When I started writing this column back in 1992, the world of personal technology was positively primitive compared with where we stand today. So armed with the benefit of 15 years of hindsight, and in this final installment of the Mossberg Report, I’d like to take a look back on the distance we’ve traveled in [...]
Apple’s iPod music players are wildly popular, and they’re paired with a very good online music service, the iTunes Store. But not everyone loves the famous gadget. Here’s a guide to doing digital music outside the Apple hegemony.
Music services
The iTunes Store is the digital equivalent of a music shop. You buy individual songs or albums [...]
You can’t turn around without reading scary stories about the dangers of the Internet — spyware, adware, viruses, spam. But the biggest trend to worry about is the combining of these nefarious tools for criminal purposes. Spam email used to be annoying; now it may lead you to phony web sites set up by identity [...]
Since the digital revolution began 30 years ago, computers and other devices have been steeped in technobabble, an argot designed to make insiders feel smart, average users feel dumb and salespeople feel superior. Of course, every industry has its jargon. But it’s hard to think of a vocabulary that’s denser yet so widely used as [...]
Recently, the Palm Treo has been the product of choice in high-end smart phones. The Treo can not only make phone calls, but also send and receive e-mail, surf the Web, play music, take pictures and handle Microsoft Office documents, with the aid of a small built-in keyboard. The latest Treo 700 models are more [...]
It used to be that if you switched from a PC running the Windows operating system to the small-selling but elegant Macintosh, you had to leave behind your Windows programs. Sure, there was one software product that allowed you to run Windows on a Mac and thus run Windows programs. But it was so slow [...]
The release of a new version of Microsoft Windows is like the launching of a new aircraft carrier. It’s a major, ponderous event whose ripples affect everything around it. So Microsoft’s planned launch of the next version of its Windows operating system, called Windows Vista, currently set for January 2007, will be a big deal.
Vista [...]
Apple Computer is gradually replacing its entire Macintosh lineup. The cutting-edge company, which turned 30 in April, already makes the best-designed hardware, the best operating system and the most-secure machines in the consumer-PC market. Now it’s performing a brain transplant on the Mac.
Starting in January, six months earlier than promised, Apple began switching the Mac [...]
When you think of videoconferencing, it might conjure up images of a cavernous corporate boardroom, its stiff executives sitting perched in front of costly cameras and viewing a slick video feed of colleagues in, say, Tokyo. Or perhaps you think of Joe Average staring into a cheap Webcam while squinting to make out a garish, [...]
When the vast majority of the world’s PC users want to surf the Web, they fire up Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, the free browser that comes included with Windows, now in version 6.0. They may not even know its name, since it’s usually the only, or at least the preset default, choice for browsing on a [...]
As smart phones and personal digital assistants become more like little computers, they have begun to compete with laptops as portable digital workstations. For short or light-duty business trips, you can now leave the laptop at home and rely instead on a smart phone with a keyboard, such as a BlackBerry phone from Research in [...]
When it came out in 2001, Windows XP was a very nice operating system, far slicker and more reliable than previous versions of Windows. But XP is getting long in the tooth. It has been patched so often to plug egregious security flaws that it is barely recognizable as the sleek, stable product that debuted [...]
Apple Computer caused a big splash recently by introducing a new iPod that can play videos and by starting to sell videos, as it does songs, at its iTunes Music Store. This new iPod will very quickly become the bestselling handheld video device, mostly because people will buy it mainly for its music capabilities.
But as [...]
Apple’s Macintosh computers claim only a tiny share of the overall PC market, but they are getting more consideration from Windows users thinking of switching than at any time in many years.
The daunting security problems that have plagued Windows have also prompted many of its users to take a serious look at the Mac. This [...]
For years Americans who accessed the Internet via cell phone networks looked across the ocean to Europe with envy. The speed of American cell phone networks badly trailed those in Europe.
But not anymore. Gradually, and with relatively little fanfare, Verizon Wireless has deployed a nationwide cellular data network in the United States that blows away [...]
Edited by Walt and written by Katie Boehret, this is a guide to gadgets, web services and other consumer technologies.
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Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.