Shadowgate review: This castle still wants to kill you, 25 years later

Shadowgate (2014) Shadowgate is unapologetically retro, bringing the difficulty of the original Shadowgate into 2014 and barely softening the blow in the process. It's fantastic.

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"You have chosen poorly, young Jair," says the screen, flashing an image of grinning Death. I hate him. I hate his bony little skeleton face so much. I've seen it at least ten times in the last hour and a half, each time listening to his snide comment about my demise.

I've been burned to a crisp by a dragon. I've been shot by an arrow from the dark. I've had a rickety wooden bridge burned from under me. Even nonlethal occurrences might as well be—I've heard the screams of a banshee and come under a curse, I've seen an enormous spider frozen to the ceiling, I've gazed upon the face of a demon.

And ever Death mocks me. "Tis a sad thing that your adventures have ended here," he says, laughing.

But they haven't ended. Not really. I load my latest quicksave again and try something new. Maybe this time I won't die. Maybe I'll solve another piece of the massive puzzle that is Castle Shadowgate.

Unlikely, though.

Shadowgate is impossibly hard, and I mean that as a compliment (I think).

For the uninitiated, Shadowgate is a remake of—you guessed it—Shadowgate, a 1987 point-and-click adventure designed for the Apple Macintosh and ported to basically every extant platform at the time: the Amiga, Apple II, Atari ST, DOS, and even the NES. You're an adventurer named Jair, and you've been called by the wizard Lakmir to free Castle Shadowgate, which has fallen to an unspeakable evil named Talimar the Black. It's a fantasy-style dungeon crawler of an adventure game, with you exploring old tombs and wielding swords and the like.

And it's hard, in the way that only late-80s/early-90s adventure games can be hard. Shadowgate doesn't even try to hide it, wrapping itself in delightfully obtuse holdovers from the olden days of adventure games.

Contextual commands? Get out of here with your newfangled ways—Shadowgate uses the antiquated "Look," "Go," "Eat," "Use," et cetera system that fell out of favor years ago. Using an item is entirely different from Looking at an item is entirely different from Eating said item, and Shadowgate expects you to know when to use each command appropriately—or it kills you.

I'm not joking. One of the most famous encounters in Shadowgate brings you face-to-face with a dragon. You have one turn—one—to notice the shield lying on the ground and Use The Shield On Yourself or else the dragon breathes fire and you die. That's it.

Shadowgate has tuned the difficulty a bit by adding easier tiers, but even these just allow you to futz your way through some of those puzzles for a few more turns. The middle difficulty tier, for instance? You have two turns to equip the shield instead of one before the dragon roasts and (presumably) eats you.

How magnanimous.

It's hard. I cannot repeat that enough. There are going to be people who get stuck after playing the game for less than half an hour, clicking everything because the game doesn't highlight what items you can interact with.

And yet for all that old-school clunkiness, for all the torture it puts you through, I genuinely enjoyed Shadowgate. Puzzles tend to make sense in a fantastical Dungeons & Dragons manner, with few notable instances of Adventure Game Logic. The game forces you to pixel-hunt a bit too much, maybe, but it's in keeping with its retro roots—this is the absurdly difficult, painful adventure game that fans of Shadowgate Kickstarted.

The pain of pixel-hunting is somewhat assuaged by the fact that Shadowgate is absolutely gorgeous. Each new room in Shadowgate is a treat. A treat that's trying to kill you, like a poisoned lollipop or something. From damp dungeons to dusty tombs and lavish towers, the hand-painted art style implies as much as it shows and would look at home in a Dungeons & Dragons manual. It's perfect for conveying Castle Shadowgate and its often-strange trappings.

Recognizing the strength of the artwork, the developers have included my new favorite adventure game feature—Immersive Mode. Press the default toggle key, F11, and the entire UI fades out—the miscellaneous clutter, the list of commands, the flavor text. You get an unobstructed view of the artwork, while mousing over any of the invisible UI elements will bring it back momentarily. It's a fantastic way to play the game once you've memorized the various command hotkeys and want to appreciate the spectacular views Castle Shadowgate provides.

The game also includes a "Retro Mode" that attempts to (playfully) emulate some aspects of the NES Shadowgate—like, for instance, the ability to swap the (fantastic) modern score to the original NES music, done by Hiroyuki Masuno.

One last time, in case you missed it: Shadowgate is hard. There's no getting around it. Even if you're a veteran of the original, you'll most likely get stuck occasionally considering the developers switched or tweaked most of the puzzles. You're going to die. You're going to be frustrated. You're going to have no clue what you should be doing, wandering at random between rooms.

If that doesn't sound like fun? That's fine! Give this one a wide berth.

This is exactly what fans of the original wanted, though. This 2014 version of Shadowgate is really just the original Shadowgate with prettier graphics—it's unapologetically difficult and occasionally clunky, but all the more charming as a result.

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Tackk review: Out of beta, still an excellent way to create simple websites

Tackk If you think you can't create your own website, Tackk will help you change your mind.

