Top 5 Smartwatches to Watch

From startups like Pebble to huge players like Samsung, more and more companies are stepping into the smartwatch arena. Even at this very early stage, there’s a lot of variety in terms of price, design and capabilities. Some smartwatches keep it simple by delivering notifications to your wrist, and some go a step further with the ability to make calls or run lightweight apps. Apple, Google and Microsoft are all believed to be crafting wrist-worn smartphone companions of their own, but there are plenty of options worth eyeing today.

The $150 original Pebble broke Kickstarter records when it was crowdfunded in 2012, and now its successor is back to prove that smartwatches don’t have to look like geek wear. The $250 Pebble Steel sports an elegant stainless steel design and comes with both metal and leather wristbands out of the box. But just as important the new look is the platform's software enhancements. The company is launching an official app store for both Pebble watches at the end of January and has announced partnerships with ESPN, Yelp,  Pandora, Foursquare and Mercedes to bring more functionality to your wrist.

More: 12 Gadgets Ahead of Their Time

Lisa has been reporting on all things mobile for Laptopmag.com since early 2013. When she’s not reviewing gadgets, she’s usually browsing patent databases or interviewing experts to track down the hottest tech trends before they even happen. Lisa holds a B.A. in Journalism from SUNY Purchase and has contributed to The International Business Times, The New York Daily News and Guitar World Magazine.

From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

CES 2014: 7 Key Trends to Watch

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From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

Google Smart Watch Said to Face Off Against Apple, Samsung

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Samsung Confirms Smart Watch as Apple War Moves to Wrist

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Review: Pocket lets you shelve items to read and watch when the time is right

The Internet is a distracting place. Cat videos, recipes, and interesting blog posts all conspire to steal our focus and distract us from whatever we've set out to do in the first place. One way you can deal with this constant barrage of brain candy by blocking it out with procrastination-curbing applications such as Cold Turkey. Another possible way is to save all those interesting distractions for later, carrying on with your day secure in the knowledge you'll get to them when the time is right. If that sort of distraction management appeals to you, you're going to like free Web-based service Pocket.

Pocket lays out the content you've saved for later in a beautiful, easy-to-navigate grid.

Pocket started out as a service called Read It Later, which specialized in saving articles, and later morphed into a more general-purpose service that can also save videos and anything else. With the change in purpose and design came a change in name, and Pocket was born.

The idea at the core of the service is simple: You have one Pocket account, but numerous applications can plug into it to save content for later. There are browser bookmarklets and extensions, but there are also lots of mobile apps that feature built-in saving to Pocket, with Flipboard and Pulse being notable examples.

When you save a page for later using the Pocket bookmarklet, a simple overlay shows you the page was saved.

Saving an article to read later takes just a moment. Pocket doesn't ask any questions: It just saves the article, and you're done. Later, when you have time, you can access the Pocket Web app or use Pocket's mobile app, and read the articles you've saved at your leisure. Pocket even improves the reading experience by stripping out extraneous formatting and making the article look nicer, much like Readability does.

Using Pocket isn't like bookmarking content to read later: When you create simple browser bookmarks (or save links to a social bookmarking service), they stay there once you're done reading them. This makes for a very cluttered bookmark collection, mixing temporary content you'll visit just once with more permanent bookmarks you'll visit time and again. With Pocket, you get a dedicated space for all of those transient links, keeping them separate from your more permanent bookmarks; and since Pocket lets you easily mark links as read, it's easier to keep it from overflowing with clutter.

Pocket reformats articles to make reading easier and more focused.

Pocket isn't a revolutionary service, and it isn't new. But it's very useful, especially if you find yourself drawn to read articles and watch videos when you're really not supposed to.

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

Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
More by Erez Zukerman

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

Review: Pocket lets you shelve items to read and watch when the time is right

The Internet is a distracting place. Cat videos, recipes, and interesting blog posts all conspire to steal our focus and distract us from whatever we've set out to do in the first place. One way you can deal with this constant barrage of brain candy by blocking it out with procrastination-curbing applications such as Cold Turkey. Another possible way is to save all those interesting distractions for later, carrying on with your day secure in the knowledge you'll get to them when the time is right. If that sort of distraction management appeals to you, you're going to like free Web-based service Pocket.

