Maximum PC - Features

Check out the Original Dream Machine!

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:51:05 +0000

It's that time of year again - Dream Machine time! In honor of our 15th Dream Machine we thought we'd go back, way back, to the very first Dream Machine. We got Online Reviews Editor Michael Brown, the only current staff member who was also around back then, to share his thoughts on the experience and we've got the whole original story. Come with us now on a journey, a journey of 24MB memory, reminisce with us over SCSI, laugh over recommendations to upgrade "later this year" to IEEE. And stick around for the rest of the week - we've got more Dream Machine retrospectives on the way, as well as this years wicked rig!

Anyone who tells you life was better “back in the good ol’ days” is either a fool or a liar—maybe both. I was Reviews Editor when we euthanized the shambling zombie of a magazine known as CD-ROM Today so that it could be reborn as the too-cool-for-its-own-good boot (the progenitor of Maximum PC). That was back in September 1996, and the components we used to build a no-holds-barred PC—the very first Dream Machine—were so weak by today’s standards that the machine would likely die in a pile if it tried to run Peggle.
The idea of building your own PC was a whole new concept back then. Most people bought prefab boxes and upgraded the weaker components (if the PCI slots weren’t blocked by ribbon or power cables, that is. Most manufacturers assumed no one would ever open the case.) Looking back, I’m proud that we recommended high-end components—including a 200MHz Intel Pentium CPU and Matrox’s MGA Millennium videocard with a 4MB frame buffer—but I’m disappointed that we used a generic “full-height metal tower” and “any 300-watt power supply.”

Best Costumes of Comic-Con 2010

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 22:49:39 +0000

A headline seldom embodies the entirety of an article, but in this case, it does!  We've got hundreds of photos to sift through and will be posting them Monday, but to hold you over, here are some of our favorite costumed super nerds from Comic-Con 2010.  Enjoy! 

 

Check back Monday for more! 

Pictures From Comic-Con 2010 Preview Night!

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:01:42 +0000

Comic-Con 2010 officially starts today, and to kick off coverage of our favorite nerd-mecca we have photos to share from last night's preview night, with images including bad-ass Iron Man suits of armor, Green Hornets decked out Black Beauty, the TRON bike, towering Bumble Bee statues, and, as always, lots and lots of costumed supernerds. And check back throughout the day to hear and see the latest and greatest news from San Diego--we're looking forward to a ton of exciting announcements this year (check out the pictures from AMCs upcoming show, The Walking Dead if you don't believe us). Hit the jump and wish you were here! 

 

What Kind of Machine Will Run StarCraft II? We Find Out!

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 01:30:13 +0000

StarCraft II’s only been out for a day, and while everyone else in the tech world is still buried in the long campaign or the cut-throat multiplayer, our thoughts are already turning to the game’s ramifications on the hardware world. Blizzard is famous for their commitment to making games that work on a wide range of systems, and we wanted to see to what extent that’s true with StarCraft II.

Toward that end, we’ve installed the game on 4 different systems. A top-of-the-line gaming machine, a more-realistic aging gaming PC, a non-gaming laptop, and a netbook. Hit the break to find out how the game ran on each system. The results are suprising!

The Rig: Predator

We wanted to take a look at StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty running near its full potential (our Dream Machine is a little bit of overkill, and we'd like to keep this within more of a consumer-friendly range), so we tapped Acer's 2010 Predator computer as our testing system of choice. And for good reason.  Sporting an Intel i7 930 clocked at 2.8 GHz, 12 GB of DDR3 RAM, and a single GTX-470, we figured it would have more than enough power to deliver some high performance numbers.

That being said, StarCraft performed quite admirably, typically hovering between 75 and 100 FPS at 2560x1600.  We did witness minor slow down, but not for the usual reasons--tons of enemies hitting the screen with hardly any slowdown. Some of the levels in the single-player campaign feature pretty detailed and particle-rich environments, but the lowest dip we saw was still 42 FPS, and this was in very rare instances.  The Predator handled multiple enemies and strands of AI—we set the difficulty to brutal for benchmarking purposes--without a hitch. We waged some pretty epically crowded battles in the challenge mode that ran stably at around 100 FPS. No surprise here.

 

It's a pleasure to report that StarCraft 2 isn't simply a good lucking RTS. It's a good looking game, period. It's smooth, responsive, colorful, and the particle effects and in-game movies are all top notch. And the FMV cutscenes are probably making people at Square squirm a little.  We'll be touching more on quality as we have more time to play it. 

