Unfortunately for Google and T-Mobile, the iPhone grabbed nearly 16 percent of the U.S. smartphone market since its introduction, and its popularity doesn’t seem to be losing any steam. Can the G1 and subsequent Android smartphones capture a major share of the market? Only time will tell. It is admittedly a head turner, but so far the G1 (and/or T-Mobile’s marketing) lack the magic Apple has managed to infuse into the iPhone. This review compares T-Mobile’s G1 to the iPhone 3G.

Attractive devices

Both the G1 and iPhone 3G ship in a compact container that includes phone, charging/sync cables, headphones, and a product manual. The G1 ships with an inexpensive neoprene slipcase; the iPhone does not.

The G1 is narrower than the iPhone, but just a little thicker, longer, and about an ounce heaver (G1: 4.60 in. x 2.16 in. x 0.62 in., 5.6 oz.; iPhone: 4.5 in. x 2.4 in. x 0.48 in., 4.7 oz.). Both are attractive devices with a similar look when viewed head on. The G1 has five buttons on the face of the device below the screen. These include Call, End Call, Home, and Back buttons, as well as a navigation/selection trackball. The phone’s menus and screens can be navigated using the 3.17” touchscreen or the trackball. The iPhone has a single Home button, and practically all navigation and input is accomplished with the touchscreen.

The other major physical difference is that the G1’s screen slides up to reveal a thumb keyboard for text and messaging. When the keyboard is exposed, the display automatically switches to landscape orientation.

User interface and OS

The G1 home screen is both attractive and easily customizable. You can not only change the background image on the home screen, you can add and remove application shortcuts and Google widgets. Apple’s OS takes care of adding shortcuts to its Home screen when you install new applications, but you cannot replace the black background unless you “jailbreak” your iPhone or iPod touch (which voids your warranty).

Similar to iPhone, you can drag the G1’s home screen left or right to access the extended desktop screens. The default home screen on the G1 includes a clock, a search widget, and shortcuts to the phone dialer, contacts, maps, and Web browser applications. Starting an app is accomplished by tapping on shortcut/widget icons. Using either screen or trackball navigation works well, but I really liked the responsiveness of the G1’s touchscreen, as did my son Rudy (an avid iPhone user).

Web browsing and Gmail

The G1 uses WebKit, the same underlying browser engine that is the basis of Safari on the Mac and iPhone. The same snappy finger gestures let you move around, zoom in and out on a page, and move to multi-page views. The G1 browser works pretty much like any browser. As with Safari on the iPhone, URL hits start appearing as you type in the URL. Having an actual keyboard to type with is obviously a G1 advantage. The G1’s multi-page view is also a bit better than iPhone’s, because it can display four separate pages in a single screen. The iPhone can only display a single page per screen, and you have to gesture between them.

In my opinion, Gmail is the best e-mail Web service ever. This is largely due to the super smart features incorporated into it, like the automatic threading of common subjects to de-clutter the inbox. As you can see below, messages in an entire thread (all those re: re: re: that pile up in your inbox) are automatically displayed together in a convenient tabbed view. The only complaint I have about Gmail is its HTML rendering of file attachments, which often doesn’t work, especially PDF documents. T-Mobile or Google need to add some decent app viewing software to the platform.

Finally, the G1 still has no native Exchange client services built into it, and forces you to register for a Google account when you set it up initially. Apple added Exchange Server capability to the iPhone 2.0 software; the iPhone does a much better job of integrating with corporate mail servers.

Maps, phone dialer, and more

Google Maps and GPS were simple to set up and use. With GPS activated, you can triangulate your position by tapping on My Location in the bottom task bar. When I tried it, the location it displayed was off by a couple of miles. I also had some issues getting map updates in a few locations; poor reception may have been the reason for this. The street view feature is very cool, allowing you to pan and zoom down to street-level and then view a ground’s-eye panoramic view of the surrounding location (provided there is photographic imaging data for the area). The G1’s internal compass allows the handset to be moved around to change the street view direction aspect, but this was too jerky to be effective in my case, so I used finger gestures instead.

Like the iPhone, the G1’s contacts and other phone features are integrated into a single application. The screens for adding contacts or entering numbers are simple with large buttons and text fields, and I doubt anyone would have any issues using the phone. The G1 has the advantage of allowing you to enter and edit contact information using a hardware keyboard while the screen is rotated in landscape mode. The G1 phone worked quite well, and the handset speaker produced a clear sound during calls.

The G1 also includes an application for T-Mobile’s popular MyFaves rate plan, which will give you unlimited calling to five numbers you specify as your MyFaves. My son laments not having this plan option for his AT&T iPhone. The G1 home screen has a prominent shortcut to the MyFaves application. Select your “faves” numbers with care, because you can only change the numbers in your “faves” once per calendar month.

The G1 has a built-in 3.2 megapixel camera that takes still images, but not video. The iPhone’s 2 megapixel camera is also still image only. Lack of video capture is a weakness on both devices; a camera phone should be able to take short video clips and photos, and have an application to easily post them to the Web. Like the iPhone, the G1 does have an application that will play YouTube videos, but no other video player is available as of this writing. The iPhone can play downloaded or converted video content.

The photos taken by the G1 are decent, but the application is slow to start and sluggish to refresh. The picture app, much like the Photos app in iPhone, makes rifling through your saved photos a cinch.

Still the winner—the iPhone

A few other G1 features are definitely worth mentioning. Unlike the iPhone, the G1 has a microSD card slot and ships with a 1GB microSD card. This makes it easier to increase your file storage capability and move photos, music, and other files between the G1 and another computer. However, the G1 does not have the massive internal storage of the iPhone.

Also, the Android OS is not restricted to running a single application at a time. You can, for example, have a chat running in the background while using the Web browser. The G1’s browser also supports Google Gears, which provides Web apps an off-line capability. These features did not always perform as advertised on my eval unit, however, like the Android itself, they should be considered works-in-progress.

