speeds

A significant update to the Opera browser's Speed Dial feature launched today in Opera 11.50 alpha (download), along with Opera Next, which includes a mechanism that makes it easier for Opera fans to automatically download under-construction builds of the browser. Opera Next will install separately and alongside the "stable" release of Opera, sporting a silver Opera logo much like Google Chrome Canary is visually distinct from the other versions of Chrome with its all-yellow icon.

The new version of Speed Dial introduces support for Speed Dial-specific extensions. Originally developed by Opera, and now in use in … Read more

EVs: They crash well, but will their sales crash, too? Dr. Dre now fits in your dash. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is for sale. And we take you for a run in the 2012 Ford Focus.

Solid crash test results on Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt

EVs, hybrids, and the rest will be maybe 10 percent of car sales by 2016

Driving on this highway could actually make energy

Interview with screenwriter of Fast Five

CNET reviews the 2012 Ford Focus Titanium… Read more

While it's got Sync, tabs on top, and a menu button, Firefox still lacks one feature that all the other major browsers have in one form or another: the "speed dial." Originally from Opera, the feature is the visual implementation of your most recently or most frequently visited Web sites on the new tab page. Firefox add-ons have stepped up to fill the dial void, but implementation in each is uneven.

Speed Dial 0.9.5.8 (download) is the most robust of the four add-ons we're looking at today. It's highly customizable, offering the … Read more

Those worried about what location information their phones are gathering might want to scrutinize their car navigation systems first.

Police in the Netherlands have used aggregate data from TomTom's satellite navigation systems to install speed cameras where drivers tend to exceed the speed limit, TomTom said yesterday. The practice doesn't involve any individual data, but TomTom is barring it in the future after customers objected.

The company's sat-nav systems can send position data back to TomTom, and the company uses the information for purposes such as routing people around traffic jams and providing accurate estimates of journey … Read more

The latest stable version of Opera 11 debuts today with a faster Turbo, an expanded Speed Dial, and some plug-in tweaks. Opera 11.10 for Windows (download), Mac (download), and Linux (download), also makes a handful of other changes to the browser, notably adding in more HTML5 support, mail client improvements, an updated rendering engine, and better battery management on laptops.

The changes to Opera Turbo and Speed Dial are the most apparent changes in Opera 11.10. The Norwegian company says that Turbo is four times faster than before, and Opera spokesman Thomas Ford said that those speed improvements … Read more

WinZip System Utilities Suite offers a one-stop shop for optimizing, defragging, and generally cleaning out your system--and it does a pretty great job, adding extras that will come in handy whenever you need to perform routine maintenance. The interface smartly mimics many of the utilities in this genre--with various tools on the left, and the main window showing the options for each tool--making it easy to clean each area of your system quickly.

Like many modern system utilities, WinZip offers the option to be as involved with the process as you want to be. From the Home screen, you can … Read more

A Web performance company has concluded that a high-end Android smartphone, Samsung's Nexus S, is faster at Web browsing than an iPhone 4. Apple, though, says the company's methodology has a significant problem.

Blaze Software concluded after loading 45,000 Web pages from Fortune 1000 companies over 3G and Wi-Fi that the Android phone is faster than the iPhone. The test concluded the Nexus S was 52 percent faster on average, beating out the iPhone 84 percent of the time.

Nonsense, said Apple.

"Their testing is flawed. They didn't actually test the Safari browser on the … Read more

Opera announced today the opening of its own mobile app store.

The new online Opera Mobile store is offering both paid and free apps designed for a variety of phones, including those running Java, Symbian, BlackBerry, Android, and Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS. The company launched the new store with help from mobile app marketplace Appia, which provided the storefront e-commerce technology.

Opera is specifically looking to reach users of its own mobile browser by setting up the store's mobile Web site as a Speed Dial link. Opening the site on a mobile device prompts users to either select … Read more

Editors' note: The video battery results for the Motorola Xoom were corrected from the original post. The original post contained results not in line with our final testing methodology. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.

During the deluge of iPad 2 coverage last week, you may have missed CNET's handy tablets table. In it we gave an overview of the major non-Windows tablets already released and those soon-to-be released.

For the few tablets we actually have in the CNET Labs, we're able to go a bit more in depth with what each has to offer. … Read more