Security Showdown 2014

Free programs will take you only so far in protecting against viruses, malware, ransomware, especially now that phones and tablets are as commonly targeted as PCs. Many suites promise to protect you, but only a few offer comprehensive security with minimal hassle.

Our security showdown evaluates the 2014 versions of 10 major suites. Most of these programs include social-network protection—scanning spammy-looking links before you click them—and Trend Micro even provides a tool for limiting access to your Facebook, Google+, and Twitter accounts. The new mobile security components in some suites can help you scan downloaded apps for security holes; locate your lost smartphone; and remotely lock, wipe, or ring it.

Another new trend in data protection is secure cloud storage. Though cloud-storage services are convenient and free (to a point), they may put your data at risk in various ways. Some security companies offer their own, vaultlike cloud storage and backup services for sensitive files, alongside their suites.

The data presented in our roundup comes from performance testing by AV-Test, an independent security research institute based in Magdeburg, Germany. AV-Test assesses the protection capabilities and speed of each suite.

In its real-world, or zero-day, malware attack test, AV-Test pings the suite with samples of malware that the suite hasn’t previously encountered. This test measures how successful the suite is likely to be in blocking unknown malware in the future. In its malware zoo test, AV-Test pings the suite with thousands of known malware samples discovered in the previous month—samples that the suite should already have encountered. This test gauges how well the suite blocks known malware (or close variants of such malware), and it also indicates how up-to-date the company is in tracking and responding to new threats. AV-Test’s false-positives test checks how frequently a security suite flags safe, legitimate programs as dangerous. This test also offers insight into how well the suite’s algorithm works: Is it great at blocking malware, or is it just great at blocking everything?

AV-Test also runs a series of performance tests on such tasks as starting up and shutting down the computer, opening files and programs, installing software, and opening webpages, to determine how a security suite might affect your system’s performance. Each suite receives a number between 0 and 15 that quantifies its overall adverse impact on performance: A mark of 0 indicates minimal impact, while a score of 15 reflects a major performance hit.

PCWorld performed additional tests to cross-check AV’s results. We installed and used each of the security suites to rate their interface and their overall user-friendliness. Though many computer users have switched to the touch-friendly Windows 8 operating system, for instance, not all the programs have undergone a redesign to accommodate that OS’s features.

Most of the suites we tested did a very good job in the key areas of protection, speed, and ease of use. In our ratings, minor differences—a touchscreen-optimized menu here, an unusually high number of false positives there—tipped the scales. Kaspersky Internet Security 2014  came out as our top choice, thanks to its exceptional results in every testing category.

Here are the suites we tested. You can click on each link to read individual reviews, or simply read this list for quick star ratings and summaries.

Kaspersky Internet Security 2014—4.5 stars Its exceptional all-around protection, extremely user-friendly interface, and small footprint make Kaspersky perfect for novices and advanced users alike.

Symantec Norton Internet Security 2014—(4.5 stars) Norton is a solid choice, thanks to its excellent detection rate and polished, touchscreen-friendly interface.

McAfee Internet Security 2014 —(4 stars) McAfee’s touch-optimized interface is ideal for Windows 8 users, but the suite is a bit weak on zero-day defense.

F-Secure Internet Security 2014– (4 stars) F-Secure delivered fantastic malware detection rates, but its interface needs some improvement.

Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security 2014—(4 stars) Trend Micro’s suite offers robust protection and a lot of extra features for the money.

Eset Smart Security 7—(3.5 stars) Eset Smart Security 7 offers great protection if you can tolerate the drag it puts on your system.

AVG Internet Security 2014—(3.5 stars) AVG’s suite offers good protection, but its many advanced options render it most suitable for power users.

Webroot SecureAnywhere Internet Security Complete—(3 stars) Webroot’s suite has a nice interface, but the program needs to get better at detecting zero-day attacks and distinguishing between threats and nonthreats.

Avast Internet Security 2014—(3 stars) Avast’s suite has some premium features and is generally easy to use, but it fell short in the crucial area of protection.

Vipre Internet Security 2014—(3 stars) Vipre’s suite competently guards against known threats, but its zero-day detection was below average in our roundup and its interface lacks polish.

Still not convinced you need a good security suite? Tony Bradley pegs the biggest threats we face in 2014.

Best Overall: Kaspersky Internet Security 2014

This year’s roundup was highly competitive, but Kaspersky’s 2014 suite still stood out with exceptional protection and an intuitive, Windows 8-friendly interface. We also loved its ability to run with minimal impact on system performance and no interruption of our workflow due to false positives.

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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Wi-Fi hard drive showdown: Corsair Voyager vs. Seagate Wireless Plus

What could be better than a portable hard drive? A battery-powered portable hard drive that provides its own Wi-Fi hotspot, of course. Corsair’s Voyager Air and Seagate’s Wireless Plus command hefty price premiums compared to more ordinary drives, but they are also extremely convenient.

The usage models are as varied as your imagination: You can use them to wirelessly stream music and video around a small area, operate them as wireless NAS boxes, or provide business guests access to educational or entertainment materials on a grid that’s completely isolated from your business network.

The two drives also vary in terms of performance, features, and price. Read on to find out which—if either—might suit your needs.

In terms of connectivity options, the Voyager Air is as versatile as can be. It can create its own Wi-Fi hotspot, so you can transfer files over a wireless network, but it can also connect to a public hotspot and pass that Internet connection through to its own clients. Other wireless hard drives we’ve tested have required you to log out of their network in order to switch to an Internet hotspot. The Voyager Air is also outfitted with a USB 3.0 port, for direct connection to a PC, and a gigabit ethernet port, so you can use it as either a wired or wireless NAS. ((Internet pass-through does not work when a client is connected to the ethernet port.) I tested the $220 1TB model. Corsair also offers a 500GB model for $180.