I used the G1 phone as my personal phone for the week I had it, and I played with the Android emulator for a couple of weeks before that. Although there are some problems that need to be ironed out, the truth is that I liked the G1 a lot. If I was looking for a phone/messaging platform that integrates well with Google services and applications, then I might consider the G1. But as things are now, I would not ditch an Apple iPhone for the G1.

The iPhone (and iPod Touch) are easier-to-use than the G1. Not only is the Apple user interface (UI) more unified and intuitive, it’s more stable. Apple’s tighter control over application development and UI lowers the chances of installing an application that misbehaves. If you want a well-designed, and reliable smartphone for both corporate and personal use (with all the trimmings), the choice is still the Apple iPhone.

Why so much? We have two adults and two adolescents. That’s four cell phones and lots of text messages. We also have two landlines—one for the family and the other for my home office.

Like just about everyone else these days, I need to save money any way I can, so I researched how to lower our telephone expenses. Here’s how I did it, and how you can do the same.

By reviewing your phone bills for unnecessary options and by using VoIP for long-distance calls, you can reduce your telephone expenses.

Focus on Cell Phones

Cell phones are the biggest expense in our family—and probably in your household, too. Our bills tally more than $160 most months.

But before you can reduce your cell phone costs, you need to know what you’re paying for. Start by examining your last cell bill, but it won’t be easy—our most recent Verizon bill ran 34 pages and required a translator.

I found more information, in easier-to-read form, on Verizon’s Web site. If you’re a Verizon user, you can log in to the site with your user name and password. Click the My Bill tab, stay on the Bill Summary tab, and click the Voice link. A pop-up will identify how many minutes each family member used during that month, plus the total. You can check other past bills, as well.

This information led me to an important discovery: Our family was regularly using 500 to 600 anytime minutes per month—far less than the 1400 we were paying for. Right there was a way to save money. But how much? That wasn’t on the bill.

This brings us to the translator I mentioned earlier. To obtain really detailed cost information, you have to call your carrier and slog through push-button hell until you reach an actual, knowledgeable human being.

The human being I reached (who was very nice and who understood my need to cut expenses) told me that I would save $20 a month by going down to 700 minutes. She said that I could save another $30 by eliminating our unlimited texting.

Taking $20 oa a $160 telephone bill may not sound like much, but it’s a start. You can also reduce your cell phone costs by attacking the usage charges that vary every month. Here are a few tips.

Keep an eye on the minutes: Most companies give you several ways to track the minutes you’ve used during a billing cycle. For example, Verizon users can dial #646 for a free text message.

Block music downloads and applications: Kids may learn that they can download music and play games on their phone, but they don’t consider that it will show up on the phone bill. And anyone can accidentally access the Internet and incur a charge.

Shop for better rates: Comparing plans is easy, but moving an entire family to a new carrier can be expensive. If you’ve added family members to your current plan at different times, each phone number may have a different contract end date, which means that moving en masse to another carrier would incur multiple termination fees. For a family of four, the charges could run into hundreds of dollars. The solution? Don’t make changes (that is, stick with your current phones) until everyone’s contract expires. Then everyone will be in sync.

Consider a prepaid plan: If you use fewer than 200 minutes a month, a prepaid plan is probably the best option.

Watch who you call: Toll-free (800) numbers aren’t tollfree when called from a cell phone, except on weekends. And international calls, even to Canada, are outrageously expensive. But calls to other cell phones attached to the same carrier may be unlimited.

Make sure everyone knows the rules: Ban long, casual phone calls before 9:00 p.m. on weekdays (or whenever your service’s peak time ends). Keep texting to a minimum, too. (I admit that we had to give up on that one.)

Keep the Land line?

Here’s a big question: If you have cell phones, do you still need a landline? A lot of people don’t bother with them.

And yet my family has two landline phones. We keep the home phone because my wife doesn’t want to give it up and because she’s reluctant to make our friends learn a new phone number for personal calls. Meanwhile, I need my home-office phone so that I can keep my work and home lives separate. I give my office number to all sorts of people that I wouldn’t want to share my home or cell numbers with.

Despite what some folks think, you don’t need a landline to be able to make 911 calls. Cell phones work just fine in an emergency. And if the electricity goes out, they are actually better than most of today’s landline phones, which require AC power.

It’s true that a landline gives you unlimited local, incoming, and toll-free calls, and lower per-minute charges in many situations. And another consideration is DSL, which comes over the phone line. If that’s your source for Internet access, you’ll have to switch either to cable service or to a socalled naked DSL account that doesn’t involve analog phone service. Either alternative would be costlier. AT&T would charge me $10 a month more for the DSL package I have now if our house were stripped of landline phone service.

So if you intend to keep your landline, how do you lower its costs?

Examine your bill—both local and long distance—for extra, optional charges. If you’re unsure what a charge means, don’t hesitate to call the phone company and ask.

I found a few things on our bills that once must have seemed like good ideas—but no longer do. On our local bills, for instance, we were being charged $7 each month for something called Wire- Pro, which is insurance to cover home wiring problems. As is true of an extended warranty on a new TV set, not having it is something of a gamble, but the money saved is worth the risk.

On the long-distance bill, we were paying $9 a month to lower our national and international by-the-minute fees. But even with the higher fees in place, we weren’t making enough long-distance calls to total $9 a month.

That’s $16 saved monthly, as long as our wires hold out and we don’t go overboard on long-distance calls.

Into the VoIP

Luckily, we have another option for long-distance calls: Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). It’s dirt-cheap, with nearly unlimited minutes.

Once too difficult and unpleasant to listen to, VoIP now offers improved quality and makes a great alternative to landlines or a good supplement to cell phones. And you’re not limited to talking with other VoIP users.

Not that it’s a total win-win option. The audio is improved, but it still sounds worse than that of a landline. And you must either keep a computer on to make and receive phone calls or use special hardware.

Despite these various drawbacks, VoIP seemed like a good alternative to my landline office phone. I looked at two very different services.

You probably think of Skype as a free service for talking and instant messaging with other Skype users, possibly with video. That’s all the free service does, but for a price Skype will connect you to telephones all over the world, and it’ll give you a phone number so other people can call you.

