AVG Internet Security 2014 review: a decent, lightweight antivirus suite

AVG Internet Security 2014 ($55 for one year of protection on one computer) is a decent security suite that gives adequate protection and adds little weight to your system. In our real-world testing scenario, the suite protected against 98 percent of all unknown (zero-day) attacks. It did an even better job of protecting against known malware, repelling 99 percent of those attacks. Still, half of the ten security suites in our roundup blocked 100 percent of zero-day threats, and all but three blocked 100 percent of known malware attacks.

AVG did well in our usability tests, not flagging any legitimate software or websites as dangerous. With a performance score of 3, it adds very little drag to your system.

AVG’s installation process asks you to choose a language, agree to license terms, enter your product key, and choose an express or custom install before getting down to business. It doesn’t ask to install any extra software (such as toolbars or browsers) or to change any settings (such as your homepage), however, so you should be able to click through these screens in a matter of seconds.

AVG's advanced settings menu is definitely for advanced users.

Compared to the other security suites in our roundup, AVG’s main screen looks a little cluttered. At the top of the screen it displays a large banner that’s green if you’re fully protected and red if you’re not. Under this banner are five large green tiles: Computer, Web Browsing, Identity, Emails, and Firewall. Each tile displays a warning if you are not secure.

Below this first line of tiles are five more tiles, slightly smaller and in teal: Fix Performance, Mobile Apps, Tablet Apps, Driver Update, and More from AVG. Two more tiles, in light teal, appear beneath those, containing buttons for scanning your system and checking for updates. Finally, the bottom of the screen hosts a white banner that lets you know how many days of protection you have left, depending on your subscription status.

This array of tiles makes AVG’s main screen seem a little overwhelming, and there’s no quick and easy way to get to the settings menu, either. The Advanced Settings area, which isn’t touchscreen-friendly, is indeed mostly for advanced users. AVG provides very few jargon-free explanations of its various settings.

AVG Internet Security 2014 offers good protection, but it’s perhaps most suitable for power users who want a lot of advanced options at their fingertips.

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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McAfee Internet Security 2014 review: Intuitive interface, decent protection

McAfee Internet Security 2014 ($56 for one year of protection on up to three PCs) offers adequate protection and an intuitive interface. The installation process can be a chore, and finding specific settings can be difficult, but its main shortcoming is that it offers fewer features than some of McAfee’s other products, despite its higher price.

In AV-Test’s real-world protection tests, McAfee successfully blocked 98 percent of all zero-day malware attacks (including Web and email threats). Though quite good in comparison to Microsoft Security Essentials’ performance (71 percent of samples blocked in the same tests), that mark lags behind the perfect scores posted by Eset Smart Security 7, F-Secure Internet Security 2014, Kaspersky Internet Security 2014,  Norton Internet Security 2014, and Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security 2014. Like most of the other suites, however, McAfee detected 100 percent of widespread malware that had been discovered in the month prior to the test.

In usability tests, the suite blocked a couple of legitimate software actions on suspicion that they were dangerous.

In AV-Test’s performance assessment, McAfee received a score of 5. This translates into slightly slower startup and shutdown times and some lag in opening programs.

McAfee Internet Security 2014's interface makes it easy to find your way around.

Installing McAfee Internet Security 2014 is somewhat arduous. First, the program scans for threats to ensure a smooth installation. Next, it asks you to log in to your McAfee account, using the email address and password that you used when you downloaded the program. Then it downloads the rest of the installer—which can take some time if you’re on a slow connection—installs the program, and requires a system reboot.

To its credit, McAfee Internet Security 2014 has among the best interfaces for Windows 8 touchscreens, with large buttons and banners that even clumsy fingers can easily tap. The main window has a large banner across the top that appears green if you’re protected, and red if you’re not. Below the banner are four large buttons for virus and spyware protection, Web and email protection, updates, and your subscription status. To the right of these buttons are three smaller buttons for data protection and backup, PC and home network tools, and parental controls.

Each section has its own settings menu—an arrangement that can be a bit confusing. Settings menus have clickable banners that you tap to open. Inside, they look like typical checkbox-and-radio-button menus. McAfee explains most of the advanced settings in simple language, and each menu features a ‘Learn more’ link that leads directly to the appropriate help section.

