Yelp (for iPhone)

Pros Easy to use and navigate. Clean UI. Useful amount of information displayed for mobile users. Relevant business details provided (hours open, map, etc.). Can post reviews and photos from iPhone.

Cons Tips are buried. Experienced minor glitches when posting new tips. Bottom Line The Yelp app provides reasonably reliable information about businesses from user-generated content. The type of information it displays in a short digest is ideal for mobile users looking for quick answers, recommendations, and directions.

By Sean Ludwig, Jill Duffy Yelp's ability to provide detailed information and reviews of businesses is rather remarkable, and its free mobile apps put exactly the right details into your hands when you're on the go. You can quickly find out if a business is currently open or closed, get directions to the site, see photos of what's inside, and read reviews and tips about the business. But it's best digested with a grain of salt. As with any user-generated content, you'll need to turn on your critical thinking skills to wade through some bias, but the design of Yelp's mobile app makes doing so surprisingly simple. Yelp is an Editors' Choice iPhone app because it absolutely makes life on-the-go better and more enjoyable. Its design and interface are clear, and the information it delivers is succinct.

Interface and Usability
The free Yelp app is jam-packed with tools, features, and various sections, but the layout and user interface actually make all this easy to navigate and understand. The key is that when you find a business you need, whether it's a restaurant or a doctor's office, the app gives you the most important information upfront in a digest: hours open and an "open" or "closed" note for the current time, map to the location, overall review rating (1 to 5), the phone number, a link to open directions, and the distance from you to it.

The main menu runs along the bottom of the app, with a home button at the far left, just where it should be, and subsequent buttons for Nearby, Search, Bookmarks, and Check-Ins. A second search tool lives at the top of the app—intentional redundancy that is a good example of Yelp's well designed interface. Searching for businesses is what users typically want to do with the app, and I appreciate that Yelp gives me multiple places to access that search button.

Also at the top are two additional buttons, one quite clear in its use (settings), and the other slightly confusing—the "add" button. Click "add," and you have pop-up options to create a new entry for a business, upload a photo, write a tip, or check-in to a venue. It seems odd that adding a business would be the first option under "add," and I'm confused why there isn't an option to add a review, seeing as you now can write them from a mobile device.

To add a review, you have to land on a business' entry first. You can search for businesses with any terms, like "coffee" or "gas stations," or look for ones nearby generally using Apple's Location Services or within a specified category such as salons or drug stores. On a business' entry, you can also bookmark the place (save it to your Yelp account).

I couldn't immediately find "tips" about a hotel in Brooklyn where locals apparently pay $45 a day to hang out on the pool deck. It turns out tips are way at the bottom, below the address, mapped location, basic information like open hours, and snippets of reviews. To add a tip from the business' page, you have to scroll even further down, to the end of the section showing snippets of tips. Best tip here? A day pass costs ten bucks less if you go during the week rather than the weekend.

I scoped out some more businesses and found a nearby coffee shop I like near PCMag's office and wrote a quick tip (bring your own cup, and drinks are nearly half price). I hit publish and saw a confirmation that my tip posted. But then I navigated back to that business' entry and re-opened the complete list of tips, where I saw mine had posted four times! In my own user profile area, though, it appeared as if I had only posted the tip once, so I don't understand what happened. I left the business, searched for it again to load the page anew, navigated back to the tips and saw my tip just once now. A glitch, I suppose.

Yelp's Effectiveness
The real selling point of the Yelp iPhone app is that it gives you succinct but essential information about businesses you might need or want to visit that are nearby. There's a lot more going on in the app, too, but it doesn't get in the way of the critical information put at the fore. You can now write reviews on the go, as well as add tips about a business, upload photos, as well as peruse photos and read complete reviews from other users. Yelp's iPhone app provides a great service, making it an Editors' Choice and one of the 50 best free iPhone apps available.

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iPhone buyback firms unruffled by Apple's trade-in plans

Computerworld - Buyback firms today remained unconcerned about a reported Apple in-store iPhone trade-in program, saying that if accurate, it simply vindicated their business models.

"Apple [doing buyback] would be great for our business," said Anthony Scarsella, chief gadget officer at Gazelle, in an interview. "It will only add a ton of awareness to the idea of re-commerce."

Jeff Trachsel, chief marketing officer at NextWorth, agreed. "This is more a validation of our business model than anything else," Trachsel said when asked about Apple's purported plans.

Gazelle and NextWorth are two players in "re-commerce," the buying of used consumer electronics like smartphones, primarily in developed countries, then refurbishing them for resale in less affluent markets.

Their sentiments were in line with comments by re-commerce companies in June, when news first circulated that Apple would this fall begin accepting older iPhones as trade-ins for new models. On Monday, those reports intensified, with TechCrunch saying that some Apple retail stores were already running pilot programs.

Scarsella and Trachsel contrasted their programs, and others like them, with what Apple is expected to offer. Gazelle and NextWorth pay cash for used smartphones, while Apple will only offer in-store credit in the form of an Apple gift card. Both Gazelle and NextWorth accept a wide range of devices, giving consumers who want to switch from an Android-based phone a sell-back outlet.

Scarsella was the most aggressive in downplaying the threat, noting that Apple's program required that customers visit a store. "I think this could be a nightmare," said Scarsella, referring to the lines that often form outside Apple stores at the launch of a new iPhone. "With us, it's fast and easy, and you wait until you get the new one before you send the old one back."

Both Gazelle and NextWorth offer a lock-in period, a span of X days during which they guarantee a quoted price for a trade-in. Usually, that's long enough for consumers to buy a new phone, switch their number and transfer their apps and content before shipping off the old smartphone.

On Monday, Gazelle extended its usual 30-day lock-in to 50 days, or until Oct. 15. NextWorth offers a 30-day lock-in period.

Apple is expected to unveil its new iPhones on Sept. 10 and begin selling them Sept. 20.

Talk of those dates has, as usual, boosted activity on re-commerce companies' websites as consumers decide whether to sell their older iPhones before purchase prices drop further.

NextWorth, one of several 're-commerce' companies, offers $340 for a 16GB iPhone 5 that works on AT&T's mobile network.Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

Read now.

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Kaspersky Anti-Virus (2014)

Pros Advanced disinfection at install handles active malware. Excellent ratings from independent labs. Very good score in hands-on malware removal test. Accurate phishing protection. Useful bonus tools.

Cons Some difficulty installing on malware-infested systems. Good-not-great results in hands-on malware blocking test. Bottom Line The independent testing labs give top marks to Kaspersky Anti-Virus (2014). It didn't fare quite as well in my own hands-on tests, but it's definitely a good choice.

By Neil J. Rubenking

It's not even September yet, and I've already encountered one antivirus with "2014" in its name and another with an implied 2014. Kaspersky doesn't use year or version numbers anymore; I'll call their latest product Kaspersky Anti-Virus (2014) to distinguish it from last year's version. In addition to effective antivirus protection, it offers a number of useful bonus features.

G Data AntiVirus 2014 is the product that's declared itself ready for the new year. Bitdefender Antivirus Plus (2014) doesn't actually use a year number, but it's the latest version. Symantec has also eliminated version and year numbers; their new product line will show up in early September.

Installation Challenges
Kaspersky installed without incident on eight of my twelve malware-infested test systems. On seven of those systems, it reported active malware immediately after installation and asked permission to perform an advanced disinfection, followed by a reboot. In a couple of cases it requested another advanced disinfection afterward. This made for a lengthy installation process, but on several systems a later full scan found nothing, meaning that the initial disinfection did the entire cleanup job.

The WindowsUnlocker component of Kaspersky's Rescue Disc foiled a ransomware threat that initially prevented installing the antivirus. On another system, the installer totally failed. On advice from tech support I employed a number of specialized tools and ran the Rescue Disc. Advice from tech support fixed collateral damage caused by the Rescue Disc; eventually I managed a full scan.

Kaspersky installed fine on one system but every time it launched, the process was immediately terminated by malware. Solving this required a number of tools, including a custom script supplied by tech support, but eventually I got the product installed and working.

I did run into some issues getting Kaspersky installed, granted, but all of the problems were solved by the Rescue Disc and other ancillary Kaspersky tools. On that basis, Kaspersky gets four stars for installation experience.

Good Malware Cleanup
Once I completed all of the installations I ran a full scan on each system and tallied up the results. I was a little apprehensive, because I had tested Kaspersky PURE 3.0 Total Security using the same malware collection a few months ago. I wondered if information gathered during that earlier test would give the antivirus an unfair advantage.

I needn't have worried. The antivirus handled almost 90 percent of the malware samples exactly the same way the suite had, right down to the percentage of non-executable traces remaining. For those where the two products produced different results, sometimes one was better, sometimes the other. Why any difference? Most likely it's because I applied different ancillary cleanup tools in the process of getting the two products installed.

Kaspersky detected 81 percent of the samples, the same as Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition (2014) and better than the 78 percent detected by Kaspersky PURE. It scored 6.1 points for malware removal, a fraction above Kaspersky PURE and a fraction below Bitdefender Free.

Best among products tested with this same malware collection was Bitdefender Antivirus Plus, with 83 percent detection and 6.6 points. The unusual cleanup-only Jumpshot tool detected more, 86 percent of the samples, but scored just 6.5 points.

For a full explanation of how I run this test see How We Test Malware Removal.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus (2014) malware removal chart

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Yelp (for Android)

Pros Useful amount of information displayed for mobile users. Relevant business details provided (hours open, map, etc.). Can post reviews and photos from mobile app.

