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May 19, 2004 |
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Spyware, adware, and other variants on the same theme are always high on the list of topics you click on and search for here. This week, we answered with a guide to antispyware apps. Also: Why Apple is faster than Microsoft. |
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Spyware
Again this week, spyware (and adware and malware and all the other variants) were among our top search terms. Whatever you call them, we're talking about tiny apps that live on your hard drive and either direct you to advertising sites you don't want or record your Internet surfing activities to download even more advertising. We know this is one of your top computing concerns--which is why this week our security maven, Robert Vamosi, served up a roundup of the leading antispyware apps, utilities that root out this snoopy software and give you back some degree of privacy. Read, download, and protect yourself.
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Mac OS X
Both Apple and Microsoft released new operating systems in 2001 (Mac OS X and Windows XP, respectively). Since then, Apple has released three substantial upgrades to its OS and will preview a fourth for developers later this month. Microsoft, meanwhile, has managed just one service pack, with a second due this summer. Not that you can draw any substantial conclusions about the two companies from those simple stats or anything. This week, Apple software guru Avie Tevanian admitted that his company can't keep that up. And Microsoft now says that WinFS, a new file system add-on that was to be a central component of the next version of Windows, won't appear until 2009--about three years after Longhorn itself is expected to debut.
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Skinny MP3 players
When it comes to buying digital music players, you have to consider storage format (flash or hard drive?), file format (MP3? WMA? Ogg Vorbis?), capacity, audio quality, and a host of other features. But if our traffic logs are any indication, bulk is close to the top of that key-feature list. How else to explain the consistent popularity of products that pack ever more tunes into ever smaller bodies? This past week, we saw not one but two new players that manage to do just that: the Creative MuVo Slim and the Cowon iAudio M3. The former is a 256MB flash player, the latter a 20GB iPod competitor, but both are Editors' Choices.
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Dell Axims
Ever since Dell got into the handhelds business, its Axims have been among the best PDAs on the market. This week, it released three new models, all of them called Axim X30s, all three using Intel's next-generation XScale processors and Microsoft's latest OS for PDAs, Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition. Replacing the Axim X3i, the high-end model, with its zippy 624MHz processor and built-in Bluetooth, sets (in the words of our reviewer) "a new standard for Pocket PCs." The midlevel model uses a slower processor but still has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built in. The base model gives up connectivity for a low $200 price tag.
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VoIP
No, no, no, don't hang up: I really do have a way to cut your long-distance phone bills. It's called Voice over IP or (to make it sound a bit friendlier) Internet phone service. All it does is digitize voice communications and send them over the Internet, bypassing the traditional copper wires of the old-fashioned phone companies and saving you a bundle in the process. It's not some fringy technology that only a Linux geek could love: it's here, now, and ready for the mainstream. (Something many of you have already noticed, if our search logs are any gauge.) You search for answers, we try to supply 'em: Here's our newly minted what-is-it-and-how-to-use-it guide to VoIP.
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