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Tackk, the best way I know of to create one-page websites, has emerged from beta full of new features and surprises. It's the same Tackk you know and love (or should, if you don't already), except it's bigger and better. The platform is now easier to use, offers more personalization, and, in keeping up with the times, is also much more social.

In a nutshell, you can use Tackk to create good-looking websites for any occasion, as long as you don't need more than one page. You need not a shred of coding skills, and even design skills are almost unnecessary. This does not mean all Tackks look the same, though. Tackk's found the golden way to ensure all pages are beautiful, while giving you just the right amount of decision and personalization options.

All embed options are in the same place, and include a contact form, a payment widget, and more.

If you've used Tackk before, you won't be disoriented by the new design. Most options remain where they were, with the addition of a more streamlined creation process, taking you through the steps of designing your page. You can now choose from whole color palettes rather than just one base color, and the embedding options for videos and music now support additional services such as Rdio, 8Tracks and TED. One option I found missing is Instagram embeds, which are nowhere to be found in this version.

The highlight of the new Tackk, however, is in the social features. Unlike the beta version, which included very basic profile details and no social options to speak of, the new Tackk adds the community to the mix. Your new profile includes a photo, a short bio, and links to your personal website and social accounts. You can follow other users and like their Tackks, as well as share Tackks using a new and improved sharing widget. You will now have a username on Tackk, derived from the email you signed up with, which you can change through the settings if you wish. If you don't like all this social stuff, however, just make your Tackks private and forget about it.

The new Tackk profiles are much more elaborate, helping you promote your personal portfolio of Tackks.

A new tagging system makes categorizing and finding Tackks much easier. When searching for Tackks in the public Tackkboard, try searching for a tag or multiple tags to zoom into pages you're interested in. Aside from following users, you can also follow tags or combinations of tags, and remain updated on any new Tackks created under these categories.

When you search for Tackks, it's easy to find out more about them or share them with one click.

No website or service is complete these days without mobile support, and Tackk is no different. The new Tackk's design is completely responsive, letting you easily browse and create Tackks using your mobile or tablet. Tackk shines on bigger screens, especially when creating pages, but it's nice to have the option to work on your Tackks from anywhere. The new Tackk is still as awesome as always. It's still the best way there is to create single-page website. And now, it's a community too. Hurry up, before everyone hears about it.

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Apache OpenOffice 4.0 review: New features, easier to use, still free

Apache OpenOffice is a full suite of office applications: word processor, database, spreadsheet, presentation, and graphics. Each of them is full-featured and robust. Though not always matching Microsoft Office in terms of maximum bells and whistles, each application goes far beyond the basics in its class. Not bad for a free suite.

You can start designing forms for databases entry with an auto-generated form, then customize it extensively.

Apache OpenOffice is a long-standing competitor to Microsoft Office, with the roots of its code going back over ten years. It is a free, open-source product under the auspices of the well-known Apache Software Foundation, with regular updates, maintenance, and bug fixes.

Like LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org, Apache OpenOffice "forked" from Oracle OpenOffice (which grew from StarOffice) in 2010. The sidebar interface was based on Lotus Symphony, which was donated to Apache Software in 2012. Despite the multiple code inputs, Apache OpenOffice feels smooth and cohesive—important in an office suite.

The individual applications in Apache OpenOffice have a good level of integration. The menu and toolbar for each window are relevant to the current document, but you can always go to the "File" menu and create a new document of another type, which will then open in its own window. Including information from other applications, such as database rows in a Writer document, is not particularly difficult.

Sadly, faux-Victorian prose is not within editorial guidelines for reviews.

Writer offers a long list of functions: document templates, frames, mail merge, a style manager, section-based headers and footers, and much more. The sidebar docking feature introduced in Apache OpenOffice 4.0 is very useful if you have a wide monitor, as it's easy to place multiple panels so that all controls are visible and accessible.

The layout and design options are flexible, but not quite at the level of Word 2007. For example, if you select a 'banded' table style, and insert or delete rows, the banding does not automatically adjust; you must select the table and re-apply the style.

Tracking doughnut consumption is perhaps the best use for any spreadsheet.

Base provides a functional set of database design and formatting tools. Some of the interface elements, such as query creation, are not entirely intuitive. There were some oddities that are sensible in retrospect, but don't call themselves out to a user: For example, switching a text field from "single line" to "multi line with formatting" disconnected it from the underlying database field (a long text field), because formatted text requires a binary field. I'd have appreciated a warning or error message.

This points out one of the flaws with Apache OpenOffice: The documentation is sparse, and not well-aimed at non-technical users. The information on some features is barely more than the feature's name and self-evident function. The definition for the "Criteria" field of the query editor is "Specifies the criteria by which the content of the data field should be filtered," with no examples or guidelines. Writing code is more fulfilling and interesting, as an end in itself, than writing documentation, so this is a common issue with open source software.

General interface responsiveness in Apache OpenOffice is good, though there's a very slight lagginess. Generally, AOO obeys standard Windows OS conventions. The look and feel are closer to XP than to Vista or 7—and leagues away from 8, for which it's tested but not yet certified—which many will consider a feature. I experienced no redraw issues, artifacting, or other oddities.