Corsair's Voyager Air is tops in connectivity, with ethernet, USB 3.0, and Wi-Fi capabilities.

On the downside, the Voyager Air currently lacks a Web portal for viewing media, and since it’s not DLNA compliant, it’s not the best mate for smart TVs, Blu-ray players, and other media-streaming devices that might be in your home-entertainment system. It works just fine with PCs, however, and there are Android and iOS apps available for relevant smartphones and tablets. Corsair has promised a firmware upgrade that will add a Web portal and DLNA compatibility, but it hasn’t offered a timeframe. For now, you simply open, view, and play files as you would from any other external storage device.

The Voyager Air delivered very good performance via USB 3.0 in our benchmark tests, reading our 10GB mix of files and folders at 101.5 MBps and reading them at 210.5 MBps. It was slightly faster when working with a single 10GB, writing at 109.2 MBps and reading at 245.6 MBps. File transfers via gigabit ethernet, however, were surprisingly slow: It wrote the mix of small files at just 14.6MBps and read them at only 28 MBps. Scores for the single large file were 18.6 MBps while writing and 51.8MBps reading. The device delivered a smooth wireless streaming experience, with no detected dropouts or pauses at bit rates as high as 2 MBps.

In my hands-on testing, the Voyager Air’s battery lasted for just over five hours while streaming a high-bit rate movie. An LED indicator glows orange when the battery level drops below 50 percent and red when less than five percent is left. There’s no harm in draining the battery dead while you’re streaming or reading files, but you should pay attention to that red light if you’re saving a file to the drive.

The Voyager Plus ships with a carrying bag, a standard USB 3.0 cable, a USB-to-power cable, a USB wall charger, and even a 12-volt auto adapter. You can power off the Wi-Fi function to preserve battery life, and plugging into a USB port will do so automatically (attaching the unit via ethernet will not).

The Voyager Air has great promise, and I know a number of IT types that will find the onboard ethernet very handy. When Corsair adds the Web portal and DLNA compliance, it'll be a pip.

Seagate’s Wireless Plus is a more polished product than Corsair's Voyager Air, despite the absence of hardwired ethernet connectivity. It provides two features that are even more important: a Web portal and DLNA compliance.

Seagate’s drive also features a more elegant industrial design with just a single Power button on its case. The Wi-Fi hotspot is always on unless the drive is connected to a computer’s USB port. The presence of a DLNA-compliant media server means you can use your client’s own application (e.g., Windows Media Player) to stream digital photos, video, and music from the drive. Seagate can also provide free apps for the iOS and Android smartphones and tablets as well as Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

Seagate's Wireless Plus lacks an ethernet port, but it has two software features that Corsair's Voyager Air lacks.

The Wireless Plus features Seagate's USM (Universal Storage Module) technology, which means the hard drive has a recessed SATA connector that can be mated to a variety of interface adapters. Seagate includes a USB 3.0 USM adapter, a USB 3.0 cable, a USB wall adapter, and a USB-to-DC power cable with the Wireless Plus.

Seagate’s drive wasn’t quite as fast as Corsair’s: Connected via its USB 3.0 interface, the drive wrote our 10GB mix of files and folders at 93 MBps and read them at 208.3 MBps. With a single large 10GB file, write and read speeds jumped to 106.4MBps and 247.1MBps respectively. Streaming multimedia via Wi-Fi was smooth, right up until about 2 MBps. That’s fast enough to stream just about any file outside an uncompressed Blu-ray rip.

Seagate claims up to 10 hours of battery life for the Wireless plus, but qualifies it heavily. The drive ran for a considerably shorter period of time—four hours—streaming a high-bit rate video. This is an admittedly extreme scenario, and you'll get better life with shorter movies and more typical usage. The status light on the top of the unit turns red when it's time to recharge, but Seagate does not specify how much charge remains after that. I got about 30 minutes, but you might not.

As with Corsair’s Voyager, the Wireless Plus automatically turns off its wireless hotspot when you hardwire the drive to your PC’s USB port. But unlike Corsair’s drive, I had to reboot the Seagate drive in order to reestablish a wireless connection. The wireless hotspot was visible to my laptop, but it would not connect to it. Another oddity: The drive is hard-coded to use Wi-Fi channel 5. This could be a problem if there are other networks in the area using the same channel (although most people set up their 2.4GHz routers to use one of the three non-overlapping channels available in that spectrum: Channels 1, 6, or 11). Still, there’s really no good reason to prevent the user from operating the hotspot on a channel other than 5.

Seagate’s Wireless Plus is a quality product. It costs $20 less than the rival 1TB Voyager Air. The absence of an ethernet port means it’s not as versatile, but the Voyager Air lacks a DLNA server and a web portal.

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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Office showdown: Microsoft Office 365 vs. Google Apps

The war between Google and Microsoft is heating up. Each tech giant offers a productivity suite serving the essentials for serious work online: word processing, spreadsheets, email, and calendars. Should you ally with Google Apps for Business, or root for Microsoft's Office 365 for Small Business?

My experience with both brands' productivity tools reflects the workflows many small businesses face. In 2007, with staff scattered across several countries, my editorial company started using Google Apps for Business. It offered email, plus shared text documents and spreadsheets all under our company domain name and logo. Meanwhile, on the desktop, we used Microsoft Word and Excel, particularly for complex documents that we shared with clients.

If we were starting over today, we would seriously consider Microsoft's desktop-hybrid Office 365 for Small Business. For years Microsoft wasn't putting significant functionality online, but next week's release of Office 365 Small Business Premium is a big step forward. In addition, Microsoft offers the full, rich Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other applications.