McAfee Internet Security 2014 offers reasonable protection and an intuitive interface, especially for Windows 8 users. But the company sells other products that offer greater functionality at a lower price. For example, McAfee All Access costs just $50 (for a limited time) and provides unlimited protection for all of your devices (including mobile), as well as online and social network protection. McAfee says that it continues to carry the Internet Security line for people who aren’t ready to switch to its all-inclusive products, which are equally effective against malware.

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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Buffalo AirStation WI-U2-866D review: Decent performance for a low price

In our roundup of 802.11ac Wi-Fi client USB adapters, the best performances that Buffalo Technology’s AirStation WI-U2-866D turned in were good enough only for second-place finishes, and the device ended up in fourth place overall. But its $40 street price—$30 less than the cost of the top-performing Asus USB-AC56—renders it an attractive value.

The WI-UW-866D’s industrial design echoes that of Buffalo’s new 802.11ac routers, and it has the same charcoal-gray finish and silver accents. Its antennas are mounted internally. Buffalo doesn’t provide a cradle, but you will find a bendable USB 2.0 stub cable in the box. I didn’t find this accessory to be of much use, since it wasn’t strong enough to prevent the adapter from flopping over.

ROBERT CARDIN

I like how the hinged USB interface folds into a recess on the back of the adapter to protect it. (Click to zoom.)

The adapter’s hinged interface is much more useful and allows you to position the adapter either vertically or horizontally. The adapter is a little over 3.5 inches long, but it will protrude less than an inch from your computer when it’s vertically oriented (and that’s how I tested it). When you’re not using the adapter, its USB interface folds neatly into a recessed area on the back of the adapter to create a very compact package for travel.

Buffalo’s model was the only adapter in the test group not to have a WPS button, so you’ll need to remember your router’s passphrase to establish a wireless connection. Like Asus, Buffalo provides a software utility that reports connection status, signal strength, and other details. You can use the utility with either Buffalo’s adapter or your laptop’s built-in adapter.

Buffalo’s adapter took strong second-place finishes at longer distances (look at the dark blue bars). (Click to zoom.) 

Buffalo’s adapter performed much better than most of its competitors when the client was in my home theater (35 feet from the router), delivering TCP throughput of 227 megabits per second. It delivered the second-fastest throughput when the client was in my home office, which is 65 feet from the router. Curiously, the WI-UW-866D was the second-slowest at close range, when the client was only 9 feet from the router. And it was 96 mbps slower than the Asus USB-AC56 when the client was in the kitchen, which is 20 feet from the router.

The WI-UW-866D is a good value, but the absence of a WPS button is a bit of a downer.

Note: This review is part of a roundup of six 802.11ac Wi-Fi client USB adapters. For more, read the introduction to the roundup.

Michael manages PCWorld's hardware product reviews and contributes to TechHive's coverage of home-control systems and sound bars.
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Acer Aspire V7 review: This Ultrabook can play a decent game or two

Acer’s Aspire V7 (model 482PG-9884) remedies many of the shortcomings I mention in my review of HP’s Envy TouchSmart 15t. In addition, it has faster components, more memory, and better battery life. On the other hand, the Aspire V7 costs $350 more than the Envy—but there are a number of good reasons for that.

Acer selected Intel’s Core i7-4500U CPU, a lower-voltage chip than the one HP chose; it has a maximum thermal design power of 15 watts, in contrast to the 47-watt TDP of the Core i7-4700MQ in the Envy. That CPU contributes greatly to the Aspire V7’s superior battery life (5 hours, 2 minutes in our tests, versus the HP’s 3 hours, 19 minutes).

Robert CardinAcer's Aspire V7 can't compete with Sony's VAIO Pro 13 for the sexiest Ultrabook, but it packs higher-end components and a larger screen.(Click to enlarge)

And whereas HP cut a few corners to squeeze both a Core i7 processor and a discrete GPU into the Envy’s $950 price tag, Acer managed to toss in a 24GB solid-state drive and 12GB of DDR3/1600 memory alongside a faster discrete GPU, Nvidia’s GeForce GT 750M. The SSD acts as a cache for a 1TB, 5400-rpm mechanical hard drive, and it makes Windows and applications load lickety-split. The SSD and the graphics card boosted the Aspire V7’s benchmark scores by a considerable margin.