Overall, I like Apache OpenOffice. The feature set includes what I expect in an office suite,  and the developers have made a strong effort to make switching between applications feel smooth and intuitive. A Windows-only user who already has access to recent versions of Office will probably not be tempted unless they genuinely prefer open source for personal or financial reasons…but those who have no office suite, those who need a multi-platform (Windows, Mac OS, and *nix), and those who have only older version of Office will all find something worth checking out.

The strength of the individual applications is such that Apache OpenOffice is fine even if you only need a single one of the components. You won't sacrifice significant functionality. Given that it's free, it's hard to argue against at least trying it out.

Note: The Download button takes you to the developer's site, where you can download the latest version of this open-source software.

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Acronis True Image 2014 review: Still powerful and feature-rich, now easier to use

You might think Windows has you covered with its own imaging/system backup, but there's still a need for programs such as Acronis True Image. Windows' built-in utility is extremely limited and reacts badly to new hardware. True Image handles bare-metal restore and diverse hardware without hiccup. Owners of recent versions of True Image probably won't find anything particularly compelling about this latest rendition, as only the online service is really new, but the new interface is a breeze to use. It also takes Acronis Backup to the cloud for the first time.

Acronis True Image 2014's new backup pane is simplicity itself.

If there's one thing that stands out about the latest version of True Image 2014, it's how friendly it is. Gone are the poorly rendered dialogs and oddly phrased instructions. The interface is clean, efficient, and simple. You can perform a backup without answering a confusing stream of questions. All the options advanced users want—including password protection, sector-by-sector backup (the program defaults to backing up only occupied sectors),  pre- and post-run commands, splitting (or not) of files, and validation—are still present. They're simply hidden away in a very cleanly organized dialog.

True Image 2014 can perform file and image backups, one-off backups, multiple tracked backups, incremental, differential, scheduling, notifications, and more. There's really no imaging trick from the last fifteen years that the program doesn't have in its bag. In addition, if your laptop lacks a boot-time recovery option, True Image will provide it. The SecureZone and Try and Decide options are still available, and there's a full list of secure erase options. You can even convert Windows backups to Acronis's format, and vice-versa.

Acronis True Image 2014's friendly new interface and vibe are major improvements to the once obtuse GUI.

In keeping with modern times, there's an online backup option in Acronis's own Acronis Cloud. You get one year of 5GB (enough only for data, not system backups) for free with the program, but after a year, or for more storage, it'll cost $10 per year for 5GB, $30 a year for 50GB, $40 for 125GB, and $50 for 125GB. That's highly competitive pricing.

Every imaging or backup program should feature the ability to create disaster recovery boot media—ideally, both CD (for older systems), and USB flash drive. The ponderousness of TI's older boot media forced me to abandon previous versions of the program, as it wasn't good for older, memory-challenged PCs. R-Drive Image is better for those. True Image 2014's rescue disc still requires 512MB of system memory, and the new interface isn't implemented, making it less friendly that the Windows UI. However, Acronis provides the means for adding it to a Windows PE boot disc, though it's not as simple a process as it should be.

Though they aren't available until you ask, True Image's options are advanced and myriad.

If  If If If you're more than a version or two back on True Image, the 2014 version is well worth a look.you're new to backup products, simply know that it really doesn't get any better than Acronis True Image for the average user, though I recommend R-Drive Image for pros.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

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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Review: 64-bit PaintShop Pro X6 is faster, but its interface is still clunky

For most professionals, Adobe Photoshop CS is the only photo editing tool worthy of consideration. Casual snapshooters can choose from a wealth of free and Web-based editors. For everyone in the middle—photo enthusiasts, serious shooters, and even pros dissatisfied with Adobe's new Creative Cloud—there's Corel's PaintShop Pro.

A viable Photoshop alternative for 20 years, PaintShop Pro offers 90 percent of Adobe's features for a tenth the price. In PaintShop Pro X6, Corel offers almost nothing new...which isn't such a bad thing. With a few exceptions, this upgrade is all about improved performance.

At long last, PaintShop Pro is a 64-bit application. That should mean faster processing and the ability to work with larger and more numerous images. Corel offers a slew of benchmarks to show that X6 runs faster than its predecessors, and in practice I found it to run notably quicker.

PaintShop Pro’s Edit workspace is essentially unchanged from previous editions, but that doesn't diminish its power, including layer and mask support and a bevy of selection tools.

Using my own stopwatch, I found that on the same PC, X6 shaves a few seconds off the startup time. Images—both JPG and RAW—load about 10 percent faster, and X6 catalogs folders and displays images more than twice as fast. Everything is snappier, giving the impression that you're at the helm of a tightly run ship.

The ship needs a new quartermaster, though. PaintShop Pro's relatively unchanged interface puts efficient design second to displaying lots and lots of tools. You access the three workspaces—Manage, Adjust, and Editing—via tabs at the top of the screen.

The Manage workspace makes it easy to review and edit metadata, as well as index your photos into "collections" for faster searching and browsing.

