budget

While it may feel like Netbooks have dropped off the face of the earth in the post-iPad era, inexpensive 10- and 11-inch laptops still lurk out there, although they're changing with the times. While many Netbooks used to be and still are Intel Atom-based, with minimal processing capabilities and hovering around $299, a few 11-inch laptops have emerged with more powerful AMD-based processors and onboard graphics.

We've reviewed several of these ultraportables with E-350 APUs, such as the HP Pavilion dm1z and Lenovo ThinkPad x120e. The $379 Acer Aspire One 722-BZ608 has an AMD APU (the company's … Read more

A new Web game has finally brought every American taxpayer's fantasy to life. Budget Hero 2.0, a timely update to an earlier title, gives players the chance to choose where their tax dollars are spent while simultaneously working to save our ailing economy.

It's somewhat ironic that the game was created at least in part with the help of federal tax dollars by American Public Media, which produces public-radio shows including "Marketplace" and "Prairie Home Companion."

Budget Hero uses data from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, which keeps track of the budget and makes predictions about the impact of all sorts of proposed policies. This allows the game to get pretty wonky very quickly, with options to "extend the Bush tax cuts" and link that amount to inflation right off the bat. It's almost as confusing as calculating hit points, for all you old-school D&Ders out there.… Read more

Maybe it's just my imagination, but when I first put together my roundup of cheap dSLRs more than a year ago, there were a lot more options than there seem to be now. At one point, if memory serves, I even dropped the top price criterion of body with a kit lens from $700 to $600.

Today, as I updated the story to include the review of the $599 Canon EOS Rebel T3, I found myself raising the bar to $650 and wondering why it was necessary. Granted, I'm still missing a review for one of the cheapest … Read more

The Canon PowerShot A2200 is basically filler in Canon's A-series PowerShot lineup and, despite that, it's one of the most popular cameras on CNET. It's a step-down from the A3300 IS, getting a shorter lens, smaller LCD, and no optical image stabilization. (It's also lower resolution: 14 megapixels compared to the A3300's 16-megapixel resolution.) Below the A2200 is the A1200, which is basically a 12-megapixel version of the A2200. It has the same shooting options, LCD, and lens, but the A1200 has an optical viewfinder and AA batteries.

That's not to say the A2200 … Read more

The General Ledger has been the basic bookkeeping tool of double-entry accounting since the Green Eyeshade days. It records financial transactions as both Credits and Debits in balance sheets, which before the advent of software were bound together in huge volumes like something out of a Dickens novel. BS1 General Ledger from Davis Business Systems brings the General Ledger up to cyberspeed with a variety of easy-to-use accounting tools that can track budgets and financial data and generate income statements, balance sheets, and other reports. It's freeware, a good start, accountancy-wise.

At just 1.44MB, BS1 is a fairly … Read more

Today Nintendo announced that its DS Lite handheld, originally released in 2006, has had its retail price reduced to $99. This comes a week before the annual E3 expo in Los Angeles, and a week after the Nintendo Wii dropped its price to $150.

The DS Lite was always a well-received handheld, and was the last Nintendo portable to support Game Boy Advance cartridges, but it's currently two generations behind. The Nintendo DSi, released in 2009, still sells for $150, and the Nintendo 3DS, released earlier this year, sells for $250.

It's not surprising to see price drops … Read more

iBank is a full-featured financial management app that can help you track bank and credit card accounts, keep an eye on your investment portfolio, generate a variety of reports, and help with budgeting and planning.

iBank's interface has a very Mac-like feel: a toolbar sits over two panes, one for sources on the left and one for a transaction register on the right. Unlike the previous version of iBank, transaction editing happens right in the register view, with drop-down tools for categories, splits, and memos, and you can perform calculations when entering amounts. The right pane is also where … Read more

The Wharfedale Diamond 10.1 is easily the best speaker I've heard for $350 per pair. Wharfedale started making loudspeakers in 1932, which makes it the second-oldest still-surviving speaker manufacturer in the world (Tannoy is the oldest). The entry-level Diamond Series speakers debuted some 49 years later; the Diamond 10.1 we're reviewing today is from the latest incarnation of the line.

Wharfedale not only designs and builds all of its own woofers and tweeters in-house, it also designs and manufactures nearly every part of its speakers, including the crossover networks' resistors and capacitors. Even the bolts that … Read more

Jolida may not be the most recognizable name in consumer electronics, but the little company has been selling overachieving budget-priced audiophile tube gear in the U.S. since 1992. I have a few friends using Jolida gear, and they're all enthusiastic supporters of the brand. I reviewed the Jolida FX10 all-tube amp late last year.

The Jolida JD301RC ($425) is a 30-watt-per-channel integrated stereo amplifier. It's a "hybrid" design that uses a pair of vacuum tubes (12AX7) in its preamplifier section, and National Semiconductor MOSFET transistors in its power amp stage. The JD301RC has four line-level … Read more