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01/28/2002 |
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Worms and viruses and the RIAA, oh my! What a rough week it's been for you readers. At least you have cool new graphics cards and camera/phones to entertain you. |
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Multifunction printers
From the holidays until now, it seems like all you readers were into as far as
printers on CNET were photo inkjets. But now it looks like some of
you are really buckling down and looking for the equipment you'll need to
complete a home office. Multifunction printers give you all the office
machines you need in one slightly oversized package. No, it's not compact,
but you are getting a printer, a fax machine, a copier, and a scanner under one
hood. And if you're like me, you're low on space, so all those separate
boxes won't do. One of the most-searched-for monster multifunctions is the Canon MultiPass
F50, which got a mixed reaction from our editors. But the real winner, which you should check out, is HP's
OfficeJet d145. |
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Worms and antivirus
Worms and viruses and Trojan horses, oh my! With horrible new nasties such
as the Slammer worm
about, what's a girl (or boy) to do to protect a PC? Many of you did the
right thing: you came looking for information on virus scanners and
firewalls to safeguard your system. Our editors' top pick in the virus-scan
category is McAfee
VirusScan 7.0, which offers fast scans and McAfee Firewall at no
charge. |
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KaZaa and the RIAA
Last Tuesday was a dark day for the file traders of the world. The
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) won a landmark victory
over Verizon; it requires the ISP to give up the name of a KaZaa user who
allegedly has shared hundreds of recordings. What this means is that now,
at best, you could be booted from your ISP and, worst case, you could be
prosecuted. Verizon does plan to appeal the decision, but it's still a
scary enough scenario that scores of you were searching for more
information on the case. On the KaZaa front, the P2P parent company Sharman has gone on the offensive against the record companies and Hollywood with a countersuit, saying the companies "obscenely" abused their copyright powers. So what does this big mess mean for file-sharing users
and future file-sharing networks? Check out the latest
MP3 Insider column for the latest digital music news. |
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ATI and GeForce
The supercharged high-end graphics card rumble is about to begin, as
Nvidia enters the ring with its GeForce FX card. And a lot of you readers
are searching for our editors' takes on the two contenders. Our review of
the ATI
Radeon 9700 Pro--currently the fastest graphics card on the market--has
been up for some time. And fortunately for the curious masses, we've just
posted our First Take of the hyped GeForce this week. A full review will be
available once the card actually ships in February. |
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Camera phones
Looks like the next hot movement in the cell phone biz definitely will be
camera phones. They're cropping up everywhere, and they're most definitely
showing up in your searches for the week. The hottest phone on the list is
Nokia's much-advertised Nokia 3650. You know the one--the ad with the
snowboarder with the broken leg getting photos of a snowboarding trip from
his pal with the Nokia. Our editors already played around with this hot
ringer and will be posting a First Take very soon. Plus, you'll see a
full review by next Friday. Also, check out our already available review of the
Sanyo
SCP-5300 and our First Take on Sony
Ericsson's P800 camera/phone/PDA. |
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Linux
The cult of the penguin never rests, and last week was their week with the
LinuxWorld Conference going on in New York. What was the big news that all
of you were searching for? Mainly that big players such as IBM and Dell are starting to
see the open-source light. If you're looking for more info on the good, the
very good, and, of course, the bad that came out of the week's event, check
out more at CNET's
News.com LinuxWorld wrap-up. |
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Tax
You know the old death-and-taxes saying. It seems many of you are looking
to let technology help you take care of at least the last half of that
adage, and rightfully so. Who can honestly keep track of all that complex
tax law info anyway? So what do our editors say is the top tax-prep
package? This year, the top prize definitely does not go to the usual
winner, TurboTax.
Apparently, the folks over at Intuit have been busy adding
product-activation features that hamper the ease of installation, which has
(among other quibbles) raised the ire of
CNET users. Instead, we opt for TaxCut, which offers low cost and smooth navigation. |
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AOL
Joining the list of security violators is America Online, which closed a
security hole in its e-mail service last week after hundreds of accounts
had been compromised. The story wasn't played up too much, but quite a
number of you readers were on the trail. The incident apparently was caused
by flaws in the software that authenticates international users. The flaws
allowed anyone to access an AOL e-mail account with only the account name
and not the password. Using the account name, the attacker could attempt to
log in to AOL Instant Messenger. The IM login window offers a link labeled
Forgot My Password, which, when clicked, brings up a page in the user's Web
browser asking if he or she would like the IM password e-mailed. In
many--if not most--cases, AOL users assign the same password to their
e-mail and instant-messaging accounts.
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Spybot
Search & Destroy? No, it's not some kind of new video game. It's actually Spybot:
Search & Destroy, an application that searches your hard disk and
Registry for adware, spyware, and other similar threats to security and
privacy. Every hard drive could use a good cleaning, so we're glad to see
that so many of you users are searching for programs such as this one. For
a more mainstream package, check out the old standby Ad-aware.
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Pop-ups
Every now and again, we see a flurry of pop-up-blocking software searches.
Do pop-ups have some kind of cycle, so they're more numerous or more
annoying during different times of the month? Well, there's no need to
suffer from pre-pop-up-syndrome (PPS); get a good pop-up-stopping tool. Our
editors' top pick is Super Ad Blocker, which is great at stopping pesky ads but understands that it
doesn't need to block nonadvertisement windows. |
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