WD My Cloud review: A better, more secure alternative to cloud storage

I love the cloud. I depend on it. The cloud allows me to access my data from any device at any time; from anywhere I have broadband access. And I can share some or all of that information with other people: A boon to productivity when I’m collaborating with someone.

I’ve become so addicted to that flexibility that I’m willing to pay a subscription fee, even though I don’t trust the service provider to keep my information entirely secure. I never put anything sensitive in the cloud, such as my tax returns or other financial data. And I never rely solely on the cloud. I always keep backup copies on storage devices that I have complete control over.

WD’s My Cloud delivers the best of both worlds. It’s a hard drive that connects to my home network, so it’s as secure as I can make it. But I can access it from the Internet—from a PC, smartphone, or tablet—just like a cloud service. And I can create user accounts with passwords to allow family, friends, and colleagues to access specific folders, so we can share information (or media) and collaborate. I can also transfer files between the My Cloud and cloud-storage services, such as Dropbox.

Robert CardinWD's My Cloud NAS box delivers all the convenience of a cloud-storage service in a device that's completely in your control.

Hmm. My Cloud sounds a lot like WD’s My Book Live product line, doesn’t it? As it turns out, the My Cloud series is replacing the My Book line, and the new desktop and mobile apps WD is launching alongside My Cloud will also work with the older drives. But there’s one My Cloud feature you won’t find on any My Book Live: a USB 3.0 port that can host a digital camera for direct file transfers. Alternatively, you can connect a stand-alone USB hard drive into this port and expand the My Cloud’s storage capacity.

As with the My Book Live, you can also back up your PC to the My Cloud over your network. And the drive supports Apple’s Time Machine technology, so you can back up Mac clients, too. And unlike some NAS manufacturers that limit the number of free client licenses you get, Western Digital will back up as many computers as you’d care to connect to it (there are practical limitations, of course, based on the amount of available storage). If you’d like, you can mirror these backups on a public cloud service.

You connect a digital camera directly to the My Cloud's USB 3.0 port, or add an additional drive to expand its storage capacity.

WD offers mobile apps for the Android and iOS operating systems, which helps solve another problem many of us face: data fragmentation caused by having stored files on multiple devices. Install the apps onto your smartphones and tablets, and you can send all your media files over the Internet to your My Cloud. I just wish my digital camera was smart enough to support an app that could do that (yes, I should buy a Wi-Fi-enabled storage card).

Installing the My Cloud is pretty much a plug-and-play affair: It even detected my double-NAT’d router and configured itself to work under those circumstances without any intervention on my part. (I’m in a double NAT situation because there’s no retail alternative to AT&T’s U-verse gateway/router combo). When the Lab benchmarked the My Cloud, it delivered very fast file-transfer performance, reading a 10GB collection of files at 29.9 MBps and writing it at 21.4MBps. It performed equally well with a single 10GB file, reading it at an impressive 79.4 MBps and writing back to the drive at 62.1MBps.

The WD My Cloud delivers excellent file-transfer performance.

Moving beyond backup services, the My Cloud has an onboard DLNA server and iTunes support, so it can stream media to various entertainment systems in your home that also support DLNA or iTunes (I’m talking about smart TVs, network-capable AV receivers, and media-streaming boxes such as the Roku or WD’s own WD TV Live). Unlike Microsoft’s discontinued Windows Home Server 2011, the My Cloud cannot stream media to a client over the Internet. WD doesn’t provide BitTorrent support, either.

The My Cloud is very reasonably priced: The 2TB model reviewed here goes for $150, and WD offers a 3TB model for $180 and a 4TB model for $250. Relying on a single-drive NAS for backup or storing critical data is a little risky, however, since you stand to lose everything if the device fails.

WD mostly solves this problem with a feature it calls “safepoints.” A safepoint is a snapshot of the drive that can be stored on another storage device on your network or on a drive attached to the My Cloud's USB port. Should the drive fail, you can recover all your data—including all your backups of your client PCs and Macs—from the safepoint on a healthy drive. And once you’ve created a safepoint, the My Cloud can be set up to automatically create new ones at specified intervals.

WD plans to offer two- and four-drive units down the road. If the drives in these models can be configured as RAID 1 (where data is automatically mirrored), it will add another layer of data security. There is, however, one shortcoming to both of these solutions: No amount of redundancy will preserve your data if both your original and your backup(s) are in the same physical location that location is devastated by fire, flood, earthquake, or some other disaster.

