Prepaid and pay-as-you-go cell phone services have a dirty reputation. For most of us, they conjure up images of rundown retail locations in strip malls full of smarmy salesmen, 2004-era phones, and sky-high prices to take advantage of people with poor credit.
Tag Archive: Guide
2009’s Hottest Holiday Tech Trends
Leaves are dropping, days are shortening, and colder air is sweeping in. The holidays are almost here, and for most of us, that means feeling out proper gifts for friends and family – and, if we’re lucky, dropping just the right hints to unwrap what we’re after this year too. The especially good news for gadget enthusiasts being as follows: If your preferred pick happens to be a high-tech item, there’s a lot to get excited about this season.
The Best Time to Buy Computers, HDTVs, iPods, Cell Phones and More
Timing is everything. Whether you’re trying to capture the perfect shot of a motorcycle screaming by at 113 miles an hour at Laguna Seca, or just trying to figure out when to dodge the lunch crowd at your favorite restaurant, the little arms that swirl away on your watch face have a lot more to do with getting it right than your choice of camera, or even which restaurant you end up at.
Windows 7: Pros and Cons
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The release of Windows 7 is just around the corner, but is it worth the upgrade? We talk with our panel of experts about their Windows 7 user experiences and find out what people should know before they pull the trigger on the snappy new upgrade on Oct. 22nd.
For more on Windows 7 check out our Windows 7 Review and Experts Review Windows 7, Recommend You Upgrade.
Best Voice Recorders Reviewed
With all the portable audio-video devices floating around today, it seems surprising – nay, downright annoying – that so few of them offer support for voice recording. Sure, they’ll load and play a kazillion songs in any format you want, display photos, play movies, and probably pour you a frosty beer, but should you want to do something as seemingly simple and as natural as recording the human voice, you’ll have to look far and wide. And even fewer of them feature line-in jacks for direct feeds from hardwired outside sources or external mics.
2009’s Best Holiday Video Games: Expert Picks
The holidays are almost here, and you know what that means – we can feel our thumbs tingling already. Thank an impending deluge of high-profile fall PC and video game releases, which signal the end of the industry’s annual summer drought.
Microsoft Zune HD vs. Apple iPod Touch
Microsoft has made no attempt to hide which trendy little MP3 player lay in the sights of the recently released Zune HD: Apple’s iPod Touch. Apple turned the market upside down when it released the Touch back in 2007, and while Microsoft let its own Zune line languish for two years before responding, the silver bullet Microsoft has finally offered up has clearly been engineered to drop Apple. But will it succeed? With both players in hand, we ran down the key advantages of each to determine which truly makes the ultimate portable video device.
OS X Snow Leopard: The Complete Guide
Snow Leopard will fully exploit 64-bit CPUs
The Snow Leopard cometh. After a modest demonstration alongside a hopped-up iPhone and slightly revamped MacBook at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, the long-awaited update to OS X finally gets its time to shine on August 28. While Apple has shied away from painting the new Mac operating system (OS) as a landmark release – even the name implies that it’s just a revision – Snow Leopard will bring with it a slew of upgrades that Apple fans have long awaited, and many that should pave a path to unlock even more performance as developers learn to fully take advantage of them. But with so many features that run more than just skin deep, Snow Leopard isn’t an easy beast to understand. We sat down with senior Macworld editor Rob Griffiths to better explain what’s in store, what could change for the worse, and whether or not most existing OS X users will want to upgrade.
Key HDTV Features to Look for When Shopping
With technology evolving at such a rapid pace, buying a new TV can be an intimidating proposition. After all, no one wants to invest in a high-definition television that’ll be outdated by the time you take it home and plug it into the wall. Complicating matters is all the confusing jargon thrown around, be it 1080p, 16:9, HDMI, ATSC, 120Hz and Blu-ray. Huh? You probably — and justifiably — feel like you need a degree in electrical engineering just to understand it all. And then there’s the sheer number of choices at retail. Take a stroll into your local retailers and you’ll stare at a sea of never-ending television sets. How on earth do you know which one to buy?
