical keyboard that has some important distinctions from earlier Android models. In general, I like the Hero and can recommend it to Sprint customers, or others looking for something powerful, but different.

HTC, a veteran Taiwan-based maker of phones, has altered Android more than anyone else so far. It has been gradually developing its own signature software layer that sits atop phone operating systems. With the Hero, it has applied this software for the first time to an Android phone, and that’s what sets the Hero apart from its Android brethren. The latest, beefed-up, version of this HTC software is called “Sense.”

Sense includes handsome, large widgets with extra features that go beyond the vanilla Android experience supplied to everyone by Google (GOOG). So the Hero looks and behaves somewhat differently. For instance, a contact page in the address book application consolidates that contact’s Facebook and Flickr accounts. The music player and photo album look better, and the Hero with Sense can use Microsoft’s Exchange service to synchronize mail, calendars and contacts.

Sprint’s HTC Hero

Sense also offers something called Scenes—entire collections of sets of screens and apps, either canned or customized, that can change the phone software’s look and feel. With just a couple of clicks, you could switch between a work-oriented “scene,” that prominently features apps such as a stock tracker and your work email, and an entertainment-oriented scene filled with the music player, photo album and other apps.

As with Sprint’s Palm (PALM) Pre, the Hero’s price is a bit deceptive. To get the phone for $180, you must remember to mail in a rebate form worth $100. At purchase, you have to put up $280. On the other hand, Sprint’s monthly fees can be much cheaper than those for other carriers. You’ll have to pay at least $70 a month to use the Hero, the same minimum fee that AT&T charges iPhone owners. But Sprint’s fee, unlike AT&T’s (T), includes unlimited text messaging and unlimited free calls to any mobile number on any network.

The Hero’s hardware isn’t especially beautiful. It’s a dull grey, noticeably thicker than the iPhone, with a smaller screen and six buttons plus a trackball, which adds another navigation option to the touch screen. It’s the same length as an iPhone, but is a bit narrower and lighter. It comes with just two gigabytes of memory, compared with eight gigabytes on the $99 iPhone and 16 gigabytes on Apple’s $199 model, though the Hero’s memory, unlike the iPhone’s, is expandable via a hard-to-reach slot under its removable back cover.

One big drawback is battery life. Sprint is only claiming up to four hours of talk time for the Hero, versus five hours for the Pre and iPhone. But, unlike the iPhone’s, the Hero’s battery is removable. Another drawback: I sometimes found the touch screen unresponsive, requiring multiple pokes at an icon.

On the plus side, the Hero has a much higher resolution camera than the iPhone’s or Pre’s—five megapixels versus three megapixels.

It also functions as a video camera, and in my tests, both still photos and videos I took looked very good. Phone calls, even on speaker phone, were clear and strong, and the phone has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in addition to Sprint’s high-speed network, which in my view is better than its reputation. Web browsing was adequate.

HTC’s Sense gives the Hero seven screens on which to place apps, versus Android’s standard three screens.

And, in addition to the standard Android apps and the 8,000 downloadable apps from Android’s Market app store, there are a variety of large, beautiful HTC “widgets” you can use. The downside of these is that they can occupy an entire screen.

The most impressive widget is called People. It’s an address book in which each contact’s page features a scrolling bar at the bottom with icons that allow you to see that person’s most recent Facebook status, photos from Facebook and Flickr, plus emails and text messages she’s sent to you and recent calls between you. This is somewhat similar to Palm’s Synergy feature, which is also based around people.

Overall, I found the HTC Hero to be the best Android phone I’ve tested, and a worthy competitor to the iPhone, the BlackBerry and the Pre.

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.

New iPhone Is Better Model–Or Just Get OS 3.0

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:00:38 +0000

Apple Inc.’s iPhone has been a smashing success, redefining the smart-phone market and creating a new hand-held computing platform that has attracted over 50,000 third-party apps, or software programs, in less than a year. With its nearly identical sibling, the iPod Touch, it has sold a combined 40 million units since June 2007, when the computer maker plunged into the phone business.

But the iPhone is drawing increasing competition from entrenched smart-phone makers anxious to emulate the upstart. The most significant of these is Palm’s (PALM) impressive new Pre, which is off to a good start with an estimated 100,000 or so units sold since it launched on June 6.

[ See post to watch video ]

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.