Google and Microsoft each allow personal and business use of their online platform, as well as simultaneous logins to multiple accounts in different browser tabs. Beyond that, however, their platforms differ greatly in usability, functionality, and mobile support. Read on to discover the standout features and surprising weak points of each suite, with a focus on how key tools operate in a Web browser.

Edits in the Word Web App aren't as elegant as hoped.

Google's word processor offers more features than Microsoft's Word Web App, and they work extremely well. Google's word processor can't create an index, but it has all the standard formatting, as well as hundreds of fonts. If I have a document pulled up in my browser while someone else is editing it on, say, their smartphone, I see the changes as they are typing them, letter by letter.

Google's word processor is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get app—unlike Microsoft's Word Web app. The way a document looks onscreen is the way it will look when downloaded to your PC as a Word or PDF file, when printed, or when published as a Web page. Critically important: Google saves your documents  automatically. Back in the old days—2008, say—you might lose all your work at any moment. Today, changes are saved instantaneously, and if you lose Internet connectivity, you're alerted immediately.

Google Drive can sync documents on multiple machines and in the cloud. If a Google document is edited offline, there's a potential for conflict with other editors, and again if users apply Word formatting that isn't yet supported by Google. If there are no conflicts, the document syncs automatically. Otherwise, either a brand-new document is created with the changes, or you can choose which changes to use.

Witness how the Word Web App isn't fully baked.

Microsoft Office 365 shares Google's synchronization problem when documents are edited locally. The Word Web App that comes with Office 365 has a bit less functionality—in addition to the real estate–hogging “ribbon” interface. But, most important, it lacks what-you-see-is-what-you-get.

Also, unlike Google, the Word Web App attempts to maintain a level of compatibility with the standard desktop version of Word, but it can't yet display all the formats. Say, for example, that you have white letters on a dark background. It looks fine when first uploaded and viewed in the Reading View. But click on Editing View, and the résumé sections are immediately misaligned, formatting commands butt into the text, and background colors all disappear. To make sure the edits look right, you'll need to switch back to the Reading View.

Editing the same sample résumé in Google is an easier matter, as this image shows:

Google's word processor: What you see is what you get.

With Microsoft's Word Web App, trying to edit the same document from multiple locations is difficult. There's a complex process of locking, unlocking, and reconciling files if multiple people edited them at once. If your employees need to do any serious editing, they'll need to use the desktop version of Word 2013.

Microsoft's mobile functionality is in place if you're using the well-built Office apps for Windows Phone 8, or if you've paid for Office desktop software for a Windows 8 tablet. There are no iOS or Android apps for Office 365, though third-party apps let you edit Office documents. Google, on the other hand, offers free apps for iOS and Android, but not for Windows mobile devices.

Winner: Google Apps wins. Microsoft's Word Web App isn't ready for prime time.

Next page: Spreadsheets, email, calendars, and costs...

Maria Korolov has been covering emerging technology and emerging markets for the past twenty years. She has reported from Russia, India, and Afghanistan, and recently returned to the United States after running a news bureau in China for five years.
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Security software showdown! 9 antivirus suites empirically tested

If you’re like a lot of people, when it comes time to renew your security software, you may ask yourself, “Do I really need to upgrade to the latest version?” The answer is yes. Keeping up-to-date is generally a good idea, as new threats surface constantly. And if you value mobile security or use a social network, this year’s crop of security suites is worth paying attention to.

An increasing number of security suites now feature special tools to help protect you on social networks—a growing target for spammers, scammers, and other parties who want to get at your personal information. For example, Trend Micro’s Titanium Internet Security suite comes with a handy tool that highlights any possible areas of concern involving your Facebook privacy settings. Various suites also include tools that will scan links on social networks so that you aren’t duped into clicking a malicious link hidden behind a URL shortener.

If you own a smartphone or tablet, or both, the security class of 2013 has some new tools for you. And some security packages come with a mobile app that provides protection against mobile malware or includes other features such as GPS tracking to help you find your phone should it go missing. These apps often also include remote-wipe capabilities that let you delete the contents of a missing phone or tablet so your private data doesn’t end up falling into the wrong hands.

In addition, Windows 8 has changed the way security software makers design their programs. Many of the suites we looked at this year sport redesigned interfaces that include larger buttons and controls made to be more touch-friendly.

As usual, we teamed up with the fine folks at AV-Test, a respected antivirus testing lab based in Germany. AV-Test ran each suite through a comprehensive battery of tests to find out how well each would stand up to the worst malware currently in existence. AV-Test also performed speed testing to determine whether the suites will slow your PC to a crawl. We analyzed the data that AV-Test provided, and then tried each of the products ourselves to give you an idea of which suites you should go for—and which ones you should pass on.

Here are the suites we tested. You can click on each link to read individual reviews, or simply read this list for quick star ratings and summaries.

1. F-Secure Internet Security 2013 — 4.5 stars (Superior). F-Secure’s latest suite offers excellent protection and a friendly user interface.

2. Norton Internet Security 2013 — 4.5 stars (Superior). With its great detection rate and Windows 8-ready design, Norton’s suite is definitely worth a look.

3. Trend Micro Titanium Internet Security 2013 — 4.5 stars (Superior). This “titanium” suite earned high marks in almost all our detection tests, and it has a nice interface.

4. Bitdefender Internet Security 2013 — 4.5 stars (Superior). Bitdefender has a user-friendly interface that will appeal to people of all experience levels.

5. Kaspersky Internet Security 2013 — 4 stars (Very Good). Kaspersky lets both beginners and advanced users get the most out of its suite, and scored well in our tests.

6. McAfee Internet Security 2013 — 4 stars (Very Good). McAfee didn’t earn top marks, but it’s still a proficient, user-friendly antimalware program.

