HP EliteBook 840 G1 review: A gem of a business laptop

Hewlett Packard EliteBook 840 $1,464.00 The HP EliteBook 840 G1 has down-to-business looks, a great design, robust performance, and all the correct options for a business laptop. But you should try its eraser-head cursor control before you buy.

Sometimes it’s clear from the very first look that a laptop’s designers understand their market. The HP EliteBook 840 G1 is calmly handsome in a way that will appeal to business users. It’s also rugged, fast, ergonomically sound, and a breeze to upgrade and repair. If you work in an office, you’ll like it—unless you’re an eraser-head fan.

The EliteBook 840 G1 is styled in silver and gray, with a matte top surface that looks nice when it’s clean, but that readily shows fingerprints. Keep a wipe cloth handy if you care about such things. The chassis is magnesium and the keyboard is fabricated from aluminum, making the unit tougher than most and endowing it with a sturdy feel. HP says the laptop has passed a number of MIL-STD 810G tests, including drop, dust incursion, and vibration.

The 840 G1 is by far the easiest laptop to repair and upgrade that I’ve ever used. Flip the unit over, unlock the latch, slide the bottom service cover off, and you have direct access to everything: hard drive, memory, battery, Wi-Fi, RTC/CMOS battery, and the wireless WAN slot. IT types who spend a lot of time repairing laptops be warned—examining the 840 G1 might make you giddy.

HP's EliteBook 840 G1 is supremely easy to service and upgrade.

The keyboard deck design is minimalist. Aside from the keyboard and touchpad, there’s only a power button (in plain sight!) and Wi-Fi and audio on/off switches. Clean. Nice.

HP delivers non-touch 840 G1s with a matte display surrounded by a largish flat-black bezel, rather than the glare-prone, glossy setups that many consumer models employ. Matte doesn’t look quite as nice, but it’s a bit easier on the eye. You can order yours in either 1366 by 768 or 1600 by 900 flavors (we reviewed the former). A touchscreen is also available, although—like most—it’s very reflective.

I was impressed with the 840 G1’s keyboard. The short-throw keys provide merely decent tactile feedback when typed lightly, but scooted up against the magnesium chassis, you get a nice bounce and excellent aural feedback when you apply more force. The touchpad is silky and HP provides two sets of buttons, one above the touchpad for when you’re typing, and one below for when you’re using the pad for navigation. 

As I mentioned earlier, this laptop’s eraser-head track stick is its one truly sour ergonomic note. HP persists in rendering it from a slippery material that even with a pebbled and concave top allows your finger to slip off. It’s an uneasy feeling and a brain-dead moment in an otherwise well thought-out laptop.

We've updated our benchmark suite and picked a new reference laptop. The EliteBook 840 G1's Laptop WorldBench 9 score of 64, which is right in line with our expectations.

The 840 G1 has ports aplenty: Two USB 3.0 ports (one provides always-on charging), a legacy VGA port, and a smart card slot on the left side. A headset jack, two more USB 3.0 ports, a full-sized DisplayPort, a super-slim docking port, and a drop-jaw gigabit ethernet port on the right side. Drop-jaw means that the lower portion expands to accept an RJ-45 connector, then contracts to about the height of a USB port when you unplug the cable. The bottom has a port to connect with the auxiliary battery slice.

Our test unit, priced at $1064, sported an Intel Core i5-4200U CPU, 4GB of DDR3/1600 memory, and a 180GB Intel SSD (SSDSC2BF180A4H). It also has a 720p webcam bordered by dual-array microphones and Bluetooth 4.0 wireless connectivty. Wi-Fi was limited to 802.11 a/b/g/n, with 802.11ac available as an upgrade. You can also add features such as vPro support, TPM (Trusted Platform Module), biometrics, larger hard drives, and so on, which will boost that price tag.

The EliteBook 840 G1 delivered a respectable 5 hours and 36 minutes of life using its standard battery.

The laptop garnered a laptop WorldBench 9 score of 64, which is right around where a Core i5 laptop with an SSD should sit. Note that WorldBench 9 scores will be significantly lower than those for WorldBench 8.1, because our new laptop baseline is a Dell XPS 15 with an Intel Core i7-4702HQ CPU, 16GB of DDR3/1600 memory, and a 500GB SSD.

The EliteBook 840 G1 weighs in at 3.48 pounds. An optional 5400 mAh battery slice adds another 1.35 pounds and a half-inch of thickness, but it more than doubles the laptop’s usable life away from an electrical outlet from a respectable 5 hours 36 minutes to a whopping 12 hours 47 minutes.

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This optional battery fits to the EliteBook 840's bottom and more than doubles the time you can use it away from an AC outlet. 

Given the lack of a discrete GPU, the 840 G1’s mediocre gaming scores were expected. The Intel HD 4400 graphics doesn’t cut it for most top-shelf games past 800 by 600 resolution, although it managed just over 30 frames per second on Grid 2 at 1024 by 768.

Video at 1080p resolution played smoothly as you could wish, and the audio through the speakers was quite nice thanks to the DTS Studio Sound enhancement utility. At least when movies were playing. With the system sounds, there seemed to be a bit of distortion. Through headphones at normal volume levels, everything is sonically hunky-dory.

What a difference a discrete GPU makes: Integrated graphics are fine for most business apps, but they still suck when it comes to games.

Our Elitebook 840 G1 came with only a one-year warranty, but there are a variety of more reassuring plans available up to 5-years with free pickup for approximately $400. 

HP touts its Sure Start self-healing BIOS, which is basically a backup of the BIOS that can be restored in if the BIOS is corrupted by malware. Motherboard vendors such as Gigabyte have been using a similar scheme for years. There’s also a software component called Trust Circles which is secure group content sharing. 

Approximately 18 months passed between the release of the 840 G1 and it’s 8470 predecessor, which is a decent lifespan. HP promises to keep parts on hand for at least five years. 

The 840 G1 has distinguished, get-down-to-business looks, a great design, robust performance and all the correct corporate options. My only caveat is that if an eraser-head is your preferred cursor-control tool, be sure you try before you buy.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Reveal 11 Business review: automated videography for your professional needs

Though video production software isn’t generally thought of as a business tool, in today’s video-centric advertising, training, and general communications environment, it should be. Apparently, as evidenced by the release of their simple-to-use, but effective Reveal 11 Business automated video production software, Muvee Technologies feels that way as well.

With Reveal, basically all you do is provide the pictures, video, and text; arrange their sequence; pick a style template; and let the program process it into a complete production. Beyond that—butter. The number of style templates, which contain the background music, FX and transitions melded into a “look and feel” are what differentiate the regular $80 version of Reveal 11 and the $500 Business SKU. The regular version has only a few styles, while the business version has over 40, plus 2000 musical renditions that you may use royalty-free. Functionally, both versions are identical.

Additional control over the creation process is hidden in well-constructed dialogs with precise and effective terminology.