Acer’s machine delivered an impressive Notebook WorldBench 8.1 score of 246, marking it as nearly 2.5 times faster than our reference notebook, an Asus VivoBook S550CA powered by a third-generation Core i5 CPU. The Aspire V7 is a capable gaming notebook, too, as it ran our BioShock Infinite test at a very playable 76.5 frames per second (with the resolution set to 1024 by 768 pixels and the visual quality set to low).

It's simple: You need a discrete GPU for reasonable gaming performance. And the Aspire V7 has one. (Click to enlarge.)

The Aspire V7’s 15-inch touchscreen display, which provides a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, is vibrant and responsive. The smaller screen means that the system lacks enough room to include an embedded numeric keypad, but the keys that are present are backlit and nicely spaced. Although they’d benefit from a bit of sculpting to provide better tactile feedback, the keys travel just the right distance for comfort and accuracy. While this machine measures just 0.83 inch thick, it’s twice as heavy—4.7 pounds—as the Sony VAIO Pro 13 (which is a wafer-thin 0.68 inch thick and weighs just 2.3 pounds).

Intel’s lower-voltage Core i7-4500U CPU contributed significantly to the Acer Aspire V7’s impressive battery life. (Click to enlarge.)

Acer outfitted the Aspire V7 with three USB ports, but only one is USB 3.0 (and it’s oddly placed on the rear of the computer alongside a gigabit ethernet port, HDMI-out, and a VGA-out that relies on a dongle). The two USB 2.0 ports are located on the left and right sides, and an SD Card reader sits on the right. The power button, however, is oddly positioned on the left side (where you’ll inevitably press it accidentally and power down your computer when all you intended to do was to pick it up).

The Acer Aspire V7 isn’t the ultimate Ultrabook, but it’s thin, it’s fast enough for all but the most demanding content-creation tasks, and it’ll play hard-core games (albeit at slightly lower resolution than full HD). I like it a lot.

Note: This review is part of a roundup of the 5 best Haswell notebooks as of September 2013.

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Review: Dell B1265dfw is a decent monochrome laser MFP with pricey toner

Thinking of the $280 Dell B1265dfw as a monochrome laser printer with benefits puts it in its best light. Besides good print speed, it offers copying, faxing, and scanning in color. There's even an automatic document feeder (ADF), though the duplex scanning features are restricted to the flatbed portion of the scanning system and are manual only. The B1265dfw also suffers particularly pricey toner--well over three cents per page even with the high-capacity supplies.

The B1265dfw is your standard medium-sized, boxy small-to-medium business MFP. It's solidly constructed, and though its standard warranty lasts just one year, a 3-year advance-replacement warranty is available for an additional $40.

The B1265dfw is a triple treat connectivity-wise, with USB, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet on board. The software Installation is easy, and Dell has made an effort to simplify Wi-Fi setup, even providing a WPS button on the control panel. Said control panel is on the right front of the unit, flips up for easy access, and is intuitively laid out. There's a numeric keypad for faxing and a two-line monochrome display. It's rendered in off-white which helpfully focuses your attention on it from the otherwise charcoal colored unit. On the other hand, Dell made the embossed icons on the circular cursor control difficult to read by not differentiating their color. Go figure.

Paper handling features include automatic duplex printing; a 250-sheet bottom-mounted paper cassette; a front-loading, single-sheet auxiliary feed; a 151-sheet integrated output tray directly above that; and a 40-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) for the scanning portion of the unit. The flatbed scanner is letter/A4-sized, and the lid telescopes slightly more than an inch to accommodate thicker materials.

Though the B1265dfw has an ADF, it's limited. While there's help (prompts on the LCD) for manual 1-sided to 2-sided, and 2-sided to 2-sided copying, it's only available when using the flatbed platen. This is not the MFP you want to buy if you regularly scan lengthy two-sided documents.

The B1265dfw’s speed is middling for a monochrome laser, but fast compared to other $300 multifunctions we’ve tested—most of which have been inkjets.Documents consisting of plain, black text with a few simple, monochrome graphics average a speedy 19.3 pages per minute (ppm) on the PC, and 15.3 ppm on the Mac. Snapshot-sized, 4--by-6-inch photos print at about 5.5 ppm.