7. G Data InternetSecurity 2013 — 3.5 stars (Very Good). G Data has an effective suite, but in­­stallation is a hassle, with a settings panel that's more suited to advanced users.

8. AVG Internet Security 2013 — 3.5 stars (Very Good). AVG’s security program is perfectly re­­spectable. But perfectly respectable just doesn’t cut it these days.

9. Avira Internet Security 2013 — 3.5 stars (Very Good). This suite is competent at detecting, disabling, and cleaning up malware, but its user interface is unfriendly.

BEST OVERALL: F-Secure Internet Security 2013 F-Secure's 2013 suite kept our test system free of malware and did a great job of cleaning up infections that made it onto our PC. It's speedy and well designed, too.

BEST PROTECTION: Trend Micro Titanium Internet Security 2013
This suite had the most well rounded protection of all the suites we looked at. It proved effective at keeping malware at bay and at cleaning up infected PCs.

BEST SPEED: Norton Internet Security The days of Norton being ridiculed as slow are long gone: Norton's newest suite had lightning-quick scan times, and its impact on overall PC performance was minimal.

BEST INTERFACE: Norton Internet Security We liked Norton's polished, easy-to-use interface and one-click installation process. It's also designed to be Windows 8-friendly.

The security software market is highly competitive and it showed in our test results. In
our testing, no suite detected less than 97.8 percent of recent known malware samples,
and blocked below around 94.4 percent of new malware in our "real-world" attack-
blocking tests. False positives were also largely a non-issue. But if you look closely,
there are still some notable differences.

We noticed a fairly wide difference in terms of ease of use between the suites we
looked at. While some—like Norton and Trend Micro—were very user friendly and
polished, others—like Avira and G Data—were less so and seemed to be designed with
expert users in mind.

In the end, even the lower-ranked suites performed reasonably well, but simply didn't
stand out enough to claim a higher ranking.

For the sake of this story, we looked at mainstream Internet security suites, but most
security companies also sell more feature-complete "advanced" suites. These suites
include products like Norton 360, Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security, and AVG
Premium Security.

For the most part, these advanced suites feature the same basic antivirus engine as the
more basic suites, but will also include PC maintenance tools, online backup, additional
parental controls and privacy controls, and more.

What comes in the more advanced packages compared to the more basic suites does
very between manufacturers, though: Some include a mobile app with the basic suite,
while others include it only in their advanced suites. In general, though, the basic suites
contain just about everything you'll need to keep your PC protected.

(by Tony Bradley)

More sophisticated phishing Email and text messages that contain links to malicious websites will improve in quality to the point that they'll be virtually indistinguishable from legitimate communications. The messages will become more polished and professional—no more broken English and poor grammar.

Watering-hole attacks A drive-by download is a twist on the concept of browser-based attacks. In this sort of attack, cybercriminals post malicious content on a Web page, and then try to figure out some way to lure you to visit the website. If the PC you use to visit the website is vulnerable to the exploit used by the attack, malware is downloaded and the system is compromised. In 2013, though, attackers will continue to hone in with more precise attacks known as "watering hole" attacks. Rather than casting a wide net (as attackers do with drive-by downloads), the watering hole attack is more precise.

Data breaches In 2013, attackers will continue to target weak security on Internet-facing database systems to acquire thousands or millions of compromised records at once rather than going after individual users. Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do to prevent this sort of attack, but you can go on the defensive by being vigilant. Monitor your bank and credit card statements and report anything suspicious to your financial institution.

 Note: Click on the chart image below to see a summary of our findings.

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Tablet Chip Showdown: Nvidia Tegra 3 vs. the New iPad’s A5X

When GLBenchmark ran the Geometric test (vertex weighted), which measures low-level shader performance, the new iPad processed 7,530,524 frames at a rate of 57 fps while the Tegra 3-based Transformer Prime processed just 3,523,926 at a rate of 27 fps. We saw the same trend on the program’s Fill test, which measures texturing speed, as the iPad processed 1.98 billion textels per second to the Prime’s 404.61 million.

On Geekbench, a cross-platform benchmark that measures raw processing power rather than graphics, the quad-core Tegra 3 blew its competitor way as it achieved an overall score of 1,571 to the A5X’s 692. On the integer (1391 to 614), floating point (2408 to 825) and memory subtests (1076 to 784) , the Tegra 3 dominated, but the A5X bested it by a small margin of 324 to 266 on the stream subtest.

We also tested the new iPad’s Safari browser performance on two synthetic benchmarks and compared the results to those on the Transformer Prime’s stock Android browser. In Peacekeeper, a general-purpose browser benchmark, the two tablets got nearly identical scores of 386 for the iPad and 387 for the Prime. However, the iPad completed the Sunspider JavaScript rendering test in just 1810 milliseconds to the Prime’s 2216 ms. 

Unfortunately, since the two tablets use two different browsers, it’s impossible to isolate the processor’s role in giving the iPad slightly faster Sunspider results. It’s quite possible that Safari just performs better on this test than the Android 4.0 browser does.

Evaluating gaming performance on any tablet is a mainly subjective task, because there’s no benchmark that measures framerates like FRAPs does in Windows. However, we attempted to see what the differences in appearance were when we played the same game on both devices and placed them side by side. 

When we fired up the jet ski racing game Riptide GP on both devices, we noticed immediately that images looked sharper and more colorful on the new iPad’s retina display. Edges of objects like our avatar’s ski jacket, the walls on the racing course, and the writing on the scoreboard looked so much crisper on the iPad’s 2048 x 1536 screen and colors just popped a lot more than on the Transformer’s 1280 x 800 display. The difference in screen quality was only a little less pronounced when we played the third-person shooter game Shadowgun.