Pocket lays out the content you've saved for later in a beautiful, easy-to-navigate grid.

Pocket started out as a service called Read It Later, which specialized in saving articles, and later morphed into a more general-purpose service that can also save videos and anything else. With the change in purpose and design came a change in name, and Pocket was born.

The idea at the core of the service is simple: You have one Pocket account, but numerous applications can plug into it to save content for later. There are browser bookmarklets and extensions, but there are also lots of mobile apps that feature built-in saving to Pocket, with Flipboard and Pulse being notable examples.

When you save a page for later using the Pocket bookmarklet, a simple overlay shows you the page was saved.

Saving an article to read later takes just a moment. Pocket doesn't ask any questions: It just saves the article, and you're done. Later, when you have time, you can access the Pocket Web app or use Pocket's mobile app, and read the articles you've saved at your leisure. Pocket even improves the reading experience by stripping out extraneous formatting and making the article look nicer, much like Readability does.

Using Pocket isn't like bookmarking content to read later: When you create simple browser bookmarks (or save links to a social bookmarking service), they stay there once you're done reading them. This makes for a very cluttered bookmark collection, mixing temporary content you'll visit just once with more permanent bookmarks you'll visit time and again. With Pocket, you get a dedicated space for all of those transient links, keeping them separate from your more permanent bookmarks; and since Pocket lets you easily mark links as read, it's easier to keep it from overflowing with clutter.

Pocket reformats articles to make reading easier and more focused.

Pocket isn't a revolutionary service, and it isn't new. But it's very useful, especially if you find yourself drawn to read articles and watch videos when you're really not supposed to.

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

Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
More by Erez Zukerman

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

Review: Pocket lets you shelve items to read and watch when the time is right

The Internet is a distracting place. Cat videos, recipes, and interesting blog posts all conspire to steal our focus and distract us from whatever we've set out to do in the first place. One way you can deal with this constant barrage of brain candy by blocking it out with procrastination-curbing applications such as Cold Turkey. Another possible way is to save all those interesting distractions for later, carrying on with your day secure in the knowledge you'll get to them when the time is right. If that sort of distraction management appeals to you, you're going to like free Web-based service Pocket.

Pocket lays out the content you've saved for later in a beautiful, easy-to-navigate grid.

Pocket started out as a service called Read It Later, which specialized in saving articles, and later morphed into a more general-purpose service that can also save videos and anything else. With the change in purpose and design came a change in name, and Pocket was born.

The idea at the core of the service is simple: You have one Pocket account, but numerous applications can plug into it to save content for later. There are browser bookmarklets and extensions, but there are also lots of mobile apps that feature built-in saving to Pocket, with Flipboard and Pulse being notable examples.

When you save a page for later using the Pocket bookmarklet, a simple overlay shows you the page was saved.

Saving an article to read later takes just a moment. Pocket doesn't ask any questions: It just saves the article, and you're done. Later, when you have time, you can access the Pocket Web app or use Pocket's mobile app, and read the articles you've saved at your leisure. Pocket even improves the reading experience by stripping out extraneous formatting and making the article look nicer, much like Readability does.

Using Pocket isn't like bookmarking content to read later: When you create simple browser bookmarks (or save links to a social bookmarking service), they stay there once you're done reading them. This makes for a very cluttered bookmark collection, mixing temporary content you'll visit just once with more permanent bookmarks you'll visit time and again. With Pocket, you get a dedicated space for all of those transient links, keeping them separate from your more permanent bookmarks; and since Pocket lets you easily mark links as read, it's easier to keep it from overflowing with clutter.

Pocket reformats articles to make reading easier and more focused.

Pocket isn't a revolutionary service, and it isn't new. But it's very useful, especially if you find yourself drawn to read articles and watch videos when you're really not supposed to.

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

Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
More by Erez Zukerman

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here

Acer Aspire TimelineUltra M5-581T-6446 Review: Apparently Canadians Don't Watch Videos

Acer is bringing its non-Ultrabook Ultrabooks to Canada. The Acer Aspire TimelineUltra M5-581T-6446 is the Canadian version of Acer's M5 series. Except for the default installed memory, it’s similar to the American M5-481T-6642. That American version costs $730 (USD), but it ships with only 4GB of DDR3; the Canadian counterpart includes 6GB. Like the other notebooks in the series, the M5-581T-6446 (henceforth called the M5) is only technically considered an Ultrabook—it may fit the specs, but it's just too big and too heavy for a reasonable person to consider it a true Ultrabook.