The only complaint here is that Muvee could do a better job looking more, well, business-like. When I say better job, I mean actually try. The plethora of styles added by the business pack are nice, but they’re named in artistic terms, not business ones. If you’re looking for something like “Target: 27-year to 32-year old food-centrics,” forget it, you’re getting Reflections, Soar, and Turn Back Time. Put another way, you’re going to walk in the shoes of an artist. Hey, it’s not all bad...

Reveal 11 business is supremely easy to use. There’s a content row on the top, with style-selection and preview panes beneath that. That’s it visually, but there’s more control over the video production than is apparent at first glance. Click on Personalize in the bottom left corner and you can insert your logo, adjust the scene timing, define the titling and credits, and record a voice-over. There’s also a small audio mix console. Click on any picture or video in the media bay, and you’re presented with slick and simple editing controls such as a zoom effect control for photos and a highly accurate scene detector/slicer for videos. There are also controls attached to each style for color profiles, more scene change speed, camera wonkiness, and more.

Reveal 11 provides complete, yet simple voice-over and audio mixing capabilities. Just bring your microphone.

Even better; labels and messages are concise, yet not overly terse as with that vast majority of programs. They actually tell you what to do. Additionally, there’s not one cluttered area, overcrowded toolbar, or cryptic icon in sight. Interfaces simply don’t get any better. I never once cracked the help file.

I’m not trying to step on the toes of professional videographers -- a good one is worth their weight in gold. But many of us don’t have the gold, and Reveal 11 Business largely meets the need. If not for a professional advertising campaign, just about everything else. If you’re really strapped for cash, you can always buy the regular version and shop for a $10/$15 style that suits you in the Muvee store. There’s also a music store with affordable licensing fees based on your intended usage.

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Lenovo ThinkPad X240 review: A no-nonsense business laptop

If Lenovo’s spendy ThinkPad X1 Carbon is the laptop every corporate drone craves, Lenovo’s thrifty ThinkPad X240 is the laptop their employer is more apt to spring for (assuming, of course, that the company’s IT department has standardized on Lenovo and not Dell, HP, Toshiba, or some other commercial laptop builder).

You might think the ThinkPad X240 is too thick and too heavy to qualify for Ultrabook designation, but it’s only 0.79 inches thick and it weighs just 3 pounds. And there’s a very good reason why the X240 doesn’t taper to a knife edge like the X1 Carbon does: The X240 is outfitted with two batteries and a battery bridge that enables you to swap a depleted battery for one that’s fully charged without turning the machine off. That’s slick.

ROBERT CARDIN

Lenovo's ThinkPad X240 looks thick only next to wafer-thin notebooks like Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Carbon. This machine is only 0.79 inches thick and it weighs three pounds.

PCWorld’s Worldbench suite rewards laptops equipped with SSDs—the configuration reviewed here includes a 256GB model—but the X240’s score of 282 leaves it slightly behind Dell’s XPS 12 Ultrabook Convertible (which has the same dual-core CPU) and Samsung’s Ativ Book 7 (which is powered by a third-generation Core i5-3337U, another dual core). This is a little surprising considering that the ThinkPad had twice as much DDR3/1600 memory: 8GB versus 4GB in the Dell and the Samsung.

Worldbench favors machines with SSDs, and the ThinkPad X240 we reviewed has a 256GB model. 

The x240 packs a fourth-generation Intel Core processor, so you can expect strong battery life. Our eval unit came with a Core i5-4200U, but you can make other choices when you place your order. The three-cell battery in this one ran for 6 hours and 26 minutes, which is typical of Haswell-powered notebooks, but Lenovo also offers an optional six-cell battery that should run much longer than the average workday. That large battery will add weight and about a half-inch of thickness to the X240—it will protrude from the bottom rear of the laptop.

If you don't mind toting an extra battery, the ThinkPad X240's hot-swap feature will keep you productive for many, many hours.  

The X240 has a number of I/O ports you won’t find on the 2013 X1 Carbon, including a gigabit ethernet port, a smart card reader, 34mm Express card socket, a VGA port, an always-on USB 2.0 port, and a docking port on its bottom. Like the X1 Carbon, it also has two USB 3.0 ports, a mini DisplayPort, an SD card reader, and a fingerprint reader (an included option our eval unit).

You can also order your machine with several different 12.5-inch displays, but I recommend staying away from the 1366-by-768 touchscreen I evaluated. It’s a bright IPS panel that’s very responsive to touch, but it looked fuzzy and grainy to my eyes. Place it next to a laptop with a 1920-by-1080 display and you’ll experience severe pixel envy. Ordering one for this machine will add $330 to its $1555 price tag.

I was also a little disappointed in the X240’s backlit, island-style keyboard. I've used a number of Lenovo keyboards, and this one just doesn't feel as nice (for lack of a better term). The spacebar has an oddly stiff feel that made me miss-tap it frequently, and the key spacing didn't feel as comfortable. It's not a terrible keyboard, but it's not as outstanding as I've come to expect from a ThinkPad.

ROBERT CARDIN

The 1366 by 768 display left me wanting more definition. 

TrackPoint fans will still find the nubby red dot in the center of the keyboard, but the dedicated buttons are gone. You'll need to depress the whole glass trackpad and hope your finger is in the right zone (there are five) to get the type of click you want. I found middle clicks especially hard to hit accurately. Speaking of the one-giant-button trackpad, it depresses easily and quietly. Its generous size enables you to make the most of Windows 8’s multitouch gestures, but I ran into a few frustrating moments when it registered two-finger scrolling when I only had one finger down. Apart from that, I found it to be smooth and responsive for navigation.

If you’re looking for a workhorse laptop with incredible battery life, Lenovo’s X240 is a solid choice. Its graphite-black chassis won’t turn heads, but it will help you travel light and get a lot of work done. Just think hard before you order one with the 1366 by 768 touchscreen. This machine deserves better, and so do you.

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Best Business Laptops 2014

Durability. Security. Reliability. These are the hallmarks of a good business notebook. Business laptops tend to sport sturdy metal cases and feature comfortable, backlit keyboards (most of which are spill-resistant). In some cases you’ll get a pointing stick in addition to a touchpad for more precision. Business notebooks also tend to come with security software to help protect your data and the ability to dock your system for the best desktop computing experience.

Selecting the right system doesn’t just come down to specs. Your business and personal style also play a role. With all of the above in mind, we present the top rated business notebooks, based on our in-depth reviews.

The Lenovo ThinkPad T440s is quite simply the business laptop to beat. This 3.8-pound powerhouse offers a class-leading keyboard and fast performance, plus more than 14 hours of endurance with its extended battery. An optional full HD touch screen is another plus, especially for those who opt for Windows 8.1. All of this is wrapped in a sturdy magnesium and carbon fiber design.