However, when we looked past the beautiful screen, we noticed that the version of the game playing on the Transformer Prime had some additional visual effects that were not present on the new iPad.  In Riptide, we noticed more reflections in the water and a splashing effect that made it look like water was hitting the screen when our ski landed from a jump. On the iPad, we just saw a little foam appear on landing, not splashes.

In Shadowgun, we walked into a scene with a burning helicopter and, on both devices, saw gorgeous billows of smoke and fire rising up to the sky. However, only on the Tegra 3-powered Transformer Prime, did the game show two flags billowing in the wind; the flags weren’t even there on the iPad version.

Our experience playing Shadowgun and Riptide on the two tablets shows how difficult it is to separate processor performance from other system components like the screen. It’s likely that, if we could put a gorgeous 2048 x 1536 screen on the Transformer Prime, these games would have both the great special effects and the sharp, beautiful images.

However, comparing tablet-to-tablet rather than chip-to-chip, the iPad’s screen makes the gaming experience a much tastier visual feast than you get on the Transformer Prime. We hope that upcoming higher-res Android tablets like the 1920 x 1200 screened Transformer Prime TF701 will give mobile gamers the perfect combination of special effects and sharp, vibrant images.

It is also possible that, once developers rework their games for the new iPad’s A5X chip, we’ll see the same kind of added special effects that we see with Tegra 3. Neither Shadowgun nor Riptide has yet been optimized for the A5X chip, so who knows what they will look like in their next iOS iterations. For now, its clear that the A5X offers better benchmark performance, while Tegra 3-optimized games offer more and better visual effects. 

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Showdown: Remote Control Tech Support Services, Tested

At some point, calling your tech-savvy friends and relatives for help gets old. Or rather, they stop answering the phone, and you’re left on your own to figure out why your Wi-Fi doesn’t work.

Designed for novices and businesses without access to on-site tech support, a new and growing breed of tech support services are ready to lend a hand. Using remote-control software, these services can troubleshoot your PC while you kick back and finish your latte--provided your Internet connection isn’t the problem. And the best part is that you no longer have to cart your computer into a shop or even walk through a fix on the phone.

We put four remote-control tech support services to the test, peppering them with three problems that we (intentionally) created on a test PC, a Samsung Series 7 Chronos laptop running Windows 7. We tested during different times of the day, but always during business hours, one problem per call. To make things tougher, we disabled System Restore, eliminating the option of an easy fix for some of these problems. (Techs are often quick to jump to this fix--after blaming viruses--as a cure-all.)

Click to see the full comparison of remote tech-support services.The Tests

We designed three tests to mimic common complaints that we've heard over the years.

Test 1: We deleted the driver for our audio subsystem, and told the tech support rep that we couldn’t hear anything during Skype calls. (The correct fix: Reinstall the driver.)

Test 2: A simple one: We changed the resolution on our display so that icons and text looked radically stretched out. We said "our kids" had messed up our PC. (The correct fix: Change resolution in the Display control panel.)

Test 3: We deleted the “Users” folder from the Windows Indexing service and said that when we searched, our personal files were no longer showing up in Start Menu search results. (The correct fix: Add the “Users” folder back to the index, then rebuild the index.)

Here’s how four remote tech-support operations fared when faced with running our gauntlet of tech problems.

Price: $170/year

iYogi, as the name implies, is an India-based outfit, even offering "Good Karma!" with its automated tune-up system. The website is garish--particularly around Valentine’s Day, when floating pink hearts obscure the checkout button--which may give you pause when forking over $170 for a year.

Once you’ve registered, iYogi directs you to install the iYogi Support Dock, a lengthy, multistep process that eventually gives you a widget that always resides at the top of your screen and includes a button to click for help.

Test 1: In the missing sound test, our support rep arrived to chat after a couple of minutes and asked if we had driver discs for our computer. We didn’t (who does?). But he correctly went to the Device Manager to spot the missing devices anyway, reinstalling them there directly. The fix took only a few minutes.

However, the tech ended with a spiel on iYogi’s other support options. And we were a little annoyed by a follow-up phone call a half-hour later, attempting to sell us on a second year of support. A second call from the iYogi telephone number came 10 minutes later, but no one was on the line. Rating: 8 (out of 10)

iYogi uses a widget that sits on your desktop.

Test 2: We began with a wait of a little under 3 minutes. Fixing the display resolution should have been easy, taking only a few seconds, but our tech rep poked around in the ATI Catalyst control panel and even ran through the ClearType Tuner wizard to try to fix it. And he blew it when he was warned by ClearType that the screen’s native resolution wasn’t enabled, skipping past it and asking us, in the end, “Are [the icons] okay now?” We said no, and eventually he dug back in, finally correcting the resolution. Total time elapsed on a 30-second fix: 20 minutes. Rating: 4

Test 3: Our indexing issue began ominously with the technician boldly informing us that the Windows Start menu can’t find user files. We insisted that this worked on our office PC, and he proceeded to dig into the Start Menu properties. There he enabled the "Search without public folders" option. This doesn’t actually add user files to the index, but it did put user files into search results, through a sort of back door. This worked well enough on our test computer, but as we had a much larger user folder than is on most PCs, searching would have been terribly slow. We complained that results were showing up slowly, but the tech considered the case closed and ended the session. Time elapsed: about 10 minutes. Rating: 4

Overall, iYogi’s technicians did not appear especially talented at solving Windows issues, but they eventually stumbled upon solutions more often than not.

Final Rating: 5

Price: $89/session or $170/year

HiWired offers per-session repair services, but for more than one problem, you’re better off going with the yearly plan. Unfortunately, HiWired’s online checkout system wouldn’t let us register over the Web, and we had to give our credit card information over the phone. We were also baffled when a technician said that we couldn't get a receipt. Despite these red flags, we plowed ahead.

