MiFi 500 LTE by Novatel Wireless (Sprint)

Pros Removable battery. Solid Wi-Fi range. Supports Sprint's new tri-band LTE network.

Cons Very basic on-device display. No external antenna port. No global roaming support. Bottom Line The Sprint MiFi 500 is a solid workhorse wireless hotspot for Sprint's new tri-band LTE network.

By Sascha Segan

Need a solid, workhorse hotspot to use on Sprint's network? The Novatel MiFi 500 LTE (free with contract) is a reliable choice, besting its main competitor the Netgear Zing on our tests of speed and range. The Zing beats it out for an Editor's Choice based on its flexibility (especially with its optional desktop cradle), but the MiFi 500 is the one to go to if you need to blanket a larger area with Sprint Wi-Fi.

Physical Features and Management
The MiFi 500 LTE is a nondescript little brick, when compared to the zingy Zing. It's a plastic puck, 3.8 by 2.4 by .7" (HWD) and 3.35 ounces, made of shiny black plastic on top and soft-touch gray plastic around the sides. The back is removable, so you can replace the 1800mAh battery; I haven't found replacement batteries on the market yet, but I'm sure they're coming. The MiFi lacks an external antenna port.

There's a big gray power button on the top face, as well as a few physical navigation buttons. Hit the power button and the dim little OLED screen lights up with signal strength and battery indicators. By flipping through onscreen menus, you can find the Wi-Fi network name and password, check which devices are connected to the hotspot, check signal strength in dBm, and activate WPS setup.

You get many more management options on the simple, clear Web-based management portal. There, you can monitor your data usage, and set up your 2.4GHz-only 802.11 b/g/n network using VPN passthrough, DMZ, port filtering, and port forwarding.

The MiFi supports up to 10 Wi-Fi devices and can connect to an eleventh as a USB modem; plugging it into a Mac or PC it works right away, without installing any drivers. With an extra driver, it gives your PC GPS support.

The MiFi 500, unlike the Zing, is not world-capable. It only works on Sprint's 3G EVDO and tri-band LTE networks. Also note that Sprint's "unlimited" sales pitch doesn't apply to hotspots; all hotspot plans are capped, costing $34.99 for 3GB, $49.99 for 6GB or $79.99 for 12GB.

Performance
Testing Sprint's new LTE network in New York City is an exercise in frustration. It's spotty and inconsistent, strongest in remote parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn. I had to use the Sensorly mapping app to find individual towers that Sprint had activated in Manhattan and Queens, and even then, the network showed a weird behavior with upload tests truncating early.

The reason to buy the new MiFi and Zing is that they support Sprint's new tri-band approach to LTE. Sprint has been taking its existing 1900MHz LTE network and supplementing it with 800MHz, which does much better at penetrating buildings, and 2600MHz, which should provide scorching speed in urban areas. Unfortunately, Sprint's buildout there is even less developed than their 1900MHz buildout, and we haven't had a chance to test the mixed coverage.

But you get what you get, and you try not to get upset. We tested LTE with the MiFi and Zing in five locations. In three of them, the MiFi was considerably faster. In one, the Zing prevailed, and in the last one, the MiFi dropped to 3G while the Zing pulled out decent LTE speeds.

Indoors, the MiFi showed much better range than the Zing. While the Zing's speeds started to drop off after about 50 feet, the MiFi held on well to about 100 feet.

The Zing also showed slightly longer battery life than the MiFi—although remember, the MiFi's battery life really wins because the battery is replaceable. I got 7 hours, 40 minutes with the MiFi compared to 7 hours, 55 minutes with the Zing.

Conclusions
If you're looking for a Sprint hotspot and need long WiFi range without a cradle, the MiFi 500 is your pick. The Netgear Zing is more manageable and flexible, it roams worldwide, and it supports external antennas, so it's a better choice for most people.

If you have a Sierra Wireless Tri-Fi, I'd say hold onto it for now. Sprint just hasn't built out enough of its tri-band LTE network for the advantages to kick in quite yet. I'd peg early 2014 for when these hotspots will start opening up speed and coverage advantages over the Tri-Fi.

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Promise Pegasus J2

Pros Speedy Thunderbolt interface. Dual SSD RAID 0 speed. Compact, pocketable drive. Works on Thunderbolt bus power or AC power.

