Andoku Sudoku Review: No-Frills, Simple Sudoku Gameplay

Andoku is an open source sudoku puzzle game for Android.

In addition to standard sudoku puzzles it offers these sudoku variants:

• X-Sudoku

• Hyper-Sudoku

• Percent-Sudoku

• Color-Sudoku

• Squiggly Sudoku (a.k.a. Jigsaw Sudoku)

• and combinations thereof (e.g. Sudoku-X with jigsaw regions)

Features:

• 10 different game variations

• 5 levels of difficulty per game variation

• 200 puzzles per game variation and difficulty level

• Puzzle timer

• Auto-save

• Statistics

• Cell highlighting

• Undo/redo

Recent changes:

• doubled the number of puzzles to 10000

• changed vertical position of toast messages

• Andoku 2 announcement

Content rating: Everyone

by Erez Zukerman, PCWorld

Andoku Sudoku for Android offers a simple way to play sudoku on your device. The app assumes you already know how to play sudoku, and does not include a tutorial, gameplay tips, or any other sort of guidance to get you started.

There are several sudoku boards to choose from, including some with special rules or layouts. Once you pick a layout you like, you can also specify a difficulty level. Andoku offers five different levels, starting with Easy and going all the way up to Fiendish. On Easy, the board will have a few numbers already filled out for you, while fiendish will start you off with a blank board.

The in-game interface feels polished and well thought out: With basic controls making it easy to see what numbers you have left to fill in. The game even includes a "pencil mode", where you can note which numbers you think could possibly go in an individual square. There are two colors schemes you can choose from (a light one and a dark one), and you can change them at will from the settings menu.

People new to sudoku may be put off by Andoku's lack of tutorials, but advanced players should have plenty to keep them coming back. With its variety of boards and difficulty levels, Andoku is great for those that want a challenge.

This app was tested using a Samsung Galaxy S II running Android 2.3.7

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Trend Micro Titanium Internet Security 2012 Review: No-Frills PC Protection

If you’re looking for a suite with a ton of features, Trend Micro Titanium Internet Security 2012 ($70 for one year and three PCs as of January 25, 2012), which finished fifth in our 2012 roundup of security suites, isn’t for you. But if you need a set-and-forget suite that will keep your PC reasonably safe, it may be the right choice.

Trend Micro's suite fully blocked 92.3 percent of malware in our real-world test (which helps determine how well a suite can stop brand-new as-yet unknown malware), and it partially blocked an additional 3.8 percent, landing around the mean for the products we tested. In addition, it detected 97.49 percent of known malware samples. Although that is a decent result historically, Trend Micro lags behind rivals in this regard (most other suites we looked at detected over 99 percent of samples). As for false positives, it identified four safe files out of a pool of 250,000 as potentially malicious. Percentage-wise, that's a negligible false-positive rate, though most other suites managed an even lower number.

Trend Micro’s suite is very effective at cleanup, as it detected and disabled all active infections on our test PC, and removed any and all malware traces for 70 percent of our test samples--a better-than-average result.

In our testing, the cloud-based Trend Micro suite had a generally low impact on system performance. It added 1.5 seconds to system startup, and added only 0.7 seconds to PC shutdown time, as compared to our test PC with no antivirus software installed. On almost every other speed test we ran, it had a smaller-than-average impact on PC performance compared to its rivals.

Unfortunately, its scan speeds were uneven. It finished our on-demand scan of 4.5GB of files in a better-than-average 1 minute, 33 seconds, so when you manually start a scan, you shouldn't have to wait too long for it to finish. On the other hand, it took longer to complete an on-access scan of 4.5GB (5 minutes, 14 seconds) than most other packages did. Trend Micro's poor showing in the on-access scan--which shows how quickly a suite scans files when you open or save them--may be a concern, since it means that you'll probably have to wait longer for files to open.

The fairly basic interface, though well designed, doesn’t offer a lot of settings or options for expert-level users. It's great, therefore, if you're a less-advanced user, or if you just need something that you don't have to mess with for it to work.

Note, too, that this version of Trend Micro's suite is a little light on features; if you like Trend Micro but want more functionality, check out Titanium Maximum Security, the company’s top-of-the-line package.

I suggest giving Trend Micro Titanium Internet Security 2012 a look, but I can't give it an unequivocal "buy" recommendation based on its acceptable-but-not-outstanding malware detection and blocking rates.

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