The quality of the B1265dfw's text is excellent, which is expected for any monochrome laser printer. The graphics are mediocre at best, with horizontal striation and vertical banding becoming more noticeable as image size increases. Scans are quick, of good quality, and you may scan in color as well as monochrome. Copying is obviously limited to black and white and suffers the same faults as the other graphics.

The B1265dfw uses a single integrated drum/toner unit and ships with a 1,000-page starter-size cartridge. The replacements cost $57 for a 1,500-page cartridge, and $83 for a 2,500-page cartridge. That works out to 3.8 cents per page (cpp) with the former, and 3.3 cents per page with the latter. That's pricey for a monochrome laser no matter how cheap the initial unit cost.

You buy a monochrome laser for speed and great text. The B1265dfw delivers both, albeit not as cheaply as one would wish. If you do the math, the total cost of operation will probably work out for small-volume copying and printing. The question you should ask is whether you might not be better off with a full-featured, $300 color inkjet MFP like the Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4540, which provides decent speed and impressive print quality, with far superior graphics and a significantly cheaper cost per page.

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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Dell's Linux laptop has good hardware, decent toolkit

Plenty of specialized companies out there sell PCs with Linux, but Dell is one of the very few mainstream contenders to have done so over the years. After some spotty initial offerings, it's taken a different approach with its latest Linux PC. Rather than try to sell Linux hardware to the masses, which the company has said typically requires support, it's focusing instead on developers, a savvy group that tends to need less help.

That's the plan behind the $1,549 Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition, an ultrabook that was born via the company's “Project Sputnik” skunkworks initiative last year combining Ubuntu Linux 12.04 Long Term Support Precise Pangolin and the company's existing XPS 13 laptop.

What started out as a pilot project turned into a real commercial product last fall, and earlier this year it got a nice upgrade. We got our hands on one recently and put this latest model through its paces.

Visually, the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition is a thing of beauty. It's thin, sleek, and lightweight, weighing in at just under 3 pounds. With a top cover precision-cut from a single block of aluminum, the silver-toned machine features a carbon-fiber composite base surrounded with a ring of matching anodized aluminum. A comfortable magnesium palm rest features soft-touch paint.

Powering the Linux ultrabook is a third-generation Intel Core i7 processor with Intel HD Graphics 4000, 8GB dual channel DDR3L RAM, and a 256GB SSD drive. That's a nice setup for the kinds of compute-intensive tasks developers spend much of their time on, including repeated cycles of coding, compiling, testing, and debugging.

Dell Inc.The XPS 13 Developer Edition we tested has a third-generation Intel Core i7 processor with Intel HD Graphics 4000, 8GB dual channel DDR3L RAM, and a 256GB SSD drive.

Developers will also often have many windows open, so the fact that this machine sports a full 8GB of RAM rather than the standard XPS 13's starting point of 4GB eases the burden by minimizing swapping to disk, thereby improving overall responsiveness.

The 13.3-inch edge-to-edge glossy display, meanwhile, is constructed from hardened Gorilla Glass and offers full High Definition WLED, 1080p resolution, and a full 178° viewing angle. So compact is the PC's design, however, that it actually feels a lot more like an 11-inch laptop in overall size.

The backlit, full-sized keyboard is another visually appealing element, though we found it a bit too light to the touch. That's personal preference, of course. Much more striking, though, was the fact that it featured a Windows superkey rather than an Ubuntu one.

While it's not a performance issue, the presence of a Windows-specific key on this device underscores the fact that this is still essentially Dell's standard XPS 13 with Ubuntu simply preinstalled. Developers wouldn't have any trouble doing that installation themselves, so we were alert to other distinguishing features that would set this device apart for this Linux-minded crowd.

One such feature is the XPS 13 Developer Edition's full year of included Dell ProSupport and onsite service after remote diagnostics. Also included on the device, meanwhile, are two USB 3.0 ports (one with PowerShare), a mini DisplayPort, and a headset jack. No mouse was included, so we added our own.

Like many Linux machines, this one featured a nice, snappy startup; it can boot from cold in as little as 13.5 seconds, Dell says.