Cons Navigation not as clear and simple as in iPhone version. Tips are a little buried. Bottom Line The Yelp app provides pretty reliable information about businesses from user-generated content. The type of information it displays in a short digest is ideal for mobile users looking for quick answers, recommendations, and directions.

By Jill Duffy Yelp's core service of providing detailed information and reviews of businesses is rather remarkable, and its free mobile apps, including the Android app reviewed here, put exactly the right details into your hands when you're on the go. You can quickly search for shops and restaurants, find out if a business is currently open or closed, get directions to the site, see photos of what's inside, and read reviews and tips about the business.

It's all best digested with a grain of salt, though. As with any user-generated content, you'll need to use your critical thinking skills to wade through some bias, although the features included in Yelp's Android app makes doing so surprisingly simple. Yelp is an Editors' Choice Android app because it absolutely makes life on the go better and more enjoyable. It delivers clear, succinct, and relevant information. Yelp on Android app isn't quite up to the standards of the Yelp app for iPhone, unfortunately, due to the lack of a few navigation features, such as a bottom-line menu.

Interface and Use
The free Yelp app is jam-packed with tools, features, and various sections, so much that it can feel overwhelming at times. The key, however, is that when you find a business you need, either through a keyword search or by exploring places nearby based on a category, the app gives you the most important information upfront in a digest: hours open and an "open" or "closed" note for the current time, map to the location, overall review rating (1 to 5), the phone number, a link to open directions, and the distance from you to it.

Missing from the Android app is a quick access main menu along the bottom, with a crucial home button at the far left. It's a handy button in the iPhone version that lets you jump back to the home screen rather than back out through pages one by one.

I installed the Yelp Android app on a Galaxy S III (Metro PSC) and started by looking at my existing account: profile (which I could not seem to update from the mobile app), reviews I've written, bookmarked businesses, friends, and other account data. The Android app doesn't have all the features of the website, but it does a good job paring down to include only what's most important while on the go.

To add a review, you have to land on a business' entry first. You can search for businesses with any terms, like "coffee" or "gas stations," or look for ones nearby generally using GPS or within a specified category such as salons or drug stores. Once on a business' entry, you can tap the Android menu button to pull up a list of options: Add tip, add photo, draft review, bookmark, call, edit business, and share.

I couldn't immediately find "tips" about a bar near the PCMag office that has an interesting beer selection. It turns out tips are way at the bottom, below the address, mapped location, basic information like open hours, and snippets of reviews. I wish they had been a little higher or easier to find. Best tip at this particular place? Apparently I have to find a server there named Jackie...

I scoped out some more businesses and found a nearby coffee shop that I like and wrote a quick tip (drink your coffee in-house at this place, and the staff typically offer you a free refill). I hit publish and immediately saw my tip in the full list of tips, right at the top. I like that these kinds of actions—writing reviews and tips, as well as uploading new photos of businesses—are easy, simple, and quick.

Yelp's Effectiveness
The real selling point of the Yelp Android app is that it gives you succinct but essential information about businesses you might need or want to visit that are nearby. There's a lot more going on in the app, too, but it doesn't get in the way of the critical information. You can now write reviews on the go, as well as add tips about a business, upload photos, peruse photos and read complete reviews from other users. Yelp's Android app provides a great service, making it an Editors' Choice.

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Saints Row IV (for PS3, Xbox 360, PC)

Pros Crazy, mindless fun. Satisfying superpowers. Tons of activities. Full of amusing references and dialog.

Cons Has all the dramatic weight of a feather in one of those indoor parachuting centers. Very shallow interaction with the world and other characters. Bottom Line Saints Row IV is a mindless, stupid playground of destruction with no artistic value but loads of entertainment value.

By Will Greenwald

I have a lot of respect for the people at Volition. After steadily stepping up the amount of craziness in their Saints Row series, they found themselves in a creative quandary. Saint's Row 2 added wackiness to what was otherwise a competent Grand Theft Auto knock-off, and Saints Row 3 cranked it up by turning them into rock stars. This was a move many fans of Saints Row 2 didn't like because it took out the few but surprisingly powerful character moments the previous game had. A logical step from there would be to pull the series back, and bring the Saints back down to earth from the heights of cartoonish popularity and psychotic nihilism. The natural response would be to carefully look at different ideas and pick out the ones that would bring the series together thematically to make it all work.

Not the guys at Volition. Instead of searching for a few good concepts against a creeping wall of you-can't-make-it-any-crazier in the series and fighting a seemingly inevitable dearth of new ideas, they said "Let's use all the ideas! Yes, even the stupid ones! You! Over there! The guy high on Dimetapp who doesn't work here! Do you have an idea? Great! We'll use that idea, too!" The result is Saints Row IV, an Xbox 360, PlayStation 4 ($59.99 list), and PC ($49.99 list) game that comes across as a sick parody of Saints Row 1 and 2, a warped commentary on Saints Row: The Third, and an incredibly fun sequel to games like Crackdown and Infamous. It's juvenile, stupid, scattershot, self-aware, and incredibly fun because of the balance it manages to find with those first four things.

Yes, This Is The Story
The plot of Saints Row IV is… well, let me take a deep breath and believe me when I say this is not a spoiler, as it all happens in the first hour or two and it was revealed by the game's various trailers.

You play the leader of the Saints, working with MI6 to take down a crazed terrorist general and blow up a nuke in the air before it can hit Washington, and are elected the president of the United States with Keith David (yes, Goliath/Spawn/street fight with Rowdy Roddy Piper/Navy commercials Keith David) as your vice president until aliens invade and put you and your gang in a virtual simulation of your old city where you get super powers and have to fight the system while your space ship prepares to attack the evil emperor's fleet.

Like I said. All the ideas.

Most of the game takes place in the virtual city of Steelport, which itself is taken over by aliens who give it a thoroughly They Live makeover and add glowing neon spaceships menacing the skies to boot. The aliens have wiped out all evidence of the Saints' existence, so you have to build your gang up from nothing again. This time, however, you do that through disrupting the system to free your friends and unlock super powers instead of performing increasingly criminal acts. Instead of bank heists and drug deals, you're blowing up alien strongholds and causing havoc. The mechanics of the game aren't that different from previous Saints Row games or any other open-world crime game, but the missions are more gleefully violent.

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T-Mobile Sonic 2.0 Mobile Hotspot LTE

Pros T-Mobile's only LTE hotspot. Good battery life. Solid speeds and range.

Cons Unstable firmware drops connections. Data monitor is inaccurate. Doesn't work abroad. Bottom Line T-Mobile's first LTE hotspot can go all day, but it needs a firmware update to reach its true potential.

By Sascha Segan

It's tough to choose when you have no choice. T-Mobile's only LTE hotspot is … T-Mobile's only LTE hotspot. It has some things going for it: It's relatively inexpensive and has terrific battery life. It supports up to 8 Wi-Fi devices, and it works as a USB modem for both PCs and Macs. But I found it unreliable in testing and especially prone to losing connections when downshifting from LTE to HSPA+. So while this is the T-Mobile hotspot to buy, we can't give it Editor's Choice.

The painfully awkwardly named T-Mobile Sonic 2.0 Mobile Hotspot LTE is made by ZTE, and it's a chubby little device at 3.87 by 2.25 by .7" (HWD) and 4.2 oz. Most of that space is taken up by a large 3000mAh battery, which gave the hotspot solid battery life: 6 hours, 11 minutes of streaming audio from an LTE network onto an Android smartphone.

The hotspot has a prominent, raised power button on the front along with a washed-out 1.77", 160-by-128 LCD display. There are four control buttons under the display, which isn't a touch screen. You can use the display to check your network name and password, see how much data you've transferred in this session, and see which devices are connected to the hotspot.

On the side of the hotspot there's a USB port for charging, along with a microSD card slot. If you pop in a microSD card, the hotspot shares it out over DLNA, which is a lost opportunity as no human knows how to use DLNA.

Performance and Interface
The Sonic 2.0 supports T-Mobile's HSPA+ and LTE networks, but almost nobody else's. It can't roam internationally. T-Mobile doesn't have any decent international roaming plans—its only affordable data roaming option is restricted to business customers—but it would have been nice for the hotspot to work with SIM cards purchased abroad.

T-Mobile's data prices are reasonable: $30/month for 2GB, plus $10 for each additional 2GB, with no contract. Sprint matches those prices, but requires a two-year contract; Verizon and AT&T tend to be more expensive. Only carriers that use Clearwire's old WiMAX network offer better deals, with Virgin coming in at $35/month for 10GB and Clear offering the only truly unlimited hotspot plan for $50.

I took the hotspot to eight locations in Manhattan and Queens and compared speeds on a Samsung Galaxy S4 sitting next to the hotspot with a Samsung Galaxy Note II. On average, speeds were comparable, which is impressive considering you typically bleed off up to 20 percent of your speed when converting from 4G to Wi-Fi. I saw, on average, 8Mbps down and 7.6Mbps up with 40ms ping times on both devices.

The hotspot also handled distance well. I didn't see much degradation even with the Galaxy S4 up to 125 feet away, as long as it wasn't on the other side of a wall.

I ran into several stability problems with the hotspot, though. When it dropped from LTE to HSPA, the connection completely broke and the hotspot had to be rebooted. In an area with a weak LTE connection, that happened too frequently. The hotspot would latch on to a very weak LTE link, lose it, and freeze.

I didn't see the stability problems in places with a consistent, strong connection. For instance, at home (with a strong LTE connection testing at 10-16Mbps down) I was able to stream audio for almost 20 hours without a break. The hotspot's Web-based interface lets you kick it into an HSPA+ only mode, which could improve stability.