If you don’t phone internationally a lot, Skype’s most attractive offer gives you unlimited calls within the United States and Canada for $3 a month, or $30 a year. Well, sort of: It isn’t really unlimited. You get 10,000 minutes per month, which could be a problem if you’re on the phone more than 6 hours a day. And it isn’t really $30 a year if you want to use it to replace a landline. Maintaining a real phone number costs you another $30 a year, and voicemail $20 more. But that works out to an overall monthly average of less than $7—still a tempting rate.

Skype’s Limitations

Unfortunately there are bigger issues. For one thing, Skype offers no 911 emergency support, though that shouldn’t be a problem if you have a cell phone. In addition, you can’t simply plug a regular phone into Skype. To get around that problem, you can install Skype’s free software on your PC and plug in a microphone (or better yet, a headset); of course, you will have to keep your PC on all the time to receive calls. Alternatively you can buy a stand-alone Skype phone that connects to your computer (which means that you still have to leave it on) or to the Internet directly.

I tried two different Logitech USB headsets, one wired, the other wireless. Both worked. I also tried Belkin’s cell-like Wi-Fi phone, which currently sells at Skype’s site for $130. I liked it de spite its quirks (it tends to make odd sounds as it finds and loses signals), but it doesn’t work with hotspots that require Web authentication, such as at Starbucks coffeehouses.

Also, Skype’s technical support is all but nonexistent. You don’t get any phone or chat support, and the service doesn’t seem to answer e-mail queries quickly, either if it answers them at all.

The biggest problem for  people who would like to use Skype as a landline replacement involves the selection of phone numbers. You can’t transfer your existing number, and you may not be able to get a new number in your area code. But keep trying; on my second attempt, the service reported that it did have some phone numbers in my area code available.

Phone Power, another VoIP provider, offers a more landline-like experience than Skype. You can use your regular phone and transfer your existing phone number to the Phone Power system. But this service is nowhere near as cheap as Skype’s is, and I found setting it up to be quite a challenge.

When you sign up, Phone Power sends you a gadget to daisy-chain between your modem and your router (you can plug it directly into the router if the preferred setup doesn’t work). Then you plug your phone into the gadget and use the phone as you normally would. It includes voicemail (which you can have forwarded to your e-mail address) and 911.

The best plan (3000 outgoing minutes, unlimited incoming) is $23 a month aS er the discounted first three months—considerably more than Skype, but less than a regular phone with voicemail and long-distance fees.

Setup Hassles

During my setup of Phone Power, I would have given up if not for the company’s excellent tech-support staff. I talked to several support representatives as we struggled to get both the phone signal and my Internet connection working. They all proved to be both polite and knowledgeable, and were truly concerned with helping me fix these glitches.

Nevertheless, despite the phone number problem and the lack of support, I’m going with Skype for my office phone. Not only is Skype cheaper, but having an office phone that travels with my computer suits my work habits.

After all those changes, how much have I cut our phone bills? Halving the allocation of cell phone minutes saves us $20 a month. Dropping the landline extras is another $16. Switching to Skype would save me about $33. In the end, that’s close to $70 a month, or over $800 a year. Not a bad reduction when you’re trying to save money in this unpredictable economy.

The term netbook, coined by Intel, conveys little useful information about this category of machines. Sure, they all have wireless networking, but so does every other laptop. Originally what the term helped to identify was a class of small, ultralightweight, cheap-as-dirt mobile PCs. Netbooks are tiny—usually between half and two-thirds the size of a garden-variety laptop—and they typically weigh only about 2 pounds. With their cool, slim designs, they outclass some fancy ultraportables. And best of all, these diminutive laptops start at around $200 (in some cases $100, when purchased as part of a mobile broadband promotional deal).

But as the next generation of mininotebooks emerges—with some examples illustrating this article—the distinguishing characteristics named above are in flux, spurring debate here at PC World. Is price still a decisive criterion? What about the size of the device, the operating system it runs, or the CPU under its hood? Ultimately all of these things factor into the category; but as new systems with an expanding array of features arrive, our definition of netbook will continue to evolve.

Then there’s the blizzard factor: So many netbooks have reached market in the past year—and so many more are on the way—that selecting the right model can be a daunting task.  There is no such thing as perfection in a category that is ultimately defined by compromises, but with a little grounding in the basic features of mini-notebooks, you can make an informed buying decision.

Processor Power

With bargain-basement prices, svelte dimensions, and full-blown operating systems, models in the current crop of netbooks look great on paper. But the Intel Atom processor powering these machines can’t do anything much fancier than editing basic documents, sending e-mail, and browsing the Web. 8 e standard configuration for the machines you’ll find on store shelves includes a 1.6-GHz CPU with 1GB of RAM using Intel’s 945 chip set and running Windows XP—not exactly a performance powerhouse, but it works.

Making the most of your netbook is all about managing expectations. Don’t plan on playing modern PC games, editing huge pictures, or creating 1080p videos on these machines—at least not yet. Later this year, nVidia will release its Ion graphics platform, and AMD will launch its Neo processor. These two mobile chips promise to boost netbook performance significantly, and may very well change the way we think about small computers.

Growing Displays

When I first encountered the original Asus Eee PC’s 7-inch LCD, I had to increase the magnification in my eyeglasses’ prescription—and spin the scroll wheel like a manic gerbil—just to read an everyday Web page.

Fortunately, times have changed. Even the smallest machines these days oH er about 8 inches of viewable display area, with at least 800 pixels across. That is adequate for Web browsing, though the 10-inch screen available on the largest netbooks makes a real difference in the experience. I’ve streamed TV shows over Hulu.com onto an HP Mini 2140, and the images look great. But you also need to account for a couple of visual X-factors when selecting a netbook. The screen coating is a critical consideration. M e HP Mini 2140’s glossy screen may look snazzy indoors, but in broad daylight—where many people would at least occasionally use it—the glare on it can be blinding.