More: Lenovo ThinkPad T440s: Full Review

Responsible for the editorial vision for Laptopmag.com, Mark Spoonauer has been Editor in Chief of LAPTOP since 2003 and has covered technology for nearly 15 years. Mark speaks at key tech industry events and makes regular media appearances on CNBC, Fox and CNN. Mark was previously reviews editor at Mobile Computing, and his work has appeared in Wired, Popular Science and Inc.

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The best Windows 8 business apps for portable productivity

Microsoft may tout the Surface as the best tablet for business productivity, but many professionals stick to traditional desktop programs rather than wading into the Windows Store.

That's unfortunate, because Windows 8's walled garden hides a slew of work-ready apps, especially if you venture beyond the Windows Store's lackluster business section. These apps probably can't replace your reliable desktop software completely, but they're more than capable enough to keep you productive while on the run.

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QNAP TS-469 Pro review: A fast NAS box well suited to both business and pleasure

If you’re a NAS aficionado, it will be no revelation that the QNAP TS-469 Pro is both fast and extremely capable. What might surprise you is that you can attach this SMB-class network-attached storage box via its HDMI output to an HDTV or other high-def display to play movies and music, or to browse the Web. Of more interest to IT types is its on-board display, which allows you to administer the box locally without need of a monitor.

The direct-connect multimedia capability is actually available in any QNAP NAS box with an HDMI output, and it stems from the company’s implementation of XBMC. A free, open-source, cross-platform equivalent of Windows Media Center, XBMC is a little more complex than Media Center but is also more capable, supporting more codecs, devices, and protocols. Web browsing is courtesy of Google Chrome. Both apps are installed under the umbrella of QNAP’s HD Station launch application.

You can also control XBMC and the other HD Station apps from across the room using the $40 QNAP remote control.

You can install a YouTube player and QNAP’s My NAS within HD Station, too. The latter is the same interface that shows up in your Web browser when you administrate the box over the network. One of the easier-to-use NAS-box interfaces out there, My NAS is also second to none in features, offering DLNA serving, multimedia Web portals, LDAP, RADIUS, Active Directory support, VPN, email and Web serving, and a lot more.

To use any of the HD Station apps, just attach an HDMI-capable TV or display to the TS-469 Pro’s HDMI output, and add a USB keyboard and mouse. XBMC will appear and let you browse for all the content stored on the TS-469 Pro and any other servers it finds on your network. If you’d like to know more about XBMC, download the PC version and bang away at it.

You can also control XBMC and the other HD Station apps from across the room using the $40 QNAP remote control, QNAP’s Qremote app for iOS devices, or any MCE (Media Center Extender) remote. The box has an infrared receiver, so you might be able to use other third-party remotes as well.

The TS-469 Pro is a four-bay box with locking, front-mounted trays and a handy LCD screen that facilitates basic array configuration and presents pertinent information such as boot and array status. The CPU is a 2.13GHz dual-core Intel Atom, and 1GB of memory is on board (expandable to 3GB). Ports are plentiful, with a USB 2.0 port on the front for quick copying and offloading, and four more on the back for attaching peripherals and slower storage. You’ll also find two USB 3.0 ports and two eSATA ports on the back to accommodate faster storage devices.

ROBERT CARDINThe TS-469 Pro features four drive bays, which might be overkill for consumers looking for home-theater storage.

Network communications are courtesy of two gigabit ethernet ports that support both failover and aggregation, and you can attach a USB Wi-Fi dongle should you wish to use the box wirelessly. In addition to the aforementioned HDMI port, a VGA port is available for older displays. When HD Station isn’t enabled, you can access the TS-469 Pro’s command-line interface on the external display.

For some reason, QNAP populated our test TS-469 Pro with four unmatched 7200-rpm hard drives—two different-model 500GB Seagates, a 500GB Hitachi, and a 300GB Samsung—all combined in RAID 5. Although this oddball arrangement resulted in a massive waste of capacity, working out to a total capacity of just 900GB (four times the 300GB capacity of the smallest drive, minus the capacity of one drive for parity info), it was still quite fast. The box wrote our 10GB mix of files and folders at 69.9 MBps and read them at 39.5 MBps. It wrote our single 10GB file at 92.9 MBps and read it at 110.8 MBps. That’s good performance that would’ve undoubtedly increased with faster drives. The box also played a high-bit-rate (40-mbps) 1080p video on an attached display with no problems whatsoever.

The QNAP TS-469 Pro is a feature-rich and extremely capable NAS box for small businesses and workgroups. It’s arguably best of breed, though it certainly is pricey. If you shop around you can find it for $800 without drives. Home users who want to take advantage of HD Station in a home-entertainment setup would be better off with the TS-269 Pro, which has the same feature set but only two drive bays and costs about $200 less.

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Juilliard, and now he power-mods his car for kicks.
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Webcams that mean business: Brother's NW-1000 HD VideoCam vs. Logitech's BCC950 Conference Cam

Whether you use Google Chat, Skype or a web-conferencing app with more sophisticated collaboration features, chances are you’ve added video to your online meeting toolbox. Integrated webcams are de rigeur on laptops, but their quality can be sub-par for business communications.

The the Brother NW-1000 Webcam and the Logitech BCC950 ConferenceCam both cost more than a garden-variety webcam, but they’re not outrageously expensive. And both deliver features that can help business conferees really see what’s going on at the other end of the line.

Brother says its high-def (1080p) webcam, the NW-1000, is optimized to work with Brother’s own OmniJoin conferencing and collaboration service. What that really means is that OmniJoin supports all the camera’s features and that the camera is easy to use with the service. You don’t need one to use the other, so the NW-1000 is equally as useful for people who have no intention of using OmniJoin.

Robert CardinBrother's NW-1000 webcam only resembles a consumer product. It delivers much higher resolution and is a natural fit for Brother's OmniJoin cloud-based video-conferencing service.

The $99 NW-1000 has a stand for sitting on a table or desk top, but the stand can also fold to clip to the top of a desktop or notebook display. It’s physically wider (but at 3.9- by 1.8- by 2.6 inches, no taller or thicker) than most desktop webcams, and it weighs less than four ounces. The camera draws power over a USB 2.0 cable, and is well suited for travelers. It works with Windows XP or later, or Mac OSX 10.5 to 10.8.

The NW-1000 delivers very smooth high-def (optical resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels), and it’s capable of capturing and encoding video to either h.264 or MJPG (Motion JPEG) formats at a full 30 frames per second. Its 71-degree diagonal field of vision is wide enough to allow a couple of people into its wide-aspect-ratio frame.

In my tests, the NW-1000 did a good job of adjusting for ambient lighting and delivering good depth of field. People at the other end of Skype calls reported that videos looked sharp and crisp.

Robert CardinBrother's VT-1000 speaker phone is the perfect companion to its NW-1000 webcam if you're looking for better voice support.

Its built-in speaker was nothing to write home about, but Brother recommends using its portable USB speakerphone, the $99 VT-1000, which can be used either for VoIP calls or as an accessory to one or more smartphones. Like Brother’s webcam, the VT-1000 is also optimized for Brother’s OmniJoin service but can be used standalone, too.