The Sonic 2.0 has a Web-based administrator interface that lets you see which devices are connected to the hotspot and change settings. The hotspot supports WPA2 encryption along with 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, but only on the 2.4GHz band. There's a basic firewall with MAC filtering and port forwarding, and you can set data usage limits for individual devices connected to the hotspot. But the Web portal's data counter was wrong when I was using it, which was disappointing. Oddly, if I drilled down, it would show me how much data was used by each individual connected device, but not the right total for the hotspot as a whole.

The Sonic 2.0 also works as a USB modem for Windows, Mac OS and Linux PCs; plug in the cable and drivers will appear. It still functions as a hotspot when in USB mode.

Conclusions
T-Mobile has growing national LTE coverage. That might make it a good carrier to check out for your hotspot needs, except that I'm concerned over the stability of this hotspot's software. Since hotspot users are typically data hogs, an accurate data counter is also a must, and T-Mobile needs to get with the program and offer international-capable devices.

The T-Mobile Sonic 2.0 Mobile Hotspot LTE has some attractive features, but it isn't the perfect hotspot for T-Mobile. A firmware update might help make it so. For now, obviously, this is the hotspot to get on T-Mobile—you want LTE, and it's your only option. But I'd like to see the carrier come out with an even better choice.

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Toshiba Satellite P55-A5200

Pros Large 1080p screen. 750GB of storage space. DVD drive. Nice Price. Numeric keypad. HDMI and VGA. 1 Year Norton Internet Security/Anti Virus.

Cons No touch screen. No SSD/Flash storage. Less than four hours battery life. Almost five pounds. Some bloatware. Bottom Line The Toshiba Satellite P55-A5200 is a decent desktop replacement laptop that will keep regular PC users happy. It has the power to last more than the next few years, Windows 8 compatibility, and a huge non-touch screen for your media creation and appreciation.

By Joel Santo Domingo

The Toshiba Satellite P55-A5200 ($754.99 list) is a decent choice if you're looking for a desktop replacement notebook that will stay in one place, like on your home office desk, most of the time. It makes a few tradeoffs for its large 15.6-inch 1080p HD screen, namely somewhat short battery life and no touch screen. If you're a power user who wants to continue to use multimedia apps like Adobe's Creative Suite products, then this is a good laptop for you. Just bear in mind that this isn't the system you want to use as your primary transition to Windows 8.

Design and Features
The P55-A5200 is a traditional looking laptop. It has a silver finish, which Toshiba calls Prestige Silver, their term for a color that is neither bright silver nor dark silver. The system measures about 1.2 by 15.25 by 10 inches (HWD), and weighs in at 4.63 pounds, just short of five pounds. While that doesn't seem like a lot of weight, consider today's lighter ultrabooks and heavier tablets weigh half as much. The P55-A5200 has a built-in DVD burner and large 15.6-inch screen, both of which contribute to the system's bulk.

The relatively large size of the system can be beneficial: The 15.6 inch screen is the right size for its 1,920 by 1,080 resolution properties, since you won't have to worry about zooming in to the perfectly readable text and images on screen. The TruBrite TFT LCD display also works well for viewing 1080p HD videos, something that is common among laptops from manufacturers that are also known for their HDTV displays, like Sony, Samsung, and Vizio. Unfortunately, the display isn't a touch screen, negating many of the benefits of Windows 8, which is touch optimized. You can use the responsive multi-touch trackpad for all your pointing needs in Windows 8, but it is annoying having to call up the Charms bar and the like from the trackpad. In particular, the trackpad has a chromed plastic ring around it, which breaks the flow during off-trackpad moves. Systems like the Editors' Choice Lenovo IdeaPad Z400 Touch ($700) and Asus VivoBook S500CA-DS51t ($679) have touch screens on systems in the same price range as the Toshiba.

The keyboard itself is a standard chiclet-style affair, backlit and with a decent feel. The P55-A5200 comes with a full numeric keypad to the right of the QWERTY keyboard, which will help students in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) classes. The trackpad is centered on the QWERTY portion of the keyboard, which helps touch typing.

Like the budget Lenovo IdeaPad S405 ($549.99), the P55-A5200 uses a spinning hard drive. In this case, it's a 750GB 5,400rpm SATA drive, which is somewhat slow (especially compared to a system with SSD/Flash Storage). On the plus side, the drive has a lot of space for media files like downloaded music and movies. If you need more space, you can hook up an external hard drive to one of the two USB 3.0 ports on the right side of the laptop. The two USB 2.0 ports on the left are better suited to hooking up external mice and printers. Since the system is a full sized laptop, you'll find a pair of audio jacks, Ethernet, HDMI, and VGA connectors: All are full size without the need for adapters or dongles. WiFi is standard 2.4GHz 802.11 b/g/n with Bluetooth as well. The system is WiDi compatible, if you need yet another way to connect the system up to a monitor. The system has a SD card reader on the front, facing the user.

The system comes with a few pre-loaded apps, including Amazon, Wild Tangent Games, StumbleUpon, eBay, iHeartRadio, Vimeo, Skype, Toshiba Book Place, Netflix, Deals & Offers, Evernote Touch, Hulu Plus, Norton Internet Security (one-year subscription) News Place, an ad for Microsoft Office, and Origin (the game download service). Like most pre-loaded software, you'll need to budget a bit of time to uninstall the ones you don't want to use, unless you want all those program files cluttering up your hard drive. It's not the end of the world, but it is kind of annoying if you need to scroll several pages on the Windows 8 Start screen with a trackpad or mouse.

Performance
Thanks to the P55-A5200's Intel Core i5-3337U processor, 6GB of DDR3 memory, and Intel HD Graphics 4000, the system turns in decent performance numbers. It was better than average against the competition, quickly finishing the Handbrake video test in 1 minute 35 seconds, and the Photoshop CS6 test in 5:36. These scores lag the Lenovo Z400 Touch by a bit, but the P55-A5200 shows its mettle compared to lower-priced systems like the Lenovo IdeaPad S405.

The P55-A5200 showed itself to be a high performer among the hard drive-equipped systems, coming in with a 3,130 point score on PCMark7, which measures the systems' day-to-day performance. The thing is, systems with SSD/Flash storage regularly score in the 4,500- to 5,000-point range on the same test. Suffice to say that the P55-A5200 is adequate for the time being, but it will start to feel slower sooner than a system with SSD. Users are being trained by their mobile devices to expect instantaneous app loading and booting thanks to the prevalent use of flash storage and SSDs in the mobile space.

The P55-A5200's most disappointing stat is its three hour, forty-seven minute battery life. While this is decent for a user that has regular access to a power outlet, it is a lot less than the Acer Aspire M5-581T-6405 ($600), which clocks in at over six hours. True, the Acer M5-581T-6405 has a lower resolution screen, but time away from a plug is more important to you, then it is a better choice for the mobile PC user. To wit: The class-leading Lenovo Z400 Touch outlasted the P55-A5200 by over an hour.

With decent multimedia performance numbers and a large 1080p HD screen, the Toshiba Satellite P55-A5200 is a good value for users who need application performance over portability. The lack of a touch screen means that this probably shouldn't be your primary Windows 8 system, but if you're going to live in apps like Adobe Creative Suite or other non-touch apps, you should be fine. Under old guidelines the system meets thin and light characteristics, in today's terms the P55-A5200 is a desktop replacement laptop. In that case, the P55-A5200 just can't keep up with the similarly priced Editors' Choice Lenovo IdeaPad Z400 Touch on features and overall performance.

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Tube Pro (for Windows Phone)

Pros Windows Phone style interface with tiles and swiping. Upload videos. Save videos for offline viewing.

Cons Map feature didn't work. Ads. Video recording dicey, with no privacy choice on upload. Bottom Line A decent YouTube experience comes to Windows Phone, with the extra perks of upload and download capabilities.

By Michael Muchmore

There's been a lot of high-profile squabbling between tech giants Google and Microsoft lately over the Windows Phone YouTube app. To me, there are a couple of good reasons to keep calm and carry on in the midst of all this: First, you can do nearly everything YouTube on a Windows Phone's Internet Explorer browser by simply navigating to YouTube.com—view top popular videos, comment, rate videos, see your subscriptions, and more. In fact, there's a little third-party YouTube app that does nothing but redirect to the video-sharing mobile website; it's a top free download with 5-star rave reviews in the Windows Phone store!

So what can you not do in the mobile YouTube site on a Windows Phone? You can't upload videos. But this too is not an inextricable hardship: You can still upload videos by emailing them to your YouTube upload email address from the mobile shown on your YouTube account page. And plenty of Windows Phone video apps let you upload to YouTube. I'd originally intended to review the excellent YouTube HD app, but that suffered the same unfortunate fate as the official YouTube app, with the search advertising behemoth blocking even the playing of videos. Luckily, a very similar app, TubePro, does it all, too (so shhhh! Don't tell Google).

Using YouTube HD
After downloading TubePro from the Windows Phone store to my Nokia Lumia 928, I wasn't required to create an account or sign into my YouTube account, but it's much more functional if you do sign in. When I did sign in, the Google sign-in page had me approve a "This app would like to Manage your YouTube account, similar to a Facebook or Twitter app authorization. The app does show ads on some pages, but you can buy the $1.29 SuperTube, which is just an ad-free version of TubePro.

Unlike a lot of YouTube apps in the Windows Store, this one uses a real Windows Phone-style interface, with the expected tile and swiping navigation between app pages. Many of the other apps simply use Google's mobile video site. TubePro's gray tiles with large red icons let you navigate among Hot videos, your Subscriptions, your Favorites, and more.