The Manage workspace is sort of like a light box mode. You inspect photos, review metadata, and enter ratings and keywords there. Although this view is perhaps the most crowded and confusing, it's all highly configurable. You can turn various panes, palettes, and toolbars off and rearrange things to your liking.

You can avoid the Manage view entirely, if you like: The program doesn't force you to import photos into a proprietary library, so you can always navigate through existing folders. If you don't use Corel's "collections," though, you're missing out. They let you tag photos for easier retrieval, and they load more quickly as well.

They also give you access to a face recognition mode, but it's perhaps more trouble than it's worth. Among other difficulties, browsing photos by people is difficult because you see tightly cropped faces only, not the entire image.

For a fast, lightweight editor, head over to the Adjust workspace, which houses about a dozen common tools Corel deems useful for lightweight editing and as go-to tools for novices. Here again, though, Corel's interface instincts strike a sour note. Some tools, such as cropping, red eye, and straightening appear in toolbar form under the histogram, but you have to access Smart Photo Fix, white balance, fill light, and others from a textual list below. There's no apparent rhyme or reason for why it's organized this way.

For lightweight editing, you can stay in the simpler Adjust workspace, which has a surprising range of tools—from exposure adjustments and Instagram-style effects to a clone brush.

That said, the tools are great. You could spend most of your time in this simplified interface, especially if all you need is to touch up digital photos with some exposure adjustments, noise reduction, and the occasional tourist removal via a clone brush.  This is also the easiest place to reach the hundred-odd Instagram-like Instant Effects.

The Editing workspace is where PaintShop Pro most closely resembles Photoshop. It's chock-full of layer support, selection tools, levels and curves controls, and even the ability to use industry standard Adobe Photoshop plug-ins.

There are relatively few "big ideas" that PaintShop Pro doesn't deliver on. Not only does the program include a very serviceable High Dynamic Range feature for combining a series of photos shot with a range of exposures, it can split one RAW image into three, and then reassemble them into an HDR shot. The effect isn't nearly as good as a true HDR, of course—PSP can't magically extend the dynamic range beyond what the camera sensor captured—but the effect can be convincing with the right source material.

Emphasize your subject with some depth-of-field style blurring.

Jealous of Photoshop's context-aware fill? You won't find that here, but you can use the Smart Cleaver to cut out objects and shrink the image as if they were never there. Depth of Field lets you blur the background with a few clicks. And  Photo Merge combines multiple photos of the same scene so you can keep the best shot of each person in a group. Just one surprising omission: There's still no panoramic stitching tool.

Good luck memorizing where to find these tools, though. They're scattered across multiple menus as if the wind blew them there.

Aside from the snappier performance, you'll have to look closely to notice the handful of differences from X5. I particularly like the new Auto Selection tool: Just draw a box around something in your photo, and PSP automatically selects it. You can then fine-tune the selection as usual.

The HDR compositor can accept multiple photos with a variety of exposures, or just one image that it splits apart using an exposure bias that you specify.

PaintShop Pro is currently available only as an upgrade to existing customers. It comes in two flavors: PaintShop Pro X6 ($60 upgrade) and X6 Ultimate ($80 upgrade). Ultimate includes a few extras, including the standalone FaceFilter program for editing portraits. On September 4, anyone can buy X6 for $80 and X6 Ultimate for $100.

A useful upgrade at a palatable price

If you're seeking an alternative to Photoshop, Corel PaintShop Pro is an unquestionable bargain. Unless you program Photoshop Actions in your sleep, you won't be missing much, if anything.

Whether you should upgrade from X5 is a trickier question. Casual photo tweakers probably won't notice much of a difference. But if you are currently frustrated by X5's 32-bit limitations for managing a large number of photos in your workspace, stepping up to X6 will save you considerable time.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

Dave Johnson is a writer and photographer who has covered technology for magazines such as PCWorld and Wired. He is currently the Editorial Director for eHow.com's Tech channel. Dave is the author of How to Do Everything with Your Digital Camera, and over a dozen other books.
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Review: Slender: The Arrival expands on the original, but it's still not enough

Slender: The Arrival is the long-promised, full-sized commercial follow-up to the popular Slender: The Eight Pages free minigame. While the original was a hit with Slenderman fans, it was just a proof-of-concept piece with acknowledged gaps in mechanics, locations, and narrative. Blue Isle Studios has addressed all of these shortcomings in the sequel, but fundamental problems in both design and execution remain.

Environments are more immersive in Blue Isle's second Slender game, but the hardware hit is high.

Since Slenderman's debut as a creepy supernatural stalker in a series of photoshopped fakelore pictures, the noodle-armed menace has become the horror mascot of the hipster age. Slender appears in countless YouTube videos, social media feeds, and blog stories, snatching postmodernist hearts.