Whether or not you use it with the OmniJoin service, the NW-1000 is a competitively priced, capable webcam for people who want better video quality than what they can get from a garden-variety webcam.

The $250 BCC950 ConferenceCam is designed for tabletop use with a small group of people sitting in a conference room. It consists of a base with a built-in speakerphone and a spherical camera unit (that’s slightly larger than a softball) that plugs in to the base via USB 2.0. You can attach stick-like extender to the lens component to elevate it. A wireless remote control duplicates the buttons on the camera’s base so that you can operate the controls from up to about 10 feet away.

Logitech's BCC950 ConferenceCam delivers advanced teleconferencing features at a budget price tag.

The webcam can pan 180 degree and tilt 55 degrees up and down (providing a 78-degree field of vision), which lets you swivel the lens to capture participants around the table without anyone having to get up and move the unit. You can also zoom in and out (up to 2x at high-def, and up to 5x at standard definition), adjust audio volume or mute the speaker, and answer or terminate video calls. In my tests the unit responded quickly and smoothly to remote commands.

Attach the provided pole and you can elevate the BCC950's camera element.

The BCC950’s image quality is quite good: Plugged into the USB port of a computer (your choice of Windows XP or later, or Mac OS X 10.6 or later), the camera’s Carl Zeiss optics deliver resolution of up to 1920-by-1080 pixels at 30 frames per second with compatible applications, making for sharp images if your broadband network is reasonably robust. In my tests, the camera did a good job of adjusting for ambient lighting, and call recipients reported smooth, clear video. Audio from the speakers was also loud and clear.

The BCC950 ConferenceCam encodes using an h.264 codec, and it complies with the UVC standard for USB video, meaning it supports all major videoconferencing and chat applications (e.g. Cisco WebEx, FaceTime, Google Hangouts, Microsoft Lync, and Skype). The webcam can run on either AC power supply or—with a second cable—USB power from the host PC.

Logitech's camera is a good compromise for businesses that want to conduct small-group video conferences without the need to shell out a lot money for a fancier telepresence system.

Editor's note, May 8, 2013: This story was corrected to report that Logitech's BCC950 ConferenceCam can run on supplemental USB power as well as its AC adapter.

Contributing Editor Yardena (Denny) Arar is a San Francisco-based freelance writer, avid online shopper, media junkie, consummate foodie, and proud possessor of a private pilot's license.
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Flickr co-founder once again bounces from games to business

Both games and business loom large in Stewart Butterfield's creative cycle. His first project was an innovative MMO called Game Neverending, which never made it past the prototype stage, but nonetheless birthed the photo-sharing site Flickr in 2004. That humble little property blew up, of course, and Butterfield suddenly became a man to watch.

Flash forward to 2009. Butterfield launched a new MMO game called Glitch. It was a hit among fanatics, but there weren't enough of them, and Glitch shut down for good last December. But just like before, Butterfield is raising a potentially powerful phoenix from the ashes of an MMO. This time, he's focusing on collaboration and communication software for business environments. It's called Slack, and it's the very software Butterfield and his team developed to help them create and run Glitch.

Butterfield's company, Tiny Speck, is developing Slack to meet the needs of its own multiple-location business. Tiny Speck's principals work in three different cities, two different time zones, and two different countries. Off-the-shelf collaboration platforms just couldn't fulfill Tiny Speck's requirements for keeping everyone in touch.

Just a few days ago, Tiny Speck added the word "working" to its public mission statement, signaling the intent behind its next project.

A Tiny Speck employee who spoke with PCWorld says that group colloboration platforms already on the market can be frustrating.  "They try to enforce a worldview as to how things should be done," said the source, who requested anonymity. So rather than than use software that might not fit their needs, the Tiny Speck crew built their own.

Several external companies are already alpha-testing the tool. But in a way, the current alpha testers more like beta testers, as Tiny Speck used Slack for months before letting other companies try it out.

When Flickr launched in 2004, other photo-sharing sites like Shutterfly and now-defunct Kodak Gallery were focused on selling customers paper prints of digital images. But Flickr's freemium model and easy-to-use interface quickly won the favor of photo enthusiasts.

"There was a burgeoning prosumer photo community that wanted to share imagery in a way that wasn't cluttered by cat photos and general consumer content," says Chris Chute, IDC's Research Director for Worldwide Digital Imaging and SMB Transformative Technology Research Practices. "They weren't interested in printing," Chute says. "Smugmug and Flickr hit at the right time to focus on Web sharing, not print."

As founders of Flickr, Stewart Butterfield (pictured) and Eric Costello (who took the photo in this screenshot) have enviably short Flickr handles. Stewart's work on Glitch earned him this doll of his game avatar, made by Amber of SouthernGothica.

Of course, Flickr wasn't really Butterfield's first effort. His first company, the Vancouver, British Columbia-based Ludicorp, was primarily focused on Game Neverending. But when Ludicorp shuttered GNE while it was still in prototype stage, the company used some of GNE's features to build Flickr.

In 2005, Ludicorp was acquired by Yahoo—ironic considering Slack's tools for remote collaboration and Yahoo's new telecommuting policy. Butterfield left Yahoo in 2008, and in 2009 he founded Tiny Speck, along with Flickr's Principal Software Engineer Serguei Morouchov and former Ludicorp colleagues Eric Costello and Cal Henderson.

When announcing Glitch's closure, Tiny Speck said its next project would be "unique messaging technology with applications outside of the gaming world."

When Tiny Speck announced Glitch's closure last year, it made reference to a "unique messaging technology with applications outside of the gaming world" as the company's next project. Journalists speculated about what the project could be, but aside from a gentle correction on what the emphasis would be ("Not photo sharing!" Butterfield wrote), Tiny Speck has kept mum.

Details on Slack are scant. Tiny Speck confirms that it will be software for SMB and enterprise, but hasn't explained whether the software will be Web-based or rely on a desktop client, or whether it will have a mobile component.

"The collaboration market is very crowded," says Henry Dewing, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. He points out that it includes competitors such as Microsoft and Cisco on the enterprise end and a bevy of smaller companies on the SMB end. But he agrees that there's room for improvement.

"The big deal with collaboration for businesses is looking at how employees use tools, how they collaborate, how they make decisions," says Dewing. But collaboration platforms can also be hard to use, and companies often struggle to convince employees of the software's value. "Even once it's installed, they need to learn how to use it," says Dewing. "They need to understand how it can help them get their job done. That kind of adoption hurdle can keep them from getting the value of it."

"More of a consumer mindset is a good thing. Somebody actually understands how individual users will adopt and use software."

It's impossible to judge a product you haven't seen, but Dewing thinks that Butterfield's Flickr pedigree suggests a fresh perspective. "They'd come out with more of a consumer mindset, which is a good thing," he says. "Somebody actually understands how individual users will adopt and use software."