Our review model, which costs $799 (Canadian), sports a third-generation Intel Core i5-3317U processor, 6GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive with a 20GB SSD cache. Unlike the American counterpart we reviewed, the model 6666, which sports a discrete Nvidia graphics card, the Canadian M5 relies solely on Intel's integrated HD graphics. Other specs include a DVD-RW drive, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and a 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium.

Performance

In PCWorld's WorldBench 7 benchmark tests, the M5 scores a very good 121 versus the baseline of 100—that is, it's 21 percent faster than our testing model. This is a better score than that of the American version of the Acer M5, which earned just 104 out of 100.

The M5 manages nicely in individual tests, as well. It starts up quickly, in just 16.8 seconds—the American M5 takes 17.5 seconds, while the Dell Inspiron 14z and the Dell XPS 15 take 22.5 and 33 seconds to start up, respectively. The M5 also performs adequately in the PCMark 7 office productivity tests, with a score of 2685 compared to the American M5's 1617. It's a little difficult to compare the M5 to other computers, since it fits somewhere in between categories (similarly sized all-purpose laptops are heftier and ultimately have higher productivity scores), but compared to the American M5, the Canadian M5 performs impressively. (Note: The chart below and others in this article include the Dell XPS 15, which hasn't been reviewed at this writing.)

"Performs impressively" in general performance, that is. Graphics performance, on the other hand, is an entirely different story. The M5 relies on Intel's integrated HD graphics for video and gaming performance and, well, it shows. In our Crysis 2 graphics tests, the M5 pumped out frame rates of between 12.4 frames per second (high-quality settings, 1366 by 768 pixels) and 26.5 fps (low-quality settings, 800 by 600 pixels). By comparison, the American M5, with its discrete Nvidia GeForce GT 640M graphics card, managed frame rates of between 39.9 and 75.9 fps on the same test. As a gaming system, the Canadian M5 is not even in the same league.

The Canadian M5, however, has excellent battery life: We managed to eke out 7 hours, 31 minutes in our tests. This is better than the other laptops in the category (which, on average, top out at 6.5 hours), and marginally better than the American M5, which managed 7 hours, 24 minutes in our tests.

Design: Chassis, Keyboard, Trackpad

The M5 looks great for an all-purpose laptop, but as an Ultrabook it's a little too big and heavy. Although it's only 0.8 inch thick, it weighs 4.7 pounds sans accessories. This is rather heavy for a slim notebook, even a 15.6-inch one. Luckily it's got great battery life, so you probably won't have to tote the power brick (which weighs about 0.75 pound) very often.

Size and weight aside, the M5 is a great-looking ultraportable notebook. The laptop sports a slate-gray cover with an aluminum finish and a laser-etched silver Acer logo in the center. The screen is super slim, but the two hinges that hold it up are solid, so it doesn't shake or wobble at all when it's open. The M5's interior features the same brushed-aluminum styling on the keyboard deck, which holds only the keyboard and trackpad—the power button is on the front of the computer, near the right side.

Though the M5 is only a 15.6-inch notebook, Acer has managed to squeeze in a 10-key numeric keypad next to the full-size keyboard. Keys are backlit, island-style, and offer decent tactile feedback, but they're a little small and stiff and take some getting used to. The Return key is sort of awkwardly squashed next to the backslash key, which means your little finger has to travel a bit farther than usual.

Below the keyboard, and off-center, is a large trackpad. The trackpad has a matte texture, so it's easy to distinguish from the smooth wrist-rest. The trackpad is large and easy to use, but it's a little too far off-center for my taste—I feel as if I'm practically on the left side of the laptop. The pad has no discrete mouse buttons, and the lower half of the trackpad tips when you press the built-in buttons.