The mythos is realized here as a first-person, stealth survival game with adventure story elements juxtaposed as cutscenes and clue items uncovered along the way. The core "run around with a flashlight" mechanic from Slender: The Eight Pages remains, but enjoys substantial improvements. The controls still consist of WASD and mouse, but default movement rates feel faster this time around. Environments are more varied and rendered in considerably higher detail. In addition to wandering the dark woods, we are treated to ransacked houses, abandoned mines, creepy shacks and flaming forests. There's even a remake of the original game hidden as an Easter egg in the first level.

Reduce Shadow Quality, Motion Blur, and SSAO for higher frame rates on modest hardware.

The story is considerably more detailed in Slender: The Arrival, with a defined narrative and characters to help elevate the suspense and surprises beyond jump scares and foot-chases. Blue Isle has overhauled the opponents as well. In addition to more evolved AI for Slenderman, other threats are woven into the story, and defensive tactics with the flashlight mix up the challenge for players when things get dicey. It's nice to have something to do other than run away. Tasks revamps show less innovation however, with page collection reskinned as switch-flipping or canister retrieval.

This illustrates the fundamental problem with The Arrival: a pathological refusal to take risks with an already conservative design. Slenderman's stories have rejected standard narrative forms since his first blurry image was posted, distorting reality and fiction to create a genuinely creepy atmosphere with minimal narrative elements and maximum emotional impact. Trying to capture that feeling with an off-the-rack selection of canned gaming elements makes Slender: The Arrival seem more like a cash-in than contribution. Like a lunchbox of your favorite movie villain, it's kind of cool but seems to miss the point.

The fuzzy, blank face of doom means death…or…something.

At $10, this is a hard sell. These Unity engine-based environments are more impressive than the originals, but exact a steep hardware price for their modest fidelity. Laptop play proved difficult on an AMD A10-based system, where mid- and low-range settings produced choppy framerates in the high teens. Mobile users will need beefy discrete graphics cards to get smooth gameplay. Desktop systems fared better, but you'll need a gaming rig to enjoy the experience properly. Office computers won't cut it.

Charlie and the piano in the main house are the keys to the first level's Easter egg.

This leaves Slender: The Arrival in a lonely place. It's better than the original, but it lacks that title's simplicity and focus, not to mention its free price. The extras help liven up the action, but not so much that the game is transformed into a new experience. Slender fans will enjoy what is certainly the most polished game devoted to the mythos to date, but the fact remains that when it comes to gaming, Slenderman's true potential remains lurking in the shadows.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can pruchase the latest version of the software.

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10 Best Windows 7 Notebooks You Can Still Buy

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Galaxy Tab 10.1 Still Not as ‘Cool’ as iPad, But Apple Must Post Apology

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15 Current Technologies We’ll Still Be Using in 2030

Back when I was growing up in the 1970s, we fully expected that, by 2012, we’d all be driving flying cars to our condos on the moon where robotic butlers awaited, ready to bring us the cure for cancer from the bathroom first-aid kit. How’s all of that working out? Sure, we now have faster, smaller computers, smartphones that talk back to you, and smart TVs, but in so many areas of technology the pace of change is slower than Windows Vista booting off a floppy disk.

A few months ago, I wrote an article about 15 technologies that will be gone by the time my infant son is old enough to use them. However, barring a zombie apocalypse, there are plenty of mainstays that my son will still be using when he enters college in 2030.

Though voice recognition, handwriting recognition and gesture control will all become more accurate and popular in the next two decades, my son will be typing his term papers like his dad and grandfather did before him. Until mind-control text entry becomes ubiquitous, typing will remain the most accurate method for composing and editing text. We just don’t speak the same way that we write.

Though physical keyboards are in danger of becoming extinct on phones and tablets, their virtual equivalents will live on. On larger form factors like notebooks, the feel of real plastic keys will not be surpassed. Whether virtual or real, the QWERTY layout, which first appeared in 1878, will continue to dominate.

Read More: 5 Things to Look For in Your Next Notebook Keyboard

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10 Outdated Gadgets You Can Still Buy Today

Obsolescence is a measure of tech progress.  That’s why the gadgets we couldn’t imagine living without ten years ago – that old Walkman, your black brick of a beeper, and camera with multiple rolls of film – are laughably out-of-date today. Yet oddly, some products which ought to be dead and buried are still being actively manufactured and sold as new. Believe it or not, you can still walk or log into a store and buy a new cassette boom box to use for your breakdancing routine. 

Sprint recently revealed it would be offering the Lenovo IdeaPad S205s WiMAX mini notebook for $199.99 on a two-year contract, the bizarre announcement that spurred this list. The company just affirmed weeks ago that it was done with WiMAX phones, but evidently it thinks WiMAX notebooks stand a whole class apart.

In case you’ve always wanted a subsidized notebook that uses an archaic wireless standard, or you fancy the idea of being stuck with the device for two years, here’s your chance. Hiding beneath the no-frills 11.6-inch (1366x768) display, a 1.33 GHz dual-core Intel U5600 processor runs the show, and the machine comes with 2GB of RAM and 250GB of storage onboard. You can grab the IdeaPad S205s right now, either in-store or at Sprint’s website.