Cons Much slower on Thunderbolt bus power. Not a lot of capacity for the price. No USB 3.0 port. Only single Thunderbolt port. Doesn't include Thunderbolt cable. Bottom Line The Thunderbolt-equipped Promise Pegasus J2 external solid-state drive is a speed demon in the studio, and a versatile bus-powered drive in the field. It's pricey and has a relatively low capacity for a $500 drive, but it is one of the fastest portable Thunderbolt drives out there.

By Joel Santo Domingo

The Promise Pegasus J2 is a portable solid-state drive that has a dual personality. Away from the studio, the drive is a portable, bus-powered SSD with good performance for video and photo editing in the field. While in the studio (and connected to AC power), the drive kicks the spurs and sprints along as one of the faster drives we've tested. Its dual nature means that you give up some speed when you're out and about, and it gives up some capacity compared to desktop-bound drives. It's a good solution for travelling visual artists who exclusively use Thunderbolt-equipped Macs, but there are better choices for everyone else.

Design and Features
The Pegasus J2 looks like a compact portable hard drive, though there are a few differences. The top of the drive has a bi-level look to it, with the end closer to the I/O ports a little bit thicker than the rest of the drive case. The two-toned drive case accentuates this look, with a silver top and black bottom. On the thicker end of the drive, there's a single Thunderbolt port, rather than the two daisy-chainable ports common on desktop-class drives. Flanking the Thunderbolt port are the drive's LED status indicator and a rubber door covering the drive's AC adapter jack. When the drive is simply plugged into a Thunderbolt port, the drive will work and the LED lights up green. When you add additional power from the included AC adapter, the LED glows blue, showing that the drive is in higher powered, higher throughput mode. More on that below, in the performance section of the review.

The drive is actually a pair of 128GB SSDs connected together in a RAID 0 array, giving the user 256GB of speedy storage. The drive arrives formatted HFS+ for Mac use, but you can reformat the drive exFAT or NTFS for use on Windows PCs. The drive comes with a Windows driver disk, but it doesn't include a Thunderbolt cable. The drive also lacks USB 3.0, something the Editors' Choice winning LaCie Rugged USB 3.0 Thunderbolt (120GB SSD) ($200) comes with. This makes the LaCie drive a better choice for people who encounter other PC and Mac users. All systems have USB drives, but only certain PCs and newer Macs have Thunderbolt ports. This will be a problem if you ever need to use the drive to transfer large files from your Mac to a system without a Thunderbolt port. You can use the Pegasus J2 as a speedy Time Machine backup drive on most MacBooks with flash storage, but we surmise that the drive will better be utilized as an external work drive for media work like editing short HD videos or working on digital photos. The drive comes with a standard two-year warranty, shorter than the three-year warranty you usually find on high performance drives.

Performance
The Pegasus J2 is one of the fastest drives we've reviewed, with the caveat that this speed was measured with the drive plugged into a wall outlet like a desktop-style drive. Plugged in, the Pegasus J2 copied our test folder in 3 seconds, and achieved a blistering 723MB/sec read and 665MB/sec write speed on our AJA System test. However, when working on bus power only, the drive managed a slower 16 seconds on the drag and drop test, an proportionally slower throughput on the AJA System test (295MBps read, 281MBps write). That is slower, though still competitive with the LaCie Rugged drive (17 seconds on Drag and Drop, 379MBps read, 200 MBps write). It's certainly faster than the Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt Portable HDD (HD-PA1.0TU3) ($230) (13 seconds on our Drag and Drop test, 110MBps read, 96MBps write), which has a 1TB spinning hard drive in it instead of a SSD. The thing is, if you need a semi-portable SSD RAID drive for work, other drives like the LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt (1TB SSD) ($999) (6 seconds on Drag and Drop, 620MBps read, 380MBps write) gives you similar performance with four times the storage space, and hence up to four times larger projects.

At the 256GB capacity, the Promise Pegasus J2 is a speedy, somewhat adaptable SSD array for the travelling photographer or videographer. However, the lower purchase price, and speedier performance (on bus power) of the LaCie Rugged USB 3.0 Thunderbolt lets it hold on to its Editors' Choice for rugged portable drives, and is a better choice for the oft travelling visual artist. If you need a drive for the studio, then other more capacious SSD drives like the LaCie Little Big Disk are more useful. The Pegasus J2 sits somewhere in the middle: You'll get some adaptability, but it's not a perfect solution for either case.