The My Cloud Dashboard provides a at-a-glance update of the NAS box's status.

The thing is, very few other NAS manufacturers offer a solution for this problem, either (the new Drobo Transporter 2.0 is supposed to be capable of backing up to another Transporter 2.0 via the cloud, but the company has yet to send one for review).

And considering everything that the My Cloud does do, that criticism becomes a small detail. If you need storage that’s available from just about everywhere, and you don’t want to rely on a third-party cloud service to provide it, WD’s My Cloud is a brilliant solution.

Michael manages PCWorld's hardware product reviews and contributes to TechHive's coverage of home-control systems and sound bars.
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Review: Dooble enters the crowded field of alternative browsers

Dooble is another entry into the large field of "web browsers that aren't Explorer, Firefox, or Opera." As with most such entries, it is reasonably functional and has a few new ideas, but it doesn't offer an overwhelmingly compelling reason to switch from your primary browser.

The main focus of Dooble is privacy and security. Dooble operates by default in what other browsers call "private mode," and the user explicitly grants exceptions to retain data from various sites between launches. It will request a password on application launch. A built-in cookie browser is easily accessible from the main menu bar, making it simple to see what data sites are tracking (if you know how to interpret the information). The more secure HTTPS protocol is on by default, as well.

Another virtue of Dooble is that it's fast, or at least it feels fast (this is a case of subjective perception, not precisely timed rendering tests). I spend a significant portion of my life staring at browser windows, and Dooble renders quickly, even on image-heavy sites. There's a crisp sharpness to it, and this is worth mentioning.

In addition to the Windows edition, Dooble comes in Mac and Linux flavors.

Dooble has some unusual features, and it feels fast and easy to read.

One unusual feature of Dooble is a built-in desktop. While most browsers accept local URLsand present directory listings. Dooble includes a simple desktop/file manager, desktop, with multiple windows, and management functions. Unfortunately, the usefulness of this is limited. For example, it doesn't read file type associations from Windows, so the user must enter them manually, and, having done so, the launching of the application based on the file is sporadic at best. Often, the application would open, but the selected file would not open within it. While I could open text files with Notepad++ or XLS files with Excel, I could not open html files with Firefox or FLV files with VLC media player.

Dooble has hooks for plugins, but, so far, only one is available, a chat/IRC type application. Because the "plugin/extension ecosystem" is becoming such a vital part of Web browsing, as the Web becomes more of an environment in itself, any browser that can't tap into that either needs to include a kitchen sink's worth of features (contrary to the current trend of slimmed-down programs), or risk being overlooked because a useful function can't be added.

I experienced only one system crash with Dooble, which I could not replicate. Given the myriad possible causes of such a one-off event, I'd rate Dooble as quite stable.

Dooble is drifting towards a niche—high privacy, with the program heavily slanted towards safe defaults—but it needs a good bit of work and polish to be good enough as an overall browser for daily use. It performs as well as any browser for the basic functions of the Web, but it is missing those "quality of life" features that are what drives a user to choose one browser over another when all of them are, in essence, presenting the same data. I hope to see functionality added in future versions, and existing functions enhanced and extended.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system.

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Samsung Chromebook 3: Cheaper, more productive alternative to a tablet

Samsung’s latest Chromebook – the Series 3 XE303C12-A01US – is small, slim, and speedy. This little laptop weighs less than 2.5 pounds and packs a decent performance punch, assuming you’re comparing it to the right machines.

GoogleThe Samsung Series 3 runs the browser-based Chrome operating system.The Samsung Series 3 looks like a laptop, but it's not. It's equipped with a mobile processor and very little internal storage, and it runs the browser-based Chrome operating system instead of the Apple Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows platform. It performs more like a tablet or advanced smartphone than an ultraportable. If you’re looking to do much more than surf the web and create cloud-based content (via Google or another service), then this is not the laptop for you. But if you’re looking for a tablet with much better content-creation functionality--namely, an integrated keyboard--then the Samsung Chromebook is an appealing option.

Our review model, which costs $249.99 as configured, sports a 1.7GHz Samsung Exynos 5 dual-core ARM processor, which is the same mobile system-on-a-chip found in the Google Nexus 10 tablet. Like the Nexus 10, the Chromebook pairs the Exynos 5 with 2GB of memory and 16GB of hard drive space.