We did encounter an issue by which the installer crashed the first time around, but on the second attempt it worked like a charm. WiFi connected on the first try, so we got to work installing some extras, including Chrome, GIMP, and Shutter for taking screenshots.

Katherine NoyesFeaturing the Unity desktop, Ubuntu 12.04 offers a user-friendly Linux experience.

We were both already familiar with Ubuntu and the Unity desktop, so that part was immediately comfortable. Since this machine is aimed at developers, however, we were particularly interested to see what developer tools were included. Those available upon startup were the Bazaar version control system, the IcedTea Web Control Panel, IcedTea Java Web Start, a printing configuration tool, and the UbuntuOne cloud service.

Handy for our review-writing purposes was that LibreOffice was installed and ready to go. Even more joy-inspiring was the absence of the vast array of OEM bloatware you'll typically find on most Windows machines.

We were surprised, however, to find no sign of two particular developer tools Dell has been talking about since the Sputnik project began. Namely, neither the cloud launcher nor the profile tool that have figured so prominently in the Developer Edition plans were evident on the laptop.

It turns out both are still essentially in alpha form and currently hosted on GitHub.

DellDell's widely anticipated cloud launcher and profile tool are not yet included on the XPS 13 Developer Edition.

Some initial work has been done on the profile tool, but Dell ended up taking a break to focus on launching the machine, it said. “We have just started up again,” the briefing notes explained.

The cloud launcher, meanwhile, “currently exists preinstalled as LXC + JuJu,” Dell noted. “We are working with OpsCode to create a Chef version as well.”

In the meantime, the XPS 13 Developer Edition comes with VirtualBox preinstalled as well as Juju, a transitional package for Ruby 1.8, Python, and more.

Is there a need for a machine aimed specifically at Linux developers? We're not so sure. Most developers are more than capable of stripping any machine of its original OS and installing what they want themselves.

That said, however, this is a decent start. With its i7 processor and 8GB of RAM, it's equipped to handle most of what developers will throw at it. In fact, the BIOS supports Intel-VT “bare-metal” hypervisor virtualization, lending itself to setting up virtual machine instances that run at near hardware spec performance levels, such as using Linux’s 64-bit kernel built-in KVM Type 1 hypervisor.

Typically programmers will set up their own “test beds” as virtual machines. Using Btrfs, for example, programmers can “snapshot” the virtual machine, make testing programmatic changes to the configuration, and if need be “roll-back” to the snapshot taken beforehand.

It was smart to go with a laptop here rather than a desktop, as developers tend to appreciate that extra flexibility. Some developers might not like the screen size, and the trade-off in weight of 2.99 lbs would probably not be the deciding factor in wanting one of these units. For anyone whose criteria included a larger display, this unit would drop off of the “short list.”

Meanwhile, Dell clearly knows that developers have their own unique preferences. The tool selection provided should be considered a starting point but not complete for any specific purpose. No two programmers have the same set of use cases and needs. Instead, what they look for are reliability and performance metrics. After all, many programmers write with operating-system-agnostic tools that can be used on any hardware platform.

The XPS 13 Developer Edition has competition: Lenovo’s ThinkPad, Apple’s MacBook Retina or Air, or Google's Chromebook Pixel. These machines aren't customized for Linux work, but they're technically superior in construction and software certification, and it's nothing for developers to strip what's there and install any operating system they want. It will be interesting, however, to revisit this device once it's fully loaded with all the developer tools Dell has planned.

Katherine Noyes has been an ardent geek ever since she first conquered Pyramid of Doom on an ancient TRS-80. Today she covers business and tech in all its forms, with an emphasis on Linux and open source software.
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Dietrich T. Schmitz is a Health Care IT Consultant based in New York. He can be found on Google+; a Perl Success Story for one of his projects is available on OReilly.com.
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Kyocera Hydro Review: Decent Specs With Impressive Waterproofing

Our water glass dunk test.If your phone has ever taken an unplanned dip in a nearby body of water, you're probably familiar with the bag of dry rice and the nervous prayers to the phone gods that typically ensue. Waterproofing may not be the first thing people look for in a smartphone, but if you're especially accident-prone or work around water, a ruggedized phone might be worth a look. The $130 (as of August 22, 2012) Kyocera Hydro on Boost Mobile won't turn any heads with its performance or its display, but its waterproofing is impressive, and the fact that it runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is a nice bonus.