Because the M5 has a tray-loading DVD-RW player on its left side, most of its essential ports are located on the back. Here you'll find two USB3.0 ports, one USB2.0 port, an Ethernet port, HDMI-out, and a Kensington lock slot. Besides the optical drive, the left side houses just the power plug, and the right side has an SD/MMC/SDHC card slot and a combination microphone/headphone jack.

Screen and Speakers

The M5 sports a glossy 15.5-inch LCD screen with a native resolution of 1366 by 768 pixels. While this resolution is somewhat typical for budget laptops and Ultrabooks/ultraportables, it's disappointing on screens larger than 14 inches.

Pixel density aside, the M5's screen looks okay. Images look crisp, but text seems a little fuzzy, colors appear accurate, and the glossiness doesn't throw back too many reflections. The screen is not quite as bright as it needs to be if you want to use it outside in sunny weather, but it's okay for the average user. At brighter screen settings, colors can start to look washed out. Off-axis viewing angles are predictably bad, especially if you look at the screen from above or below.

Video plays pretty poorly on the M5. I saw a lot of artifacting and choppiness, which is unexpected given the robust video block in Intel’s HD 4000 integrated GPU, and also also a lot of shimmering and pixilation, which is something I don't typically see. This happens in both streaming and nonstreaming clips, so it's not the clip quality or Internet connection.

Audio, on the other hand, sounds pretty good. The speakers are respectably loud, though not overwhelming, and offer up decently full sound. The speakers are on the bottom of the machine (under the front two corners), but did not sound muffled even when I sat the computer on my lap.

The Bottom Line

Most of our readers will never see the Acer M5-581T-6446, since it's sold only in Canada. That said, it's a pretty good laptop if you're looking for a larger, more solid Ultrabook-type model. The M5 has great battery life and excellent overall performance, but it lacks a discrete GPU and even its integrated graphics seem subpar. But if you're not too interested in graphics performance, this is a great, sleek laptop.

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

PlayLater Lets You Watch Your Shows on the Web--And In Your Own Sweet Time

What do you get if you cross Hulu with TiVo? This may sound like the start of a joke, but the answer is PlayLater, an online DVR that's definitely not a punch line. At $40 per year (currently discounted to $20 per year), it's certainly cheaper than a cable package.

PlayLater's neat and clean interface makes it easy to find shows to record and to play back your recordings.PlayLater is the latest application from MediaMall Technologies, the company behind PlayOn, a piece of software that lets you place-shift online video. With PlayOn, you can watch video from Hulu, Netflix, or several other sources, on devices such as the iPhone, iPad, Wii, Roku, and more. Where PlayOn focuses on place-shifting, PlayLater is all about time shifting: This handy PC-focused application lets you record online video for watching later. PCWorld last reviewed PlayLater when in was in beta.

When you launch PlayLater on your Windows PC, it displays its Guide screen, which shows you all of the online video sources you can use. PlayLater has access to all of PlayOn's video sources, which include Amazon Video on Demand, CBS, Nick, PBS Kids, TBS, and more, in addition to the already-mentioned Hulu and Netflix. From the Guide, you can select a video source or channel, and then browse through or search for available shows. PlayLater is neatly laid out and makes it a cinch to find the shows you want. Once you locate the show you'd like to record, you can click it to initiate the recording. You can initiate recordings from within the PlayLater app only; you cannot go to a third-party video site and request to record a video from there. The folks at PlayLater say this capability may be added in the future, in the form of a toolbar you install.

And then PlayLater goes to work in the background. The application fires up its own browser window, which is invisible to you, and plays the requested video, capturing it as it plays. The video in question is not actually downloaded, but recorded and saved as an encrypted video file. Recording a video takes exactly as long as it does to play it, and the recording captures the entire video as it would play in browser, any ads included.

You can only record one video at a time, but you can queue up multiple videos to record in succession. The company says it may lift this restriction in the future, but notes that the video recording process can be taxing on your system, so you may not want to record multiple videos at once, anyway. I noticed no performance issues on my two-year-old Windows 7 PC when testing PlayLater.

You cannot watch the video while it is recording, and you can't start the playback until the recording is complete. PlayLater doesn't play back the video in its own application, but instead does so in Windows Media Player. The company says the decision to use Windows Media Player instead of a custom-built player was made because the application is Windows-only, and every Windows PC comes with the software installed.