The Chromebook also sports built-in Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, two USB ports (one USB 3.0, one USB 2.0), a 3-in-1 card reader, and a headphone/microphone combination port. There’s also an HDMI-out port on the back of the machine. Samsung offers USB dongles for VGA-out and Ethernet (sold separately).

Because the Chromebook is technically a tablet, with a mobile system-on-a-chip and no discrete graphics card, we tested it using our tablet benchmark tests – Peacekeeper, SunSpider, and WebVizBench.

The Chromebook performs very well compared to tablets in all three of these tests. It scored 1233 on Futuremark’s Peacekeeper HTML5 browser test, which is more than twice the score of Apple’s iPad 3 (516). The Chromebook was also very fast on SunSpider, taking 0.69 seconds to complete the same JavaScript test that the iPad 3 took 1.78 seconds to complete, and that the fairly speedy Asus VivoTab RT took 1.03 seconds to complete. On WebVizBench, another HTML5 test, the Chromebook scored 5.4, slightly behind the Windows Surface RT tablet (6.9) and, surprisingly, the HTC Windows 8 phone (5.9).

The Chromebook also loads pages quickly. In our page-load test, it took just 7 seconds to load a page that took the Asus VivoTab RT 23.3 seconds to load.

The Samsung Chromebook looks a lot like the 11-inch Apple MacBook Air. It’s thicker (0.8 inches to the MBA’s 0.68 inches) and slightly heavier (2.43 pounds to the MBA’s 2.38 pounds), and it’s made of plastic instead of Apple’s standard aluminum. However, it clearly took cues from Apple’s ultrathin, ultralight premium laptop, right down to the island-style black keyboard and smooth, button-less trackpad.

The Chromebook may be lightweight and made of plastic, but it feels very sturdy. When closed, the laptop feels solid, and when open, the hinge is practically unshakeable. Speaking of the hinge, that’s the only major eyesore on the machine: When the laptop is closed, the hinge juts up about a half-centimeter. This breaks up the otherwise clean, smooth lines of the machine.

The Chromebook sports a solid, matte-silver lid featuring both the Google Chrome logo (in the upper left corner) and the Samsung logo (left, center). Inside, the laptop is all matte-silver plastic, including a silver plastic bezel surrounding the machine’s 11.6-inch screen. There’s another Samsung logo below the screen.

The keyboard is still a full-size QWERTY keyboard, but Google and Samsung have modified the layout to better suit the Chrome experience. First, there’s no Windows or Apple key (after all, this isn’t a Windows or Apple computer), just larger Ctrl and Alt buttons. There’s also no Caps Lock key – instead, there’s a Search key that, when pressed, brings up a list of apps installed on the computer. This is sort of like the Windows key, since it essentially brings up the apps in a Start Menu-esque format.

GoogleThe Samsung Series 3 sports a silvery design and an extremely sturdy hinge.

There’s also no Fn key. Instead of function keys along to the top of the keyboard, above the numbers, there are dedicated keys for various tasks. From left to right, you’ll find: Escape, Back, Forward, Refresh, Full Screen, Next Window, Brightness up/down, Mute, Volume up/down, and Power. This setup shouldn’t take too much getting used to if you’re a Mac person – MacBooks’ function keys are, by default, set to perform tasks instead of the typical F1, F2, etc.

The keyboard, which sports Chiclet-style keys, is fairly comfortable to type on, though it’s certainly not the best keyboard I’ve ever used. The keys offer somewhat light tactile feedback, which can be an issue if you’re typing quickly. The keys are also a bit small, though the keyboard itself is full-size.

The Chromebook’s multi-touch-enabled trackpad sits below the keyboard. Similar to Apple trackpads, it has no discrete buttons, just one big, clickable pad. Unlike Apple’s trackpads, however, the one on the Series 3 lacks a setting for a physical right-click (that is, you can’t set it to right-click if you click in the lower-right corner). All right-clicks must be performed by tapping the pad with two fingers.

The trackpad supports some multi-touch gestures, such as two-finger scrolling. It does not support pinch-to-zoom, which is unfortunate considering the Chromebook’s screen is so small. The trackpad is comfortable, responsive, and otherwise easy to use.

The Chromebook’s display is adequate, considering the size and price of the system. The laptop sports a matte-finish LED display with a native resolution of 1366 by 768 pixels – the same resolution you’ll find on the 11-inch MacBook Air. This resolution is perfectly acceptable for an 11.6-inch screen, and images and text look crisp and clear. Color fidelity is fairly good, though some colors look a little washed-out when the screen is cranked up to its brightest setting.

