EditMinion review: Improve your writing's style and grammar with this Web tool

A Web-based companion to Write or Die, EditMinion is similar to After the Deadline. This writer's companion doesn't track your work, though. Rather, it provides an editing box for you to cut and paste work for immediate analysis and grading.

Well, Mr. Dickens, let's see how this story looks to readers of Christmas present.

Adverbs, clichés, weak phrasing, repetitive usage and more are all laid bare for the author to see, making initial edit passes quick, if not painless.

Your style is old-fashioned, Mr. Dickens. You might want to make some changes...unless, of course, you really want people to think you wrote this in the 1840s.

EditMinion is also free, so the only thing you have to lose is your dignity when a beloved scene fails to make the grade. At least there are no witnesses.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can use the latest version of this Web-based software.

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

Chrome 21 is a browser built more for speed than style

The designers of high-end sports cars often strip their cars of every inessential component, just to coax the greatest power and speed from their creations. Google’s Chrome reminds me of those speed demons: It lacks the fit and finish of Apple’s Safari (), but man, does it ever burn (virtual) rubber.

Built for speed

I’m not sure which is faster: Chrome itself, or the browser’s development cycle. To watch the version numbers blur by, you’d expect big changes in the browser’s look and feel. But on startup, Chrome 21 looks a lot like last year’s Chrome 8, right down to the annoyingly persistent rough edges on its interface.

You still can’t open all the bookmarks in a given folder without awkwardly right-clicking, selecting a command from a contextual menu, and clicking OK in a nagging dialogue box. You can’t switch into privacy-protecting Incognito mode on the fly, but instead must open an entire new window. When you navigate back and forth, pages don’t so much slide as simply appear. These are minor details, for certain, but their absence suggests that Google’s coders care more about the technical side of their browser than the way it interacts with humans.

Unpolished UI: Chrome’s interface hasn’t changed much from earlier versions, and often lacks the small, thoughtful touches you’ll find in Safari.

Chrome 21 contains one definite and laudable exception to that theory, though: its support for Apple’s VoiceOver, which makes browsing easier for the visually impaired. Last year, Google promised to improve its then-lackluster integration in future versions, and it’s since delivered. VoiceOver support still isn’t perfect; I could only get it to recognize the first link in any of the folders on the Bookmarks Bar, but I could accurately and easily navigate pages in Chrome via keyboard or mouse, with my Mac speaking each section aloud. Kudos to Google for this considerate, useful improvement.

Indeed, most of Chrome’s notable additions have been made under the hood. The browser fully supports Lion’s Full Screen mode—which coexists somewhat awkwardly with Chrome’s own, functionally identical Presentation Mode. Also, despite Google’s stated intention last year to ditch H.264 video support in favor of its own WebM codec, Chrome still appears to play both types of HTML5 video.

Rather than worry too much about their browser’s chassis, Google’s team seems to have focused almost entirely on its engine, with impressive results.

Top Tier: Chrome posts the highest score for HTML5 standards compliance of any Mac browser.

Hot rod browser

For HTML5 standards compliance and raw JavaScript performance, no Mac browser beats Chrome. In tests on a 2GHz aluminum MacBook with 2GB of RAM, Chrome smoked the latest versions of Safari, Firefox, Opera (), and Maxthon () (essentially a Chrome clone) in both categories.

In Google’s own V8 JavaScript benchmark suite, Chrome’s score beat that of every other browser by at least 25 percent. Even in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark, Chrome edged out Firefox for the fastest time, trouncing the others by even wider margins.

And Chrome downright embarrassed the competition in HTML5Test.com’s check of standards compliance. Its score of 431 (plus 13 bonus points) out of 500 exceeded its nearest rival, Opera 12, by 41 points, with the rest of the pack trailing considerably farther behind.

However, when it came to actual HTML horsepower, Chrome fell surprisingly short. Its score in an HTML5 vector graphics test beat Firefox’s handily, but still totaled less than half Safari’s mark. It ran about 19 percent slower than the leading scores in HTML5 bitmap graphics, and placed fourth after Safari, Opera, and Firefox in HTML5 text handling—albeit by a narrower gap.

In regular use, Chrome felt generally fast, responsive, and fun to use, on par with its latest competitors.

BrowserHTML5 VectorHTML5 BitmapHTML5 TextV8SunSpiderAcid3HTML5 ComplianceBest results in bold. Reference browsers are in italics. HTML5 Vector, Bitmap, and Text test results are in frames per second; higher is better. The V8 Benchmark Suite test results are scores; higher is better. The SunSpider JavaScript results are in milliseconds; shorter times are better. The Acid3 result is a score out of 100. HTML5 Compliance is a score out of 500.