The Rig: The Aging Beast

This computer is something a lot of our readers might have—a capable gaming PC with some parts that are a little less than top of the line. The machine we tried it out on is running a 2.67GHz quad-core Core i5 with a GTX 295 and 4 GB of RAM. In other words, it’s definitely no dream machine, but it’s got a lot of life left in it. How does StarCraft play? Amazing. With all settings maxed out at 1900 X 1200 this computer still plays Starcraft with an average 70 fps. Even in intense battles with lots of units, the game rarely dips below 60 fps. This computer’s more than enough to get the most out of StarCraft 2.

The Rig: The IT Special

StarCraft II has already proven itself to play fantastically on dedicated gaming hardware, but we wanted to see how it runs on a machine that’s not originally designed to play games. For that, we used an IT-issued Dell Latitude E6400 notebook. This 2-year-old laptop’s all business—a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo proc and a respectable 4GB of memory, saddled by integrated graphics.

How does StarCraft play?

 

Well, alright. Sort of. If you turn all the graphics all the way down (and we mean all the way) the game is actually thoroughly playable. We saw an average of 40fps at the laptop’s native 1440 X 900 resolution, staying above 30fps even in the heat of battle. The game doesn’t look very pretty with the settings this low, but it’ll still get you your StarCraft II fix during your lunch break at work.

 

The Rig: The Little Guy

Watching StarCraft hum along at 42FPS on Alex Castle’s two year-old business laptop struck a strange note of curiosity in all of us, mostly because it was clear that Blizzard has made a real effort to make sure that gamers with varying degrees of computerized sophistication can own and enjoy the experience.

We could have tested progressively slower and slower laptops to see just how little power could be used to run the game smoothly, but opted instead to test the worst of the worst, the slowest of the slow.  We decided to test StarCraft 2 on a netbook. 

The verdict?  Ehhhh...

 

We installed SC2 on a Samsung N210, running an Intel Atom N280 with a gig of RAM.  We didn’t have high hopes, but were hoping at least to achieve a playable, albeit bad looking version of the game.  Unfortunately we did not achieve the “playable” part of the game, even with the settings dumped to their lowest capacities.  Granted, the little guy was able to load a map, complete with an entire squadron, and move them from place to place at (we’re guessing) around 5 FPS.  But the moment any sort of battle began, the slowdown became un-bearable.  This wasn’t necessarily a huge surprise, but showed us that even developers as talented as Blizzard can’t quite make everyone across the playing field happy.  

Windows Live Essentials 2011 - In Depth

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:26:04 +0000

Windows Live Essentials 2011, now available in a public beta, is the local client component of Microsoft Windows Live, a collection of programs and web services. WLE 2011’s components include photo editing and organization (WL Photo Gallery), video editing (WL Movie Maker), email and calendar (WL Mail), instant messaging and social media (WL Messenger), blogging (WL Writer), cross-platform file synchronization and Windows remote access (WL Sync), and web and IM filtering (WL Family Safety). Before the public beta was released in late June, Windows Live Essentials 2011 was known as Windows Live Essentials Wave 4. In this article, you’ll learn what new and improved features the latest WLE wave brings with it.

What's New

Most of WLE 2011’s applications now feature an Office 2007-style ribbon menu to enable easier access to new and improved features. However, the improvements are more than skin-deep. WLE 2011’s components now feature better integration with each other and with the online portions of Windows Live. For example, slide shows in WL Photo Gallery can be converted into WL Movie Maker auto movies with just a couple of clicks or can be published online to Windows Live SkyDrive’s 25GB of cloud-based storage.

WLE 2011 also plays nicely with others, with integrated support for Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube and the ability to share social messaging from Facebook and MySpace with WL Messenger. You can also add support for many other services.

The downside? WLE 2011 is designed for use with Windows 7, and will also work on Windows Vista, but Windows XP users are out of luck. For now, you can still get the previous version of Windows Live Essentials, but after you see what you can do with the 2011 version, you might be ready to give up XP for 7.

Windows Live Photo Gallery

As with previous versions (and its Windows Vista ancestor, Windows Photo Gallery), WL Photo Gallery is designed to organize photos and perform light-duty editing. In this edition, WL Photo Gallery provides many more features for both organization and editing.

People tagging has now been enhanced with face recognition. When you select a photo for people tagging, WLPG automatically highlights each face in the photo and prompts you to tag them. You can also manually highlight other faces and tag them with their Windows Live contact names or names you enter manually.

The more you use people tagging with face recognition, the smarter the feature becomes: as WLPG “learns” the characteristics of each face, it can tag or suggest tagging the same people in other photos.

When it’s time to find a few favorite photos out of an immense forest of digital images, WLPG 2011 makes searches simpler as well. The Quick Find menu on the Home tab provides face-based searches as well as calendar, star rating and flagged/non-flagged lookups.