That said, the screen's brightness could be an issue, considering this is designed for portability. The screen is 200 nits (a term for a unit of measured brightness). This is fine for basic indoor work, but I usually like at least 250 nits for working outdoors or in direct sunlight. Apple’s MacBook Air has a very bright screen, at 354 nits.

Video looks and sounds surprisingly good on the Chromebook, considering it has no discrete graphics card (and a mobile chip, at that). High-definition streaming video plays well, though darker scenes suffer from quite a bit of artifacting. Audio from the Chromebook’s two 1.5W stereo speakers sounds decently full and loud, and the headphone jack is clean. I wouldn’t make this your main video machine, but for casual watching and listening it works just fine.

The Samsung Chromebook is designed for a user with very specific needs. Because it runs the Chrome OS, you can’t use traditional applications – you have to use web-based apps or apps that are built within the Google infrastructure.

Melissa RiofrioThe Chromebook comes with several apps built-in, including the Chrome browser, Google Maps, and YouTube.

The Chromebook comes with several apps built-in, including the Chrome web browser, Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Google Drive, and a calculator app. You can download additional apps, either paid or free, at the Chrome Web Store.

This Chromebook is really designed for people who do little more than surf the web and create documents and spreadsheets, and who want something light, portable, and with a physical keyboard. It only has 16GB of internal storage, but never fear: Chromebook users get 100GB of free Cloud Drive storage for two years.

While the Chromebook isn’t for everyone, it’s certainly a cheap and productive alternative to a similarly-equipped tablet. You don’t get a touchscreen, but you do get extra Cloud Drive storage, better performance, and a keyboard.

Sarah is a freelance writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. She has a love/hate relationship with social media and a bad habit of describing technology as "sexy."
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Killing Comic Sans: 5 alternative fonts that protect your dignity

Comic Sans: It's the best font in your tool box if you're committed to sappy, unsophisticated design, and want to prove to the world that your type library hasn't been updated since 1995. Comic Sans is embarrassing. It makes us avert our eyes. Yet it's still the go-to font for amateur designers trying to make their messaging more friendly—if only in the same way that reindeer sweaters are intrinsically friendly.

It's one of Windows' longest-standing clichés.

"If you love Comic Sans, feel free to use it with the understanding that it makes your work appear amateurish and thus the information it presents is perceived as unprofessional," says Robin Williams, author of The Non-Designer's Design and Type Books and How to Boss Your Fonts Around.

When Comic Sans was included in Windows 95, the world was starved for a relaxed, whimsical font, making the bubbly sans serif type face just the ticket. Or at least designer Vincent Connare thought so. He had designed the font the previous year explicitly for the comical (and later to be eternally mocked) software package Microsoft Bob.

Nowadays, Comic Sans elicits a visceral response: Either you hate it, or you use it. But using it even a little is a little too much.

"Your hairstyle, your car choice, your clothes—all provoke an immediate response from others. We dress and groom ourselves to fit a general image of who we think we are, and how we want others to see us," says Williams. "Your font choice provokes the same sort of reaction from others. Using Comic Sans, you send a visual message that your work is unconsidered, unprofessional, and probably untrustworthy. Obviously, your physical appearance choices and your font choices can have absolutely nothing to do with the inner truth, but we cannot deny the impact of the initial visual impression."

Ouch.

In its defense, Comic Sans is one of very few fonts that works well at "display" sizes, yet retain readability, both on screen and printed, when very small. It uses a single-story lower-case a and simple lower-case g rather than letter-press versions of these letters, in theory allowing early readers to decode text more easily. It's as innocuous as Val Kilmer's Batman: Not quite as forgettable as Lewis G. Wilson, but not exactly Christian Bale either. It's the overuse that's made Comic Sans into the Batsuit-nipples of the font world.

So if you—or someone whose work reflects on you—indulges in Comic Sans, and you need a font or a full typeface that's friendly, fun-loving, and informal, try the following alternatives. Each is free for personal use, while professional and commercial use fees range from a user-set donation to about $16.

"So many designers hate Comic Sans," designer Hannes von Döhren of HVD Font tells me in email. "They think people who don't know design are overusing this funny little friendly font, which is out of place nearly every time." His HVD Comic Serif is a (PostScript) OpenType font that's an interesting alternative if you want to stick with the comic book theme. The slab serif letters are drawn monoline, but with a fun, easygoing attitude. Comic Serif is strong, but still has an innocent feel.

