Few things can be more disappointing than the expectation that something will be far better than it turns out. I'm afraid to say this is my experience with the Hewlett-Packard TouchSmart IQ506t, which, for just under $1,600, is positioned as an all-in-one computer for the home user. Published August 27, 2008
Apple Inc.'s iPhone 3G has done for mobile communication what Michael Phelps has done for swimming - impressed a style so deeply on global consciousness that it will be difficult to imagine other options, at least for a while. Published August 25, 2008
I'm in Week Four of using Apple Inc.'s iPhone 3G, and all's very well so far. But, to borrow from the late Satchell Paige, the folks in Cupertino might not want to look back: Mike Lazaridis might be gaining on them. Published August 20, 2008
There aren't too many things I'm looking for in life, but one of my continuing quests is organization. I keep trying to get organized, and the recent release of version 1.0 of Chandler, "The Note-to-Self Organizer," is becoming part of my quest. I like the idea, but the performance could benefit from some tweaking, in my opinion. Published August 18, 2008
I often tell people that my experience with every version of Microsoft Windows - going back to 1.0, which I purchased at the very first Staples store in Cambridge, Mass. - resembles my pre-marriage dating life. Published August 11, 2008
Almost since the dawn of time - or at least since the beginnings of the "Phone Company" as a unifying force in society - there has Published August 6, 2008
Visitors to this month's Olympic Games in Beijing may have more than smog to worry about. Published August 4, 2008
I'm getting tired of radio - even satellite radio, if you must know the truth. Yes, I can find a specific genre of music, but the people in radio keep insisting on playing the songs they want to play when they want to play them. Published July 30, 2008
The faint stirrings of direct marketing that saw 19th-century railroad clerk Aaron Montgomery Ward sending out circulars advertising watches and other trinkets have grown into Amazon.com, but if you regard the Web site as the ne plus ultra of personalized online commerce, you might want to reconsider. There's much more to come. Published July 28, 2008
Amid the justifiable excitement of the July 11 launch of Apple's iPhone 3G - 1 million units were sold the first weekend, after all - there's a lot more than meets the eye. Published July 23, 2008
When WordPerfect last made any significant headlines, or so it seems, then U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno had ordered up a bunch of licenses for the Department of Justice. Lawyers, it seems, love WordPerfect. Published July 21, 2008
If you ride the Metro to work every day, do I have a device for you: the $359 Kindle, an electronic book reader created and sold by Amazon.com, the dominant online book seller. Published July 16, 2008
DENVER -- I am here ahead of Sen. Barack Obama, but he doesn't have to worry about a boarding pass to fly out of this place. I, however, do. Published July 14, 2008
Adobe Systems' Acrobat 9 Professional, recently released, is worth every penny of the $459 list price, especially if you work with documents, with forms or with data. In Washington, I believe, that's just about everyone, including most street vendors. Published July 7, 2008
The idea pf XM NavTraffic is to take all sorts of streams of traffic data and bring the information to the car in time for you to do something about it, using data from a Chicago-based firm that collects traffic data from road sensors, transportation departments, police and emergency services, cameras and airborne reporters. Published July 2, 2008
In today's multimedia-hungry world, there's a continuing question - how do you get the video or audio that you need onto a computer in digital format? Professional solutions abound, but these often have hefty price tags and steep learning curves. Published June 30, 2008
If Walt Disney's name is the gold standard in family entertainment, a lot of gold is on the line Oct. 7 when the iconic company bets that enhanced Blu-Ray DVDs will capture the attention - and dollars - of home entertainment buyers. Published June 25, 2008
Apple's iPhone, birthed last summer, is a force to be reckoned with. Combining a mobile phone with a Published June 18, 2008
Perhaps the greatest surprise in the announcement Thursday of version 9.5 of the Opera Web browser and the Tuesday launch of Firefox 3 is that neither is a snoozer. Published June 16, 2008
John Donne famously observed around 1624 that "No man is an island, entire of itself." And that was nearly 400 years before anyone began to think of collaborative computing. Published June 9, 2008