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Promise Pegasus R4

Pros Speedy Thunderbolt throughput. Four drives. Two Thunderbolt ports. Internal power supply. Supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, and 50.

Cons No USB 3.0 nor eSATA. 2-year warranty. Bottom Line The Promise Pegasus R4 is an external hard drive for the media, database, and scientific professional who needs to work on multi-TB projects, and who need to constantly submit their work now.

By Joel Santo Domingo

The Promise Pegasus R4 is a four-bay RAID external drive for professionals that sling a lot of data. It is one of the latest Thunderbolt drives on the market for Mac and PC users who have adopted the speedy 10Gbps interface. It's a drive for the media, database, and scientific professional who needs to work on multi-TB projects, and who need to constantly submit their work now.

Features
The Pegasus R4 looks like a standard business-class RAID drive from the front. It's got an identical if shorter facade like its big brother, the Promise Pegasus R6 ($1,999). It's a big metal box with four removable drive sleds in the front, with power and access lights, and a perforated panel for cooling duties. In the back the drive has a pair of 10Gbps Thunderbolt ports, a Kensington lock port, cooling fan exhaust, and a standard 3-pin power port. The drive's internal power supply means that you won't have to find space for an external power brick, which saves a little space and makes it more convenient to move the drive to another Mac or PC.

The Pegasus R4 has four 1TB drives in it, giving you a 4TB RAID 0 configuration. You can setup the drive for RAID 1, 5, 6, and 50, which can give you data redundancy, at the expense of some drive capacity. For our tests and review, we left the drive in RAID 0 configuration. While more complex (if needed), the flexibility of RAID configurations are more flexible than the simpler RAID configs in the comparable Western Digital My Book VelociRaptor Duo ($900), LaCie 2big ($749), and Editors' Choice LaCie 5big Thunderbolt Series ($2,199).

The Pegasus R4 comes pre-formatted with HFS+ for OS X systems, but you can of course reformat the drive exFAT or NTFS for Windows PCs. The drive has no packed in software aside from drivers. This is fine, since the drive is positioned more as a data work drive than a backup drive. The drive only has Thunderbolt ports, so if you want to use the drive with a PC, you'll need a PC with a Thunderbolt port. Since the drive lacks USB or eSATA, you won't be able to copy data directly off your old PC or Mac. The drive comes with a shorter 2-year warranty, many drives in this price class come with three years of coverage.

Performance
The reason to buy a Thunderbolt-equipped external drive is for performance, and the Pegasus R4 has that base covered. The drive takes a short three seconds to copy our standard drag and drop test folder, and showed prodigious throughput rates (525 MBps read, 630 MBps write) at the AJA System test. This means the drive is well suited for high-throughput activities like HD video editing, large-scale database development, and almost instantaneous information search and retrieval. It's also a good fit for scientific duties, where users need to analyze and interpret large swaths of digital info. On our tests, it's much faster than the Western Digital My Book VelociRaptor Duo (11 seconds on the drag and drop test, 374 MBps read, 343 MBps write), as well as the Pegasus R6 (6 seconds on the drag and drop test, 480MBps read, 620MBps write). However, it is measurably slower than the prodigiously capacious LaCie 5big (2 seconds on the drag and drop test, 645MBps read, 677MBps write). That said, if you work on smaller project sizes of 1TB to 2TB at a time, the Pegasus R4 makes more sense than the huge 5big.

If you don't need 20TB of storage all the time, then the 4TB Promise Pegasus R4 is a very good media/database/scientific work drive. It will be a good companion to the upcoming Apple Mac Pro, or virtually any Thunderbolt-equipped Mac or PC. It's not quite as capacious or as fast as the LaCie 5big, our current Editors' Choice for desktop-class external drives, but nonetheless it would be a drive we'd recommend if you don't need quite that much storage.

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LaCie 5big

Pros Server-capacity storage. Speedy Thunderbolt interface. Dual Thunderbolt ports. 5-drives.