Tiny Speck's website remains a static page, although on Wednesday it slyly introduced the word "working" into its mission statement, which now reads, "to make people's working lives simpler, more pleasant and more productive."

Even the Glitch.com closing page that mentioned the "unique messaging technology" has been taken down and replaced with a Glitch image of a complaining piglet. This may not be a comment on the missing page. The Glitch piglets were terrible malcontents.

40. Ain't dead. Messed some things up pretty bad. Did others pretty well. Still plenty to learn. I think I'll get the hang of it eventually.

— Stewart Butterfield (@stewart) March 21, 2013

Still, with the GNE-to-Flickr cycle as precedent, Slack's potential is intriguing. "I would expect it to have a very interesting brand," says IDC's Chute. "If I tried to dissect Flickr, how would I even map that back to photography? I would also expect a clean user interface, probably focused on an underserved market or market segment."

Tiny Speck has Slack slated for release later in 2013. No specific date has been set, but the company says that development is on schedule.

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Review: Quick View Plus lets you read nearly any business file

Quick View Plus 12 Standard ($49, 30-day free trial) is nifty file-viewing utility for business users. It allows easy viewing—without having to open the originating program—of literally hundreds of file types, including word processing docs, spreadsheets, databases, and even compressed file archives produced by a myriad of programs. The kicker is that handles many older file types that you may no longer have the software for.

[Quick View Plus 12] handled all the Office files I threw at it, including the docx, xlsx, etc. formats of Office 2007 and 2010.

The list of supported files types supported by Quick View Plus 12 is impressive and can be found in a .pdf fact sheet available at vendor Avantstar Inc's website. New for version 12 are updated import filters for Adobe PDF, AutoCAD, Corel WordPerfect Office, some more esoteric Microsoft Office types, Open Office, Star Office, 7Zip archives, and a number or new MIME and email formats.

Quick View Plus integrates into Vista and Windows 7 and lets you use the existing Explorer preview pane, rather than open QVP's own, somewhat primitive, three-pane browsing/viewing application (which is all you get under XP). It also integrates with Outlook, the 32-bit Adobe Acrobat Reader X, Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer 9, and Mozilla Firefox 4 through 8 to provide preview capabilities. It also lets you view any type of file as text or hexadecimal, as well as copy information for pasting into other documents.

Quick View Plus Standard 12's standalone interface is capable, but boring.

I used Quick View Plus to preview dozens of different file types. The program handled all the graphics files I threw at it, with the exception of an EPS file of a bitmap graphic saved from Photoshop 5. It also handled all the Office files I threw at it, including the docx, xlsx, etc. formats of Office 2007 and 2010. My only complaint was that the PDF previews didn't seem as cleanly rendered as with Adobe Reader or Foxit Reader, and the color was reversed on some scanned PDF files.  Quick View Plus displays file and header info is displayed for file types it doesn't understand.

With the plethora of multimedia players available, it probably doesn't make sense for Avantstar to include music and video playback, but it would be nice—especially in the Professional version, which costs $495. The pro version adds features that most users won't need, but could be key for some corporate citizens, such as deeper support for Microsoft Office revisions, hidden columns, speaker presentation notes, etc. Vector formats and PDF graphics (perhaps those that didn't display properly for my in the standard version), are also handled more accurately.

Quick View Plus may not be necessary for everyone, but if you need it, it's indispensable.

Quick View Plus is a niche product and not worth the price for most of us, who will be just fine with the native Windows preview capabilities. Those of stuck with the Windows 8 needn't even try QVP, which isn't supported on Win8. But it can be worth its weight in gold for those looking to preview obsolete file types, or for anyone who regularly needs to search or preview lots of less common document types.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software appropriate to your system.

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Julliard, and now he power mods his car for kicks.
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Samsung SAFE With KNOX Demoed: Box Off Your Business Life

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Dell OptiPlex 9010 business desktop PC review: small but powerful

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Julliard, and now he power mods his car for kicks.
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The small form factor Dell Optiplex 9010 Desktop takes up little space, packs a nice performance punch, and is very easy to repair or upgrade. If also has all the service and warranty options and legacy connectivity businesses need. Couple that with Dell's promise of a long product lifespan and plenty of warning for upcoming changes, and you have a powerful compact PC that won't stress out your purchasing agent or IT personnel.

Dell refers to the small form factor 9010 as a Desktop, which it is in the older sense of the word--a PC that literally sits on top of your desk. At only 12 inches deep, by 11 inches tall, by 5 inches thick it will fit easily beside a monitor, or flipped on its side, serve as a monitor stand. Styled in black and gray, it also looks like it belongs on your desk. Being small also makes it easy to hide away, if that's your preference.

Our small form factor 9010 Desktop shipped without a display, though there are a number of 20-inch or 24-inch LCDs ($250 to $400) as well as dual-display options available. We did get a mouse and keyboard, which, while obviously not top-tier items, get the job done. The mouse tracks well and the keyboard, despite being very light in weight, has a better than average typing feel.

The 9010 Desktop small form factor offers a large array and logical mix of modern and legacy ports. There are a whopping 10 USB ports; four on the front of the unit, six on the back, and two in each set are USB 3.0. There are also dual DisplayPort connectors, VGA output, a gigabit Ethernet port, and a serial port. That latter is to support the still rather large fleets of serial port devices such as hand scanners still used by businesses.

Also included are microphone and headset jacks on the front, plus audio in and out jacks on the back. There are legacy PS/2 connectors for both keyboard and mouse--something I and my collection of old IBM M-series clackers can get behind. Lastly, there's a lock slot on the back so you can securely cable the 9010 Desktop to prevent it from being easily opened or carried away.

Our test small form factor 9010 Desktop sported a highly-capable Intel Core i7 3770, 8GB of DDR3-1600 memory (two 4GB parts filling two of the available 4 DIMM slots), and a 1TB Seagate ST31000524AS hard drive occupying the single hard drive bay. The hard drive is married to a pop-out caddy as is the 8X DVD burner that sits on top of it. One of the two 16x PCIe slot on our unit was filled by an AMD Radeon HD 7470 graphics card.

The SFF 9010 Destktop garnered 107 points on our older WorldBench 7 test suite, which is a good if not spectacular score. Feel-wise, the unit is snappy. Not SSD-snappy, but darn good for a system with a traditional hard drive. The aforementioned HD 7000 graphics card will render modern games acceptably at 800 by 600 and in some cases, 1024 by 768. Good enough for the lunch break if your situation allows.

With one PCIe slot available, you could add IEEE 1394, or another Ethernet port. You could also utilize the back panel opening for the slot to add eSATA, as one of the three SATA 6Gbps ports and a SATA-style power connector are available. You could also use those to add an SSD. There's no mounting point but there is room for one inside the chassis.

The small form factor 9010 Desktop carries a three-year warranty with four- and five-year versions available for another $150 to $300 or so. An onsite option to the three-year plan is available for around $50. The 9010 also features a TPM (Trusted Platform Module) for security and optional out-of-band (remote management via hardware only, powered or not) management in the form of Intel's standard or vPro management. Dell will also sell you software encryption for a cool $40, or you can opt for a self-encrypting hard drive.