Another characteristic to weigh is native resolution. The default setting for most netbooks is 1024 by 600 pixels. Thugh this slightly odd aspect ratio will work with most software, some programs require a different resolution
to run properly. For compatibility, Lenovo also incorporates a 1024-by-768-pixel-resolution option into its IdeaPad S10. If you intend to run proprietary business apps that demand a specific resolution, make sure that the netbook you buy can support it.

Better Battery Life

Though the Intel Atom CPU is by no means an energy hog, netbooks aren’t known for long battery life. That is partly because vendors typically try to keep costs down by providing a modest three-cell battery. If you’re lucky, a battery of that size will last 2.5 hours on one charge, judging from our Test Center results. So if you want to stay productive on your netbook while traveling, you’ll probably need to buy an oversize, extended life battery to power your machine.

The best-selling Acer Aspire One is a case in point. As configured, this neat little machine sells for roughly $300; but if you want it to run longer (surviving a cross-country Tight would be nice), prepare to shell out another $100 for an optional six-cell battery that effectively doubles its duration. the bigger battery adds a little more weight to the system, too: there’s roughly a 0.3-pound difference between threeand six-cell netbook batteries, but the longer life between recharges is worth the extra investment.

So far, Asus has earned the laurels for producing netbooks that have the longest battery lives. One reason for its preeminence in this area is the company’s inclusion of an eight-cell battery. Another is its practice of offering
both a standard and a larger battery with its netbooks, letting users choose the right battery for their needs.

You get one other bonus when you buy a bigger battery, in some models at least: The double-stuffed power source props up the netbook at a slight tilt, making ergonomic typing on the (usually) tiny keyboard a little easier.

Cramped Keyboards

When you read that a netbook’s keyboard is 88 or 92 percent of a full-size QWERTY keyboard, you can pretty much ignore the numbers. The layout and arrangement of those keys counts almost as much as the size of the individual keys. To see whether the layout and shape of a given keyboard will work for your fingers, you need to do some hands-on testing at a store. Of course, bigger keys are better for beefy digits—and netbooks that have 10-inch screens tend to offer the larger keyboards.

That’s probably why I keep returning to the HP Mini 1000 or the businessminded Mini 2140. The broad, Tat keys on these HP netbooks are large enough for anyone to use, because HP opted to reduce the space between the keys rather than to downsize the keys themselves beyond what was necessary. You may be surprised at how many netbooks come with serviceable, comfortable keyboards. Asus’s Eee PC 1000H, for one, has a spacious setup that’s well suited to touch typists. The machine is cozy and includes a slight valley between adjacent buttons. Even smaller netbooks with 8.9-inch screens can pack a few surprises. The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 and the Acer Aspire One, for example, house great keyboards— far bigger and more usable than their tiny frames would suggest.

Software Choices

Windows XP and some Y avors of Linux are the primary operating system options available for most netbooks. Why Linux? Well, for starters, it runs a little leaner than XP, which makes it perfect for a netbook’s anemic CPU. Second, it trims a few dollars off the price of these already-inexpensive portables.

For the most part, Windows XP netbooks carry very little onboard software. A few machines we looked at came preloaded with OpenOffice.org— the free Java-based oa ce suite—but few vendors care to match Lenovo, whose IdeaPad S10 provides a handy recovery application called CyberLink OneKey Recovery 6.0 for creating configuration backups, setting partitions, and establishing restore points. Almost all of the other netbooks we’ve examined require you to download the so` - ware you want to use on your own.

Fortunately, some sites make getting great netbook apps easy. The Google Pack Page (pack.google.com), for in stance, offers a few top-notch (and extremely popular) free programs to download, sans spyware—everything from Adobe Reader to Real Networks RealPlayer to Google’s Chrome browser (of course).

Here is a list of other free, downloadable applications that no netbook should be without: CCleaner, Digsby, Fresh UI, Paint.Net, Secunia PSI, Spybot Search & Destroy, and Spyware Blaster.

Expecting Windows Vista to work with a netbook’s puny processor is like expecting a baby with one hand tied behind its back to push a Buick up a hill. Nevertheless, HP originally packaged its 2133 netbook with Vista Business Edition—and no one was terribly surprised when its unimposing Via C7-M processor ran like an out-ofshape sprinter in a swimming pool full of Jell-O. Now Sony thinks it can get its new Atom-processor-based VAIO P mini-notebook (which it insists on calling a “lifestyle notebook” rather than a “netbook”) to run Windows Vista Basic. This is probably still a bit of a performance stretch, but advances in future netbook CPUs should eventually make either Vista or Windows 7 an acceptable option.

As we prepare to go to press, rumors are circulating that Google’s Android OS will find its way into netbooks this year. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Work or Play

The first generation of netbooks targeted nonbusiness consumers—especially students. After all, you can stuff one of these affordable task-specific portables in a bag, and it can take a beating. But machines of this class make sense for corporate users, too. Why lug a huge laptop through the halls of an office complex when all you need is a good keyboard and a wireless connection? Such thinking has led vendors to divide netbooks into business and consumer subcategories.

Corporate netbooks pack more premium components than their consumer counterparts. HP’s rugged Mini 2140 comes with 802.11n Wi-Fi instead of the usual 802.11b/g. A built-in accelerometer protects the hard drive if the system is dropped, and a spill-resistant keyboard keeps it dry. Asus’s N10Jc was the first mini-notebook to include a discrete graphics processor (nVidia’s GeForce 9300M GS) that the user could toggle on or off . Of course, premium gear is expensive, and corporate netbooks command prices above $600.

The Next Generation

Netbooks won’t stay as they are for very long. By the end of the year, they will have emerged as a major computer category, with diverse options to augment similar basic features.

Sony’s new $900 VAIO P, for instance, relies on a 1.6-GHz Intel Atom processor to run Vista Basic and gives users an 8-inch screen (a little smaller than a DVD case) to work with. The company’s marketing people may cringe when you call it a netbook, but it sure looks like one. Another company pushing the Atom CPU to new heights is MSI, with its X320—a 13-inch portable with the style of a MacBook Air but a price of only $1000.