Swiping to the right from the home screen shows you Top Rated videos broken down into subcategories. Another right swipe takes you to your subscriptions, and at the bottom is a search button in the form of a magnifying glass. One cool-seeming option was Map Tube, which shows a map with options for view count, and time ranges, but I didn't see any data on the map.

Watching a Video
Once you've tapped on a particular video either on Hot, Top, or from your subscriptions, you'll see its Details page with a large thumbnail of the video's poster image, with the thumbs up and down icons, view count, user name, and description. Below the thumbnail, you get choices for LQ (low quality), HQ, and HD. But next to this is the really verboten item: Download. Buttons on the bottom let you add the video to your Watch Later list, favorite it, subscribe to its creator, and share it through email or social networks, or SMS—all the stuff you can do on YouTube itself.

Right-swiping form the video details page moves through pages for Related videos, Author's videos, and Comments. During playback, you can change the aspect ratio (from 16:9 to 4:3 and back), fullscreen, or skip ahead an back. There's also a scrubber that lets you jump ahead and back anywhere in the video you want and you can pinch on the screen to lower the volume or unpinch to raise it.

Uploading Video Shot on Your Windows Phone to YouTube
As I mentioned in the intro, uploading your own mobile videos is one of the only things you can't do simply by opening YouTube.com in Internet Explorer. TubePro makes both uploading from your camera roll and from video you shoot on the spot possible. Tap the "Recorded" tile on the home screen, and you'll see two icons at the bottom: a movie camera and and upload button.

Hitting the movie camera starts the camera view, with the same icon for starting recording. This was a little hit-or-miss with me; sometimes the screen just turned black for a while before the recording started. I wish I could start recording by tapping the screen, as I could in the default camera app. Speaking of that default app, I'd like to see a TubePro upload option added to that, as Vyclone and other apps do.

Once the timer started and I was filming, I could hit the Pause button, which let me directly upload the video to YouTube after entering a title for it. I would have like to have been able to choose the privacy level: My test upload was public.

After recording some video clips, the Recorded page is populated with a list of them, but oddly this doesn't show thumbnails, just a date.

Downloading
One thing that Google made Microsoft take out of its official YouTube app was the ability to download videos from the site. For now, anyway, this Tube Pro app doesn't suffer from that restriction. Just tap the Download link on any video's Details page, and you'll be taken to a black Downloading page with a progress bar showing percent downloaded. You can pause the download, and a setting lets you enable background downloading. Once the video's in your phone's storage, you can head to your My Download page from its home screen tile and watch it at your leisure, without the need for a data connection. 

Which Tube Is For You?
If you just what to watch the top YouTube videos or those you've subscribe to, the sites' mobile Web version is all you need. Tube Pro adds the useful abilities to upload videos right from your phone and to download videos for later viewing. It also offers a more Windows-Phone-characteristic interface than the mobile Web site. Despite a few minor drawbacks like finicky video recording and not-too-obtrusive ads, I can recommend Tube Pro as a decent YouTube experience for Windows Phone users—at least until the almighty Google decides to cut it off, too.

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Uninstall Master (for Android)

Pros Quickly uninstalls apps. Free. Easy to use. Monitors storage capacity. App recovery feature.

Cons Doesn't uninstall apps in one click. Rudimentary interface. Bottom Line Uninstall Master for Android is a simple, but effective Android app that lets you quickly uninstall apps by removing the tedium of ditching them one at a time.

By Jeffrey L. Wilson

I test a lot of Android apps for PCMag.com, so that means there's a lot of software installing and uninstalling. Unfortunately, I can only uninstall one app at a time by dragging a file into the trash bin. It's not an awful experience, but it is somewhat tedious when there are numerous apps to trash in a hurry.

Fortunately, EasyApps Studios' Uninstaller Master helps in that regard. The free Android app lets users remove apps from their phones en masse. I tested the free, ad-supported version, but an ad-free version is available in the Google Play store for $2.99. The app works well, and offers a hair more functionality than Batch Uninstaller, making it one to have in your Android library.

No More Apps
Uninstall Master's bland interface belies its usefulness. It removes both downloaded apps as well as apps installed from APK files. Removing most apps is as simple as tapping the check box next to the app's name, and then tapping the trash icon. Voilà! It's that simple.

Unfortunately, you cannot kick system apps (such as AT&T Locker) to the curb without first rooting your phone. Average users who don't want to root their devices may be disappointed that Uninstall Master cannot remove those pre-installed apps, but that isn't the app's fault; the inability to remove carrier-installed apps is something you suffer when attempting manual deletions, too. Batch Uninstaller, another Android app uninstaller, has the same limitation.

You can select multiple apps for mass deletion, but you must confirm each delete before the deletion process begins. If you want to delete five apps, for example, you must confirm all five apps for deletion. Some will see it as a safeguard against accidentally deleting apps; I see it as an extra step that I could do without. Still, it's faster than uninstalling apps the traditional way, which is the app's purpose.

Cool Features
Uninstall Master, unlike Batch Uninstaller, lets you recover uninstalled files. It sends "uninstalled" apps and their icons to a recycling bin from which you can truly delete the apps or recover them.

Uninstall Master also keeps an eye on your Android device's storage capacity; it displays the number of files on your device and the amount of storage they take up. This may come in handy should your Android phone or tablet run low on space and you want to tidy up a bit. Batch Uninstaller, unfortunately, lacks this at-a-glance information.

The Wrap on This App
Uninstall Master won't magically transform your Android experience, but it does make one area—app deletion—a smoother process. I would've liked the inclusion of a "one-click" solution similar to what you see in many tune-up utilities and a more visually appealing interface, but even as-is Uninstall Master is a very solid Android utility.

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Vizio 15.6-inch Thin + Light Touch (CT15T-B1)

Pros Quad-core processor. Excellent performance on benchmark tests. Large, bright 1080p touch screen. Microsoft Signature prep. Long battery life. Roomy 256GB SSD. 802.11ac.

Cons Slippery, non-backlit keyboard. Pricey. Bulky. Only two USB ports. Bouncy screen. Bottom Line The Vizio 15.6-inch Thin + Light Touch (CT15T-B1) has long battery life, quad-core power, great design, and speedy, spacious SSD storage. Still, you'll need some hands-on time with this 15-inch laptop before you can decide it's the one for you.

By Joel Santo Domingo

The Vizio 15.6-inch Thin + Light Touch (CT15T-B1) ($1,359.99) is a laptop whose looks and design promise brilliant visuals, Cutting edge technology, high end performance, and a great user experience. Unfortunately, the CT15T-B1 delivers most, but not all of these attributes. It's getting there, and is certainly a contender, but its features need work.

Design and Features
The CT15T-B1 follows the same design lines as previous Vizio Thin + Light laptops, like last year's Vizio 15.6-inch Thin + Light (CT15-A1) ($999). The CT15T-B1 is essentially in the same chassis as the Vizio CT15-A1, measuring about 0.68-by-15-by-10-inches (HWD), though the new system weighs 4.69 pounds, which close to a pound heavier than the older model. Chalk the extra weight up to the touch screen and presumably to a more densely packed battery (more on that below). Visually, the system is on par with systems like the Google Chromebook Pixel (64GB, LTE) ($1,449), though gaming systems and convertible ultrabooks like the Sony VAIO Duo 13 ($1,399.99) are certainly flashier.

The CT15T-B1 has very bright and clear 15.6-inch screen. The screen's 1,920-by-1,080 resolution ensures that you will be able to view all the pixels presented in a 1080p HD video, as well as giving you a large screen to work with in media creation apps or when viewing websites with a lot of info. That said, the ChromeBook Pixel and Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (Retina Display) ($1,999) both give a higher resolution screen for even more screen real estate. The CT15-B1's screen resolution matches the current Editors' Choice for high-end ultrabooks, the Asus Zenbook Prime Touch UX31A-BHI5T ($1,199).

There is a noticeable flaw in the CT15T-B1's screen: It bounces a bit after you touch the screen. Since this is a touch-screen laptop, the bounce can become annoying after a while, particularly on action games or reaction tests where you have to tap and move often. Contrast this with the Acer Aspire S7-191-6640 ($1,200), which has a dual-friction hinge to help prevent screen bounce while using the touch screen.

The CT15T-B1 has improved on its trackpad performance compared to the previous CT15-A1. The trackpad now works a little better and responds to input from your fingers a bit more accurately. Where the system still needs improvement is Vizio's choice of a slick material on the floating key-type keyboard. The keys themselves are slick and the lack of space between the keys means that you may have trouble touch-typing until you get used to this quirky keyboard. It's easy to handwave keyboard problems on a desktop, since you can replace a desktop's keyboard easily. With a laptop, you're stuck with the keyboard that the manufacturer supplies. This is definitely a system we'd recommend you try out before you commit to a purchase.

Sound from the built in speakers was loud enough for a moderately noisy room, but you'd be better off using a pair of headphones for any critical listening. The CT15T-B1 comes with very few pre-installed programs, basically just Windows 8, Skype, an ad for Microsoft Office, and a couple of Vizio utilities. All Vizio PCs are part of the Microsoft Signature program, which reduces bloatware and gives the user 90 days of Microsoft-based tech support for Windows 8. Vizio covers the systems with a one-year standard warranty for repairs and a year of standard tech support.

The CT15T-B1 comes with a 256GB of SSD storage space, which is plenty for an average user that doesn't download many movies off of the Internet. For those that do, we'd suggest adding an external hard drive to one of the system's two USB 3.0 ports. Two USB ports is a little light for a 15-inch laptop, but it'll do. The system also comes with a HDMI port for connecting to an external monitor. Speaking of connecting, the system comes with an 802.11ac adapter, so you can connect to the newer wireless routers appearing on the market now. The system comes with 8GB of system memory, perfect for the users that like to open dozens of browser tabs during a surfing session. The SSD helps the system with quick reboots, while opening programs, and with general speed in day-to-day operations.