Design

You'll need a coin or a strong fingernail to unlock the Hydro's back cover.

The Hydro weighs 4.16 ounces, and feels noticeably lighter than many rival smartphones thanks to its mostly plastic body. Still, the phone is a bit bulky, and the design is by no means sleek.

The Kyocera Hydro seen from the side.You'll need a coin to unlock the back cover and gain access to the battery, which you have to remove to get to the MicroSD card slot. Aside from the MicroSD card slot, the only ports you'll find on the Hydro are a MicroUSB and a 3.5mm headphone jack, located on the top right and top left of the phone, respectively. The volume rocker sits on the Hydro's left spine, and a power button is on the right spine. The face of the phone features a 3.5-inch display that is adequate at best. Text looked crisp for the most part, but images and videos were unimpressive on the low resolution 320-by-480-pixel display. Compared to most other smartphone screens, the Hydro's is unattractive.

Waterproofing

The Hydro resists water damage even in exceedingly damp conditions.Kyocera claims that the Hydro is waterproof in up to 1 meter of water for 30 minutes, and it passed my water-exposure tests with flying colors. The phone features a water-tight cap for its MicroUSB port (just make sure it's closed tight), and the 3.5mm headphone jack is waterproof.

If you've ever felt the urge to use your phone while you shower, the Hydro is a good match: I checked my email and browsed the Web, all while enjoying a nice soak. The phone's touchscreen can become unresponsive if it has a lot of water on it, but a quick wipe down should get things working smoothly once more. Water naturally beads off the water-resistant screen so this is rarely an issue, unless the phone is situated directly under a stream of water or you've taken it with you underwater.

The Hydro also easily handled a "tumble" into my sink (with the faucet running), and a prolonged dip in a glass of water. It's pretty clear that this smartphone can withstand more than just a few droplets of water.

Performance

The 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S2 MSM8655 single-core processor in the Hydro worked well-enough for navigating around the phone's menus and home screen, but it lagged a bit when exiting the camera app and while browsing the Web. I had to force-quit out of the browser multiple times while trying to stream videos from YouTube. Other sites didn't cause the browser to freeze, but most lagged more than usual on my 3G data connection. Using the FCC-approved Ookla Speed Test app, I recorded an average download speed of 894 kilobits per second, and an average upload speed of 816 kbps.

Call quality over Boost Mobile's network was good, even when the Hydro was immersed in water. The screen seemed to be overly sensitive to movement during calls, however, and was constantly turning on and off as I talked. I inadvertently pressed the mute button multiple times with my face, which didn't make for smooth conversations.

The Hydro has a 1500mAh battery that promises up to 8.4 hours of battery life, and Eco Mode software included with the phone permits easy access to energy settings for customization. With display brightness set to auto, the battery performed as advertised for me, showing 65 percent battery life remaining after about 4 hours of testing.

Software

The Hydro ships with Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), a nice performance bonus. The OS ran smoothly, and scrolling and swiping was generally very responsive. The phone comes with Google's suite of apps (Gmail, Google+, Play Music, and so on), plus a handful of applications from Boost Mobile such as BoostZone (for managing your Boost Mobile account) and TeleNav GPS Navigation.

Entertainment

Music sounded good on the Hydro with headphones, but I found the Play Music app to be extremely laggy when starting up and selecting songs. The songs themselves sounded muffled on the phone's speaker, and music was too quiet to be enjoyed in any sort of environment with external noise. You'll get 2GB of internal storage to go along with an included 2GB MicroSD card, so if you're hoping to keep your music library with you, plan on investing in a larger card.

Videos streamed from the Internet looked dull and pixelated on the Hydro's low-resolution screen, even in HD. Coupled with the device's lackluster streaming speeds, this made for a less-than-enjoyable video viewing experience.

Outdoor test image.

Camera

You can quickly access the Hydro's 3.2-megapixel camera with a swipe from the lock screen. The camera app gives you basic control over your photos, letting you adjust the type of scene you're shooting and the white balance. Photos I took using the Hydro tended to be fuzzy, and ones I took in low light looked grainy.