HVD Comic Serif isn't Comic Sans with serifs added. This heavy slab serif font packs a punch.

Just like its archnemesis, HVD Comic Serif is very legible, even at 10-point text size, and can easily be used as a display or poster font. However, while the two comic fonts have a vaguely related heritage, and both include handwritten styles for the lower-case a and g (rather than the letter press style), HVD Comic Serif probably isn't going to be a good choice for beginning readers. The heavy weight of the font and the short descenders cause the heavy slab serifs to barely fit in the glyph.

HVD Comic Serif is regular 400-weight, but it seems heavier. This may be because of the short ascenders and descenders relative to the x-height, and an x-height slightly above the median. Also, there's no bold version of the font, so bolding the font in a text editing program like Microsoft Word or Open Office makes the letters almost run together. That said, HVD Comic Serif includes a crazy 11,940 kerning pairs, so your copy will be well spaced in practically any design. This font has all the usual upper and lower-case glyphs, plus numbers, punctuation, many mathematical and scientific glyphs, and Eastern, Central, and Western European language support.

As designer von Döhren suggests, appropriate use is key to not looking out of place, whatever font you use. So even though it includes scientific and mathematical glyphs, don't use HVD Comic Serif (or any font with the word Comic in its name, for that matter) for grant proposals, dissertations, or signage at MIT. HVD Comic Serif includes installable embedding, and is free for personal and commercial use.

DK Au Revoir is a handwritten OpenType font that has style and flair, with subliminal don't-mess-with-me undertones. Designer David Kerkhoff also created a lower-case o that caught my eye: It's almost a heart, but not quite.

Au Revoir adds panache to informal communications.

Even though they are regular (400) weight, DK Au Revoir's glyphs are quite petite. As a comparison, the cap height of some of the upper-case letters (L for example) are equivalent to the same point size Times New Roman font, while other letters (B, E, R) are only two thirds the size. All of the lower-case letters reach the full cap height, but have an x-height way below the median. However, the extra-tall ascenders in DK Au Revoir add to the font's refined nature, and the diminutive size shouldn't distract from the detail that's gone into this font. DK Au Revoir is very well-executed, and includes more than 9,000 kerning pairs to ensure whatever your copy, it's going to look perfect.

DK Au Revoir contains all upper and lower-case glyphs, numbers, common punctuation, accented characters, and some special characters, such as the Euro symbol. DK Au Revoir looks beautiful at sizes larger than 24 point, and it will add class to any brochure, flier, or newsletter. That said, it's an understated font that doesn't demand attention. Don't send an audit announcement with DK Au Revoir or Comic Sans.

The free (for personal use only) demo of DK Au Revoir doesn't include the contextual and stylistic alternates, full kerning control, ligatures, or extensive language support you get with the full version. In addition, the embedding is restricted in the demo. Contact Kerkhoff for the full, commercial-use version.

Inspired by the formal handwriting of architects, Architect's Daughter is delightfully precise, yet lighthearted and not at all bossy. Architect's Daughter is a TrueType font you could use at larger text sizes (14 point) and encounter no problems with legibility, or use at poster sizes to enjoy the detailed edges of the letters.The tiny serif at the end of the upper case E, and gentle slope within the center stroke of the F, are particularly charming.

Casual but never sloppy, Architect's Daughter defines a cross-section of neatness and friendliness.

The slightly off-scale width of some letters—,lower-case o and c, and upper-case B, D, and R among others—plus the non-mirror image lower case b and d all work together to aid the legibility. Indeed, many experts cite these differences as things that can make a typeface easy to decipher, especially for early readers and people with a disability like dyslexia. The lower-case a and g in Architect's Daughter also are handwriting style rather than letter-press, similar to Comic Sans, which is a benefit to beginner readers.

Although Architect's Daughter may seem casually handwritten, 377 accurate kerning pairs help give it a sensible cleanness that expands its usability. However, still pass it through the suitability filter: This is not the font for memorial signs or grave markers.

Architect's Daughter includes full upper- and lower-case glyphs, plus numbers, punctuation, and accented characters; all at 400 (regular) weight. It's fully installable, allowing you to embed the Architect's Daughter font in documents ready for other users to install. Architect's Daughter is free for personal use. For commercial use, contact designer Kimberly Geswein.

