Consider Your Needs, Then Use This Guide to Buying a Laptop
With laptops outselling desktop PCs, Walt Mossberg offers a quick guide to the key factors you should consider when buying notebook computers.
Personal Technology
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KidZui’s Parent Plan Lets Children Explore in Safe Corner of Web
A new service called KidZui aims to offer kids a safe subset of the Internet where they can roam freely without triggering parental worry.
Hulu Is a Good Site for Online Shows, but Fare Is Thin
Hulu.com, a site that aims to be a legal, one-stop shop for streaming of TV shows and movies, is far better than the typical network or studio Web site. But the site’s offerings lack depth.
Apple’s Time Capsule Gives You Easy Way to Back Up Wirelessly
Apple’s new Time Capsule packs both a giant hard disk and a speedy Wi-Fi wireless router into one slender case, allowing computers to easily back up their hard drives wirelessly.
Multitouch Interface Is Starting to Spread Among New Devices
“Multitouch,” the iPhone-style interface that lets users manipulate lists or objects without a mouse or keyboard, is catching on. Rival companies are scrambling to add multitouch features to laptops and other digital gadgets.
Asus Offers Travelers Small, Mobile Eee PC, but It’s Too Cramped
A tiny new computer called the Eee PC is better than competing products in certain respects, such as text entry and price. But it still has too many compromises to pry most travelers away from their larger laptops.
Verizon’s New Voyager Looks Like the iPhone, But Software Is Inferior
Verizon’s new Voyager looks remarkably like the iPhone and even beats Apple’s product in certain respects. But Walt Mossberg says the Voyager suffers badly in the area where Apple’s phone shines: software.
Dell’s All-in-One PC Has the Guts, Design to Compete With iMac
Dell’s new all-in-one PC, the XPS One, is a stylish Windows Vista machine that runs well and won’t cost a fortune. If it didn’t have the Dell logo on it, the XPS One might be mistaken for a product of the PC industry’s design leaders, Apple or Sony.
With Online Services, Foreign Texts Can Get Lost in Translation
Free online translation services are in greater demand, but their results can be rife with syntactic and semantic errors — from the merely too-literal to the laughably bad.
Slacker Digital Player Handles the Drudgery for Busy Music Fans
A new digital music player called the Slacker plays music that is absolutely free, contained in preprogrammed Internet radio stations instead of individually selected songs and albums. But the device has some glitches.
Here’s a Mac FAQ if You’re Looking to Buy a Computer
Every average consumer using a computer should at least look at the Mac, suggests Walt Mossberg. Here’s a quick guide — a sort of Mac FAQ — to shopping for a Macintosh.
New Gateway Desktop Takes on Look of iMac, but Can’t Match It
Gateway One is striking like the iMac but offers smaller screens and lower resolution — huge factors in an all-in-one machine — for prices that can exceed the iMac’s, says Walt Mossberg. Video
Leopard: Faster, Easier Than Vista
Apple’s new version of OS X, called Leopard, builds on Apple’s quality advantage over Windows, says Walt Mossberg. Leopard is better and faster than Vista, with a set of new features that make Macs even easier to use.
Don’t Tell Your Boss, But There Is a Way to IM Despite Blocks
Internet-based instant-messaging services Meebo and KoolIM circumvent barriers to downloadable software and are far less vulnerable to viruses.
Apple’s iPod Touch Is a Beauty of a Player Short on Battery Life
The iPod Touch is an elegant and capable music player, but this cousin of the iPhone is short on battery life and lacks some important software features, writes Walt Mossberg. (Video)
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