Cons External power supply. No USB 3.0 nor eSATA. Only RAID 0, 1, JBOD. Bottom Line The LaCie 5big Thunderbolt Series desktop-class external drive gives you a huge 20TB of storage, available instantly. It's the drive to use when you need constant access to all your work or project data.

By Joel Santo Domingo

The LaCie 5big Thunderbolt Series ($2,199 list) is one of the largest, fastest drives we've ever reviewed. It holds a massive 20TB of space in a single RAID 0 volume, enough for many hours of HD video, and the dual Thunderbolt interface means that you can work on several HD streams at once. The 5big's prodigious capacity and speed are also useful for scientific users and database development. It's the drive to use if server-based storage is too slow, but you need the gargantuan capacities that a server would give you or your users. It's also our new Editors' Choice for external desktop-class hard drives.

Design and Features
We don't normally highlight design when we're talking about desktop-class external hard drives, but LaCie's drives are an exception. Thanks to a conscious design strategy, you notice LaCie drives when they're sitting on someone's desk. The 5big is large, but its minimalist design makes it seem less bulky than other drives like the Promise Pegasus R6 ($1999) and the Western Digital My Book VelociRaptor Duo ($900). The large backlit blue dome on the 5big's front panel tempers its imposing girth. The blue dome of light makes the aluminum block look friendlier, even though it reminds us of the supercomputer HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The drives are made to be stackable, so you can easily put 120TB of storage on your desk.

The drive's back panel has a pair of 10Gbps Thunderbolt ports, AC adapter port, Kensington lock port, and the exhaust for the cooling fan. The Thunderbolt ports can be daisy-chained to other drives, and can pass through video to Thunderbolt-compatible displays. The drive notably lacks a USB 3.0 or eSATA port, which means that the drive is better suited for a design studio or dev firm that already has Thunderbolt-equipped Macs and PCs. You'll have to connect older drives up to your new Mac for transfer rather than connecting the new drive up to your old Mac or PC. The 5big is pre-formatted HFS+, telegraphing the primary audience for the drive. You can of course reformat the drive exFAT or NTFS for use on a Windows PC. It would've been nice to have a built-in power supply, as on the Promise Pegasus R4 ($1,099), as a result you'll have to find some space for the large power brick that comes with the drive.

As the name implies, the 5big comes with five populated drive bays. Each drive is on an easily-swappable sled, in case you need to physically archive the drives and their data. You can setup the drive in RAID 0,1, and JBOD configurations, but for speed and capacity, we left the drive in RAID 0 (striping) configuration. In this config, you have an insane 20TB of drive space (five 4TB drives). This is server-level capacities, and will serve the video editor, scientific data analyst, or database user well. The 20TB is enough for several decades of searchable data, especially considering that 1TB drives only became commonplace in the past half dozen years.

Even though the drive has five mechanisms, other RAID levels like RAID 5 aren't available, since all the drive management happens in Apple's Disk Utility. If you need more esoteric drive management, you'll have to find another solution. The drive comes with Intego Backup Manager Pro on a CD, but the 5big really is overkill for use as a backup drive. In theory, you could format each of the five drives individually for a daily 4TB backup during the workweek, but we have a feeling that most users of this drive will want a 20TB bucket for active use on projects, particularly when Apple releases its upcoming Mac Pro, which won't have upgradable internal storage. A Thunderbolt cable is included in the drive's packaging. The drive comes with a standard three-year warranty.

Performance
The 5big is one of the fastest drives we've tested. Its little brother, the LaCie 2big ($749) took 12 seconds to do our drag and drop copy test, and had excellent AJA System test numbers (320MB/sec read, 304MB/sec write). The 5big more than doubles the AJA System Test speed (645MB/sec read, 677MB/sec write) and our drag and drop test is almost instantaneous (2 sec). This drive is even quicker than the 10,000rpm drive powered Western Digital My Book VelociRaptor Duo (11 seconds in our Drag and Drop test, 374MBps read, 343MBps write), which has one-tenth the capacity.