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DisplayMate: New iPad’s Display Bests Competition, but Still Room for Improvement

Over at DisplayMate, Dr. Raymond M. Soneira has published a pretty thorough evaluation of the new iPad’s 2048 x 1536 Retina display—and the verdict is that it’s pretty darn impressive.

Soneira compared the latest iPad to the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4 (which, incidentally, apparently outperforms the iPhone 4S on the screen front) by running the devices through tests for screen reflections, brightness, viewing angles, colors and intensities, running time on battery and more. The results? The new iPad’s display is leaps and bounds better than what you’ll find on the iPad 2, along with virtually all other tablets on the market.

The new iPad’s screen stands out especially for its improved sharpness and color saturation. When it comes to power consumption, the iPhone 4's display guzzles less energy, but that hardly means it offers a superior viewing experience.

The bottom line: The new iPad’s display is first-in-class, but DisplayMate sees room for improvement with all mobile screens. Automatic brightness, screen reflectance, the ambient light sensor and more could all get better according to the organization, but then we’d hardly expect Apple’s latest tablet to be the end-all, be-all in display technology, would we?

via DisplayMate

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Google Chrome: Still a Strong All-Around Browser

Chrome's minimalist design isn't eye-catching, but its lean toolbar leaves more room for viewing Web pages. And what Chrome lacks in flashiness, it more than makes up for in performance. Google's browser really shone in our JavaScript test, leaving its competitors in the dust. JavaScript is used in many popular websites--Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, etc.--because it makes those sites more immediately responsive and those JavaScript heavy pages will perform better in Chrome. The browser also performed admirably in our speed test, fully loading an image-heavy page in just over five seconds.

Along with impressive performance, Google's browser has some other useful tricks up its sleeve. For starters, tabs are run as separate processes so that if one crashes, it doesn't take the entire browser down with it. If your wanderings take you to a foreign language Web site, Chrome will recognize the language and offer to translate it for you in a matter of seconds. The translations, which are powered by Google Translate, are not always completely accurate--but they can be helpful in giving you a basic idea on what the page is about. Chrome is one of the most secure browsers on this list because it is sandboxed: The plug-ins Chrome uses are limited to accessing information only within the browser itself and cannot read information from other areas on your computer. Sandboxing allows Chrome to prevent malware that uses plug-in exploits from spreading through your PC.

Mobile users will be glad to know that if you own an Android phone or tablet running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), you can sync your Chrome bookmarks and web history to your mobile devices.

You can customize Chrome with web apps, themes, and extensions to fit your preferences. Chrome has a built-in web store that makes it easy to search for and install add-ons to the browser. Add-ons range from simple things, like an Evernote plug-in, all the way up to full games like Angry Birds or Bastion. And, unlike in Firefox, you don’t need to restart your browser every time you install a new extension or app.

Still, Chrome lacks an integrated RSS reader, so you'll need to come up with your own solution if you subscribe to multiple RSS feeds.

Note: The Downloads button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

--Megan Geuss

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Verizon Says 4G Restored, Service Still Spotty

For the fourth time in the last three months, Verizon Wireless’ 4G LTE network has suffered a service outage. Verizon Wireless spokesman, Tom Pica, said the outage was brief and that service has since been restored.

We tested the network from our New York office using the Speedtest.net app on our Droid RAZR Maxx and. We got a decent but unspectacular average download speed of 9.4 Mbps. Upload speeds were far lower, reaching just 1.5 Mpbs. During out initial testing, the phone managed 12.9 Mbps down and 8.8 Mbps up.

According to Verizon spokesperson Brenda Raney, the network outage was limited to Verizon’s 4G service and did not impact 3G or voice networks. However, several users reported that they were unable to establish a 3G connection with Verizon. In an interview with Bloomberg, Pica said complaints from New York area residents began at around 6:30 a.m. today.

Verizon has been forced to cop to a series of network issues in the past three months. In December alone, Big Red’s 4G network went down as many as three times. Most of those outages, however, lasted just a few hours before full connectivity was restored.

Verizon’s 4G LTE service has been the fastest of the four major carriers and generally the most reliable. In fact, the company took the top spot in our 2011 Nationwide 4G Showdown. But with AT&T getting more aggressive with its 4G LTE rollout, Verizon will need to figure out a way to keep outages to a minimum.

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Labor Activist: Apple Best at Auditing Factories, Still Not Doing Enough

Involuntary Labor: Apple discovered 17 facilities that required their workers to pay excessive recruitment fees, effectively forcing them to work off these debts as indentured servants. The company says it terminated business with one repeat offender and required the rest to reimburse workers for any fees that exceeded Apple’s limits, a total of $3.3 million.Underage Labor: Auditors discovered 19 cases of underage workers at five facilities in 2011, though 13 of those were workers who had either left or aged since their hires. Apple says it required its suppliers to “support the young workers’ return to school.”Lack of Protective Gear: The company found 58 facilities where workers either lacked the proper protective gear, weren’t using the gear, or didn’t know how to use the gear. Apple says it required the facilities to educate the workers and supervisors about the importance of protective gear.Poor Emergency Preparedness: 99 facilities were in some form of non-compliance with fire prevention standards.Too Many Hours: 93 facilities had more than 50-percent of their workers exceeding the 60-hour weekly limit on work time. Apple hired a consultant to help suppliers manage their workers’ time better.Explosions: This wasn’t much of a disclosure, since explosions at two Apple plants were public knowledge before the report, but the company said it has changed its rules about working with toxic dust, the source of the fires.

