The Best 1 E-Book Readers First Looks: How to Find NING TEN theNew | Your Lost SeeEee Apple Mac Mini | Cell PhoneAUGUST 2010 VOL. 29 NO. 8 VALS Pye Venue COVER STORY 50 WAYS TO MAKE THE MOST OF WINDOWS 7 Think you know everything about Windows 7? Well, there’s more to mastering this OS than just shortcut keys. We show you how to become a Win 7 guru with tips to make it run faster, look slicker, stay safer, and do more. Pc MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION AUGUST 201012 i FIRST LOOKS 12 HARDWARE Apple Mac mini (HDMI) Dell Studio 17 (Multitouch) HP Pavilion Elite HPE-210f Plus Quick Looks 18 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS Microsoft Xbox 360 (250GB) Motorola Droid X Kobo eReader Canon PowerShot SD4000 |S Plus Quick Looks 26 BUSINESS Lenovo ThinkCentre M90z Zoho CRM Professional Edition Canon imageFormula DR-2020U 30 SOFTWARE Skype 2.0 (iOS) Panda Cloud Antivirus 11 Apple Safari 5 Plus Quick Looks 72 THE BEST STUFF 36 38 40 60 64 67 TECH NEWS FRONT SIDE The fastest ISPs in the country; music piracy on phones; a cell phone for seniors; a new crop of e-book readers. OPINIONS FIRST WORD: LANCE ULANOFF JOHN C. DVORAK SASCHA SEGAN DAN COSTA SOLUTIONS INSIDE 3D HDTV Sure it's the coolest thing going in tech right now, but is it for you? SECURITY: FIND A LOST PHONE Here’s how to locate your cell phone the next time you misplace it. WORK: SMALL-BUSINESS NAS We round up some of the best choices for low-cost, high- performance NAS devices. AUGUST 2010 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 1 >FIRST WORD LANCE ULANOFF FAQs on Google TV he upcoming Google TV hardware and serviceis byno means the first to try to com- bine TV and the Web. WebTV (bought by Microsoft and now called MSN TV) predates it by 15 years, and Apple TV has been trying half-heart- edly to deliver the Internet to your television for the past three. Yet, with its industry-lead- ing partners, a proven platform, and suc- cessful demonstration of phase one, Google TV does have the scent of a game changer. I think it’s fair to assume many of you will be considering a Google TV purchase in the fall (in an anecdotal survey, over 60 percent of you told me you would). With that in mind, here are some common questions to con- sider before you make that investment Do | still need an IR blaster? Google's partners include Sony, Logitech, and Intel. Direct TV isin there, too, but there are no major cable or fiber TV companies announced as of yet. This means the cus- tomers of Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon FiOS, and other services will still need to use an IR blaster to control their cable boxes. If you're unfamiliar with <2 PCMAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION AUGUST 2010 this technology, here’s how it works: There will be a port on the Logitech Google TV box. It will accept a very long cable that will end ina tiny plastic device that’s actu- ally an IR transmitter. The transmitter needs to be placed in front of your cable box’s IR receiver, Without this, Google TV cannot change your cable box channel and set up DVR recordings. It’s unclear whether this will have any impact on Google TV’s guide search capabilities Is it network-ready enough? Google TV needs the Internet to work, and Sony will deliver Internet-ready TVs and Blu-ray players this fall (though there are other Internet-ready TVs and players for other manufacturers currently available) Theoretically, Sony’s sets and players will also integrate Google TV's set-top box capability. But even with a Google TV set-top box, you'll still need a local internet connection Wireless should work fine, but only if you have 802.1In. The slower 802.11g, which is what most people still have, may not be able to handle the HD video Google's promisingFor now, Google TV can access only what you have online, which is not bad—just a limitation. Will advertisers have too much control? Google described the wonderful new world that’s opened up to advertisers who, from a Web page on Google TV, can potentially switch to a favorite channel or record a show. This may not happen automatically, but | envision your TV doing some unex- pected things if you don't set up Google TV to control advertiser access. Can you access local content? Google TV seamlessly blends Web and TV content, giving you full access to online accounts, including Netflix, YouTube, and Flickr. What it doesn’t appear to do is offer you local access. Many people have most of their photos on a local PC or network attached storage. For now, it looks like Google TV will access only what you have online. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s a limitation you should keep in mind. Can it print? Google TV combines the Web and TV, but it certainly doesn’t appear to combine TV, the Web, and computing. Google hasn’t men- tioned whether you can save Web pages or print anything you see online to a network printer. At the very least, I'd like to send some of the Web pages | find to my local PC. Is it social? Google TV will let you use many of your favorite Android apps directly on the plat- form. This makes Google TV extensible, but it doesn’t ensure that you can interact with other viewers on a social level. Will the Android Twitter app work on Google TV? If so, will it allow you to Tweet a show's meta-info like day, time, channel, or even where you paused in a show you recorded? Now that would be a whole new level of convergence. What will that box look like? We still don’t know what the final boxes, remotes, and keyboard will look like. I’m hoping Google and Logitech steer clear of the bulky D-Link/Boxee design and go for something super thin and very black. The keyboard is another concern. Others have tried to put a full keyboard in the living room with little success. Actually, it makes sense fora full keyboard to be there, but storing 2 keyboard in the living room has never been an elegant solution. For that reason, I'm glad that Google TV will start off with the ability to use an Android phone as a remote. And I hope that in addition to that capability, any other phone you choose—especially one with a QWERTY keyboard—can be used as a full input device as well. That way we can all just stow our multimedia controls away in our pockets. FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER! Catch the chief's ‘comments on the latest tech developments at twitter.com/LanceUlanoft. AUGUST 2010 PC MAGAZINE DIGITALEDITION 3 >Subscribe to PAN eee rallies Digital Edition Biwi comprehensive Perret ce Bes all your Peet Ua small Pere technology solutions. esc ae detailed "how to" rele Plc) a oad) Rens CUS) Plt} winning columns from Pree Oc Cue subscribe wouron stenharie cheng Lance Ulanoff rotor hn conta, cae oo Vik. cbse re “oat Santa Gaming (a awawysrs Dan E: orwer en Evans (ON, herders), om Nicole Groham sas Merk Lamorgese, Whitney A, Reynolds sews oom Hark Hoch janenomren Chloe Albanese nder (printers scenners, rl Pier ry internet) meshes cherdwvare) John R, Delaney Bill Machrone. Ean inrenne Andrea But fh St, New York. NY 10 St, New York NY 100167940: phone, 800-356-2425, n go to www pcmagmesia.cor secrmcmaamen Asie) es rearmcer cer me nt Executive pinect Iden (Marketing and Sales Devel oucronitivsche tees Ce ap evelopment. Consumer/Smal ZIFF DAVISa New from the World ys Si The Fastest ISPs In the U.S. Who offers the quickest service in your area? By Ben Z. Gottesman Is your Web browsing as fast as it could be? Believe it or not, the number-one factor in page-load speed (or any kind of download) isn’t your browser. It’s your Internet service provider (ISP). After all, a Web page can’t finish loading until all the bits arrive. And while cable and phone companies compete to provide fast connections, 80 percent of Americans have no idea how fast their con- nection is supposed to be, according to a recent FCC study. The reality is that consumers do not expe- rience speeds anywhere near what their ISPs claim to offer, at least not when it comes to Web surfing. An ISP’s claimed throughput rates are for sustained downloads of an indi- AUGUST 2010 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 5 >