Even in Test Form, Windows 7 Leaves Vista in the Dust

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 02:02:03 +0000

This will be a big year for new operating systems. Apple (AAPL) plans a new version of its Macintosh operating system, to be called Snow Leopard. Palm (PALM) plans an all-new smart phone operating system called Palm WebOS. But the new release that will affect more users than any other will be Windows 7, the latest major edition of Microsoft’s dominant platform.

Microsoft (MSFT) hasn’t announced an official release date for Windows 7, but I would be surprised if it wasn’t available to consumers by this fall. The company has just released the first public beta, or test, version of the software, and I’ve been trying it out on two laptops. One is a Lenovo ThinkPad lent me by Microsoft with Windows 7 already installed, and the other is my own Sony Vaio, which I upgraded to Windows 7 from Windows Vista.

[ See post to watch video ]

I won’t be doing a full, detailed review of Windows 7 until it is released in final form, but here’s a preview of some of the main features of this new operating system and some of my initial impressions.

In general, I have found Windows 7 a pleasure to use. There are a few drawbacks, but my preliminary verdict on Windows 7 is positive.

Even in beta form, with some features incomplete or imperfect, Windows 7 is, in my view, much better than Vista, whose sluggishness, annoying nag screens, and incompatibilities have caused many users to shun it. It’s also a serious competitor, in features and ease of use, for Apple’s current Leopard operating system. (I can’t say yet how it will compare with Apple’s planned new release, as I haven’t tried the latter.)

In many respects, Windows 7 isn’t a radical shift from Vista, but is more of an attempt to fix Vista’s main flaws. It shares the same underlying architecture, and retains graphical touches like translucent Window borders. But it introduces some key new navigation and ease-of-use features, plus scores of small usability and performance improvements — too many to list here.

The flashiest departure in Windows 7, and one that may eventually redefine how people use computers, is its multitouch screen navigation. Best known on Apple’s iPhone, this system allows you to use your fingers to directly reposition, resize, and flip through objects on a screen, such as windows and photos. It is smart enough to distinguish between various gestures and combinations of fingers. I haven’t been able to test this feature extensively yet, because it requires a new kind of touch-sensitive screen that my laptops lack.

But even if your current or future PC lacks a touch screen, Windows 7 will have plenty of other benefits. The most important may be speed. In my tests, even the beta version of Windows 7 was dramatically faster than Vista at such tasks as starting up the computer, waking it from sleep and launching programs.

And this speed boost wasn’t only apparent in the preconfigured machine from Microsoft, but on my own Sony (SNE), which had been a dog using Vista, even after I tried to streamline its software. Of course, these speed gains may be compromised by the computer makers, if they add lots of junky software to the machines. Windows 7 is also likely to run well on much more modest hardware configurations than Vista needed.

The familiar Windows taskbar is more customizable and useful in Windows 7. The program icons are larger, and can be “pinned” anywhere along the taskbar for easy, repeated use. There are also “jump lists” that pop out from the icons in the taskbar and start menu, showing frequently used or recent actions.

A screenshot shows several application windows on the desktop of the Beta version of the Microsoft Windows 7 software.

Windows 7 also cuts down on annoying warnings and nag screens. Microsoft notifications have been consolidated in a single icon at the right of the taskbar, and you can now decide under what circumstances Windows will warn you before taking certain actions.

Compatibility with hardware and software, which was a problem in Vista, seems far better in Windows 7 — even in the beta. I tried a wide variety of hardware, including printers, Web cams, external hard disks and cameras, and nearly all worked fine.

I also successfully installed and used popular programs from Microsoft’s rivals, such as Mozilla Firefox, Adobe Reader, Apple’s iTunes, and Google’s (GOOG) Picasa. All worked properly, even though none was designed for Windows 7.

But there are some downsides to Windows 7. First, you will only be able to directly upgrade Vista computers to the new version. People still using Windows XP will need to perform a more cumbersome multistep process. Microsoft is working on a method to help XP owners preserve all their data during this process.

Second, Windows 7 will eliminate some familiar bundled programs from Windows. Vista’s Mail, Calendar, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, and Address Book programs are being removed. To get similar basic, free, programs, you’ll have to download them from Microsoft’s Windows Live service, or use alternatives from other companies. Microsoft defends this move as supporting consumer choice and better coordination with Web services, but it does remove out-of-the-box functionality from Windows.