Videos I took with the phone weren't much better, with dark and pixelated footage. The phone does have the potential to take unique underwater pictures and videos, however, as the camera is fully functional underwater.

Bottom Line

The Kyocera Hydro's waterproofing exceeded my expectations, and I enjoyed the novelty of using a smartphone in circumstances that would normally spell certain death for an electronic device. Though the phone's specs and design are unimpressive overall, Android Ice Cream Sandwich and a $130 price tag are big pluses in the phone's favor. If you're not looking for a media phone, and the sometimes laggy performance doesn't bother you, the Hydro makes a strong case for itself a spill-proof phone.

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Kyocera Hydro Review: Decent Specs With Impressive Waterproofing

Our water glass dunk test.If your phone has ever taken an unplanned dip in a nearby body of water, you're probably familiar with the bag of dry rice and the nervous prayers to the phone gods that typically ensue. Waterproofing may not be the first thing people look for in a smartphone, if you're especially accident-prone or work around water, a ruggedized phone might be worth a look. The $130 (as of August 22, 2012) Kyocera Hydro on Boost Mobile won't turn any heads with its performance or its display, but its waterproofing is impressive, and the fact that it runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is a nice bonus.

Design

You'll need a coin or a strong fingernail to unlock the Hydro's back cover.

The Hydro weighs 4.16 ounces, and feels noticeably lighter than many rival smartphones thanks to its mostly plastic body. Still, the phone is a bit bulky, and the design is by no means sleek.

The Kyocera Hydro seen from the side.You'll need a coin to unlock the back cover and gain access to the battery, which you have to remove to get to the MicroSD card slot. Aside from the MicroSD card slot, the only ports you'll find on the Hydro are a MicroUSB and a 3.5mm headphone jack, located on the top right and top left of the phone, respectively. The volume rocker sits on the Hydro's left spine, and a power button is on the right spine. The face of the phone features a 3.5-inch display that is adequate at best. Text looked crisp for the most part, but images and videos were unimpressive on the low resolution 320-by-480-pixel display. Compared to most other smartphone screens, the Hydro's is unattractive.

Waterproofing

The Hydro resists water damage even in exceedingly damp conditions.Kyocera claims that the Hydro is waterproof in up to 1 meter of water for 30 minutes, and it passed my water-exposure tests with flying colors. The phone features a water-tight cap for its MicroUSB port (just make sure it's closed tight), and the 3.5mm headphone jack is waterproof.

If you've ever felt the urge to use your phone while you shower, the Hydro is a good match: I checked my email and browsed the Web, all while enjoying a nice soak. The phone's touchscreen can become unresponsive if it has a lot of water on it, but a quick wipe down should get things working smoothly once more. Water naturally beads off the water-resistant screen so this is rarely an issue, unless the phone is situated directly under a stream of water or you've taken it with you underwater.

The Hydro also easily handled a "tumble" into my sink (with the faucet running), and a prolonged dip in a glass of water. It's pretty clear that this smartphone can withstand more than just a few droplets of water.

Performance

The 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S2 MSM8655 single-core processor in the Hydro worked well-enough for navigating around the phone's menus and home screen, but it lagged a bit when exiting the camera app and while browsing the Web. I had to force-quit out of the browser multiple times while trying to stream videos from YouTube. Other sites didn't cause the browser to freeze, but most lagged more than usual on my 3G data connection. Using the FCC-approved Ookla Speed Test app, I recorded an average download speed of 894 kilobits per second, and an average upload speed of 816 kbps.

Call quality over Boost Mobile's network was good, even when the Hydro was immersed in water. The screen seemed to be overly sensitive to movement during calls, however, and was constantly turning on and off as I talked. I inadvertently pressed the mute button multiple times with my face, which didn't make for smooth conversations.

The Hydro has a 1500mAh battery that promises up to 8.4 hours of battery life, and Eco Mode software included with the phone permits easy access to energy settings for customization. With display brightness set to auto, the battery performed as advertised for me, showing 65 percent battery life remaining after about 4 hours of testing.

Software

The Hydro ships with Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), a nice performance bonus. The OS ran smoothly, and scrolling and swiping was generally very responsive. The phone comes with Google's suite of apps (Gmail, Google+, Play Music, and so on), plus a handful of applications from Boost Mobile such as BoostZone (for managing your Boost Mobile account) and TeleNav GPS Navigation.