By comparison, HP’s detailed audit-findings page, which does not yet include information from 2011, only shows a vague percentage of worldwide suppliers who were in conformance with standards categories like “child labor avoidance” and “freely chosen employment,” without providing specific numbers of violations and remedies taken. Dell provides a list of its top suppliers and lists the labor standards it follows, including international conventions like the Electronic Industry Code of Conduct (EICC), but doesn’t show a list of specific violations it has uncovered. 

Ironcially, Apple appears to be less concerned about factory conditions than its competitors, because of the company’s unwillingness to talk with advocacy groups like China Labor Watch and Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior. Li said Dell and HP responded to his group’s reports about working conditions in their factories, but Apple ignored them. SACOM’s Debby Chan told us she had had helpful conversations with both Dell and HP, but Apple had refused to meet with her. 

“Dell and Hewlett Packard are not doing as good as Apple is doing right now,” Li Said. “But when we talk about publicity and public relations, it’s another story.”

Though most large hardware makers conduct thousands of supplier audits a year, those audits may not be enough to uncover the truth and correct problems. Li explained that bribery of auditors is common at Chinese factories, because it’s less expensive to make a pay-off than to fix an unsafe condition. He said his company has uncovered at least nine cases of bribery at Intertek, a leading auditing firm and is currently involved in a lawsuit against the company for allegedly publishing the name of a confidential informant who had witnessed incidents of corruption. 

Even when inspectors act in good faith, a simple visit may not be enough to uncover abuses, because supervisors prepare just for the audits. In a very detailed report based on worker interviews and undercover work, China Labor Watch details conditions at 11 factories that make products for a number of suppliers including Dell, HP, Lenovo, Philips, Apple, and others. In the section on  Hongkair Electronic Technology, a supplier that makes components for ASUS, Apple, HP, IBM, China Labor Watch writes: 

The factory often has different customer representatives come visit them to do an inspection of factory facilities. At the time of inspection, the factory will demand workers wear the appropriate safety protection equipment, will turn on all the factory lights, and will make an effort to clean up the factory grounds.

Apple states on its website that it has begun working with the Fair Labor Association (FLA) and will allow the association’s inspectors into its factories and allow them to post the results of these audits to the FLA website. “This represents a level of transparency and independent oversight that is unmatched in our industry,” Apple says. 

Li said he’s unimpressed with Apple’s partnership with the FLA, because Intertek conducts some of their inspections. However, Li feels that Apple’s own inspections are probably fairly accurate because of all the embarrassing abuses they’ve detailed.

If audits don’t always uncover the truth, there’s another way to find out what’s going on at the factories: Just ask the workers. Li said a number of advocacy groups are currently testing hotline programs in cooperation with major OEMs. Workers can call these numbers and report abuses, which then get sent straight to the companies involved.

Li would not disclose the names of any companies involved in these pilot programs, because they have asked for confidentiality right now. However, he said that companies need to involve all the facilities that make their products, not just a few.

“For example if the company has 100 supplier factories in China, maybe they just wanted to involve like 20 or even less of them to participate in the hotline program,” he said. “They have to consider in the cost of the whole program that as soon as they find out about problems they have to remedy them, which is money-consuming as well.”

According to employees  interviewed by China Labor Watch, the conditions at many suppliers’ factories are far worse than those found at Foxconn, a company that has become infamous because of a series of high-profile incidents such as employee suicides and a fatal explosion. However, according to the China Labor Watch report “Tragedies of Globalization: The Truth Behind Electronics Sweatshops,” workers at the two Foxconn plants they investigated received health and safety training, along with all necessary gear, before starting work. Machines at the plants are reportedly maintained and checked for safety every day. According to the report, Foxconn workers even have a trade union with a workers’ care center hotline for reporting problems.

All of this is not to say Foxconn, which manufactures products for Apple, HP, Dell, and many other OEMs,  is a pleasant place to work. As with other plants, the managers are reportedly verbally abusive, the work is grueling, and one of the Foxconn factories apparently required a lot of overtime with few breaks. However, workers at the Longhua Foxconn plant received better wages and benefits than those at any of the 10 factories China Labor Watch investigated.  

“Foxconn is not good,” Li told the New York Times.  ”But if we compare all industries, electronics, textile, toys, Foxconn is one of the best.”

Meanwhile, at other factories China Labor Watch investigated, workers and undercover agents reported serious health and safety problems, along with even more exploitative wages and poor working conditions. For example, at Catcher Technology, a company that makes notebooks and phones for Acer, Apple, ASUS, Dell, IBM, Motorola, Nokia and Sony, workers are allegedly given no safety training and are then forced to inhale noxious and potentially toxic fumes. Labor Watch writes:

If a worker has an  accident, it is their own problem. There is no systematized health and safety education training . . . Workers wear masks during working hours, although the masks do not serve much of a purpose. Workers report that especially the grinding of the cell phone case creates very fine powder which is extremely easy to inhale into the nose and lungs.