Because of the security features, warranty options and support, business PCs are more expensive than consumer models. Our test configuration will set you back about $950 with Windows 7 Professional. A Windows 8 option is available, though few businesses need or want it at the moment. You can back off our near high-end configuration to the minimum Core i3-3220, 4GB of memory, a 250GB hard drive and read-only DVD drive for about $650.

Dell's been playing the corporate game for a long time and that experience shows in the Optiplex 9010 Desktop. It's powerful, has all the features businesses ask for and just enough expansion to add a random capability you might need. The 9010 Desktop's small form factor makes for convenient placement, but if want more extensive expansion capabilities; the 9010 is also available in a variety of other form factors.

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Brand your business on a budget with fantastic free fonts

From logos to letterhead to websites, a consistent look helps your customers identify you. But branding your business can be expensive, and many small businesses can't justify the outlay. To create a consistent look for your business—without breaking the bank—consider using the same typeface for all of your communications and materials. We found five fonts to set the right note without blowing your budget.

Getting down to business with fonts

Certainly, a popular typeface or font like Arial, Times New Roman, or many of the others included with Microsoft Word will be Web-safe—but will it set you apart as the go-to company? Your typeface needs to be more than just legible: It helps define your business. Your customers will have an emotional response to your typeface, and unless you're a preschool, they may not appreciate the levity of Comic Sans.

Make sure you're choosing a typeface that comes complete with italic (or "oblique," identical glyphs that slant just as italics) and bold faces at the very least. Many popular sans serif fonts—for example, Tahoma—do not have separate italic or oblique faces. When you apply "italic" formatting to Tahoma, your operating system creates a synthetic version of the font in the oblique style. You'll encounter the same problem with many of the display fonts—serif or sans serif—you can download. Synthetic fonts won't print as expected on many high-end devices, so if you want to print commercially, either now or down the road, choose carefully.

For businesses who want to grow, and brand well right from the get-go, these five typefaces offer some great options, from classic to modern, with expanding options. All are free to download and try out, but check the license before sending out an all-staff email announcing the new company font.

Gentium, a TrueType typeface designed by J. Victor Gaultney, is part of SIL International's Non-Roman Script Initiative. The ultimate goal of Gentium is to provide diverse ethnic groups around the world with a digital resource to present their complex languages. Even without that lofty goal, the typeface itself is refined and modern, yet classically elegant.

The many editions of Gentium support a wide number of languages and alphabets.

To the casual observer, Gentium may seem similar to Times New Roman, with a stacked letter-press type lowercase, delicate serifs, and legibility at very small sizes. But Gentium has more rounded glyphs, and a much less harsh overall appearance. Gentium supports a wide range of Latin- and Cyrillic-based alphabets, and is available in a number of versions to fit all your business needs.

Gentium Basic includes upper and lowercase, numbers, punctuation, special characters, and a limited Latin character set. Gentium Book (designed by Gaultney with Annie Olsen) is a slightly heavier version. Both Gentium and Gentium Book include italic, bold, and bold italic faces. In addition, Gentium Plus offers extended Latin glyphs, archaic Greek symbols, and full extended Cyrillic script support; but currently includes only regular and italic faces. Gentium Alt includes more than 2400 kerning pairs and flatter diacritics designed to improve appearance when writing non-English (and offers fun options that may not be typographically correct, but add flair).

Gentium fonts are free for both personal and commercial use, in addition to being open source under the SIL Open Font License (which permits both redistribution and modification). Embedding is installable.

Jura is a contemporary serif TrueType font designed by Ed Merritt from Ten By Twenty. There are no hard edges in Jura. All the corners and angles are elegantly smoothed, which brings to mind the Isle of Jura (in Scotland's Inner Hebrides) more than the sub-alpine Jura Mountain Range.

Jura's elegant, smooth edges add polish to your business's image.

Jura has much more even line thickness than many other serif fonts. Jura is much less of a calligraphic type than traditional Times New Roman, but it's not marker-drawn either—and the serifs blend easily into the strokes, giving Jura a unique look. Like most serif fonts, Jura includes the letter-press style lower case a and g, although the g has an interesting flat bottom that matches the modern, short ascenders and descenders of this typeface.

Jura is quite legible at very small text sizes, but it's also interesting enough to be used for display purposes. The Jura typeface has regular, bold, an oblique italic-style, and bold-italic faces, which in turn all include all upper and lowercase, numbers, punctuation, diacritics, some special characters and mathematical glyphs. Jura is donationware that's downloadable for free for personal and commercial use; but if you're making money, consider donating to Merritt via the ten by twenty Web site. Embedding is installable, meaning the font will be installed on other's systems when you embed it into a file they then open.

Designed by Jos Buivenga of Exljbris, OpenType (PostScript) font Museo Slab is the offspring of popular—and also free—Museo. As Museo Slab's name suggests, this is a slab serif typeface, but don't let that fool you into thinking Museo Slab is purely a display font. Museo Slab is legible at tiny sizes, and includes more than 25,000 kerning pairs.

Museo Slab's clear but weighty letters make a strong impression.

If you are looking for a modern edge, but want to retain legibility and clarity, Museo Slab is a good place to start. Museo Slab includes all upper and lowercase letters, numbers, punctuation, special characters, and diacritics. The italic face retains the stacked letter-press type lowercase a of the regular version (unlike many serif fonts, which switch to the handwritten a in the italic face), but converts bottom serifs to smooth curves in some of the lowercase letters (m, n, p, for example), giving a more delicate look.

Museo Slab 500 and Museo Slab 500 Italics are both available for free for personal and commercial use. Other weights (Museo Slab 100, 100 Italic, 300, 300 Italic, 500, 500 Italic, 700, 700 Italic, 900, 900 Italic, 1000, and 1000 Italic) also are available to purchase. Various weights and faces of complementary Museo and Museo Sans also are available for free.

In Greek mythology, Tiresias was a blind prophet. This TrueType typeface was designed for the Royal National Institute of Blind People, a UK charity. Tiresias was originally distributed to allow blind and partially sighted people better access to information through a well-designed typeface that's easy to read and can be machine-read. This goal yielded a typeface that works beautifully at both large and surprisingly small sizes.

Designed for ease of reading, Tiresias is a font that works neatly in all sizes.

Tiresias is a sans seriffont, and includes all upper and lowercase, numbers, punctuation, mathematical symbols, some diacritics, and special characters. Tiresias is a nice alternative to Comic Sans if you're looking for a typeface that's very easy to read, although Tiresias uses a stacked letterpress lowercase a (but a regular lowercase g). Tiresias is available in a number of versions with slight variations. All come with regular, bold, and oblique faces. Tiresias LPfont includes very tiny curves on the edges of all glyphs (regular and oblique) which gives it a stylish upper hand; and its relatively narrow glyphs add to its distinguished nature.