Designer Robby Woodard of WoodardWorks describes Laconic on his website as "a typeface design meant to be dry without quite seeming parched." For any stern note, Laconic is ideal: über-legible, even at small text sizes, but without ingratiating flourishes.

Laconic conveys a smart and capable image without stuffiness.

The glyphs are perfectly proportional (with 652 kerning pairs), and drawn with the preciseness of an almost-typewritten font, but with sans serif twenty-first century style. Straight lines blend seamlessly into elegant curves with Laconic. Following good rules for a font like this, Laconic's lower-case letters have an x-height slightly taller than the median line, and upper-case letters such as B, H, G, etc. aim their midpoints precisely at the median. Although Laconic's ascenders and descenders are uniformly short, the ascenders are slightly taller than the cap height.

If you are writing formal sentences (rather than all-caps, or all lower-case) these far-reaching ascenders can be slightly distracting, so don't use Laconic for mental health screenings or STD questionnaires..

The Laconic typeface family includes Light, Regular, Bold, and Shadow (all OpenType, and all included in the same download) for interesting, modernistic effects. Each weight features ligatures, old style figures, proportional figures, small caps, tabular figures, and stylistic alternatives, as well as the more standard upper- and lower-case, numbers, and punctuation.

Embedding allows for print and preview only, but permissions in Laconic's EULA allow you to redistribute Laconic freely. Laconic is free for personal use. For commercial use contact Woodard.

Lexia Readable: It's what happened when Comic Sans grew up. Designed by K-Type as a visually mature version of the comic cliché, Lexia gives your copy clarity and legibility without the now-cloying whimsy.

Beautiful and ultra-legible, sans serif typeface Lexia is a winner.

Lexia Readable and Lexia Bold are available as OpenType, TrueType, and PostScript in the same download. A sans serif typeface, Lexia Readable echos the reasons many literacy professionals like to use Comic Sans: the handwritten lower-case a and g (rather than the letterpress versions); ascenders that equal the cap height, and similarly long descenders; an x-height that is just a hair above the median. These features all make Lexia easy on the eyes—and easy on the brain for early readers and readers with a disability such as dyslexia.

But unlike Comic Sans, Lexia Readable steps it up a notch with asymmetrical lower-case b and d, straightened lines rather than the hand-drawn wobble, and 170 kerning pairs to ensure good spacing and placement.

Keith Bates, designer of Lexia Readable, notes, "Lexia Readable was primarily an attempt at a grown-up Comic Sans that might be more appropriate for use with older readers," he says. "It's an attempt to retain the strength, friendliness and legibility of Comic Sans, and even a slightly marker-drawn feel, whilst tidying up the comic book idiosyncrasies.Lexia adds a hint of dignity, a sprinkling of refinement, and introduces elements of designer type to appeal to a contemporary audience."

Lexia is designed to be legible, even at small sizes, and looks great down to 8 points. The open lower-case b and p (designed to avoid symmetry and confusion for some readers) make Lexia a poor choice for display purposes—it just looks odd—but it still works, and at least the detail in the upper-case letters adds style that Comic Sans lacks.

Embedding is installable. Lexia Readable and Lexia Readable Bold are available free for personal use, and also free for use by schools, colleges, other educational establishments, non-profit groups, and charities. The full Lexia typeface (Lexia Bold, Italic, Heavy, Outline) is available for all uses including commercial from K-Type; the full package runs about $16.

Williams says, "As you become more conscious of typography and put into words your gut reactions to fonts—that font is cranky, that one is happy, and so on—you'll find that Comic Sans will naturally disappear from your choices."

A word of caution: Whatever cheerful, lighthearted, easy-to-read font you choose, if it fails the suitability test, it's not going to work. If your copy relays devastating news or you need people to take your message seriously, don't use Comic Sans or any others we've suggested (with the possible exception of Lexia). If in doubt, Times New Roman will never fail you.

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Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4590 Review: Low-Cost Corporate Laser Alternative

The Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4590 color inkjet multifunction works quickly and uses cheap ink, but it isn't available through normal retail channels. It's aimed at large businesses that value service and a low total cost of ownership over a low purchase price. Priced at $500 (as of August 13, 2012), the WP-4590 comes with a three-year warranty and is sold only through VARs and other corporate channels. Consumers who are tired of PIB (Printers in Black) might also appreciate this unit's friendlier putty and light-gray coloring.