Switch to the Find tab for more advanced options, including AND/OR searches, star rating searches by specified rating, specified rating and higher (or lower), selected or most-used tags, and free text search to find photos by people tags, descriptive tags, or geotags. You can also pin a search to make it available at all times.

The Edit tab now features a customizable auto adjust repair tool, individual automatic tools to straighten, improve exposure, improve color, and remove noise, and the ability to select a group of photos for automatic repairs. User-controlled repair tools are now found in the Fine Tune menu, including a new Retouch tool for removing small flaws such as dust and scratches and an improved Reduce Noise tool that maintains detail while reducing JPEG artifacts.

New goodies on the Create tab include Photo Fuse, which enables you to combine the best parts of two or more photos into a single image, an enhanced Movie command that interfaces with WL Movie Maker 2011, and easy access to additional Microsoft photo editing tools such as PhotoSynth and Collage Pro.

 

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Windows Live Movie Maker

WL Movie Maker 2011 pairs up with Photo Gallery 2011 in a couple of ways: in addition to its ability to convert WLPG 2011 slide shows into movies, Movie Maker creates videos you can tag and organize with Photo Gallery. However, even if you never take a digital photo, you’ll still appreciate the new video import and editing chops in Movie Maker. You can now import webcam video directly into MM.

And, regardless of where your video comes from, MM 2011 features plenty of new ways to manipulate it. The Speed option in the Edit tab lets you vary the speed of a video clip from a dreamy 0.25x slow motion to a frenetic 64x fast motion. Spilt and trim tools are now easier to use, and you can fade audio in and out at three different speeds.

The Visual Effects tab provides options to adjust brightness, change color, and add a large variety of special effects to your video clips (edge detection is shown in this example). The real-time preview means you can see how each effect changes the video immediately.

The Animations tab now provides timing options for effects such as fade-in, fade-out, and other types of dissolves, and you can now add the same effect between all clips with a single mouse click. To see the effects applied to any clip, hover your mouse over it.

The Home tab now offers captions as well as credits and title slides. Captions can use any installed font and feature adjustable transparency levels. Preconfigured credits templates make it easy to add acting, directing, and other types of credits.

When it’s time to output your creation, MM 2011 lets you choose from an expanded roster of standard settings for PC, DVD, or mobile playback, or you can create custom settings.

You can also publish your movies to Facebook, YouTube, Windows Live SkyDrive, or Windows Live Spaces.

Windows Live Mail

Windows Live Mail 2011 not only features the near-ubiquitous ribbon menu, but also puts the formerly-hidden Calendar (which integrates with Windows Live Calendar) on top. In addition to making working with the calendar simpler, WLM 2011 also provides powerful tools for working with email and stopping junk mail.

If you’re tired of dredging up help files from your email provider to figure out your email server’s name, port numbers and so on, here’s good news: WLM 2011 auto-configures email account settings for you when you set up a new account. And, when you read your email, WLM 2011 now uses conversation threading as the default, or you can choose other sort options such as priority, size, attachment, flag, watched items, and more.

WLM 2011 supports photo email, a new way to email photos that stores the full size versions in the sender’s Windows Live SkyDrive shared storage while sending reduced-size thumbnail links to the recipient. If the recipient wants to download the full-size versions from SkyDrive, there’s a 90-day window in which to do it.  Choose from a variety of formats to make your photo email even more eye-catching while relieving the strain on your recipient’s inbox.

Other new and improved features include the ability to set the default encoding used for email messages (Encoding), enhanced junk mail filtering with options to block specified top-level domains and encodings, and offline calendar and email support.

WLM 2011 continues to include RSS news feed, newsgroup, and contact management with improved layout options to make using each type of content easier to use. WLM 2011 also supports launching Windows Live Writer and Windows Live Messenger directly from its interface.

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Windows Live Messenger

WLMessenger 2011 reflects the following social-network realities:

1. You and your friends use lots of different social media platforms
2. You’d like to find out what’s up with your friends and the world without wasting time switching between websites 
3. Microsoft is just one player in the social network/media game

When you start WLMessenger 2011, you can choose from a large window view that brings up news and entertainment feeds from MSN or an identically sized Social view that displays your friends’ latest comments and news from Windows Live, Facebook, and MySpace. When you add a contact, you can specify how much of your information to share.

 

WLM 2011 also includes a more compact and easier to use ‘picture in picture’ interface for video chatting along with HD video support, a resizable window so you can see your contacts in multiple columns, easy sharing of audio clips and photos, and better integration with WL Mail: photos you receive through WL Mail also show up as social updates in WLMessenger.