Tiresias is free for personal and commercial use under the GNU General Public License (published by the Free Software Foundation); you may also redistribute and adapt Tiresias under this license. However, if your business becomes hugely successful, consider making a donation to the Royal National Institute of Blind People to support their programs.

OpenType (TrueType flavored) Aller was created by Dalton Maag Ltd. for the Danish School of Media and Journalism. Aller Standard Edition is available for free (for up to 25 users within each organization) in three different versions: Aller and Aller Light, which include italic faces; and Aller Display.

Designed for the Danish School of Media and Journalism, Aller is as reliable as the daily newspaper (and like the paper, it looks slightly old-fashioned).

A modern sans serif typeface family, all versions of Aller include some interesting variations: in the regular form, the tail of the uppercase Q floats just below the baseline and ordinarily joined angles just barely touch in lowercase letters k, x, and y, giving the typeface a very airy appearance.

Aller Display is a heavier weight, and includes complementary quirks: the lowercase letters in Aller Display are a combination of bubbly uppercase and lowercase glyphs, which give Aller Display somewhat of a dated look (reminiscent of a font created in the 1970s to try to look futuristic). All versions are legible at text sizes, and also work well at display sizes; plus they include upper and lowercase letters, numbers, punctuation, mathematical symbols, some diacritics, and special characters.

All variations of Aller Standard are free for personal and commercial use for up to 25 users within an organization. For additional users, please contact Dalton Maag. Preview and print embedding is allowed.

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Head of HP’s PC Business Disses Microsoft Surface

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Lenovo ThinkCentre M92z review: Multitouch comes to business

In today’s business world, the keys to getting the most out of your computer are productivity, space, and power—and the Lenovo ThinkCentre M92z all-in-one desktop PC epitomizes efficiency. Its 23-inch screen and compact dimensions take up little desk space in today's crowded office environments.

At $1247 (as configured, as of September 19, 2012), the ThinkCentre M92z represents a significant investment if a business plans to outfit its entire office with new machines, but it provides the power to back up the price. This true desktop system doesn't rely on laptop-style construction, and the result is better performance. The M92z comes outfitted with an Intel Core i7-3770S processor that runs at a standard 3.1GHz. A healthy 8GB of RAM supports optimal multitasking; when you run spreadsheets and browsers on this all-in-one, they'll seem as light as air.

On our strenuous WorldBench 7 benchmark suite, the M92z earned a score of 91—about 9 percent slower than our baseline system. By way of comparison, the Vizio CA27-A1 27-inch all-in-one, also priced at $1250, racked up a mark of 122. In part, the big difference in scores is attributable to Vizio’s quick startup time (20.6 seconds), which is less than half as long as the M92z requires (49.4 seconds). The Vizio included a small SSD as cache to support its included 5400-rpm 1TB drive; that SSD cache also improves performance in the content creation and office productivity benchmarks. The M92z has a 1TB (7200-rpm) hard drive that manages to outperform the Vizio on most normal hard-drive benchmarks, however, so take that into account when you're choosing a business system. The Vizio would be a good choice for a larger, prettier screen, but for pure productivity the Lenovo comes out ahead.

Don’t expect too much gaming performance from the M92z. The all-in-one comes with Intel’s integrated HD Graphics 4000, though you have the option to move up from that to an AMD Radeon HD7650 with 1GB of memory. When we ran our graphics benchmark at the highest quality settings and a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, the M92z managed average frame rate of 15.9 frames per second on Dirt 3 and 10.1 fps on Crysis 2—about what you'd expect with Intel's GPU. When we lowered the graphics qulity setting and dropped the resolution to 1024 by 768 pixels, the M92z ran Dirt 3 surprisingly well (65.3 fps), but Crysis 2 still struggled at a playable but far from pretty 34.2 fps. Of course, gaming performance is rarely a major consideration for business desktops.

The screen is a 23-inch multitouch display with antiglare capability and a maximum resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels. The screen gives a good 178-degree viewing range, and you can easily adjust the screen by tilting it. The sturdy stand looks like something you'd find on a clerical worker's desk. The LED screen isn’t exceptionally sharp, and its antiglare material gives it a slightly cheaper look.

The M92z is well stocked with ports and connectivity options. It includes optional PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectors as well as a serial port for unusual holdover peripherals. Businesses often need to connect legacy devices, so the inclusion of older ports like PS/2 and RS-232 can be quite useful. In case you need additional screen space, you'll find a DisplayPort-in and -out connection, but you don’t get any DVI, HDMI, or VGA connections. The all-in-one has four USB 2.0 ports on the back and two USB 3.0 ports on the left side. An ExpressCard slot and an 11-in-1 card reader slot on the left side, and a DVD multiburner on the right round out the offerings. Finally, if you worry about workplace theft, the M92z has an integrated Kensington lock to keep it in place.

The ThinkCentre M92z also offers full networking capabilities. It has a gigabit ethernet port on the back, a Centrino Wireless N 2230 Wi-Fi adapter, and Bluetooth, so it can connect in practically any office—with or without a wired connection.

The M92z comes equipped with an integrated webcam and microphone. It has been optimized for VoIP and comes with integrated speakers that feature Dolby sound enhancement. It's also the first 20-inch all-in-one that is vPro-ready, for even more business support.

Finally, the system is bundled with its own wireless mouse and keyboard. They are standard peripherals except that the mouse is astonishingly small: It fit into about half of my hand. The keyboard provides plenty of room for your hands to move around, far removed from the cramped layouts that torment stubby-fingered users like me.

Overall, the Lenovo ThinkCentre M92z is a great choice for users in need of a strong, smart business system. The screen is large enough and eminently usable, thanks to its touchable antiglare properties, the hardware can rival any other office system (though it's not a good choice for playing games), and the price is right for equipping certain key office workers who need relatively strong performance in a small space.

Performance charts

PC WorldBench 7 Results Office Productivity Performance Content Creation Performance Startup times Storage Performance Gaming performance

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Sage 50 Complete Accounting 2013: Advanced Accounting Tools for Small Business

At $369 for a single user ($669 for three licenses, and $899 for five), Sage 50 Complete Accounting 2013 isn't the cheapest way to keep your small business's books. But if you are well versed in accounting practices and want to implement your own preferences where choices are available, Sage 50 Complete provides all the controls you could wish for.

Even if you've never studied accounting but are eager to learn, Sage 50 may be worthwhile for its extensive documentation and tutorials. They won't turn you into a CPA, but they can help you learn a lot of the basics.

A descendent of the package formerly known as Peachtree Complete, Sage 50 Complete 2013 comes with its own database, which can make installation tricky: My first attempt to install the program was cut short by firewall issues that Sage acknowledges in its help pages (and offers workarounds for). In my case, installing several Windows updates appeared to solve the problem, but your mileage may vary.