Performance
The CT15T-B1 has a third-generation (Ivy Bridge) Intel Core i7-3635QM processor, 8GB of memory, Intel HD Graphics 4000, and that 256GB SSD to thank for its performance. The system makes quick work of the Handbrake and Photoshop CS6 tests, as well as the day-to-day tests of PCMark 7. Unsurprisingly, it lags the Sony Duo 13, which has a fourth-generation Intel Core processor, on the 3D tests. In any case, you'll be playing mainly less demanding 3D and casual games on these systems with Intel HD Graphics in any case.

The place where the Vizio excels is its battery life. We were able to get 8 hours 40 minutes on our battery rundown test. This is just 15 minutes behind the Sony Duo 13, and more than two hours longer than the EC Asus UX31A-BHI5T.

So there's the rub: There are elements of brilliance (nice screen, quad core power, almost 9 hours of battery life, etc.) in the Vizio 15.6-inch Thin + Light Touch (CT15T-B1). However, these gains are reversed by physical problems like the slippery keyboard and the bouncy touch screen. While the trackpad is improved, the keyboard and touch screen are the primary ways to interact with the system. On this PC, these are at best annoying and at worst frustrating enough to slow your workflow. It's for these reasons we give the CT15T-B1 an improved score over its CT15-A1 predecessor, but it's still not enough to unseat the Asus ZenBook Prime Touch UX31A-BHI5T as our high-end ultrabook Editors' Choice.

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VuPoint Solutions Photo Cube IP-P20-VP

The VuPoint Solutions Photo Cube IP-P20-VP is similar to, but one step down from, the VuPoint Solutions Photo Cube IPWF-P30-VP that I recently reviewed. Like its more expensive sibling, it's a dedicated photo printer designed to print strictly from smartphones, tablets, and PictBridge cameras, and it can print both 4 by 6 photos and panoramas at up to 4 by 16 inches. As with the IPWF-P30-VP, if you want to print without moving files to your computer first, it can be a good fit.

It's easy to tell the IP-P20-VP from the IPWF-P30-VP from a distance, but only because it's white instead of black. Beyond that, the main differences are the IP-P20-VP's lower price and its lack of Wi-Fi. If you want easy photo printing from your camera or mobile device, either one can do the job. But if you don't need Wi-Fi, the IP-P20-VP's lower price makes it the preferred choice.

Basics and Setup

The IP-P20-VP is a thermal dye printer, a category that also includes the Canon Selphy CP900. At 5 by 6 by 7 inches (HWD) and only 3.1 pounds, it's reasonably portable. However, it's not as portable as the CP900, which is not only smaller and lighter, but has an optional battery available. The IP-P20-VP needs to plug into a power outlet.

Much like the print cartridge for the Canon CP900, the IP-P20-VP's cartridge includes both paper and ink, in the form of a dye roll. This welcome convenience lets you load ink and paper in a single step. Unlike the Canon CP900, however, the IP-P20-VP has the advantage of being able to print photos at different sizes: 4 by 6, 4 by 11, or 4 by 16 inches. The printer can manage this trick because the paper is stored in a continuous roll. When it's finished printing, its built-in automatic paper cutter slices the roll to releases the photo as the last step.

One other unusual feature, which the IP-P20-VP shares with the VuPoint IPWF-P30-VP, is a 30-pin connector for printing from iThings. The connector is on the top of the printer, with a raised rest behind it, so you can connect an iPad, iPhone, or iPod to print from. According to VuPoint Solutions, the dock works with iPhone models 4S, 4, 3GS, and 3G; the iPad, iPad2, and third generation iPads; and the second through fourth generation of iPod touch.

There's also a USB port on the side of the printer that you can connect to by USB cable. VuPoint Solutions says it works with all the same Apple models, plus the iPhone 5, fourth generation iPad, iPad mini, fifth-generation iPod Touch, and Android smartphones and tablets using OS 2.0 and above. In addition, it supports PictBridge cameras. There's no way to print from a computer, however.

Setup is simple. The printer comes with a 10-photo starter cartridge already installed. All you have to do is take the printer out of the box and plug it in. Replacing the cartridge is also easy. Slide the old cartridge out and slide the new one in.

Speed and Photo Sizes
To print a photo from a mobile device, you have to download the appropriate version of the VuPoint Solutions Photo Cube Advance app to your phone, tablet, or iPod. You can then run the app, pick a photo, connect to the printer's dock or connect by USB cable, and print. To print from a PictBridge camera, you simply connect the camera by USB cable and use the camera's built in commands to print.

For my tests, I printed from a Samsung Galaxy S3 phone and a Canon PowerShot S60 camera. For testing the panorama feature, I used photos I took with Wondershare Panorama version 1.5.1, a free app available on Google Play.

For both the camera and phone, print speed for 4 by 6s in my tests varied from 1 minute 11 seconds to 1 minute 29 seconds, which is essentially the same range I saw with the IPWF-P30-VP. Keep in mind that these results aren't comparable to our standard tests, which use a specified suite of photos and print from a computer. One valid comparison, however, is to the Editors' Choice Epson PictureMate Charm, which took 43 to 52 seconds to print 4 by 6s from the same camera using PictBridge.

As with the VuPoint IPWF-P30-VP, the IP-P20-VP can print panoramas in three sizes, with the Photo Cube app giving you the choice of 4 by 6, 4 by 11, or 4 by 16. For each of these sizes, you can use the app to zoom in on the photo to print only part of it and drag the photo on the screen to choose which part to print. You can also zoom out to print more of the photo, with white space above and below. Not surprisingly, the times for each size were similar to the times on the VuPoint IPWF-P30-VP, at 1:15 for the 4 by 6 size, 2:20 for 4 by 11, and 3:37 for 4 by 16.

Output Quality, and Other Issues
Output quality, unfortunately, showed the same shortcomings I saw with the VuPoint IPWF-P30-VP. Photos in my tests tended to lose details based on shading in both light and dark areas, and many of the photos had a slightly soft focus, which is a known potential issue for thermal dye printers despite the true 300 dot-per-inch resolution with no need for dithering. This puts the quality at the low end of what you would expect from drugstore prints and is best described as snapshot quality overall.

I also saw an additional issue with panoramic photos. The panoramas are printed in sections, with vertical lines showing between sections, and with a noticeable color shift from one section to the next in some cases.

As I mentioned in my review of the VuPoint IPWF-P30-VP, VuPoint Solutions is aware of the problem and has temporarily addressed it by removing the ability to print panoramas from its latest upgrade the to Photo Cube app, version 3.59. At this writing, the company still plans to fix the problem before reintroducing the feature. Until the fix is available, however, panoramic printing with the IP-P20-VP will be limited to letting you create panoramic collages of 4 by 6 photos.

One final issue that the IP-P20-VP shares with the IPWF-P30-VP is the cost per photo. At $19.99 street for a 36 photo cartridge, 4 by 6 photos are 55.5 cents each. You can double that for 4 by 11 panoramas and triple it for 4 by 16 panoramas.

I'd like this printer a lot more if it had higher photo quality and a lower cost per photo. It would also help if it let you print from a computer. However, the snapshot quality is acceptable as long as you don't have too critical an eye. If you simply want an easy way to print from your phone, tablet, iPod, or PictBridge camera, that may be enough.

That said, what really makes the VuPoint Solutions Photo Cube IP-P20-VP different and worth considering is the potential to print panoramic photos. Even the flawed panoramas, with vertical lines and color shifts, would be good enough for some purposes. Any improvement will make the output that much more attractive. If the ability to print panoramas is enough to make you consider getting this printer, however, you'll want to be sure before you buy it that the feature has been added back to the app.

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SQL flaws remain an Achilles heel for IT security groups

Computerworld - Indictments filed against five persons charged in a massive international hacking scheme indicate that SQL injection vulnerabilities continue to be a huge security Achilles heel for large IT operations.

The residents of Russia and Ukraine were indicted Thursday in connection with the theft of more than 160 million credit card numbers and other financial data from a virtual Who's Who of big business, including NASDAQ, JCP, Carrefour, Discover Bank, Hannaford, Heartland and Dow Jones.

The indictments allege that the victims lost some $300 million over a seven-year period between 2005 and 2012.

In a statement, Paul Fishman, U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey described the attacks as "cutting edge" and called the work a threat to the U.S. economy and national security.

The indictment also suggest that the hackers, in most cases, did not employ particularly sophisticated methods to gain initial entry into the corporate networks. The papers show that in most cases, the breach was made via SQL injection flaws -- a threat that has been thoroughly documented and understood for well over than a decade.

The NASDAQ network, for instance, was initially attacked via a SQL injection vulnerability on an online password reminder page. The flaw let hackers access the network without authorization to get a foothold that eventually let them gain full administrative control.

Similarly, initial unauthorized access to corporate networks at Heartland, JC Penney, Wet Seal, Visa Jordan and Diners Singapore came as a result of SQL coding errors. In each instance, the attackers rapidly escalated their privileges on the network to install malware and backdoors for stealing credit card and other data.

Via SQL injection attacks, hackers take advantage of poorly coded Web application software to install malicious code in a company's systems and network. The vulnerability exists when a Web application fails to properly filter or validate data entered by a user -- such as when ordering something online or when resetting a password.

An attacker can take advantage of input validation errors to send malformed SQL queries to the underlying database letting them break into it, plant malicious code and/or access other systems on the network.