I'm not typically a fan of Windows Media Player--I prefer the excellent VLC media player--but it didn't bother me when using PlayLater. Maybe I was so excited about the fact that I could amass my own offline-accessible library of online shows. I don't have to worry about Hulu pushing my favorite episodes out for newer ones, and as long as I have a PlayLater subscription, I don't have to stress when I want to watch online videos when I'm traveling and without an Internet connection. PlayLater has solved all of these problems by creating the software application I had no idea I always wanted.

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

-- Liane Cassavoy

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here

CineXPlayer Lets You Watch, Chat About Movies With Faraway Friends

If you like to message with friends or Google actors’ resumes while you watch movies on your tablet, there’s an app for that. At Mobile World Congress, NXP Software showcased a new version of its CineXPlayer video playback app that lets users watch videos simultaneously with friends in other locations, chat about video content with those friends and look up information about the movies, all on the same iPad screen.

The current version of CineXPlayer has been around for a couple of years and allows users to playback Xvid format movies on their iPads with full Dolby Digital support, to import subtitles files from outside sources, and convert 2D to 3D movies that require you use either blue/red glasses or a screen cover called a Grilli.

However, the new version which is due later this Spring, adds a host of social features. In an extensive demo at the NXP Software booth, CineXPlayer Development Manager Jeremy Davies showed us the upcoming version’s ability to share the viewing experience with friends anywhere in the world.

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

WIMM One Watch App Store Hands-On: Install Software On Your Wrist

To access the Micro App Store, users simply log in to wimm.com and click on the Micro App Store Beta link in the left nav. The current app store homepage loads containing a complete list of all the micro apps — 25 as of this writing — sorted into categories such as gaming, productivity and travel. For each app, there’s a thumbnail which matches its shortcut icon and a gray “Add” button next to it that’s clickable only if the app has not already been installed on your device.

If you hover over the thumbnail for a given app, a small description of it will appear. If you want to install one of the apps, you can click the Add button next to it and then wait until the next time your watch syncs with WIMM’s servers. You can set your watches to sync as frequently as once per hour or as infrequently as once a day, but you can also manually force an immediate sync by tapping the sync button in the settings menu on the device itself.

At present, all of the Micro Apps are available for free, but in the future, the Micro App Store will likely also be able to accept payments. If you want to remove an app from your device you can go to the Micro Apps control panel page on wimm.com which shows a list of all the apps on your device and lets you reorder their shortcuts or get rid of them by toggling the “visible” checkbox. After unchecking the visible box next to an app, that app’s shortcut will disappear from your watch at the next sync, though we’re not sure whether that means it is truly erased or just hidden.

To test out the app store, we installed a few of the available apps, including TwitUpdate, News Reader, Searchlight, and aFlashlight.

One of our favorite micro apps, TwitUpdate allows you to follow up to five users and / or search strings on twitter. The app shows five different screens, one for each Twitter feed.

You configure the feed by tapping on the blue title bar at the top of the screen and then entering either a user to follow, text to search for, or both. If you enter only the username, you see the latest three updates from that user on that screen. If you enter only a search string such as “laptops” or “#ces2012? that screen shows the latest three tweets from all of Twitter that contain that text. Of course, if you enter both “@laptopmag” and “smartphone” you can see the latest three tweets from the @laptopmag twitter account that contain the word “smartphone.”

Useful as it is, TwitUpdate has its share of limitations. First, you must use WIMM’s slow-moving on-screen keyboard, which makes you swipe through the whole alphabet to select each letter, to change TwitUpdate’s query stings. Second, it is limited to only the latest three tweets per screen and only five screens in total. Finally, there’s no way to view pictures or click on links that appear in the tweets. Still, it’s great to be able to see a friend’s latest tweets at a glance and we hope to see the functionality expand on this app as it evolves.

News Reader sets the gold standard for what is possible on a WIMM One watch. Using a Google Reader account, you can set the app to receive RSS news updates from all your favorite sites. If you’re too lazy to set up a Google Reader account, the app has built-in feeds from leading tech news sites like Engadget, Tech Crunch and Boy Genius Report.