The LaCie 5big is currently one of the largest and fastest external hard drives we've ever tested at PCLabs. While it is pricey, it is an excellent solution for the type of user who needs insane amounts of storage, and considers server-side storage to be too slow for their needs. If you're doing a lot of video/media editing, database development on the fly, or scientific analysis work on a Thunderbolt-equipped Mac or PC workstation, then the LaCie 5big is the drive we'd recommend. On a speed and cost per GB basis it blows away our previous Editors' Choice, the LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt (1TB SSD) ($999). For all these reasons, the LaCie 5big is our new Editors' Choice for desktop-class external hard drives.

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Polywell Nano i3-Q7

Pros Compact. Quiet. Two HDMI ports. Speedy SSD powered system.

Cons Small capacity SSD. No built-in Wi-Fi. Bottom Line The Polywell Nano i3-Q7 brings Intel Core i3 power to the small-form-factor PC business market. It's a durable, quiet PC that will help your entry-level workers do their jobs and service their customers.

By Joel Santo Domingo

The Polywell Nano i3-Q7 is a small-form-factor PC with a business focus. It's a good system for business uses like static displays, POS terminals, customer information terminals, and in vehicles. It uses a SSD drive for speed and durability. Its metal shell protects the system from day to day use, and its ultrabook-class processor means that it's quick in day-to-day performance, even at somewhat strenuous multimedia tasks. It's a versatile system for the business user in extreme environments, and comes highly recommended for certain niche areas.

Design and Features
The Nano i3-Q7 is a tiny black metal box, measuring just 2 by 4.75 by 4.25 inches (HWD). The chassis is heavily vented to keep the Intel Core i3-3217U processor cool, but even under load you probably won't hear the internal cooling fan unless your ear is right next to the system. It's designed for business use, like in kiosks, ATMs, POS terminals, and in vehicle installations. It's not hard to imagine this system in those situations, since it can virtually hide under a desk or behind a screen. The system has three USB 2.0 ports, two in the back and one in the front. There's also an old school serial port for card readers and the like. The Nano i3-Q7 also somehow includes two HDMI ports, which means that the system can support multiple monitors (for example, one for the sales clerk with a another display for the customer).

The Nano i3-Q7 comes with a mounting bracket, and since the PC has no moving parts aside from the fans, you could theoretically mount the system on a moving platform or inside a vehicle. The system uses an mSATA SSD card for storage. The system we reviewed came with a 64GB SSD, which is somewhat small for a user system but would be sufficient for a single-use system like a POS terminal. In any case, you can connect an external USB 2.0 port if you need more storage, or order a larger SSD for the system. The Nano i3-Q7 can connect to your network via a built in Gigabit Ethernet port, which is more secure than Wi-Fi, which isn't included. IT folks can install a half-size miniPCIe card for WiFi inside the tiny chassis or use an external USB key.

The Nano i3-Q7 has an external power supply, keeping the box itself small. Audio duties are handled by HDMI, which means that you can't use external speakers unless connectors are built into your monitor (you also can't connect a pair of headphones to the system). The system will support Windows 7, 8, XP, Linux, and FreeBSD, but the our review unit came with Windows 7 Home Premium (and not much else).

Performance
The Nano i3-Q7 comes with an ultrabook-class Intel Core i3-3217U processor with built-in Intel HD Graphics 4000, 8GB of system memory, and that 64GB mSATA SSD we mentioned above. The combination results in a PCMark 7 score of 3,344 points. PCMark 7 measures the system's day-to-day performance. The Core i3 processor and SSD mean that the system has over double the points of the Atom-powered Lenovo IdeaCentre Q190 ($400) and over 1,000 points over the similarly positioned Zotac Zbox ID83 Plus ($473). In fact, the system even (barely) outscores a mainstream full tower with discrete graphics, the Acer Aspire AT3-600-UR11 ($600). Other benchmarks are good, with a very short Handbrake time of 45 seconds, matching the Acer. The Lenovo takes three minutes flat on the same test. Essentially, the system works well, and should serve its users well over the 5 to 7 years it's expected to last.

The Polywell Nano i3-Q7 is a very good system for the niche market of small systems that serve as an in-between among customers and your workers. It's certainly powerful enough to serve single-purpose tasks like cash registers, ATMs, and customer info terminals. However, systems like the entry-level business desktop Editors' Choice Lenovo ThinkCentre M92p Tiny ($580) are a better choice for workers that do varied tasks in an office setting, so it holds on to its EC. If you need a tiny system that does one thing well, day in and day out however, the Nano i3-Q7 should be on your short list.