HiWired has its own tech support application called PC Check & Connect, but this did not work until our third round with tech support, at which point they fixed their own app. For the first two rounds, HiWired used LogMeIn Rescue sessions to control our PC, after we called in via phone.

Test 1: After a brief hold, the technician went to the Device Manager and saw the missing drivers, but instead of adding them through Windows, he used a browser to go the manufacturer’s website to try to download drivers for our machine. He asked what model our PC was and we twiddled our thumbs as he tried to find audio drivers online. Eventually he realized that the standard audio drivers included with Windows just needed to be reinstalled. He spent a long time trying to troubleshoot the PC Check & Connect software to no avail, citing a compatibility problem with Windows 7 and Internet Explorer. A lengthy 40 minutes later, we had sound, but still no support app. Rating: 3

Test 2: Our screen resolution repair went smoothly, with the same rep as the previous day. We spent 3 minutes on hold, yet he immediately saw the problem after launching LogMeIn Rescue, fixing it right away. Rating: 9

HiWired's own app didn't work on our PC.

Test 3: This ordeal would have made Sisyphus break down in tears. We were connected via phone to a new technician, who began troubleshooting by creating a dummy text file and verifying the search system couldn’t find it. He said it was an indexing problem, but proceeded to check if the Windows Search service was running, confusing the two (related) issues. When this looked okay, he said he would “check the files” over the next few hours, but did nothing for 40 minutes.

He finally opened, then rebuilt, the index, failing to notice that the Users folder wasn’t showing up there. We still had no fix, and two hours later we were transferred to another technician. He spent several hours installing and running a battery of antispyware apps and testing the speed of our Internet connection. We didn’t have a clue what was going on until hours later, when he declared that “AVG Antivirus was the issue,” and that the problem was “fixed.” He signed off.

We later learned that the new tech was mistakenly told we had a virus. We reexplained the problem, and the tech said he would run some Windows updates and Check Disk. This would take quite a while, he said, so we left the PC on throughout the evening. Eight hours later, another virus scan was running, which we left going overnight. Come morning, the session had expired and the computer had clearly been abandoned with the antivirus app still on-screen.

We reconnected, getting a third technician with an aggravating penchant for attempting to control our PC while we were explaining our issue in the chat window. She blamed the prior tech for misunderstanding the problem. Her lengthy session ranged from checking running services to editing the Registry (seriously) to downloading Windows hotfixes.

She did eventually update the index, but added the entire C and D drives to it instead of just the Users folder. This created a new problem because the index would clearly take hours to rebuild. When results weren’t immediately evident, she restarted the index rebuilding process several times, rebooted into Safe Mode, and ran the Windows System File Checker. Two hours into this session, the problem was finally--mercifully--resolved. Time elapsed: 22 hours. Rating: 1

For the most part, we got the distinct impression that HiWired’s technicians had little idea of what they were doing. The final incident alone was horrifying.

Final Rating: 2

Next: Geek Squad, Support.com

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here

Scheduling Services Showdown: Schedulicity vs. Genbook vs. Appointy

Managing your schedule and booking clients can take up a lot of time that you could otherwise spend serving those clients, or eating lunch. We examined three online booking services that make it easy for clients to book appointments online via your company's website or Facebook page. The three are popular with service-based businesses such as consultants, cosmetologists, and personal trainers.

Each service lets clients pick times that work for them, and then it sends automatic reminders to reduce no-shows. You choose between a solo plan (to support a single owner) or a multiuser plan (to support an unlimited number of staff members who have access only to their own calendar. Since the services function entirely online, there's nothing to install on your computer; and you can access your calendar from any computer that has a browser. Each service also maintains a mobile-friendly website, so you can manage your calendar from a smartphone.

But there's more beneath the surface. Each service has unique features such as promotions, analytics, and the ability to accept prepayments. Which tool is right for your service-based business? Let's take a look.

Since it launched in 2010, 15,000-plus subscribers have booked more than 10 million appointments through Schedulicity across the United States and Canada, making it the largest service in our roundup. Schedulicity is also the most robust, with strong customer-relationship management tools and customizable deals and promotional tools.

Signup and Setup

The straightforward setup process walked me through the steps of creating a profile for my music lessons business, defining the types of lessons I offer (including pricing and duration), and specifying the times that I'm available. During sign-up, a pop-up window offered help from a live chat support team, though I found the steps easy to follow without additional consultation; Schedulicity also has lot of videos and even free webinars.

Calendar Management

You can create a tab for your Facebook page to let clients book services with Schedulicity.Schedulicity provides a ScheduleNow button for your website or Facebook page. A client who wants to schedule an appointment clicks the button and then, with the aid of a pop-up, walks through choosing a service and provider and picking a time from among your open spots--all without leaving the browser or having to install anything. After creating an account with Schedulicity, clients gain access to a personalized scheduling page with one-click rebooking, appointment reminders, and links to cancel or reschedule appointments.

Another option is to add appointments or block out personal time from the management page. When you create a new appointment, you can select from current clients or add a new client, and you can create a one-time appointment or a series of recurring appointments.

You can subscribe to your Schedulicity calendar via Outlook, iCal, or Google calendar. Because the subscribed calendar is read-only, you must make changes from the Schedulicity website.

Client Management

Importing my current client list entailed rearranging my spreadsheet to match the columns that Schedulicity needed, but all of the data imported without error. You can rate each client's reliability, and you can define whether individuals can book appointments online or must contact you to set up an appointment. A client history report shows past bookings, deals, and promotions.

The one thing that Schedulicity won't track is money. Clients can't use the service to pay in advance for services, and you can't use it to keep track of deposits that you may require clients to pay in order to hold a time slot. This limitation isn't a big deal if your policy is for clients to pay at the time that they receive your service, but if you require a deposit to secure a time, you'll have to track that separately.