Accompanying the WP-4590 are the usual competent Epson software and driver installation routine. Since the machine has USB and ethernet, but no Wi-Fi (a bow to security concerns, per Epson), you will be tethered. The control panel sports a 2.5-inch LCD and the usual array of buttons, arranged in a classic and logical manner. If you've ever used an MFP before, you will encounter no learning curve here. The software includes Epson Scan for scanning and PaperPort 9 for OCR chores.

Paper-handling features on the WP-4590 are quite good. It has a 250-sheet tray on the bottom and an 80-sheet rear vertical feed. If that's not enough, you can buy an auxiliary 250-sheet bottom tray for a mere $100. For a laser printer you'd pay at least twice as much for such an accessory. Having the rear feed is especially nice for photos, since it permits the MFP to process heavier glossy paper with minimal bending. The rear feed also allows you to keep two types of paper loaded.

The WP-4590 has a 30-sheet automatic document feeder for scanning and copying longer documents, and it scans in duplex (via a refeed, not with dual-scanning elements). The lid for the letter/A4-size flatbed scanner telescopes about half an inch to accommodate thicker materials. The WP-4590 also supports automatic duplex printing.

The WorkForce Pro WP-4590 is the fastest inkjet we've tested recently, narrowly edging out its consumer-oriented WorkForce Pro WP-4540 cousin. Monochrome pages print at 12.6 pages per minute on the PC and 12.1 ppm on the Mac. Snapshot-size (4-by-6-inch) photos print at 6.2 ppm to plain paper and 1.7 ppm to glossy photo paper. Full page photos print at 0.7 ppm, and copies proceed into the output bin at 6.4 ppm.

The corporate-oriented WP-4590 may be pricier than small-business inkjet multifunctions, but its ink costs are outstandingly low. The unit ships with starter cartridges: a 1000-page black, and 900-page cyan, magenta, and yellow. The 676XL retail replacements are $38.49 for the 2400-page black and $24.49 for the 1200-page cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges. That works out to 1.6 cents per page for black, and 6.1 cents per page total for color. A four-color page would cost a bargain 7.7 cents. The extra-high-capacity 711XXL cartridges listed on Epson's website are slated to be available only through commercial channels rather than retail. Based on the suggested pricing that Epson provided to us, black will cost 1.6 cents per page and each color will cost 1.7 cents per page, for an even lower four-color cost of 6.8 cents per page.

In our tests, output from the WP-4590 was typical Epson—that is to say, quite good. Text appeared sharp and black, and very close (though not quite equal to) laser output when we used its highest-quality setting. Color graphics were good, looking a tad washed out on plain paper, but coolly accurate when we switched to glossy photo paper. Of course, as an inkjet, the WP-4590 is capable of handling thicker photo papers.

Epson rates the WP-4590 for 1650 pages per month. That's the recommended number, not the industry's absurd duty-cycle rating, which people generally ignore these days. Still, 1650 pages is a fair amount of printing.

The Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4590 is a nice, inexpensive alternative to a low-end color laser MFP for smaller corporate workgroups. It's fast enough for most scenarios, supply costs are outstandingly low, and its long warranty is better than what you’ll get from a comparably priced laser.

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Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4590 Review: Low-Cost Corporate Laser Alternative

The Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4590 color inkjet multifunction works quickly and uses cheap ink, but it isn't available through normal retail channels. It's aimed at large businesses that value service and a low total cost of ownership over a low purchase price. Priced at $500 (as of August 13, 2012), the WP-4590 comes with a three-year warranty and is sold only through VARs and other corporate channels. Consumers who are tired of PIB (Printers in Black) might also appreciate this unit's friendlier putty and light-gray coloring.

Accompanying the WP-4590 are the usual competent Epson software and driver installation routine. Since the machine has USB and ethernet, but no Wi-Fi (a bow to security concerns, per Epson), you will be tethered. The control panel sports a 2.5-inch LCD and the usual array of buttons, arranged in a classic and logical manner. If you've ever used an MFP before, you will encounter no learning curve here. The software includes Epson Scan for scanning and PaperPort 9 for OCR chores.

Paper-handling features on the WP-4590 are quite good. It has a 250-sheet tray on the bottom and an 80-sheet rear vertical feed. If that's not enough, you can buy an auxiliary 250-sheet bottom tray for a mere $100. For a laser printer you'd pay at least twice as much for such an accessory. Having the rear feed is especially nice for photos, since it permits the MFP to process heavier glossy paper with minimal bending. The rear feed also allows you to keep two types of paper loaded.