Still, even in its preliminary form, Windows 7 looks very promising, and could well help expunge the bad reputation of Vista.

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.

Friends and Family Have a New Way to Just Drop In

Nick Wingfield — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 02:18:03 +0000

Digital-picture frames have started to take off as a way for people to show off their stashes of digital photos in rotating slide shows. A growing number of frames even connect to wireless home networks so they can easily be refreshed with photos stored online and on PCs.

But keeping those types of digital-photo frames up-to-date with new pictures demands more technical skill than many parents and grandparents are likely to have. It requires, for example, rudimentary knowledge of how to configure a home Wi-Fi network or shuttle storage cards between a frame and a digital camera. Still, digital frames are a great way to keep generations in touch with, say, a far-flung child’s latest ballet recital or a football game.

Just in time for the holidays, the wireless carrier T-Mobile is selling a digital-photo frame that makes it easy to set up and to keep fresh. While I found the Cameo excels in its simplicity, it comes with a number of annoying drawbacks and a pricing model that will limit its appeal. It sells for a reasonable $99.99 in T-Mobile stores, but carries a hefty $9.99 monthly fee.

Still, Cameo is an exciting first edition of a product.

First, its strengths. The picture frame is as easy to operate as a cellphone, containing some of the same technical innards of a wireless handset. And each Cameo has a unique phone number, just like a cellphone, that lets anyone who knows the number to “dial” it up — sending messages containing digital photographs instead of voice calls.

Setting up Cameo is as easy as taking it out of a box, screwing a stick into the back to prop up the frame and plugging it into an electrical outlet. The Cameo has a seven-inch color display and one of the more attractive borders I’ve seen on a digital photo frame: imitation black leather with white stitching.

Users themselves can manually load images onto the frame from a PC by connecting it through a USB cable or by inserting a miniature storage card from a digital camera.

Cameo can receive pictures wirelessly two ways. The owner of the frame hands out the Cameo’s phone number to friends and family members, who then send pictures to the frame that were taken with the cameras standard on most modern cellphones. This method uses MMS, or multimedia messaging service, a communications standard normally used to share pictures and other media between cellphones.

Cameo owners also can give out an email address for their picture frames that is based on their Cameo’s phone number, allowing people to email images that they’ve downloaded to their computers from digital cameras.

The first time the frame receives a picture from an email address or phone number, Cameo asks the frame owner to push a button on the back of the frame to place the sender on an approved list. After that, all images from the approved source appear automatically on the frame — a method that at least keeps random people’s photos from popping up in grandma’s living room.

There’s a wonderful unpredictability to how Cameo works. Imagine all of the kids and grandkids in a sprawling family room in different locations being able to send snapshots to each other. This is possible now with photo-sharing sites like Flickr, but those typically require going to a Web site. Images on a Cameo just show up without warning on your kitchen countertop, living room or office desk.

I handed out my Cameo number to some colleagues and was delighted when their cameraphone pictures began trickling into my frame, including a shot of the New York neighborhood in which one of them lives, and an image of another colleague ice skating.

The Cameo’s screen, featuring 720×480 pixels, isn’t the highest-resolution digital photo frame on the market, but the pictures looked fine to me. You can do a slide show for any number of images, chose a fade-out or other transition, change the order of the photos and alter the display speed — holding a single image for up to an hour.

Unfortunately, the frame has a skimpy 64 megabytes of memory, and storage capacity isn’t expandable. There is enough room for only about 200 photos at maximum size. Once it’s full, you have to make room by manually deleting photos.

Another problem is that the frame currently is available only to existing T-Mobile cellular subscribers.

By far, the biggest turnoff is the monthly fee for the cellular service that delivers the pictures to the frame. There’s no limit on how many pictures can be sent to a Cameo under T-Mobile’s cellular plan, but $120 a year is a steep price.

The carrier says it will consider other pricing options in the future. Until it does, it’s going to be tough for most people to buy the Cameo, even for a beloved family member.

Walt Mossberg is on vacation.

Write to Nick Wingfield at nick.wingfield@wsj.com

BlackBerry's Storm Presses Into the Touch-Phone Fray

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:32:02 +0000

To its fiercest devotees, one of the best things about the BlackBerry is its carefully designed physical keyboard, which the skilled BlackBerry addict can play like a violin. These folks scorn Apple’s popular iPhone, whose keyboard is virtual and must be operated by tapping on the screen.