SQL injection flaws are relatively simple to fix, once found. The challenge for IT personnel is knowing where to look for them. There are hundreds of places in large Web applications where users can input data, each of which can provide a SQL injection opportunity.

Hackers have taken advantage of SQL injection flaws for years because they can be exploited with relative ease. In recent years, SQL injection attacks have consistently ranked as one of the most popular methods for hackers to break into networks.

Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

Read now.

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StandScan Pro Power Bundle

Pros Turns assorted smartphones and tablets into more reliable scanners. Portable. Includes LEDs to illuminate the scan target.

Cons Can't adjust distance from camera to target to change field of view. Bottom Line Basically a box with a peephole on top for a camera to take pictures through, the StandScan Pro Power Bundle turns smartphones and tablets into better portable scanners.

By M. David Stone

Similar in concept to the ScanJig that I recently reviewed, but notably different in design, the StandScan Pro Power Bundle offers a slightly different way to turn your phone or tablet into a better scanner. Compared with the ScanJig, it gets extra points for offering its own LEDs instead of depending on ambient light, but it also costs a little more, which puts the two products on equal footing overall.

The argument for the StandScan Pro relative to traditional scanners is the same as for the ScanJig. As I've pointed out in any number of scanner reviews, taking a picture with a camera phone or tablet is fully equivalent to scanning. That makes both phones and tablets excellent alternatives to portable manual-fed, simplex (one-sided) scanners, like the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1100 and the Epson WorkForce DS-30. Like the ScanJig, the StandScan Pro makes it easier to get good quality scans with a camera, and it also speeds up scanning for multiple pages.

Like the ScanJig also, the StandScan Pro solves the problem of trying to hold the camera absolutely steady while also filling as much of the frame as possible to take best advantage of the camera's resolution.

Basics
The StandScan Pro is basically a box with a trapezoidal cross section, one open side, a peephole on the top for the camera to look through, and a base that's a little larger than a letter-size piece of paper. The open side lets you reach in to put the scan target in the base or take it out. In addition, there's a strip of LEDs on the inside of the top, providing consistent lighting.

The StandScan Pro actually comes in two versions. The StandScan Pro itself comes with a battery pack for a 9-volt battery. The StandScan Pro Power Bundle also includes a second battery pack for eight AA batteries plus an AC power adaptor. The difference is significant. With the 9-volt battery I measured the brightness at the center point on the scan bed at only about 500 lux with a fresh battery. With AC power and with the AA battery pack, I measured between 1,319 and 1,363 lux, with the reading varying over time.

The range from 1,319 to 1,364 lux isn't enough to see a difference. The drop to 500 lux is. More important, it makes a significant difference in how well an optical character recognition (OCR) program can recognize text in the resulting file. In my tests, using Abbyy FineReader 9.0, the program managed to read text on our standard scanner test pages as small as 6 points for Arial font and 8 points for Times New Roman font without a mistake for images taken with AC power. With the 9-volt battery pack, the accuracy dropped. The smallest size the software could read without a mistake was 10 points for both fonts.

More Basics
As with the ScanJig, there's a fixed distance between the camera and the document with the StandScan Pro, so the field of view for some cameras may not be big enough to include an entire page. Rather than name specific supported devices, the StandScan Pro Web site suggests that you hold your phone 31 centimeters above a letter-size page and make sure it can see all four corners of the page. If it can, it's compatible with the StandScan Pro

In my tests the StandScan Pro worked well with a Samsung Galaxy S III and with an Apple iPhone 4S. However, I couldn't see the entire page with a Motorola Droid RAZR MAXX, an HTC Droid Incredible, or an iPad 2. Another potential issue is that the top of the StandScan Pro box may not be large enough to let you balance your tablet on it. Quite aside from not being able to see a full page with the iPad 2, I had to hold the tablet with one hand to keep it from falling off the box.

Keep in mind also that, as with any scanner, what you can actually do with your scans depends on software, and the StandScan Pro doesn't come with any. There are plenty of apps you can get elsewhere, but the point is that you have to get them separately, and, in many case, pay for them. For my tests, I scanned using the default camera app in the phones and tablets I tested with. I used Abbyy FineReader 9.0 for text recognition mostly because I had it on hand.

The Unfolding Story
Setting up the StandScan Pro involves unfolding it, bending pieces along various creases, and positioning the sides so embedded magnets will hold the overlapping edges together. I found this a little hard to do the first time, mostly because I had to figure out which parts to bend. After doing it once, however, it was easy to break the StandScan Pro down to fold it into a flat, highly portable format, and at least as easy to unfold and snap it back into its working state.

The box is made from laminated heavyweight card stock, which feels a little flimsy when you're trying to put it together. However, it holds together well once all the magnets are properly aligned. The total weight is only about 11 ounces, making it light enough to bring with you without a second thought.

...And Scan
Scanning with the StandScan Pro is simply a matter of snapping a picture. As with the ScanJig, you can put a stack of pages on the document bed and work your way through them, one page at a time, fairly quickly. It took me about one minute to scan 10 pages, which is a match for the ScanJig and a lot faster than with most manual-fed scanners. As with the ScanJig also, scan quality will depend on your phone or tablet and the app you're using.

The StandScan Pro Power Bundle is the sort of gadget that the more you use it, the more you'll appreciate it. Having its own light source is a plus, but then again, having the light source is more important for the closed-box design than for the ScanJig's open design that takes full advantage of ambient light. These two products are so closely matched that choosing between them really boils down to personal taste. That said, however, the StandScan Pro Power Bundle is certainly a reasonable choice for anyone who wants to use his or her phone or tablet as a scanner substitute.

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Surveys show that enterprises tablet use is on the rise

By Brian Lawrence, CDW product manager a mobilityNetwork World - One in three U.S. adults now owns a tablet computer, up from 18% last year, according to a June 2013 study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. So what about professional use? Are tablets standard-issue employee equipment? To find out, CDW surveyed professionals from midsize and large business, healthcare, higher education and state and local government to see how these devices are affecting day-to-day productivity.

Tablets in the workplace are fairly new. More than half of the respondents (56%) noted that they'd only been using a tablet at work for one year, and 32% have used a tablet for two years. Only 9% have been using a tablet at work for three years. Many of these tablets (59%) are personally owned, although 34% of respondents use a company-issued device. Some even use both.A

For the most part, employees are using tablets at work for email, Web browsing, Office/productivity suites, file storage and social media. Employees surveyed say they enjoy working on tablets because they promote collaboration with coworkers and make work more enjoyable. Most importantly, tablets provide information access on the go.A

However, tablets aren't replacing other devices for work purposes. Sixty-eight percent of respondents noted that they still use a desktop, 62% still use a laptop and 53% use smartphones all in addition to their tablets. In fact, only 2% of respondents said they only use a tablet for work tasks.A

While employees assume tablets increase their productivity, organizations tend to wonder if they are more of a distraction. Since inquiring minds especially managers want to know, we asked.A

CDW found that tablet users spend about two hours daily on their tablet for work purposes, gaining just over one hour in daily productivity thanks to tablet use. Employees are spending about a quarter of their total computing time on their tablets, and especially like the ability to manage email and calendars and to take notes. A whopping 84% of respondents confirmed that tablets do make them better multi-taskers while at work.A

The perfect tablet

We also asked tablet users what the dream tablet would look like. Not surprisingly, what users value most is email access, long battery life and Web browsing capabilities. Other important features and functions cited included 3G/4G support, fast start, ease of use and a touchscreen interface. Tablet users also appreciate the portability of tablets and note that they also look for Office/productivity suites, an attachable keyboard or keypad, a high-resolution display and file storage capabilities.A

Ironically, we did find differences in tablet preferences based on respondents' astrological signs. Respondents under the Aries designation enjoy presenting in meetings on tablets, while Libras value the hours gained in daily productivity. Cancers agreed that tablets are a great tool for customer/constituent service, and Leos say that tablets improve work flow.A

According to Pew, there are no statistically significant differences in tablet ownership between men and women, or between members of different racial or ethnic groups. Ironically, we did find that there could be a difference in the productivity, availability and general happiness of your organization if and when employees become equipped with tablets. Regardless of your sign, it's impossible to deny the effects of tablets in our work and personal lives.A

About CDW: CDW is a leading provider of technology solutions for business, government, education and healthcare. Ranked No. 31 on Forbes' list of America's Largest Private Companies and No. 267 on the Fortune 500, CDW was founded in 1984 and employs more than 6,700 coworkers. For the trailing 12 months ended March 31, 2013, the company generated net sales of $10.2 billion.A

Read more about pc in Network World's PC section.

Reprinted with permission from NetworkWorld.com. Story copyright 2012 Network World, Inc. All rights reserved.

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US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent

IDG News Service - The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected claims of an Apple patent that figures prominently in a patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung Electronics, according to documents filed by the South Korean company in a U.S. federal court.

The 21 claims of the patent were rejected by the USPTO in a "final office action," as they were anticipated by previous patents or unpatentable. Known as the "pinch-to-zoom" patent, it covers the ability to distinguish between the scrolling movement of one finger and two-fingers gestures like pinch-to-zoom on a touch-screen to activate certain functions.

Apple has up to two months to respond to the USPTO decision. In a filing in April after USPTO rejected multiple claims of another patent in a similar final office action, Apple said it had further options, including appeal to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board and seeking judicial review.

Claim eight of the patent was involved in Apple's lawsuit against Samsung in the court, according to a filing Sunday by Samsung in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose Division. A jury last August awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages, but the court has ordered a partial retrial to review the damages to be paid to the iPhone maker.