Bottom line

If you like to browse without frivolous bells and whistles, or need first-rate JavaScript performance, Chrome is the browser for you. What it lacks in surface refinements, it more than makes up for in raw power.

[Nathan Alderman is a writer, editor, and occasional Top Gear viewer in Alexandria, Va.]

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

HP Pavilion dm4 Beats Edition: Great Sound and Style at a Reasonable Price

The HP Pavilion dm4 Beats Edition does a lot for a little. The moderately priced laptop boasts sturdy, striking design, powerful speakers, a generous allotment of external ports, good battery life, and an Intel Core i5 processor. It's not perfect in every way, but it's a solid laptop for the busy audiophile on a budget, with an eye for the urbane.

The Beats brand is endorsed by rapper and hip-hop producer Dr. Dre. So it should come as no surprise that style and high-quality sound components come standard.

The aesthetic appeal of the slim profile and matte-black, brushed-aluminum case of our 14-inch review model can't be denied. The dm4, which starts at $900 and peaks out at around $2000 fully loaded, looks and feels great. Typing on the backlit red-on-black keys is a breeze. An inch thick, this 4.5-pound all-purpose laptop slips neatly into any work-sized bag without weighing you down.

Despite its compact frame, the dm4 packs a punch and goes toe-to-toe with the specs of many laptops in its class. It has a generous allotment of three USB ports (one 2.0 and two 3.0), as well as two display ports (VGA and HDMI), an SD/MMC memory card input, and an ethernet port. Beneath its pretty shell, our entry-level test unit boasts 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, WLAN, Bluetooth, an Intel Core i5-2430M processor, 6GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, and Intel integrated graphics.

Of the most recent all-purpose laptops reviewed by PCWorld, the Pavilion dm4's battery outlasted all but one — the Asus U46SV, which held a charge for 6 hours, 41 minutes in our lab, more than an hour longer than the dm4's 5 hours, 23 minutes.

The dm4 Beats Edition bested the HP Envy 15, Lenovo IdeaPad U400, and VAIO S Series with a moderate WorldBench 6 score of 120. The Asus U46SV earned a slightly higher WorldBench 6 score of 123.

While the Beats series of headphones are often derided by audio enthusiasts as being of middling quality while posing as high-end (I'm not disputing it), one of this laptop's clearest strengths is the built-in speakers. Aided by the Beats Audio control interface — which is different from the much simpler Windows sound panel — the dm4 Beats Edition really kicks. It can get loud without sounding overdriven, and the Beats Audio control panel is a big improvement over the Windows sound controls (with a nine-band graphic equalizer and special built-in microphone filters). What would a laptop endorsed by a rap legend be without bass? The lower frequencies really hold up coming from the on-board stereo speakers with subwoofer.

It's just a shame that HP decided to position the speakers on the underside of the front of the device. That placement only serves to ensure that you will muffle your tunes when listening with the dm4 on your lap, especially in bed, and especially since the HP Cool Sense feature on our review model lets you enjoy using the laptop on your lap without cooking your thighs. I used the HP Pavilion dm4 Beats Edition to take notes at a recent presentation in a crowded theatre. I typed away with the device on my lap for nearly 40 minutes and my legs never got too hot, nor did the bottom of the computer feel all that warm to the touch when I finished.

This configuration of the dm4 Beats Edition, however, is certainly not for gaming. It shows average performance at low resolutions (48 frames per second when playing Dirt 2 and 40 on Far Cry 2 at 800 by 600 resolution), and much poorer frame rates as the resolution increases (22 fps on Dirt 2, and 15.1 fps on Far Cry 2 at 1024 by 768). Although its LED display (backlighting is optional) is HD-capable and decent for watching DVDs (no Blu-ray option is available) and for streaming videos, the colors are bit flat.

Budget-conscious gamers should look into the Asus U46SV, which scored much higher in this area, or at least spring for the $100 Radeon HD 7470 discrete graphics option. If you can spend a bit more, look into the Asus G53SX — by far the strongest performer of all our recently reviewed all-purpose laptops.

The trackpad can be a bit jumpy, and I often found myself pressing it a bit harder than I thought I should have to in order to engage the cursor, but the ability to double-tap the upper right-hand corner of the trackpad to disable it is nice, especially since the cursor sometimes jumps around due to poor palm detection. Also nice are the unit's multitouch gestures — pinch to zoom, twist to rotate, and up-down/side-to-side scrolling. The fingerprint reader is a cool feature as well, though I'm not sure if I'd ever use it.

The HP dm4 Beats Edition didn't score the highest ratings in our lab tests, and it in some ways it certainly leaves you wanting. But for under $1000 this laptop will do most anything you need it to do (gaming aside) with respectable efficiency — all while keeping your beats bumping.

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