But, on Friday, Verizon Wireless and Research in Motion (RIMM), the BlackBerry’s maker, will do the unthinkable: They will introduce a BlackBerry model without a physical keyboard, one where typing and navigating require tapping on glass, just as users do on the iPhone. This new model is called the BlackBerry Storm, and will sell for $250 with a two-year contract, though a $50 mail-in rebate can bring the price down close to the $199 that Apple (AAPL) charges for the base model of the iPhone.

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Despite its lack of a keyboard, the Storm is a real BlackBerry in every other respect, with push email, corporate features and the familiar BlackBerry menus. In many respects, the Storm is a touch-based, large-screen version of the recently released BlackBerry Bold, which is the most polished version of a traditional BlackBerry. It is also the latest member of the new class of hand-held computers, the super-smart phone category kicked off by the iPhone last year and joined by the Google G1 earlier this year.

The Storm sports a large, high-resolution touch screen that fills most of its surface and automatically switches from portrait to landscape mode when the phone is turned. There’s also a forthcoming souped-up download store for third-party software, meant to be similar to the ones on the iPhone and the Google (GOOG) phone. And the Storm can even be used in European and other countries where most Verizon (VZ) phones don’t work.

BlackBerry Storm’s touch screen switches from portrait to landscape mode when turned, and aims to make typing on glass feel more like typing on a real keyboard.

However, the biggest innovation in the Storm is a clever feature RIM hopes will give it a big advantage over the iPhone. When you strike a key or icon on the Storm’s screen, you feel a physical sensation, as if you were pressing down on a real key or button. That’s because you are, in fact, pressing a real button. The entire glass display is one large button, mounted on a mechanical substructure that allows it to be depressed when pressure is applied.

The idea behind this feature is to make typing on glass feel much more like typing on a real keyboard, and thus to make the virtual keyboard, and the touch interface, more acceptable to people used to physical keyboards and buttons. This push-down screen also replaces the side-mounted scroll wheel or track ball on other BlackBerrys for activating menu choices and icons.

But, in my tests, this physical feedback feature, which RIM calls SurePress, didn’t magically turn the Storm’s touch interface and virtual keyboard into their physical counterparts. The feature does provide a more reassuring confirmation that a key has been struck or an icon has been clicked than the mere visual feedback one receives from the iPhone. But neither I, nor any of the several BlackBerry addicts I asked to try it out, considered typing on the Storm’s keyboard to be very similar to using the keyboard of a traditional full-sized BlackBerry.

In my opinion, using the Storm’s keyboard is much more like using the iPhone’s keyboard than a traditional BlackBerry’s. I found that I could type quite well on the Storm after awhile, but that a greater adjustment, and more practice, were required than with a physical keyboard.

The Storm also has a keyboard oddity that I found annoying, and that may put off others. It presents you with a full virtual keyboard only when you are holding it horizontally. When you hold the Storm vertically, you get a mashed-up keyboard, like the one on the narrower BlackBerry Pearl, which has multiple letters on each key. This keyboard design relies on software to guess which letter you meant to press. You can also switch to a virtual cellphone-style keypad that requires you to hit each key multiple times.

From left, BlackBerry Storm, Google G1, and iPhone 3G

This is a curious design decision. Once a company ditches a physical keyboard for a virtual one, it can create all kinds of keyboard variations. RIM could have offered a full, vertically oriented keyboard, even if it would have had smaller, more closely spaced keys.

RIM also failed to customize the Storm’s virtual keyboard for some common, specific tasks. For instance, on the iPhone, when you are typing in a Web address in the browser, the keyboard morphs to offer a convenient key that automatically enters “.com”. Not so on the Storm.

There’s another glaring deficit in the Storm: It lacks Wi-Fi capability. This means that, unlike on the Bold, the iPhone or the Google G1, if high-speed cellphone data service is absent or pokey, you can’t fall back on speedy Wi-Fi connections in public places. And, at home or in the office, you can’t take advantage of Wi-Fi connections that are often much faster than cellphone data networks.

The Storm has some important advantages over the iPhone. Its screen, while 7% smaller physically, offers about 13% higher resolution. Photos and videos look beautiful on it. It has much better battery life for phone calls than either the iPhone or the Google G1. While the latter two phones deliver just under their claimed five hours of talk time, in my tests, the Storm lasted a bit over six hours, which is actually half an hour more than its claimed 5.5 hours of talk time. And the Storm has a removable battery, unlike its Apple rival.