Entertainment

Music sounded good on the Hydro with headphones, but I found the Play Music app to be extremely laggy when starting up and selecting songs. The songs themselves sounded muffled on the phone's speaker, and music was too quiet to be enjoyed in any sort of environment with external noise. You'll get 2GB of internal storage to go along with an included 2GB MicroSD card, so if you're hoping to keep your music library with you, plan on investing in a larger card.

Videos streamed from the Internet looked dull and pixelated on the Hydro's low-resolution screen, even in HD. Coupled with the device's lackluster streaming speeds, this made for a less-than-enjoyable video viewing experience.

Outdoor test image.

Camera

You can quickly access the Hydro's 3.2-megapixel camera with a swipe from the lock screen. The camera app gives you basic control over your photos, letting you adjust the type of scene you're shooting and the white balance. Photos I took using the Hydro tended to be fuzzy, and ones I took in low light looked grainy.

Videos I took with the phone weren't much better, with dark and pixelated footage. The phone does have the potential to take unique underwater pictures and videos, however, as the camera is fully functional underwater.

Bottom Line

The Kyocera Hydro's waterproofing exceeded my expectations, and I enjoyed the novelty of using a smartphone in circumstances that would normally spell certain death for an electronic device. Though the phone's specs and design are unimpressive overall, Android Ice Cream Sandwich and a $130 price tag are big pluses in the phone's favor. If you're not looking for a media phone, and the sometimes laggy performance doesn't bother you, the Hydro makes a strong case for itself a spill-proof phone.

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F-Secure Internet Security 2012 Review: A Slow but Decent Malware Fighter

If you can tolerate some sluggishness, F-Secure Internet Security 2012 ($60 for one year and three PCs as of January 25, 2012), which placed eighth in our 2012 roundup of security suites, will protect your PC pretty well.

F-Secure's suite put up decent all-around scores for malware detection, though it fell somewhat short of the top contenders. With a 96.2 percent blocking rate in our real-world tests (which indicate how well a suite can stop brand-new, as-yet-unknown malware), it’s generally on a par with its competition. Its 99.91 percent detection rate for known malware is also very good. The F-Secure package found and removed all test infections on our system, and it cleaned all malware traces 60 percent of the time (which is just about average compared with the other products we tested).

It did report four false positives; that’s a tiny percentage given our sample size, but several of its rivals had one or zero false positives.

The F-Secure software’s impact on PC performance was fairly low for the most part, though it wasn't the fastest suite we've seen. The 15 seconds it added to PC shutdown times (as compared to our test PC with no antivirus software installed) was among the worst results we saw on that test; it also faired poorly in our app-installation test, completing the task in 3 minutes, 12 seconds. That outcome was a good 22 seconds slower than the average time for the suites we evaluated, and only 3 of the 14 suites we looked at had a larger impact on performance in this test.

Scan speeds were pedestrian: In our on-demand scan test (which indicates how quickly a suite will run a manually initiated scan of 4.5GB of data), the F-Secure software took 2 minutes, 43 seconds, the second-worst result on this measure. In our testing of the on-access scanner--which runs when you open or save a file to disk--it required 4 minutes, 21 seconds to plow through the same 4.5GB of files, landing at the middle of the pack.

Overall I appreciated F-Secure’s basically easy-to-use interface. The installer was fairly straightforward, though it did require me to click through more screens than I would have liked. F-Secure's main interface is based on the Launch Pad, a small window that you use to access the Internet-security and PC-security settings windows--the two feature sets are organized separately from each other. I wasn't crazy about this arrangement, since it merely added another screen that I had to pass through to get where I was going; I don't see why F-Secure can't combine the two categories into a single control panel.

Although the panels for the Internet-security and PC-security sections are laid out nicely, they're almost identical, so it's easy to get them crossed up. When you delve into the settings, you'll find that the interface is clean, but some features could use better descriptions. For example, you must go into the help system to learn what DeepGuard is (it monitors how programs behave, as well as the contents of files, to identify malware).

All things considered, F-Secure Internet Security 2012 is a good product. It'll do an effective job. This year's competition is stiff, however, and F-Secure doesn't quite keep up with the leaders of the pack.

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