The jury found at trial that 21 of 24 Samsung smartphones and tablets infringed claim 8 of U.S. Patent No. 7,844,915 ('915 patent), Samsung said in its filing on Sunday. The claim relates to "determining whether the event object invokes a scroll or gesture operation by distinguishing between a single input point applied to the touch-sensitive display that is interpreted as the scroll operation and two or more input points applied to the touch-sensitive display that are interpreted as the gesture operation," according to a USPTO document filed in the court by Samsung.

The USPTO ruled claim eight was anticipated in U.S. Patent No. 7,724,242 awarded to Daniel W. Hillis and Bran Ferren. "Hillis teaches distinguishing the number of contact points and determining whether the event object matches a gesture pattern," the USPTO wrote in its decision.

The USPTO rejected in April multiple claims of another patent that figured in the lawsuit, known as "overscroll bounce" patent. Apple, however, said in a filing that the reexamination is not finished, and it is entitled to file a response to the action which may result in a withdrawal of the rejection or certification of the claims under reexamination.

The company also raised the possibility that it may appeal to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, and if unsuccessful, may seek judicial review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit or the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. A similar filing is likely from Apple in connection with the rejection of the '915 patent, even as Samsung is expected to argue for lower damages. The jury awarded damages to Apple with regard to all but two products found to infringe the '915 patent, Samsung said in its filing.

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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V3 Gaming Devastator

Pros Powerful processing with overclocked 4th-gen Intel Core i5 processor. Two-way SLI Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 graphics provide smooth graphics as any detail level.

Cons No room for expansion or upgrades. Side/top panel video is awkward to remove. Bottom Line The V3 Gaming Devastator is a small form-factor (SFF) desktop that competes with elite systems thanks to a 4th-Gen Intel Core i5 processor and two Nvidia GPUs.

By Brian Westover

Don't discount a gaming desktop just because it's small. V3 Gaming's new small form-factor (SFF) Devastator packs a new fourth-generation Intel Core i5 processor and two Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 graphics cards, letting it punch above its weight-class and take on more expensive SFF gaming systems. It's not the fastest compact gaming PC out there, but for $2,499 it can run with the best.

Design & Features
The V3 Devastator is a small form-factor gaming desktop, with a SilverStone SG10 case that measures 11.75 by 6.6 by 15.0 inches (HWD). This compact case features a large variable speed fan on the top, ventilation on all four sides of the case, and liquid cooling inside. The front panel features a slot-loading DVD+-RW drive, two USB 3.0 ports, and separate jacks for headphone and mic. On the rear of the system are another eight USB ports (four USB 2.0, four USB 3.0) along with Gigabit Ethernet, 8-channel audio, and an array of video outputs—three HDMI ports, three DVI-D ports, and two DisplayPorts.

The compact case opens by removing a panel that covers the entire right and top sides and half of the left side of the tower. The panel is a bit more difficult to open that others we've seen—on the back of the system the panel is secured with thumb screws, but the left hand side is also secured by a single Phillips-head screw, negating the tools-free appeal of thumb screws.

Once inside the case, you'll find the V3 Devastator is equipped with an Asus Gryphon Z87 motherboard, sporting a fourth-generation Intel Core i5-4670K, 16GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz memory. A 750-watt power supply (Corsair TX750) provides power for the motherboard, two Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 graphics cards in an SLI configuration, a 256GB solid-state boot drive and 1TB 7,200rpm storage drive. There's not a lot of rom in the case for expansion, and no available PCI slots or drive bays, but there are two open DIMM slots for additional RAM.

The system comes with Windows 8 (64-bit) preinstalled, but otherwise the system is immaculate, with only Nvidia drivers and a couple of system monitoring utilities (CPUID CPU-Z and HWMonitor) installed. V3 Gaming covers the Devastator with a three-year warranty on parts, and a lifetime warranty on labor.

Performance
The V3 Devastator comes overclocked, so the Haswell Intel Core i5-4670K is boosted up to 4.0GHz, up from the base speed of 3.4GHz. With the new processor it completed PCMark 7 with a score of 7,013 points, and a Cinebench score of 7.44 points. The hardware also equates to powerful performance in processor-intensive tasks, finishing Handbrake in 31 seconds and Photoshop in 2 minutes 40 seconds. Though it couldn't match the performance of a system boasting a new Haswell Core i7 CPU—like the Falcon Northwest Fragbox (GeForce GTX 780 SLI) (which scored 7,322 points in PCMark 7 and a 9.91 in Cinebench) or the Digital Storm Virtue (which scored 7,042 points in PCMark 7 and a 9.59 in Cinebench)—the new processor is on par with the top Core i7 CPUs from the previous generation (Ivy Bridge). For example, the Maingear Potenza Super Stock scored 5,356 points in PCMark 7, and 9.57 points in Cinebench, while the affordable Editors' Choice HP Envy Phoenix h9-1320t scored 4,033 points (PCMark 7) and 7.49 points (Cinebench).

The V3 Devastator's two Nvidia GPUs also go a long way toward helping the system achieve top performance, scoring 12,439 points in 3DMark 11 (at Entry settings), and 3,547 points (Extreme). Even at high resolution and detail settings, the V3 Devastator cranked through our gaming tests with solid performance, pumping out 63 frames per second (Alien vs. Predator) and 60 fps (Heaven 3.0). The result is smooth gameplay with no stuttering and no lag, even with all the eye-candy on high.

The small form-factor V3 Devastator offers up the performance of an elite gaming PC with the price tag of mid-range system, trouncing most similarly priced competitors and keeping up with more expensive compact gaming rigs. It's significantly more expensive than the Editors' Choice HP Envy Phoenix h9-1320t, but you get dramatically better performance for your money, with the trade-off of losing expandability. With an overclocked fourth generation Core i5 processor and two Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 GPUs, the V3 Gaming Devastator doesn't top the similarly priced (but better equipped) Digital Storm Virtue, but it's still a smart pick, so long as future upgrades are optional.

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With Chromecast, Google reveals Chrome as its strategic big gun

Computerworld - Chrome is Google and Google is Chrome.

The Chrome browser is Google's most potent strategic weapon, a former Microsoft program manager said last week.

"Chrome is the focus at Google; Android is an afterthought," asserted Ben Thompson, who writes on his Stratechery blog. Thompson, who left Microsoft earlier this month, has quickly made a name for himself with insights into the technology market, in particular Microsoft, Apple and Google, ranging from Microsoft's massive reorganization to the possible role for a larger, 13-in. iPad.

"Chrome shouldn't be thought of as a Web browser," Thompson wrote. "Rather, it's an optimized bi-directional delivery vehicle: the best experience with Google services for users, and maximum user data for Google. And it runs everywhere. This is why Google has been investing millions of dollars in building the Chrome brand."

Thompson's latest post was reacting to the debut of Chromecast, the $35 stream-to-TV device Google introduced last week. Chromecast, said Google, is powered by a simplified version of Chrome OS. (Although GTVHacker.com claimed Chromecast is "more Android than ChromeOS.")

"As a horizontal company, Google wants to be on every screen, and their vehicle to accomplish that across verticals, both from a technical and brand perspective, is Chrome," Thompson added. By "verticals," Thompson meant "devices."

It's hard to argue with Thompson.

Google has been expending significant resources to push Chrome into as many corners as possible.

Not only is Chrome (the browser) available for all major desktop and mobile platforms -- from Windows and OS X to Android and iOS -- the major features of Chrome OS are being added to the browser, including packaged, nee "native," Web apps and the ability to view and edit Microsoft Office documents.

The goal? From Thompson's viewpoint, control of a "multi-screen world."

Others have had similar thoughts.

"It looks like Google is defining the Chrome platform as what I'd call 'Web Platform Plus,' and intends for Chrome OS and the Chrome browser to be a 'platform on a platform' on any device it is permitted to run on," said IDC analyst Al Hilwa in a May interview, months before Chromecast.

By defining that "platform on a platform" -- Chrome on Windows, on Android, on iOS, on OS X, on the television -- Google is trying to turn as many devices and screens as possible into ones locked into the company's ecosystem, keep users loyal to that same ecosystem of sites, service and apps, and entice others to join them.

The ultimate prize is more revenue, which Google generates almost exclusively from online advertising. All Google does, argued Charles Golvin, an analyst with Forrester, is driven by its search for more, and more expensive, advertising.

Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

Read now.

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YACReader (for iPad)

Pros Supports DRM-free CBR, CBZ, PDF, RAR, and ZIP files. Handy folder system lets users manage files without a computer.

Cons Few mainstream publishers release DRM-free comics in the available formats. Lacks a two-page landscape mode. Bottom Line YACReader may not have an integrated store, but it's a slick, multi-format digital comic reader that's worth the purchase.

By Jeffrey L. Wilson

Does the iPad need yet another comic reader? The answer is a resounding "yes." The $1.99 YACReader (which literally stands for Yet Another Comic Reader) is a feature-packed iPad app that's one of the best dedicated mobile comic readers on the market. YACReader lacks an integrated store like the Comics or Dark Horse Comics apps, but the app supports numerous comic-friendly file formats, import methods, and reading styles. If you fancy yourself a digital comic book enthusiast, YACReader is well worth the purchase.

The Splash Page
YACReader is an open comic-book reader that supports DRM-free CBR, CBZ, PDF, RAR, and ZIP files, which makes it a solid app for reading indie efforts and Image Comics' new DRM-less catalog. You'll need to download the Comics or Marvel Comics app if you want to read the latest Hawkeye issue, however.