This new BlackBerry comes with more memory than the similarly priced base model of the iPhone — nine gigabytes versus eight gigabytes. And, unlike the iPhone’s memory, the Storm’s is expandable, via larger flash cards.

The Storm’s camera is much better than the iPhone’s, at 3.2 megapixels, versus just 2 megapixels for the Apple device. It also has zoom and flash, features the iPhone’s camera lacks. And, unlike the iPhone or the Google G1, the Storm can record videos. In my tests, all of these camera features worked well.

Also, the Storm has copy and paste functionality; MMS (a service for sending photos directly to other phones without using email); voice dialing; and the ability to act as a modem for your laptop. It also allows you to edit, and not just to view, Microsoft (MSFT) Office documents. All of these features are missing from the iPhone out of the box.

The Storm also has a better speaker than the iPhone, and a noise-canceling microphone system. Phone calls, even on speaker phone, were crisp, clear and plenty loud. Physically, the Storm is attractive but hardly svelte. While it’s about the same length and width as the iPhone, it is 15% thicker and 17% heavier — almost as heavy as the chunky G1.

The Verizon high-speed network on which the Storm runs is older and better-established than either the T-Mobile (DT) high-speed system the G1 uses or the AT&T (T) 3G network used by the current iPhone. Where Verizon’s high-speed data coverage is strong, the Storm flies.

But, because it lacks Wi-Fi, the Storm can be much slower at Web access than its main competitors. I tested these Web speeds in two hotels in Silicon Valley. In the first, where Verizon reception was strong, the Storm trounced the iPhone on cellphone data speeds, averaging over 800 kilobits per second to the iPhone’s 621 kbps over AT&T. But, when I switched the iPhone to use the hotel’s Wi-Fi network, it beat the Storm by 100 kbps or so.

At the second hotel, barely a mile away, the Storm’s lack of Wi-Fi hurt much more. There, Verizon’s signal was poor, and data speeds on the Storm averaged a horrible 96 kbps. But the iPhone on AT&T averaged 459 kbps, and on Wi-Fi the iPhone averaged 785 kbps.

My test Storm, which was a near-final model missing only a few minor software tweaks, was also sluggish at some tasks. It took noticeably longer than the iPhone to flip the first photo from landscape to portrait orientation, or to start the process of flipping through a series of photos by swiping them with a finger. And some other tasks were also slow. It’s possible that production models will be quicker.

Rim has tweaked the familiar BlackBerry user interface for the touch screen, and in general these changes worked well. You select the menu item or icon you want with a light touch, then press down on the screen to activate or confirm your choice. There are even a couple of cool new touch features. For instance, in a list of emails, if you lightly touch and hold one entry, the Storm shows you all messages in that thread.

But this combination of a light touch followed by a hard press on the large screen took some practice, just like typing did. It befuddled several BlackBerry veterans at first.

And some common tasks took more steps than on the iPhone. For instance, emailing a link from a Web page required four steps on the Storm, versus two on the Apple device. The Storm’s email system will be familiar to every BlackBerry user. It has the same corporate email features as other BlackBerrys, and I was easily able as well to use a BlackBerry Internet email account and to set up several personal email accounts, including Gmail.

The Web browser is much improved over the one in older BlackBerry models, and offers multiple ways to view and navigate pages, including one in which a finger moves a cursor, just as on a PC. But I found that panning and zooming in the browser was a bit slower and more awkward than on the iPhone. And, to make some Web sites work properly, I had to dig through menus to change options.

Using the BlackBerry desktop software, I was easily able to synchronize my calendar and contact data over a cable from a Windows PC. (There’s also Mac software for the same task.) But, unlike the iPhone or the G1, the Storm doesn’t offer wireless synchronization from consumer services, only from corporate servers.

The Storm’s multimedia software isn’t as fancy as the iPhone’s, but it’s better than the G1’s, and worked very well in my tests.

Overall, the Storm is a very capable handheld computer that will appeal to BlackBerry users who have been pining for a touch-controlled device with a larger screen. And it offers yet another good option for anyone who is looking to buy one of the new, more powerful, pocket computers.

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.