The WP-4590 has a 30-sheet automatic document feeder for scanning and copying longer documents, and it scans in duplex (via a refeed, not with dual-scanning elements). The lid for the letter/A4-size flatbed scanner telescopes about half an inch to accommodate thicker materials. The WP-4590 also supports automatic duplex printing.

The WorkForce Pro WP-4590 is the fastest inkjet we've tested recently, narrowly edging out its consumer-oriented WorkForce Pro WP-4540 cousin. Monochrome pages print at 12.6 pages per minute on the PC and 12.1 ppm on the Mac. Snapshot-size (4-by-6-inch) photos print at 6.2 ppm to plain paper and 1.7 ppm to glossy photo paper. Full page photos print at 0.7 ppm, and copies proceed into the output bin at 6.4 ppm.

The corporate-oriented WP-4590 may be pricier than small-business inkjet multifunctions, but its ink costs are outstandingly low. The unit ships with starter cartridges: a 1000-page black, and 900-page cyan, magenta, and yellow. The 676XL retail replacements are $38.49 for the 2400-page black and $24.49 for the 1200-page cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges. That works out to 1.6 cents per page for black, and 6.1 cents per page total for color. A four-color page would cost a bargain 7.7 cents. The extra-high-capacity 711XXL cartridges listed on Epson's website are slated to be available only through commercial channels rather than retail. Based on the suggested pricing that Epson provided to us, black will cost 1.6 cents per page and each color will cost 1.7 cents per page, for an even lower four-color cost of 6.8 cents per page.

In our tests, output from the WP-4590 was typical Epson—that is to say, quite good. Text appeared sharp and black, and very close (though not quite equal to) laser output when we used its highest-quality setting. Color graphics were good, looking a tad washed out on plain paper, but coolly accurate when we switched to glossy photo paper. Of course, as an inkjet, the WP-4590 is capable of handling thicker photo papers.

Epson rates the WP-4590 for 1650 pages per month. That's the recommended number, not the industry's absurd duty-cycle rating, which people generally ignore these days. Still, 1650 pages is a fair amount of printing.

The Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4590 is a nice, inexpensive alternative to a low-end color laser MFP for smaller corporate workgroups. It's fast enough for most scenarios, supply costs are outstandingly low, and its long warranty is better than what you’ll get from a comparably priced laser.

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eM Client: Affordable Alternative to Microsoft Outlook

If you're looking for the Microsoft Outlook experience without paying an arm and a leg, you should definitely consider eM Client. eM Client is a functional dead ringer for Microsoft's flagship e-mail client and organizer, with e-mail, tasks, contacts, and calendaring, and it's organized in largely the same fashion. If you know Outlook, you'll have no trouble using eM Client, though eM Client has many more features.

Though eM Client's look is a bit different, functionally it's a dead ringer for Microsoft Outlook.EM Client offers the e-mail basics: support for multiple accounts (it's less buggy with this than Outlook), junk mail filtering, and the ability to organize and search. It also fully supports Gmail as well as Facebook and Skype messaging, and it imports Outlook's entire range of data: e-mail, contacts, tasks, and calendar appointments.

One unique and very cool eM Client feature is in the sidebar to the right of the main window. It shows all your email to and from the person connected with the currently displayed e-mail or contact. This feature is absolutely worth its weight in gold, and could be mined even further by making the program contact-driven. You don't even have open the email, simply hover over it and a readable preview pops up. On the downside, I miss Outlook 2010's feature that lets create rules by right-clicking on an e-mail .

eM Client has its own hosted Exchange service so you can easily sync email between your PC, laptop, and mobile devices. At $50 per year, it's quite a bit cheaper than most hosted Exchange services. (That said, many of the more expensive hosted Exchange services grant you a free license for Outlook.) Your $50 gets you unlimited accounts and phone support. The free license for eM Client is for personal use and supports only two email accounts.

eM Client isn't perfect; I'm not in love with the overall appearance, which is just a tad busy, or the poorly divided avalanche of options in the Settings dialog. But once you have eM Client configured, you'll find its features addictive as well as inspiring.

--Jon L. Jacobi

eM Client is being developed as an alternative to MS Outlook. It integrates enhanced Calendaring interface, Task and Contacts and Instant Messaging that users can simply configure and use. With eM Client you can easily import your messages and contacts from MS Outlook, Outlook Express, The Bat, and Thunderbird. eM Client 2.0. allows full synchronization with Gmail, Facebook, Skype and many other servers or services.

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