Within the app, each screen contains a list of the latest headlines from a different news source. You can scroll side to side between screens to switch news sources or tap on an individual headline to read that article. The articles even have lead images that appear in full color. We used an earlier version of this app before the app store launched, but the latest version has improved formatting within the articles (paragraph breaks work now) and seems smoother than before.

As its name suggests, aFlashlight lights up the screen so you can use the watch to light your way in a dark room. The only neat feature here is that you can select the color of the light using a color wheel so, if you want a pink flashlight, you’ve got one.

Inferior to aFlashlight, Searchlight just shows a white circle on the screen to emulate a flashlight.

Long-time WIMM users will notice a small, but important change to the application menu which appears when you slide upward on the watch’s face. Where the old menu had an image of a large neverending cube behind the shortcut icons, the new menu has a simple but tasteful royal blue wallpaper and what appear to be larger shortcut icons.  

With the update, the screen also appears to have become a bit more responsive, sometimes seemingly too responsive. When shooting a video demo of the new UI and apps, we found ourselves accidentally pulling down the watch face when we were trying to rotate through shortcuts. However, when we put the watch on our wrist — rather than holding it in it in our hands — and were careful not to swipe upward — we had no trouble moving side to side in the apps menu or between screens within apps.

As you scroll between the icons, you’ll notice a small white bar at the top of the screen which shows you where you are in the row of apps. If you’re on the first shortcut, the white bar is all the way on the left and it moves further left or right as you swipe through the apps. If you want to swipe through apps more quickly, you can press and hold on left or right side of the blue wallpaper and the system will quickly scroll through the apps until you lift your finger.

WIMM says another key feature of the version 1.03 firmware update is improved Bluetooth power efficiency. We haven’t had a chance to test this feature out yet, but we’re hopeful that battery life with Bluetooth enabled will improve as our watch was dead after just 8 or 9 hours when we tethered it to our phone in the past.

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

Buffering Too Slow? Watch Videos When They're Complete With Video DownloadHelper

If you ever found yourself repeatedly starting and stopping an online video clip because it wouldn't buffer fast enough or felt that Flash was slowing your browser down to a crawl, you should try Video DownloadHelper for Firefox.

Video DownloadHelper contains YouTube-specific features for fine-grained control over downloaded video quality.Video DownloadHelper is a free add-on, and it has been around for years. With almost six million downloads and over 3,000 reviews giving it an average of over four stars, this is one of the best ways to download videos off YouTube, Vimeo, and a slew of other video-hosting websites.

When you first install Video DownloadHelper, it takes you to an "installation successful" page. This is one of the more disappointing parts of the user experience: The page features sketchy-looking banners offering a "free scan for hidden PC errors" and a large button leading to a ranked list of video sites, many of which are adult-oriented. In other words, the best thing you can do as soon as Firefox restarts after the installation is close that tab and pretend it was never there. Just as you wouldn't judge a book by its cover, try not to judge Video DownloadHelper by its website.

What that success page should really contain is a quick tutorial showing how to use Video DownloadHelper. This is not trivial: Video DownloadHelper used to have a menu item, as well as an optional button in the status bar. The menu item is still there, but the menu itself has been hidden in recent Firefox versions, leaving only an orange Firefox button at the top-left corner of the window. The status bar has also been axed, replaced with an "add-on bar" that is hidden by default. This makes getting to Video DownloadHelper tricky at first.

The secret is to go to a webpage with a video, start playing the video, and right-click anywhere on the screen. You should now see a DownloadHelper entry in the context menu, featuring lots of options. This has a sub-menu labeled Media, only visible once you start playing the video, which lets you easily download the current video to disk. If you're on YouTube, you even get to pick what quality you'd like to download. The DownloadHelper menu also lets you access a rich Preferences dialog, but the add-on works just fine with the default settings.

Downloads are done via the browser's built-in download dialog. Once you begin a download, you can close the video's tab--the download happens in the background, no Flash involved. The video files you get can be played with any modern media player, such as VLC or SPlayer. Even with the same resolution, watching a video file locally feels better: You can play and pause using your keyboard's media keys, there's no buffering involved, and you don't have to read the comments.

Video DownloadHelper is a valuable tool, especially if you're on a slow connection. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but if you enjoy watching videos online, it can certainly add to the experience.

--Erez Zukerman

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here