Shopping for Basics and Saving Money on Your Next PC

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:06:02 +0000

It’s time for my annual fall PC buyer’s guide. As always, this guide covers what average consumers doing typical tasks should look for in a desktop or laptop PC. That excludes heavy-duty gamers, corporate buyers, techies, or enthusiasts.

But this autumn, we find ourselves in a serious global economic slowdown. So I will focus this edition of the guide on how folks whose PC budgets have shrunk can still get something adequate for light use.

The guide below applies to both desktops and laptops, since the latter, at least in the consumer market, have achieved rough parity in performance and versatility, and are now more popular than desktops.

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Windows vs. Mac: I consider the Mac operating system, Leopard, to be faster, easier and more stable than Windows XP or Windows Vista. It isn’t susceptible to the vast majority of malicious software that circulates on the Internet. And Macs also include Apple’s superb built-in iLife multimedia suite. Macs can even run Windows, though that costs extra.

However, Apple (AAPL) has consciously chosen not to offer machines in the bargain category. The cheapest Mac desktop, the minimalist Mac Mini, which doesn’t even include a monitor, speakers, keyboard or mouse, costs $650 for a model with a hard disk I consider adequate. The cheapest Mac laptop, the base model of the prior-generation MacBook (which Apple has retained in its lineup) is $999.

Both are good values, mainly due to the software. And Macs can save you money over time. But if the lowest upfront cost is your objective, you can pay hundreds less for desktops and laptops from Windows PC makers.

Which Windows: Windows Vista is too often slow, and incompatible with older peripherals, such as the printers you might not want to replace in this economic climate. It also can cost more because it demands beefier, and thus costlier, hardware to run well than does the older Windows XP.

Budget shoppers should look around for a computer that still runs XP, either one of the dwindling number of models built with XP in mind, or one that has been “downgraded” by the manufacturer to XP. This downgrade “feature” can cost $50 or more upfront, but permits you to buy a cheaper machine.

Dell Inspiron 530

For instance, I recently advised two of my budget-minded friends to buy a low-end Dell desktop, the Inspiron 530, at Micro Center, a small but very good national chain of computer superstores. This Dell (DELL) runs XP, and has a low-end Intel (INTC) processor. The store is currently selling a version with a 250-gigabyte hard disk — more than enough for an average user — and 2 gigabytes of memory, generous for XP, for just $400 after instant rebate. You can get a similar good deal directly from Dell.

These particular friends, one on each coast, each bought a nice LCD monitor for $100-$150, and were out of the store for very little money. Since they only wanted to run Microsoft (MSFT) Office, browse the Web, do email and manage photos, this machine met their needs.

Another option is a low-cost machine with the Home Basic version of Vista, which also tends to cost less and to require less-expensive hardware than the more-common Vista Home Premium. If my friends had wanted laptops, I could have steered them to a 15-inch Acer Aspire laptop at the same store. This machine runs Vista Basic, with 1 gigabyte of memory and a 120-gigabyte hard disk, and costs $380.

You can often buy an even less-costly computer if you opt for the Linux operating system, but I still don’t advise this for average non-techie users.

Memory: For XP, or a Mac, I suggest 2 gigabytes of memory, but you can get away with 1 gigabyte for light use. For Vista, I recommend 3 gigabytes, but 2 gigabytes will do on a tight budget. You can always add memory later.

Hard disk: On a laptop, 160 gigabytes is the minimum I usually suggest, but you can get by with 120 gigabytes and upgrade when economic times are better. On a desktop, 250 gigabytes is easily obtainable, but 160 gigabytes will do.

DVD drive: If you never record DVDs, you can save money by buying a cheaper combo drive, which plays both DVDs and CDs, but records only the latter.

Processor: Look for a dual-core processor, but to save money, don’t worry about the speed, model number, or brand.

Video: A separate, or “discrete,” video card is best, especially for Vista Home Premium, but budget shoppers should stick with lesser “integrated graphics.”

Other features: If your home lacks the fastest “n” version of Wi-Fi, spend less for a laptop with the older “g” version. If you don’t need to do video chats or recording, don’t pay for a built-in camera and microphone.

Netbooks: If you don’t mind a tiny screen, cramped keyboard and limited file storage, these popular new mini-laptops can save you money. Some sell for under $400, even equipped with Windows.

Remember, pay only for the computing capabilities you need.

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.