At Compal Electronics, a huge supplier that manufactures notebooks for Dell, HP, Lenovo and Toshiba, workers reported that the company does not provide face masks or ear plugs, despite loud noises. Apparently, there was not even  a first-aid kit available. “In the event of an injury,” Labor Watch writes, “the workshop manager will give the injured worker some cotton to cover up their injury.”

Reading about the abusive managers, poor safety conditions, filthy living accommodations, long hours, and low wages, it’s tempting to blame the suppliers who run the factories or government authorities who are charged with enforcing China’s 2008 Labor Law. According to Li, China’s Bureau of Labor is limited in its abilities by local governments that receive tax revenue from the factories, but don’t have to provide benefits to what they classify migrant workers. The suppliers, he says, are also limited, because of price and production pressures from Apple and the other OEMs.

“If Apple still lowers their prices and doesn’t give enough profits to the factories, then the factories don’t have money to improve the labor conditions,” he said. “So it’s always the problem of Apple and not the problem of factories. We can see that Apple is trying to put all the responsibility on the factories by releasing the supplier factory list and trying to put the factories into the focus of the immediate public, but we think that Apple should do more to make a positive change in the whole system.”

Though he believes that Apple has done a better job of inspecting its factories than others, Li maintains that the public is right to put more pressure on Tim Cook’s company than its competitors who have the same problems. Because Apple makes the most profit, he reasons, it also bears the most responsibility for fixing a broken system. He maintains that it wouldn’t take more than 2-percent of Apple’s profits to dramatically improve workers’ lives in China while companies such as Dell and HP would have to spend more.

“Although we think Apple is among the best in terms of auditing, we still think that Apple can do more because it is the most profitable company in the world,” he said. “As soon as Apple is willing to give a small percentage of its profits, the workers can benefit a lot. But Apple is not willing to do that.” 

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Popular, Powerful, and Still Free: Paint.NET

Originally commissioned by Microsoft as a replacement to Paint, Paint.NET (free) has come very far indeed. With tools to manipulate photographs and draw and paint pixels, Paint.NET bridges the gap between Photoshop- and Illustrator-type software. Now you can eliminate red eye, fix the contrast, change the sky to green, paint a fake mustache on your brother-in-law, and convert the image to look like an oil painting, in one easy-to-use program.

If the naked program isn't enough, hundreds of free Plugins for Paint.NET make it easy to create the special effect you're imagining.Paint.NET is free, and when you first start using it, you may be fooled into thinking that it's pretty basic. In fact, the naked program is refreshingly lean: For example there are limited brush styles, preset shapes don't include a star or triangle, and there are only three Artistic Effects--ink, oil, and pencil. All the stuff that could get distracting at first (but may want to pick up later) for Paint.NET is in the user-created Plugins, which run the gamut from brushes to 3D modeling. Most of them are free—and with them, you can build the Paint.NET you need.

Without any plugins, Paint.NET is still a very powerful pixel editor that's very intuitive and has a user-friendly UI. Paint.NET's Clone, Eraser, and Magic Wand tools work exactly as you'd expect them to; There are unlimited undos, or you can just jump back using the history window; there's a Magnifying glass as well as zoom in and out buttons; and the floating Tool menu boxes become transparent, so you don't need to stop what you're doing if you run into one.

You can add layers as you need them in Paint.NET, but the layers work just like an overlay you can turn on and off. There's no way of locking them, no transparency, and no effects features within layers like with RealWorld Paint (also free).

Paint.NET has many of the same tools that you'll find in ($700) Photoshop, but Paint.NET just seems friendlier and easier to use. In Paint.NET the Lasso shape you draw is easily moved or manipulated. And, much like vector-based Xara Photo & Graphic Designer ($89), gradients are easy to create and color.

Unlike many raster programs, including RealWorld Paint, with Paint.NET you can either specify the number of pixels of your new artwork, or specify the resolution and page size. It's a little confusing if you don't understand the relationship between pixels, resolution, and inches; but worth doing your homework if you're serious about digital art. And, since Paint.NET works only in raster (think pixels), you need to choose wisely, because your artwork is not scalable. If you are looking for a great vector (scalable) or page layout program, but don't want to pay for Illustrator, try Xara Photo & Graphic Designer or Serif DrawPlus Starter Edition (free).

All in all, even without the Plugins, Paint.NET is a great raster image program. If you've ever struggled to find Photoshop's hidden gems or can't get familiar with GIMP's unusual UI, spend a little time researching and downloading Plugins, and you'll become a Paint.NET convert. Paint.NET is simply the best image manipulating, painting and drawing program you can get for the price. Snap it up before Microsoft realizes what they're missing out on, buys it back, and starts charging the big bucks for it.

--Clare Brandt

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