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Kodak ScanMate i940 Scanner for Macintosh Computers

Pros Designed for the Mac. Fast for a portable scanner. 20-page ADF. Duplex scanning. Can run from AC or battery power. Nearly matched rated speed for USB-powered scans.

Cons Subpar OCR performance. Scan times under AC power were well below its rated speed. Bottom Line The ScanMate i940 Scanner for Macintosh Computers is a capable portable scanner that's also good for light-duty desktop use.

By Tony Hoffman

Kodak recently launched its ScanMate i940 Scanner for Macintosh Computers, the OS X counterpart to the Windows-based Kodak ScanMate i940 Scanner, an Editors' Choice. It's a welcome addition, as Mac-specific scanners are not easy to find. In our testing, although it was well short of its rated speed when under AC power, it was nonetheless fast for a portable scanner, and it lost little time when I switched to scanning to searchable PDF from image PDF. Although it's primarily a portable scanner, its 20-page automatic document feeder (ADF) and duplex scanning capability make it useful for light desktop use as well.

At 3.1 by 11.4 by 4.2 inches (HWD) and 2.9 pounds, it is large and heavy for a portable scanner. It has a 20-page automatic document feeder (ADF), and supports duplex (2-sided) scanning. It can scan both business cards and thick plastic cards in addition to paper documents up to 8.5 by 60 inches.

As befitting its dual nature as a desktop and portable scanner, you can power the i940 for Macintosh either from an AC adapter or from your computer's power over a USB cable. (You can add a second USB cable for additional power.) Once it's plugged in, to start the scanner you just open the lid; you'll see a blue LED-lit number to identify the current scan profile. There are also two arrow keys: an up arrow for cycling through the profiles, and a right arrow, the scan button, which is illuminated in green when you're ready to scan. After 15 minutes of inactivity, the scanner will go into power saver mode, and the lights will go out. To turn the scanner off, you simply close the cover.

Software
I tested the i940 for Macintosh on a 13-inch MacBook Pro running OS X Mountain Lion. Apart from OS compatibility, what differentiates a Mac scanner from a Windows model is the included software. The Mac version comes with NewSoft Presto! PageManager 9 for document management and NewSoft Presto! BizCard Xpress for business card management, plus a Twain driver.

In contrast, the Windows-only i940 includes the Kodak SmartTouch scan utility and NewSoft Presto! BizCard 6 plus Twain, WIA, and ISIS drivers—which let you scan from Windows programs that include a scan command—but no document management program. Both PageManager 9 and the SmartTouch scan utility have built-in optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities.

In PageManager you can adjust the settings for the scan button profiles, which include Scan to PageManager; Scan to BizCard Xpress; Scan to Folder; Scan to Mail; Copy to Print; Scan to OCR; Scan to PDF; Scan to Google Docs; and Scan to Evernote. Output formats include TIFF, JPEG, RTF, BMP, PDF, and searchable PDF. I launched the scans from the scan button icon on the program's top menu.

Performance
When using the scanner under AC power, I timed it at 12 pages per minute (ppm) in scanning and saving a 10-page document to image PDF in black-and-white at the default 200 ppi using PageManager. Although well short of its rated 20ppm speed, that's still a very good speed for a portable scanner. Switching to duplex (two-sided) scanning, I timed it in scanning a 10-page document to image PDF at 11 ppm/22 ipm.

In scanning and saving the 10-page simplex document to searchable PDF, I clocked it at 1 minute 5 seconds, a little slower than scanning to image PDF but still a strong score in that many scanners lose a lot of time in the OCR phase.

I also tried scanning to image PDF solely under USB power (a second supplied USB cable plugs into the scanner's power jack); in my testing it slowed to 7 ppm for simplex and 7 ppm/14 ipm for duplex scanning, which is still faster than most portable scanners, and it nearly matches Kodak's rated speed for USB-powered scanning (8 ppm).

OCR
Using the OCR function in PageManager to scan to RTF format was a disappointment. There was at least one error in all fonts (including the standard Times New Roman and Ariel) even at the largest sizes, and it also had trouble in formatting the scanned pages. This is in line with what we've seen with other (Windows-based) scanners that used the OCR function in PageManager.