Other chip makers hope to get in on the ultraportable action, too. nVidia has been making some noise about its Ion platform concept, which will likely consist of a GeForce 9400M GPU married to an Intel Atom CPU on a tiny motherboard. The Ion has performed well on basic tests, but who knows whether it will gain any traction with vendors (or whether Intel will ever support the idea of a different company’s chip set working with its Atom CPU)?

Meanwhile, AMD is aiming for yet another tweener category of laptops: ultraslim and affordable. The company’s Athlon Neo processor is designed to run reasonably powerful ultraportables that start in the vicinity of $700—just a hair more than the amount some companies are charging for their high-end netbooks—and run as high as $1400. In
AMD’s case, the baseline configuration has a 1.6-GHz CPU working with ATI Radeon X1250 graphics processor on the motherboard. Though this arrangement is faster than Intel’s integrated option, it hasn’t set the world on fire yet. Partner a Neo with an ATI Mobility HD3410, however (as the company is proposing), and it can offer 1080p high definition playback and reasonable game performance. AMD already has a proof-of-concept model shipping this March: the HP Pavilion dv2, a 12.1-inch machine priced at $600 to $800.

Our focus on netbooks here shouldn’t lead you to ignore the rest of the notebook market. With the economy in extended decline, prices for full-size laptops are sinking. You’ll soon be able to find last year’s gear in newer, cheaper notebooks. Toshiba plans to release a low-end all-purpose laptop, the Satellite L305, for around $550. And that machine will have an optical drive.

In short, no one portable is perfect for everyone—but you’ll soon be able to find the perfect set of options for just about anyone.

WHICH LCD MONITOR

Key Specifications

Native resolution: An LCD has a fixed resolution at which it looks best. The majority of 17- to 19-inch models use a native resolution of 1280 by 1024 pixels. Wide-screen 23-and 24-inch units typically use 1920 by 1200; 30-inch wide-screens, 2560 by 1600. A particular LCD is a good choice if you are comfortable using its native resolution for all applications.

Aspect ratio: Wide screens with a 16:10 aspect ratio have been dominant, but the trend is moving toward 16:9, as you’d ;nd on an HDTV. A wide screen is good for handling spreadsheets, or programs with lots of toolbars or palettes, as well as for viewing documents side-byside or watching DVDs.

The area of a wide-screen display is smaller than that of a regular-format display of the same size; for instance, a 21-inch wide screen shows about as many pixels as a regular 19-inch LCD does.

Viewing angle: This is how far a viewer can move from a position directly in front of the LCD before image quality deteriorates unacceptably. No standard exists for measuring it, so you can’t compare the numbers (in degrees, up to 180) between vendors. Most LCDs have a viewing angle of at least 160 degrees. The larger the monitor, the more critical a wide viewing angle is. That’s because the far edge of the screen is at an even greater angle away from someone sitting to one side.

Contrast ratio: This term refers to the difference in light intensity between the brightest white and the darkest black an LCD can produce. Look for a contrast ratio of at least 400:1. At any lower ratio, colors may wash out at higher brightness settings and disappear at lower settings. The spec is useless for comparison purposes, however, as no industry standard exists and it can vary from one vendor to the next.

Brightness: Expressed as candelas per square meter (cd/m2) or nits, this spec denotes the greatest amount of light that comes from a screen showing pure white. Most LCDs have a more than sugcient brightness level of at least 250cd/m2.

Digital connectors: Digital trumps analog, but you have a choice of digital ports. DVI is common on graphics cards, motherboards, and monitors. You can find two types of DVI on typical LCDs: DVI-D is digital-only, while DVI-I can accept either an analog input or a digital one (you need a special connector to hook it to your PC’s VGA analog port, however). Some monitors use the relatively new DisplayPort connector. HDMI connectors, the same as on HDTVs, are becoming more common on 22-inch and larger LCDs. HDMI can transmit digital video and digital audio signals between devices.

Response time: A low response time (measured in milliseconds) signifies minimal artifacts in moving images. Rise-and-fall measures how long a pixel takes to turn from black to white and back to black. Gray-to-gray measures the time a pixel takes to change from one shade of gray to another. Rise-and-fall has been clearly defined for years, but the same cannot be said for gray-to-gray. Even so, most LCDs today have fast enough response rates for all but the most hard-core gamers.

Physical adjustments: Almost all monitors offer tilt adjustment; you may want one that allows height adjustment as well. Side-to-side swiveling makes showing your screen to others easy. And for viewing anything that’s longer than it is tall, you might like screen pivoting (as long as you also have image-pivoting software).

Monitor Shopping Tips

Try before you buy: Only your eyes can judge image quality, resolution, and size.

Check screen real estate: Make sure you have enough space for what you need to accomplish. The current sweet spots are the 19-inch regular-format LCD and the 20- to 22-inch wide screen.

Consider using multiple smaller monitors instead of one big display. With the right video card, you can run two LCDs on the same PC.

Look for USB ports: USB lets you attach peripherals. Such ports are most convenient on the side of a monitor.

Consider speakers: Included speakers can save desk space. Their sound will rarely satisfy the discerning ear, but they are fine for daily use.

The price difference could be a major sales point for the iPhone Nano. Mike Abramsky, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, estimates that the cost of the device would be between under $100 with a signed contract. Gene Munster, a senior research analyst with Piper Jaffray, thinks that it would cost between $99 and $149, but that it might also be available on both prepaid and low-cost contract terms. According to Mr. Abramsky, the iPhone Nano “…addresses a global opportunity three to four times as large as iPhone 3G.”

As for the expected features, Mr. Munster believes that theiPhone Nano will have a slider keyboard to facilitate typing. Mr. Abramsky thinks that the iPhone Nano will lack the ability to connect to mobile wireless data networks, relying instead on Wi-Fi for Internet access. If true, the lack of cellular data capability would lower the monthly service bill because customers would not need to sign up for expensive data plans. Another thing that might lower the cost is using less expensive components. Intel is due to launch two new chipsets for mobile devices—the Intel Atom and the Intel Silverthorne—sometime in mid-2009. These chips are supposed to provide greater processing power at a lower price. If Apple decided to go with one of these chipsets—a high ranking Intel Germany executive is rumored to have said they will—it would allow them to drop the price of newer versions of the iPhone. However, Apple is currently using ARM chipsets in the iPhone 3G, and it has recently acquired a chipset designing firm PI semiconductors, so the above is speculative.

