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March 9, 2004 |
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The word adware is a perennial favorite among CNET searchers--that, plus
spyware and the names of the most popular adware busters are consistently
among our top search terms. This week was no different, but this time you
had some interesting news to search for. Also big in the search logs: the
new WordPerfect, Voice over IP, and gaming consoles. |
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Adware
CNET users know: adware and spyware (programs that either
serve up ads on your PC or follow your online travels for the benefit of
marketers) are royal pains. Such sleazeware may be making someone money,
but it sure makes online life unnecessarily unpleasant. And CNET users are
clearly fed up with it. At the same time that news stories on the topic
(such as this
report or this
one, both about efforts by lawmakers to clamp down on the practice) are
among the most popular on the site, leading adware fighters Spybot Search and
Destroy and Ad-aware are
number two and three, respectively, on our product search charts. |
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Games X Copy
In
the beginning, there was DVD X Copy, which let buyers make copies of
copy-protected DVDs, and it was bad. At least that's what the judges say.
Just last week, a
federal court barred software company 321 Studios from distributing its
popular DVD-copying software, saying the app violated the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act; that ruling has since been put on hold pending a
hearing next week. Now there's Games X Copy to further vex the legal mind. As the name implies, it allows users to make dupes of
copy-protected games. 321 Studios released
the app last month; here's our review. |
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WordPerfect Office
What is it with WordPerfect? Here we are: it's 2004, the office suite wars
over for a decade or so, Corel is still releasing new versions of the
WordPerfect Office suite, and CNET users are all over the news story and our review of
the suite. The big selling point: it's more compatible than ever with
Microsoft Office. Which leads us to wonder: why not just buy Microsoft
Office in the first place? Because it costs at least $100 more than
WordPerfect's offering. If the latter really is fully compatible with the
former, that C-note could be pretty compelling. |
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Voice over IP
Voice over IP (or VoIP for short) has been much in the news lately, and CNET users have been all over it. There was the news that VoIP
vendor Vonage has struck a deal to put its hardware in 600 Circuit City
stores. Broadband provider Covad just bought a VoIP
company of its own to help speed the rollout of Covad's own telephony
service. A couple of weeks ago, AT&T itself--the very definition of the
traditional phone company--announced plans to
sell VoIP services very soon. Why would CNET readers care about a seemingly
arcane telecommunications technology? Simple: because they're no dummies.
VoIP can slash phone bills for consumers and businesses alike. |
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Game consoles
As always, CNET users were interested in anything having to do with gaming
consoles. And there were a couple of big stories this past week or so to
keep them occupied. One of Microsoft's partners in the Xbox business,
memory maker M-Systems, claimed that there
would be no hard drive in the next version of the gaming hardware, that
users would have to rely instead on either flash memory or online storage.
(For the record, Microsoft called the claim "speculation.") Then there was
the news that
Scientific-Atlanta, which makes an inordinate number of the world's set-top
boxes, was going to add gaming capabilities to said boxes in the near future. |
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