I scanned a stack of business cards to Presto! BizCard Xpress, which did a passable job of reading and sorting the data. Although nearly all the cards had spelling errors (and in some cases items were mis-sorted), it's still a good bit better than keying in the data yourself.

As the Kodak ScanMate i940 Scanner for Macintosh Computers is the first scanner we've tested using Mac hardware and software, we can't do any "Apples to Apples" comparisons to other scanners we've tested. I can say that although its performance didn't match its Windows counterpart, it was still very respectable for a portable scanner, and it is well worth a look by Mac users in search of a scanning solution.

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Kik Messenger (for Windows Phone)

Pros Free. No ads. Super simple to set up and ad contacts. Shows when messages have been delivered and read. Private—doesn't require cell phone number. Versions available for all major mobile platforms, including Blackberry and Symbian.

Cons No video or audio messaging. Windows Phone offers fewer goodies than iPhone version. Bottom Line Kik Messenger is one of the simplest free, cross-platform messaging apps around. It's also more private than some major competitors, and doesn't' foist ads on you.

By Michael Muchmore

If you've spent any time at all browsing the multitude of Instagram photos or Vine mini-videos, there's a good chance that you've seen posts with captions containing the phrase "KiK me" or those that include a Kik username. Kik Messenger has become the de facto standard for instant messaging among the new generation of mobile social communicators. It differs from competitors like WhatsApp and Viber by not requiring your phone number, but it too lets you include photos in your messages and engage in group chat.

Setup and Signup
I tested Kik Messenger on two phones, a Nokia Lumia 928's and a Samsung ATIV Odyssey. Signing up for a Kik account is a matter of entering your first and last names, a username, an email address, and password. The signup form recommends, but doesn't require entering you phone number. I really wish you could just sign up with your Facebook or Twitter credentials, though; all this filling in forms is so 2005.

The signup procedure asks if you want Kik to scan your address book for existing users of the service. Any user found will get a notification that they can now chat with you over Kik. In general, I had a much easier time connecting with my pals in Kik than in WhatsApp; I could also send invites to email or Facebook.

The Kik Windows Phone app has just two swipe-through pages: Contacts, and Conversations, making it one simpler than WhatsApp. On the Conversations tab, you can tap a gear button to get to settings for things like Notifications, Account, Privacy (you can add users to a block list), and interface color.  It would be nice to be able to change the font and font size, but the color choice is already more personalization than you get with WhatsApp.

Kik has no pretensions of creating rich profiles the way that's become standard with social networks: You don't have to enter any personal info. Your contact info page is just a photo and your username.

Messaging
Kik was an innovator with its ability to show you whether your contact had read your message or not. When you first send a text, an S appears in a small box to its left; this turns to a D to indicated "delivered," and then to an R when the message has actually been read by the contact.

When it comes to energizing conversations with extra goodies, Kik lets you insert the standard selection of smilies to your chat, but they're not as impactful as Facebook Messenger's stickers. You also don't get as many message attachment options in the Windows Phone version of Kik as you do in the iPhone version: things like video sketches, YouTube videos, and memes (those photos with the big block text). But if an iPhone contact adds any of this, you'll be able to see it in the Windows Phone app. Nor can you create a video or audio message the way you can in WhatsApp. And forget about actual voice calling like you get with Viber or video calling like you get with Skype.

One thing you can do is engage in group chatting. Kik makes this a simple matter of tapping a big plus sign after tapping the Convo Info button at the bottom of the chat screen. You can add up to 10 group members, and anyone can leave at any time, using the same Convo Info page.

Will You Get a Kick Out of this App?
The choice of a messaging app depends a lot on whether people you want to chat with are using it. Though pretty bare-bones, Kik for Windows Phone has loads of users and a few good things going for it—its very simplicity is one of them. Kik also provides more privacy than competitors like WhatsApp and Viber, which require your cell phone number. That also means you don't have to worry about a small app developer ever selling your number to marketers. Another plus over WhatsApp is that you don't have to see ads in your inbox. But if you want free, ad-free, privacy protecting text messaging, stick with our Editors' Choice, Skype[], which adds voice and video chat.

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