Deals, Promotions, and Marketing

Schedulicity gives you lots of control over how clients can redeem a deal.Schedulicity lets you send mass email messages to your clients based on various templates, including industry-specific artwork, newsletters, seasonal promotions, and invitations to book or connect online. You can also invite Facebook fans and Twitter followers to check out your online listing and book online.

News media have reported many instances where businesses that use services like Groupon to offer a deal have lost money when overwhelming response to a promotion has forced the company to provide too many discounted services in a day. Schedulicity helps protect your business from this misfortune by letting you set caps on how many times clients can redeem a particular promotion, and on how many discount-claiming clients can schedule a service on a given day.

Price: $19 per month for a single user; $39 per month for 2 to 20 users; personalized business plans are available for larger numbers of users; 30-day free trial

Pros: Clean, easy-to-understand design; robust marketing tools; lots of support documentation

Cons: No money management

Bottom line: Schedulicity is easy to use despite incorporating lots of options, especially in connection with its robust promotional tools.

Next Page: Genbook

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here

Scheduling Services Showdown

Managing your schedule and booking clients can take up a lot of time that you could otherwise spend serving those clients, or eating lunch. We examined three online booking services that make it easy for clients to book appointments online via your company's website or Facebook page. The three are popular with service-based businesses such as consultants, cosmetologists, and personal trainers.

Each service lets clients pick times that work for them, and then it sends automatic reminders to reduce no-shows. You choose between a solo plan (to support a single owner) or a multiuser plan (to support an unlimited number of staff members who have access only to their own calendar. Since the services function entirely online, there's nothing to install on your computer; and you can access your calendar from any computer that has a browser. Each service also maintains a mobile-friendly website, so you can manage your calendar from a smartphone.

But there's more beneath the surface. Each service has unique features such as promotions, analytics, and the ability to accept prepayments. Which tool is right for your service-based business? Let's take a look.

Since it launched in 2010, 15,000-plus subscribers have booked more than10 million appointments through Schedulicity across the United States and Canada, making it the largest service in our roundup. Schedulicity is also the most robust, with strong customer-relationship management tools and customizable deals and promotional tools.

Signup and Setup

The straightforward setup process walked me through the steps of creating a profile for my music lessons business, defining the types of lessons I offer (including pricing and duration), and specifying the times that I'm available. During sign-up, a pop-up window offered help from a live chat support team, though I found the steps easy to follow without additional consultation; Schedulicity also has lot of videos and even free webinars.

Calendar Management

You can create a tab for your Facebook page to let clients book services with Schedulicity.Schedulicity provides a ScheduleNow button for your website or Facebook page. A client who wants to schedule an appointment clicks the button and then, with the aid of a pop-up, walks through choosing a service and provider and picking a time from among your open spots--all without leaving the browser or having to install anything. After creating an account with Schedulicity, clients gain access to a personalized scheduling page with one-click rebooking, appointment reminders, and links to cancel or reschedule appointments.

Another option is to add appointments or block out personal time from the management page. When you create a new appointment, you can select from current clients or add a new client, and you can create a one-time appointment or a series of recurring appointments.

You can subscribe to your Schedulicity calendar via Outlook, iCal, or Google calendar. Because the subscribed calendar is read-only, you must make changes from the Schedulicity website.

Client Management

Importing my current client list entailed rearranging my spreadsheet to match the columns that Schedulicity needed, but all of the data imported without error. You can rate each client's reliability, and you can define whether individuals can book appointments online or must contact you to set up an appointment. A client history report shows past bookings, deals, and promotions.

The one thing that Schedulicity won't track is money. Clients can't use the service to pay in advance for services, and you can't use it to keep track of deposits that you may require clients to pay in order to hold a time slot. This limitation isn't a big deal if your policy is for clients to pay at the time that they receive your service, but if you require a deposit to secure a time, you'll have to track that separately.

Deals, Promotions, and Marketing

Schedulicity gives you lots of control over how clients can redeem a deal.Schedulicity lets you send mass email messages to your clients based on various templates, including industry-specific artwork, newsletters, seasonal promotions, and invitations to book or connect online. You can also invite Facebook fans and Twitter followers to check out your online listing and book online.

News media have reported many instances where businesses that use services like Groupon to offer a deal have lost money when overwhelming response to a promotion has forced the company to provide too many discounted services in a day. Schedulicity helps protect your business from this misfortune by letting you set caps on how many times clients can redeem a particular promotion, and on how many discount-claiming clients can schedule a service on a given day.

Price: $19 per month for a single user; $39 per month for 2 to 20 users; personalized business plans are available for larger numbers of users; 30-day free trial

Pros: Clean, easy-to-understand design; robust marketing tools; lots of support documentation

Cons: No money management

Bottom line: Schedulicity is easy to use despite incorporating lots of options, especially in connection with its robust promotional tools.

Next Page: Genbook

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here

Carrier Support Showdown: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Tested

Cellphone shoppers generally judge wireless carriers based on their networks’ speed, size and—above all—reliability. But reliability extends to customer service. Will your carrier be able to help when something goes wrong? And can you get your questions answered in a timely fashion?

With that in mind, we performed a survey of the country’s four largest service providers—AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless—to determine which offers the best service and which could use some lessons in customer appreciation.

To get a complete view of each carrier’s customer support options, we visited two of their brick-and-mortar stores, placed two phone calls to their tech-support hotlines and tried to connect with them via their Web services. For our tests, we used purchased phones (instead of review units) to help ensure we received genuine user experiences.