Sage gives you the option of setting up your books for either cash or accrual accounting. Once installed, Sage 50 Complete immediately displays its serious accounting credentials in a setup wizard that asks questions you don't get from some competitors--for example, whether you want to post transactions in real time or in batches, and whether you prefer to use cash or accrual accounting (with cash, you record transactions as you receive payments or spend money; with accrual, you record sales whether you've received payment or not, and you record expenditures as you commit to them).

Once setup is complete, you see a pleasing interface with lots of useful navigation aides. The first screen to appear is one of several general-topic pages that show a collection of related tasks in flowchart format, or simply display information. The Business Status page, for example, assembles an overview of your finances that uses widgetlike boxes to show your year-to-date revenue, key account balances, a list of bills you owe, a list of customers who owe you money, and a pie chart showing aged receivables--balances due based on how long they've been owed. You can customize the page by adding or removing these widgets.

Other general topic pages (accessible by clicking on entries in a left navigation bar) cover customers and sales; vendors and purchases; employees and payroll, banking, and system settings--and you can make any one of them the default start screen. Underneath the topic page tabs, Sage also puts a customizable shortcut list in the nav bar to help you jump immediately to a specific ledger or task from any category. The default list includes links for creating an invoice, entering received payments, paying bills, viewing customer and vendor lists, searching for a specific transaction, and making a general journal entry.

Inventory management tools have been a strong feature this software from the days when it was called Peachtree Accounting.Since its Peachtree days, Sage 50 has earned a reputation for superior inventory management features, and rightly so. It's the only one of the top desktop packages we looked at to offer the full range of cost-basis options for evaluating inventory: average cost, Last In First Out (LIFO), First In First Out (FIFO). In contrast, QuickBooks Pro 2012 supports only the average-cost method.

The 2013 edition expands the inventory analysis capabilities of Sage Business Intelligence, the tool that integrates with Microsoft Excel (2003 or later) to move data into spreadsheets for advanced forecasting and other tasks. The new template joins an already impressive collection of templates, all customizable and easy to link to Sage 50 data.

Other innovations include the ability to reconcile accounts (by changing back entries) without having to change accounting periods; the ability to deactivate multiple vendor records based on a cutoff date for activity (previously you had to get rid of one record at a time); and improved batch check-printing for Accounts Payable and Payroll (you can now print long descriptions on a blank sheet of paper, and the program can eliminate numbers for voided checks), which helps you avoid wasting preprinted checks.

On the downside, Sage has made it more difficult to manage payroll without enrolling in one of its subscription-based payroll add-on services. Previously, you could manually update tax tables and then run payroll calculations in the program. Now, without a service, you must perform payroll calculations outside of the program and import the results--a time-consuming workaround, to say the least. The cheapest payroll service (which generates W2 forms at year's end but doesn't support e-filing) costs $270 for the 2013 fiscal year; alternatively, you can pay $380 to cover the rest of this year and next year. Either way, this expense practically doubles the cost of the software.

Sage 50 also comes up a bit short for people who want to switch from another program. Basically, you have to export your data to an Excel spreadsheet and then link fields manually to their Sage 50 equivalents to do any kind of data import--tasks that might discourage prospective QuickBooks refugees. Sage has yet to deliver a companion mobile app for Sage 50, though it does offer one with its payments service. (The U.K. edition does have an iOS app.)

If you're in charge of a growing business and aren't afraid to hear or learn accounting jargon that may stand you in good stead going forward, Sage 50 Complete Accounting 2013's power and versatility make it worth its admittedly high cost.

This review is part of a roundup of accounting software. You can read the introduction to the story and find links to the other products we reviewed here.

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Acclivity AccountEdge Pro 2012 for Windows: A Friendly Accounting Program for Relatively Inexperienced Business Users

AccountEdge Pro keeps things simple. You can get a single-user edition of AccountEdge Pro for $299, and each additional user for an existing installation costs $149. The upgrade price for existing customers is $159.

That makes AccountEdge Pro somewhat cheaper than Sage 50 Complete Accounting 2013 (for individuals, at least), but more expensive than QuickBooks Pro 2012--and, at this early August writing (a couple of months before Intuit's annual refresh), you can even find the higher-end QuickBooks Premier 2012 for less. However, QuickBooks' price advantage evaporates if you want to add users: You pay the same for each new QuickBooks Pro license as for the initial license, and extra Premier licenses are more expensive than the current discounted price. Also, while AccountEdge supports up to 15 simultaneous users, QuickBooks Pro and Premier support only 5.

QuickBooks gets a lot pricier with its payroll service, too. That service costs $42 a month or $504 a year, whereas Acclivity's equivalent service runs about $350, and you can save even more by opting for a basic service that does the payroll math but doesn't e-file forms.

In terms of usability, AccountEdge Pro 2012 sharply reduces the intimidation factor in setup by letting you tackle it in chunks. To create a new company file, you walk through half a dozen screens that cover entering basic company info (name, tax ID, address, and so on), making a few basic accounting choices (defining fiscal year, setting the date for your first transaction entries, specifying the number of accounting periods), creating a list of accounts (AccountEdge offers suggestions based on common business types), and specifying the location for the data file.

AccountEdge Pro's Easy Setup Assistant screen uses a wizard approach to help you get started.After that, AccountEdge Pro presents you with the Easy Setup Assistant screen, whose wizards address options in five categories: Accounts (to edit the list of accounts and enter details on starting balances), Sales (including customer and pricing information), Purchases (for vendor and expenditure data), Payroll (for employee and payroll tax numbers), and a Customization section (for miscellaneous options relating to data entry, reminders, and more). The program explains these features clearly and identifies common choices instructively, with additional details on a well-organized and thorough Help Center.

Once setup is complete, AccountEdge's newly redesigned interface presents a fairly standard lineup of sections (which it calls Command Centers) in tabular form, with bright blue rectangular buttons instead of plain text links leading to ledgers and forms. On the right, a new sidebar holds links to recently accessed features, features that you've designated as favorites, and a full array of help resources.

AccountEdge Pro reduces the intimidation factor by allowing you to handle accounting tasks in chunks. The program's redesign includes additional navigation aides at the bottom of each command center in the form of buttons for a to-do list, searching transactions, reports, analyses, syncing data, and lists. Other new features in 2012 include support for mileage tracking and multiple blling rates.

Businesses that send employees into the field will appreciate AccountEdge Pro's free iPhone/iPad app--something other packages don't offer--for entering sales, expenses, activity slips (to record time billing while in the field), and contact info, and then syncing it all with the desktop software. To encourage adoption, Acclivity also offers to give a customer's accountant a free copy of AccountEdge Pro.

Overall, AccountEdge Pro 2012 is an attractive, full-featured package that neatly balances ease of use and exposition of (and instruction for) its accounting underpinnings. It's also a bargain for businesses that want support for multiple simultaneous users.

This review is part of a roundup of accounting software. You can read the introduction to the story and find links to the other products we reviewed here.

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