Mums the word!

For months now, Apple kept mum about the iPhone Nano and completely ignored these rumors. In fact, during Apple’s quarterly earnings conference call in January 2009 Apple’s COO Tim Cook stated that “We’re not going to play in the low-end voice phone business. That’s not who we are. It’s not why we’re here. We’ll let somebody else do that. Our objective is not to be the unit share leader in the cell phone industry. It’s to build the world’s best phones.” That doesn’t sound very encouraging!

However, in the same conference call he said: “The fear that …everyone has in this market, is that the economy may slow the adoption rate of smartphones, because smartphones generally command higher monthly fees and that may keep some customers from signing up for higher priced contracts.” One way to lower these monthly fees would be to produce an iPhone without broadband cellular data capability, as Mr. Abramsky predicted.

Are all these respectable analysts wrong? Is Apple going to produce the iPhone Nano? Will we all be on food stamps by the time it arrives? The jury is still out!

THE IPHONE 3G and the T-Mobile G1 may have created a stir, but Research In Motion’s BlackBerry units dominate the Top 10 Smart Phones chart. The two newest BlackBerrys (the Bold and the Storm) land on the chart, but two older units (the Pearl 8120 and the Curve 8320) remain near the top of our rankings.

Between the latter two BlackBerrys are the Motorola Moto zine ZN5 and the Samsung Omnia, both new. The ZN5 includes an outstanding camera, but its design and 3G support seem compromised. The Omnia has a gorgeous 3.2-inch touch screen and a sophisticated design, but its user interface is slow.

Relatively poor battery life pulled down the iPhone 3G and the Android-based G1.

Sony claims that the VAIO P is a bite-size lifestyle laptop. But whose lifestyle? My guess: petite women with eagle-eye vision. Weighing 1.4 pounds and measuring 9.6 by 4.7 by 0.9 inches, it is about half the size of Acer’s Aspire One, slips into a coat pocket, and even comes with a matching leather purse.

The tough it borders on unusably tiny, the device is built around a QWERTY keyboard that is 88 percent the size of a standard desktop keyboard. The cut-out keys (like those on Apple MacBooks) are small—about 0.5 inch wide—but reasonably spaced. This keyboard is way more manageable than those on some of the first gen Eee PCs from Asus, but I still found my hands awkwardly clawed while trying to type. You may have to hunt and peck your way through documents. The keyboard does provide a couple of handy, customizable shortcut buttons. And one thing the VAIO P gets right is the pointer controls: the eraserhead camps intelligently amidst the keys, and firm mouse buttons rest below the spacebar.

An Appealing Display

Sony laptops typically have sweet screens, and the P’s backlit LED display doesn’t disappoint. It’s impressively crisp and bright and sports a resolution of 1600 by 768 pixels (a 16:7 aspect ratio). Sony reps say its 8-inch screen will let users view two full Web pages side by side—but don’t risk your eyesight trying to read said pages.

The tough the VAIO P is attractive, it isn’t really built for serious business. Sure, it packs all sorts of goodies beyond the 2GB of RAM inside a slim, screwless case (say bye-bye to upgrades): 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Qualcomm’s Gobi chip 68 FAIR SONY’S VAIO P is ultracompact and has a good feature set—but it’s also pricey for a netbook. set for wireless broadband; two USB ports and a headphone jack; a Webcam with a built-in mic; and slots for both an SDHC Card and a Memory Stick HG Duo card. Those specs beat the MacBook Air’s. The P also has an intelligently designed VGA/LAN adapter connection, a dongle that attaches to the tiny power brick.

But should anyone really run Windows Vista on this thing? the P scored a measly 29 in our WorldBench 6 test suite, largely because of Vista Home Basic. As bad as that may sound, some other netbooks, such as Dell’s Inspiron Mini 9, scored even lower in WorldBench when running Windows XP. This VAIO would probably score 30 to 40 on World- Bench if it ran XP instead.

Like a Netbook

The P can play video recorded at 320-by-240-pixel resolution without a hitch. With anything larger, such as 640 by 480 pixels, playback slows so much that you get something more like a slide show than a video.

The unit has a reasonable battery life: 3 hours, 22 minutes on the included fourcell battery. But the HP Mini 2140, which costs $529 and performs roughly on a par with the VAIO P, lasts nearly 7 hours with its battery.

The P’s quick-launching (20-second startup) Linux shell can save you time and juice if you just need to do some Web browsing or video watching. the Smart-Wi networking software quickly gets you onto Wi-Fi or wireless broadband networks. And the VAIO Control Center provides quick access to the most frequently tweaked features. Also on board are Microsoft Works and mercifully little bloatware.

So, is this thing a netbook? It’s roughly the size of one and it performs like one. And that’s the problem in a nutshell: Considering the price, it needs to do more than be small. On the other hand, this ultracompact ultraportable sure looks great.

FOR ANYONE WHO uses a Mac for work, an update to the iWork suite is welcome. Does iWork have what it takes to do serious business?

iWork ’09 consists of the Pages word processor, the Numbers spreadsheet application, the iWeb site builder, and the Key note presentation software. New in ’09 is iWork.com, which lets you share files and collaborate with colleagues, whether they use Macs or not.

If you’re seeking a replacement for Microsoft Office, iWork is not it. Although it can read files made in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, you can’t have it automatically save original files in those apps’ formats. And the features in iWork’s apps are relatively limited.

On the other hand, if you need inexpensive, versatile tools, iWork ’09 is a solid choice that can create cool newsletters, intuitive and beautiful charts, and stunning presentations.

Among the most substantial updates in Pages ’09 is vastly improved linking to Numbers spreadsheets. This makes mail merges easier and lets you add charts powered by Numbers data. And a new mode can fill your screen with just the document you’re editing.