Our test beds included an AT&T Motorola Atrix 4G, a Sprint EVO 4G, a T-Mobile G2x and a Verizon Wireless Motorola Droid X. To ensure our testing was fair, we posed the same three questions to each carrier’s service representatives: “How can I tether my phone to my notebook,” “How can I upload photos from my phone to Facebook?” and “How do I improve my phone’s battery life?”

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

Evernote vs. OneNote: Note-Taking Apps Showdown

Among the many options for storing information digitally, the biggest players in the note-taking software market are OneNote and Evernote. These applications come in handy for taking notes, making lists, managing projects, storing and organizing information, and sharing it with others.

OneNote has been part of Microsoft’s Office suite since 2003. It emulates the way a traditional binder works, with pages of notes organized into sections and stored in notebooks. OneNote is unique in that it allows you to add content anywhere on the page. Sadly, it is not included in the Mac version of Office, but Microsoft has released mobile apps for iPhone and iPad.

Evernote opened to the public in final form in 2008, and it has since grown quickly to 20 million users. Evernote can store all kinds of information in notes, including Web clippings and attached files as well as audio and video notes. With desktop apps for Windows and OSX, full-featured mobile apps for Android, iOS, Blackberry, and WebOS, and a strong Web app, Evernote’s best feature may be its cross-platform compatibility. It’s also free, with extra features for users who sign up for a $45/year Premium account.

Both Evernote and OneNote cover the basics of organizing and storing information, but each goes about it in a different way. I have both programs installed on my desktop, laptop, Windows tablet, iPad, and Android phone (I do have to use a third-party program to access OneNote on the Android phone), and both applications play an active role in my writing and teaching.

Basic Text Notes

Microsoft's ribbon interface (left) has more features but looks more cluttered than Evernote's text editor.Text notes are the most basic form of note-taking, and the format you’re most likely to use if you carry a laptop to meetings. Both programs handle text as a basic word processor does, with rich text editing options.

Evernote's text editing interface is clean and easy to navigate, with options similar to what you would find in a Web editor like Google Docs. When you start a new text note in Evernote, you’ll just get a blank space to write in, but rather than being divided into pages like a Word document, the text appears as one giant block.

OneNote's options are very similar to Microsoft's Word, including the ribbon interface. If you're used to Word, finding options in OneNote should be similar, but the look is more cluttered than Evernote's interface. One major difference with OneNote’s layout is that text is contained in boxes, which you can move anywhere on the page. You can drag and reorganize your thoughts around the page without having to cut and paste.

Winner: Evernote is the better tool for basic text notes due to its cleaner interface. If you need more complex formatting, OneNote would be the better choice.

Multimedia Notes

Sometimes you need to add more to your notes than words alone--a chart or an image, say, or even an audio recording of the meeting. Both OneNote and Evernote let you add images, audio, video, and files including Word documents or PDFs to your notes.

OneNote does audio and video, and you can place those files anywhere in the note.In Evernote, files, audio, and video are added as attachments to notes, while images are added inline. You can add images from your computer, or take a new snapshot with your webcam. Audio attachments are limited to 2 hours in length if you’re a free user, and 4 hours for Premium users. Video is limited to Premium users only.

With OneNote, you can add multimedia items anywhere within a note. Starting an audio or video recording will create an icon for the file in the note, and selecting that icon will bring up playback controls. Images also appear in line with your notes, and you can resize and reposition them. When you drag a file into your note, you choose between inserting a link to the original file, inserting a copy of the file onto the page, or inserting the file as a printout so you can read it directly from within OneNote and even add notes on top. All of these elements are independent on the page and can be moved around separately.

Winner: Evernote is great for grabbing quick audio recordings if you just have your phone with you, but OneNote syncs your notes to the audio or video playback and can even index spoken words for later search, making it a better reference tool for longer recordings.

Ink Notes

Ink notes in both OneNote and Evernote.Sometimes handwriting notes as if you had pen and paper is the most comfortable way to store information. It can be especially handy in a meeting to have a tablet flat on the desk and write with a pen, rather than having a laptop open, creating a barrier between you and the other attendees. Unlike pen and paper, "ink notes" in either Evernote or OneNote are indexed and searchable just like notes you’ve typed in.

With Evernote, you can choose to create an ink note to take handwritten notes, but that's all you'll be able to do with it. Ink cannot be mixed with any other type of content using the desktop application, and you cancreate ink notes only with the Windows desktop application. You’ll be able to view your ink notes on other platforms, but not create new ones. Some mobile apps that sync with Evernote also support ink notes, like the Notes app on the HTC Flyer tablet, but those are third-party.

OneNote has a far more robust inking system thanks to Microsoft's years of work with tablet PCs and handwriting input. You can place ink anywhere in a note, including on top of documents you have printed in. The ink is contained in a box like text, and can be selected and moved anywhere on the page. You can leave your ink as ink, or have it converted to text. OneNote also has more color and pen-size options including highlighters and shapes. One of my favorite tools in OneNote is the ability to add blank space between things you've already written--you don't have to try cramming some added thought in between two lines, you can just create more space.

OneNote comes with a variety of templates.

Winner: OneNote wins hands down on handling ink. If you like writing by hand or need to mark up documents, OneNote is the clear choice.

Templates

Templates are great for a variety of situations. Meeting notes, calendars, to-do lists, charts, forms, and reports are all much easier to create if you already have a template in place. OneNote comes with a variety of templates, and you can also make new templates from any existing page. You can also choose from a variety of lined and ruled backgrounds for taking handwritten notes. Evernote will give you a blank page for typed notes, or lined yellow paper for ink notes. It offers no other options.

Winner: OneNote wins this one by default. The best you can do with Evernote is creating lists with checkboxes for To-Do items.

Next Page: mobile tools, collaboration, pricing, and conclusion...

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