Like ComicRack, YACReader has a desktop client (available for Linux, Mac, and Windows) that lets you read, manage, and transfer comics to the iPad app. That said, you can also transfer comics using iTunes (both wired and wirelessly) or Dropbox which is important, as YACReader lacks an integrated store like Comics. YACReader also lacks ComicRack's awesome Smart Lists, but you can create folders and sub-folders. I prefer ComicRack's Smart Lists as they automatically sorted new library additions into categories that I pre-defined, but ComicRack requires a computer to do so; I created YACReader folders on the fly without the need for a Mac or PC.

Moving digital comics into folders is simple. Swiping a comic entry from right to left selects a file so that you may copy it; when you create or open a folder, the paste option becomes available. I created a series of folders and sub-folders within a few minutes time. The entire management system works remarkably well.

Turning the Pages
Your collection lives in the My Comics section, which you can customize with three eye-catching layouts. Comic fans with deep libraries will like the option to view comics in an alphabetical index or find them using the built-in search engine.

Rucka and Lark's Lazarus #1 looked fabulous on the iPad's 9.7-inch display. Word bubbles and captions were legible so I didn't have to utilize the zoom feature. Should you want to tinker with a comic's presentation, pinching, zooming, and dragging the image around the screen are available options. Left or right swipes, naturally, turned pages.

YACReader's automatic scrolling isn't nearly as impressive as Comics' Guided View, so if you're a fan of that particular feature, you may want to stick with Comixology's apps. You cannot, however, flip the iPad into landscape so that YACReader displays two pages at a time (a function found in Comics and ComicRack). YACReader remembers where you finished reading, so that when you return to a comic after exiting the app, you'll pick up where you left off—a nice touch. YACReader's page scrubbing is adequate, but isn't as impressive as ComicRack's, which lets you rifle through thumbnail versions of comic pages. YACReader's page scrolling, however, is smoother than ComicRack's (which had the occasional lag).

Tapping and holding a comic thumbnail lets you assign a star rating and fill in metadata information (title, issue number, genre, and more). Numbers at the top of the screen represent the page you're reading and the number of pages in total. There are numerous preferences to digest, so I suggest reading the brief Help section for additional information.

The Final Caption
Now that a major publisher like Image Comics has given DRM the boot, open, dedicated iPad digital comics readers will become even hotter commodities. If you're in the market for one, consider YACReader as it's a refined reading tool despite lacking Comics' huge marketplace.

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Yelp (for Windows Phone)

Pros Excellent Windows Phone style interface. Vast repository of restaurant and business reviews. Lets you write reviews. Monocle shows augemented reality view. Rewards for checking in to certain businesses.

Cons Doesn't have the "compliment" feature. Can't search phone contact list to add Yelp contacts. Bottom Line A beautifully designed app lets you find the best local eateries and businesses.

By Michael Muchmore

If you desperately need to find a good place to eat nearby, Yelp can come to your rescue. Designed with all the "metro" style cues, the Yelp for Windows Phone app (free) is a rare example of a Windows Phone app that doesn't fall short of its iPhone counterpart. It even includes some more advanced features like "monocle" (more on that later). Yelp's rating on the Windows Phone store is lower than it should be, but the recent update on July 18 should change that. The higher-rated, closely competing UrbanSpoon, while well designed and useful, offers far less than Yelp.

Setup
I installed the app on a Nokia Lumia 928 running Windows Phone 8 and a Samsung ATIV Odyssey. As only makes sense for an app intended to help you find local businesses, at installation Yelp asks if you'll allow it to access your location. The app would be far less useful without this, and in fact, you can't install it unless you tap the "allow" button. You can use the app without a Yelp account, but it's far more helpful if you do sign in.

Interface and Using Yelp for Windows Phone
Large red tiles on the home screen let you see Nearby, Bookmarks, Feed, Friends, Deals, and Recents. You can swipe to the right (visually cued by thumbnails peeking from the side of the screen) to see "hot+new nearby" and "about me" (if you've signed in). Tapping the Nearby tile displays a list of popular venue categories—Restaurants, Bars, Coffee & Tea, and so on. You can pin a home screen tile for any of these, and even make a home screen tile for a particular business, by holding your finger down on the entry and choosing "Pin."

Each business's page has five "tabs" you can swipe through, from left to right: info, reviews, photos, tips, and regulars. From the businesses page, you can place a phone call, see the menu, or call up a map; but a small map doesn't appear right on the main business page as it does in the iPhone app.

I often have to remind myself that Yelp is for more than just restaurants: I was trying to remember the name of the violin maker across the street from our office, since they occasionally have concerts. Google Maps didn't do the trick, but choosing "music venues" in Yelp found the YMP Concert Hall on the first page of results. You'll also find detailed reviews of opticians and hairstylists—pretty much any retail or service you can think of.

I mentioned in the outset that Yelp for Windows Phone even supports the "monocle" augmented-reality feature. This lets you hold up the phone to see business entries hovering over your camera view in a heads up display. But it was only available on one of my two test phones, the Nokia Lumia 928. On bottom of the results page for a Nearby category, the monocle button appeared, letting me use the phone's camera to view tags for businesses in the direction I was pointing. The Samsung ATIV Odyssey, however, lacked this button, probably due to some hardware spec limitations.

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Zotac ZBox Nano XS AD13 Plus

Pros Small footprint. Good port selection. Affordable.

Cons Slow performance. Operating system not included. No keyboard or mouse. Bottom Line The Zotac ZBox Nano XS AD13 Plus is a neat little box that will fit nicely into your home entertainment system. However, you don't get much in the way of performance with this nettop, and you'll have to supply your own operating system.

By John R. Delaney

When we reviewed the Zotac ZBox Nano AD12 Plus back in February we were impressed with its diminutive size and assortment of I/O ports but lamented the fact that you had to supply your own OS, keyboard, and mouse. We weren't very impressed with its performance, either. With the ZBox Nano XS AD13 Plus you get the same processor configuration in an even smaller chassis, and slightly better performance thanks to the addition of a solid state drive. You still have to supply your own operating system and peripherals, though.

Design and Features
The AD13 Plus measures 4.1-by-4.1-by-1.5 inches (HWD) and weighs less than a pound (0.74 pounds), making it smaller than the ZBox Nano AD12 Plus by almost an inch and lighter by around 7.9 ounces. The basic design remains the same with a black plastic top and brushed silver sides. One corner of the top sports a small Zotac logo while the adjacent corner is home to an embedded LED power indicator. Once powered up, the lid glows with a bright green circle.

To get inside the Zbox you must loosen the four rubber feet/screws and remove the bottom cover. There isn't much you can do in the way of expansion other than replacing the existing 2GB memory module with a higher capacity module (up to 8GB) and replacing the 64GB mSATA drive with a higher capacity mSATA drive. However, you can install the included VESA mounting plate if you want to mount the box on the back of a VESA-compliant HDTV or monitor.

The front-facing side holds a power switch, a 6-in-1 card reader slot, an eSATA/USB combo port, and two audio ports (headphone/SPDIF, microphone). The rear side panel contains two USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, a gigabit Ethernet port, an HDMI output, and the power jack. Gone is the DisplayPort input from the A12 model. Another HDMI port would be beneficial for connecting to multiple devices though.

In additional to the aforementioned VESA mounting plate the ZBox comes with a remote control for use with Media Center applications. An IR receiver is built in to the front of the ZBox but you also get a USB receiver that you can use if you decide to tuck the box away out of sight or mount it behind an HDTV. Also included are a power adapter, a driver disk, a USB Wi-Fi 802.11n adapter, a quick start guide, and a user guide. You have to supply your own mouse and keyboard, and you'll have to install your own operating system on the solid state drive. Zotac covers the ZBox with a one year warranty.

Performance
The AD13 Plus is fueled by a 1.7GHz AMD E2-1800 dual-core CPU with an onboard AMD Radeon HD 7430 graphics controller, and 2GB of DDR3 system memory. Although these are the same exact components found on the A12, the A13 managed slightly better scores on our benchmark tests, with slightly being the operative word.

Its PCMark 7 score of 1,681 was 641 points higher than the A12 but paled in comparison to the Intel Core i3-powered Intel NUC DC3217BY (3,704) and the Core i5-powered Giada i53 Mini PC (4,337).

Not surprisingly, results from the Cinebench R11.5 CPU test were similar. The A13 scored a lowly 0.70 but it did edge out the A12 (0.65). The Giada led the pack with a score of 2.17.

The A13 needed 6 minutes 21 seconds to complete our Handbrake encoding test, while the Intel NUC did it in 2:32. The ZBox A12 took a lengthy 6:41 seconds to complete the test.

The AD13 Plus's poor showing on our productivity and multimedia tests comes as no surprise as this box is meant for HTPC (Home Theater PC) tasks like storing and playing video and music rather than encoding video and rendering 3D images.

The on-chip Radeon HD 7340 renders video just fine but you don't want to press it into duty for 3D gaming. It managed just 7.6 frames per second (fps) on our medium quality Aliens vs. Predators test and 5.8 fps on the high quality test (you'll want at least 30 fps for smooth game play). Results were similar on our Heaven gaming tests with scores of 6.3 fps (medium quality) and 1.9 fps (high quality).

You don't get much in the way of computing power from the Zotac ZBox Nano XS AD13 Plus, but that's not what this little box is about. It has more than enough chops to store and stream media, and it won't take up much room in your entertainment center. Although its $300 price is affordable keep in mind that you'll have to supply your own OS, keyboard, and mouse, which can drive the price up considerably (unless you decide to go the Linux route). If you want a more robust nettop, consider our Editors' Choice, the Acer Revo RL100-UR20P. It's more expensive but it comes with an OS pre-installed and ships with a keyboard and a mouse, and it has a Blu-ray drive.

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