In Numbers ’09, powerful sorting features now help you create rich spreadsheets that act more like user-friendly databases. Set a table category for a column, and you can sort and reorder your spreadsheet based on it. Drag an entry from one category to the next, and the accompanying data up dates. Picking a formula is easy, too, with helpful descriptions and a natural-language search function. Most impressive is the updated chart creator, which offers gorgeous new shading and textures, yet gives you minute control over them.

The standout is Keynote, which beats PowerPoint in simplicity and usability. It’s packed with tools to import, arrange, and manage music, video, and pictures, as well as to make impressive transitions. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, a 99-cent download will turn your device into a Keynote remote control. With its slick, intuitive interface and almost foolproof presentation creation, Keynote by itself justifiles the $79 price tag for the iWork ’09 suite.

If everyone in your company is using Microsoft Office, stay with the crowd. But if you’re a small-business owner who needs to bang out a newsletter and track inventory in a spreadsheet, or a professional who makes a lot of presentations, iWork is worth a closer look.

Whether you want to save a few bucks or to obtain a perfect balance of power and mobility, you can find an all-purpose laptop to meet your needs.

While some of the portables in our Top 10 straddle a fine line between two diferent laptop categories, all of them offer some genuinely good value for your mobility bucks. Oat’s largely because the prices for laptops are plummeting—and they likely haven’t hit bottom yet.

You can see our complete chart of the top-ranked allpurpose laptops on page 50, but here’s a look at four new, recently tested models.

Acer TravelMate 6293

Before this tiny Acer portable came along, Lenovo had a lock on the all-purpose laptops category, offering notebooks adept at combining price and performance. Lenovo’s TinkPad SL400, which formerly occupied our number-one spot, ranks third this month, and it remains a solid deal, selling for a little over $1100. But shoppers can find plenty of reasons to choose Acer’s Travel Mate 6293 instead.

For one thing, it has battery life in spades. Equipped with a powerful 7200-mAh battery, the 6293 lasted 3 minutes shy of 8 hours in our tests. That’s far better than the results we’ve seen from any other all-purpose machine on the market.

Performancewise, it rocks. The 2.26-GHz Core 2 Duo P8400–equipped unit with 2GB of RAM turned in an impressive WorldBench 6 score of 90. It lacks a dedicated video card (one unfortunate characteristic of small laptops), so its entertainment capabilities are limited by the shared video memory. Despite that, the 12.1-inch, 1280-by-800-pixel, wide-aspect display is fine for any other task you might need to squeeze into its small quarters. And the 250GB hard drive provides ample storage headroom.

You might not call the 6293 handsome, but this entirely black laptop is fairly well packaged for an allpurpose machine, al though it’s missing a Fire Wire port (which would have been handy for speedy digital downloads) and sports the older PC Card slot instead of a newer ExpressCard slot.

In the plus column, it does provide conveniences such as dedicated Bluetooth and 802.11n Wi-Fi switches, as well as a built-in Webcam. IT departments will love the fact that storage and memory are fully user-upgradable, too—and even the accounting folks should be able to tolerate the TravelMate 6293’s palatable $999 price.

Samsung X460

In the X460, Samsung has managed to craft a 14.1-inch, thin-and-light, all-purpose laptop that is perfectly roadready and can go toe-to-toe with some of the best ultraportables out there.

That’s right: Because of its design, I’m leaning toward comparing this all-purpose laptop with lighter-class notebooks rather than with other all-purpose models. After all, the X460 comes incredibly close to qualifying as an ultraportable, weighing a mere 4.2 pounds.

The X460 is smartly priced considering what it oaers; our review configuration goes for $1699. Fat money buys you solid performance in the form of a 2.26-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 CPU, 3GB of RAM, and a discrete graphics processor. Although the GPU is no powerhouse—it’s a 256MB nVidia GeForce 9200M GS—it certainly helps the X460 give you better graphics performance than many thin-and-light machines do.

The 14.1-inch-diagonal backlit LED screen is amazingly bright, and the X460’s processing power and battery life shine, as well; in our PC World Test Center WorldBench 6 tests, it hit a very respectable score of 93, while its battery ran for a nice, long, 4.5-hour stretch.

The svelte case houses an optical drive and squeezes in a lot of ports, including VGA, HDMI, ethernet, three USB connections, a five-in one :ash memory card reader, an Express Card slot, and headphone/microphone jacks. Grow in 802.11n Wi-Fi, a 1.3-megapixel Webcam, and a fingerprint reader, and you wind up with a pretty robust package.

Gateway MC7803u

On the outside, the attractive Gateway MC7803u sure doesn’t look like it costs only a thousand bucks—but while using it, we quickly realized that Gateway had cut some corners. Since $999 clearly won’t net you the fastest laptop on the block, it’s no surprise that the MC7803u (with an Intel 2-GHz Core 2 Duo T5800 CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a 512MB AMD Radeon HD 3650 graphics processor) barely eked out a score of 78 in WorldBench 6. Gat kind of performance is average, but hardly capable of delivering a decent game experience on a portable.

The MC7803u managed to survive 3 hours, 48 minutes on a single charge of the included battery—also about average for the all-purpose category. Gat result is a bit more impressive when you consider that the battery has to power the unit’s 16-inch glass display, but the screen is a little washed out.

The keyboard feels good, and the system’s overall layout is fairly sensible. Four USB ports occupy the sides, along with a five-in-one :ash card reader and a PC Card/ExpressCard slot; a pair of headphone jacks and one microphone jack occupy the front, and a Webcam resides atop the display. You also get VGA and HDMI video outputs, modem and ethernet connections, and Bluetooth and 802.11n Wi-Fi.

Weighing 7.7 pounds, the MC7803u is a little hefty for toting everywhere, but the price is a significant factor in making this laptop a solid contender. Just remember that, though it looks good on the surface, it makes some compromises that prevent it from being an entertainment notebook.

Dell Studio XPS 16

The Studio XPS 16 succeeds in outmuscling the slick but slightly flawed Gateway MC7803u, proving that you can emphasize style in a laptop without sacrificing functionality. Dell’s classy portable starts at $1199, and our review configuration costs roughly $1804—significantly more than the price tag on Gateway’s offering—but that premium shows in the Dell machine’s higher build quality and performance.

Our review system had a 2.4-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 CPU, a 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3670 graphics processor, and 4GB of RAM, and it ran the 64-bit @avor of Windows Vista. That configuration notched a mark of 92 in our World Bench 6 test suite, exhibiting more than enough power to handle everyday tasks and some games, too; I had no problem playing Fallout 3 and Left 4 Dead at the screen’s native resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels. For such results you can thank the capable mobile GPU and the 7200-rpm, 320GB hard drive, whose fast rotational speed enables better read/write performance during game play.

Images looked sharp on the laptop’s RGB LED screen, but the sound is a little flat and hollow. The Studio XPS 16 has a selection of nice input options around the sides: two USB connections and one shared eSATA/USB jack, plus DisplayPort, HDMIout, and VGA-out jacks. In addition, it offers a fourpin FireWire 400 port, a five-in-one flash memory card reader, a 2-megapixel Webcam, an ExpressCard slot, and a slot-loading Blu-ray Disc drive. Our review machine came with both a sixcell battery and a nine-cell battery for the price; while running on the latter, it survived for 3 hours, 41 minutes, which is about average for an all-purpose laptop.

Not only is the Studio XPS 16 packed with features, but it also boasts a reasonably sharp-looking design. Like the Gateway MC7803u, this laptop sports edge-to-edge glass on the display; the diference here is that Dell locks down the screen by bolting the hinges firmly into both sides of the bezel. In the end, even from just a quick glance at the two notebooks side by side, you can see what the price diference buys you.

Dell’s Studio XPS 16 is squarely aimed at people who want to get a little more for their mobile entertainment buck; it’s a solidly constructed multimedia laptop that piles on features without breaking the bank. nk8fwxv26q

As crooks aggressively push fake antivirus software, you need to know which ersatz warnings may point toward a hidden infection.

Sound familiar? Dirty tricks like these, designed to get you to install and buy fake antivirus products, are more common than ever. But while you might recognize such warnings as bogus, you might not know that the fake warning could be a red alert about an underlying bot malware infection. Knowing the difference is key. As crooks aggressively push fake antivirus software, you need to know which ersatz warnings may point toward a hidden infection.

“It’s not something you even blink at anymore,” says Christopher Boyd, senior director of malware research for communications security company FaceTime Communications, of requests for help in dealing with phony warning pop-ups.

The increased incidence of such pop-ups is due to more crooks going ader easy money from shady affiliate programs, which pay a huge cut of the profits—up to 90 percent—for every person who mistakenly hands over money for a fake program, regardless of what induced them to pay. Often, the inducement comes from a malicious Web site that employs JavaScript tricks to unleash a horde of pop-ups, or even resize the victim’s browser window, to create something that looks like a real antivirus scan.

You might reach such a site by using a bad search link, like the one Boyd clicked for a free online Batman game. He got redirected to a site that took over his browser to display a fake antivirus scan, which then found (fictitious) critical infections that he could supposedly fix by buying the rogue antivirus app.

If a site merely hijacks your browser, you don’t have to worry too much: The pop-ups or fake scanner windows don’t cause lasting damage, Boyd says. You might be prevented from closing the window, as Vana was, but you can usually bring up the Windows Task Manager with <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<Del> and close your browser that way. Sometimes just pressing <Alt>-<F4> will shut it down.

“To do this, [the fake site] uses real code, and doesn’t generally exploit a hole,” Boyd says. As long as you don’t panic and install the pushed program, no real harm occurs.

Bot Infections and Fake Antivirus

Unfortunately, the other way you might en counter a fake antivirus program is far worse.

Joe Stewart, a director of malware research with Secure Works, a security services company for businesses, tracks bot malware for a living. Criminals use bot-infected PCs, sometimes gathered into huge networks (called botnets) of a hundred thousand or more systems, to send spam worldwide. But they also use bots to down load rogue antivirus apps and other malware onto a victim’s PC.

“It’s a proven way of monetizing a botnet,” says Stewart. “Just about anybody with an already-deployed botnet is potentially looking at this as a way to make extra money.

”According to Stewart, crooks make that money either by getting someone to download a supposed trial version of the rogue antivirus tool—co-opting a legitimate software sales technique—or by installing that software behind the-scenes with a bot.

Once installed, the rogue typically uses highly aggravating techniques, such as changing the Windows desktop background to warn of a supposed infection and displaying constant other warnings, to push you to buy the full version of the software.

You might know not to download a rogue antivirus utility in response to a spurious pop-up. But when ordered to download it by a malicious controller, a hidden bot will never give you the chance to apply your good sense.

If you follow basic security precautions, such as keeping your bonafide antivirus software up-to-date and being careful with e-mail attachments and downloads, you can significantly reduce the odds of getting infected with a bot or other malware. But if you do see pop-ups or other fake warnings from a rogue antivirus app on your machine, try to determine whether it’s from a Web site or from actual software installed by a bot (or by someone else who uses the PC).

Possibilities Are Endless

The fake software scam comes in many variations, and crooks’ tactics differ, so there is no sure indicator that one is present. But watch out for warnings that persist after you reboot your PC, especially if they appear before you open your browser. Seeing an unfamiliar warning icon in your system tray is another bad sign, particularly if you can’t right-click it and make it go away. And if your desktop background has changed, you’re definitely infected with a rogue antivirus program, says Boyd.

As to the source of this garbage, here’s a clue. One variety that Stewart examined, then called “Antivirus XP 2008,” would first check the PC’s system configuration to see whether it was located in a country with many ethnic Russians. If so, the installer immediately quit.

Best Deals from Trend Micro

• 10% Off - 1 YR - Trend Micro Internet Security 2009 - Coupon Code: TrendIS.
• Protect Your PC from viruses, hackers, spam and more. Buy PC-cillin 2009 with Easy Installation & Support!
• Download award-winning internet security and anti-spyware software from Trend Micro