Along with support for the most common social-networking PC clients, WL Messenger 2011 also supports the Apple iPhone and other mobile platforms.

Windows Live Writer 2011

WLW 2011 also benefits from the ribbon interface shared by the rest of the content-creation gang in WLE. As with its predecessor, it enables you to use a single blog editor to post blogs on WordPress, Blogger, Windows Live, and other blogging platforms. To set up WLW2011 to work with your blog, answer a couple of question and WLW2011 does the rest.

To make your blogging easier, WLW 2011 offers three views of your posting: the default Edit view, a Preview view showing how your post will look in a browser, and the traditional HTML Source view

WLW 2011 features easier insertion of pictures and videos from your own computer or from the web, and you can also insert videos from online services such as YouTube. It includes integrated tools such as word count and a spell checker as well as HTML and character-based formatting. The Insert tab also lets you insert tables, maps, and Bing (“Windows Live”) searches into your blog entries. You can also use it to create an online photo album hosted on Windows Live SkyDrive.

WLW 2011 continues to support a growing library of plug-ins, so you can customize it to meet your needs.

Windows Live Sync 2011

Windows Live Sync 2011 is a not-exactly-“new” member of Windows Live Essentials. It is a replacement for two older Windows Live synchronization services that were available in separate downloads: Windows Live Mesh and Windows Live Sync.

The 2011 version of Windows Live Sync borrows Live Mesh technology, but offers only 2GB of storage (which comes out of the 25GB of cloud-based storage all Windows Live users get as part of SkyDrive).

However, Windows Live Sync 2011 provides cross-platform PC to Mac synchronization without using up your online storage (get the Mac client here) and provides remote access between computers running WLSync 2011. The Devices.live.com website lets you see the status of the drives and devices being used by WLSync 2011.

If you currently use Windows Live toolbar, Windows Live Sync or Windows Live Mesh, be sure to see the instructions for preparing your system to use WLSync2011.

Windows Live Family Safety

Windows Live Family Safety 2011 is the least glamorous member of the WLE 2011 family, but if you’re trying to keep your children away from the seedy side of the Internet or from age-inappropriate programs on your computer, it could be the most important. WLFS 2011, like its predecessor, requires that each family member you want to monitor have a standard user account on the computer. However, it’s not necessary to set up a Windows Live account for each family member unless you allow them access to social networks and enable contact management.

WLFS 2011 also includes a new Warn on Adult Content setting, blocks paid ads, and includes an adult image content filter. Activity reports now display only sites that users access, so it no longer clutters up the report with popup ads that were never clicked on.

To avoid flipping between the WLFS 2011 management tool and the limited family protection settings already in Windows 7 and Windows Vista, WLFS 2011 also includes time limits and program blocking as well as game rating limits, so you can use it to manage both local and network content. With WLFS 2011, you decide how much access to provide to younger users.

Conclusion

Windows Live Essentials 2011’s integration, feature set, and scope bring it closer than ever to the original Windows Live Vision of seamless integration of social networking and social media. It’s a worthwhile download for anyone using Windows 7 and for all Windows Vista systems that meet the requirements.

Mark is the author of the forthcoming book Using Windows Live.

First Impression: Intel's Extreme Tuning Utility

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 23:32:40 +0000

Intel’s new Extreme Tuning Utility streamlines the user interface for tweaking your motherboard and CPU, and is pushing for widespread adoption among motherboard makers.

High end motherboards from Intel have long shipped with their own tweaking tool, the Desktop Control Center. However, that tool always had limited capability, especially when stacked up against similar tools from other motherboard makers, like Asus, Gigabyte and MSI.

While on the surface, DCC was limited, the underlying engine wasn’t. So Intel engineers went back to the drawing board and developed a new interface called the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility, or ETU for short. The coolest thing about ETU, though, isn’t that Intel has a new tweaking tool for its own motherboards – ETU will also be available on 3rd party boards and systems from Asus, Dell and others.

 

 

For ETU to work on a system, several layers need to be implemented:

•    A BIOS friendly to the ETU middleware API (which is informally known as “Intel XTU Service”) needs to be available.
•    Supported Intel CPUs and Intel chipsets. While XTU 1.0, with DCC layered on top, worked with Intel’s own P45, X38 and X48 boards (socket 775), ETU is
•    Watch Dog Timer. This is a combination of external hardware plus logic built into the chipset. Intel notes that watch dog timers will be fully integrated into next generation chipsets.
•    An application layer (GUI interface) on top of the middleware. This can be customized by OEMs to their own look and feel, but changes by reskinning are limited; fully realized UIs different from Intel’s look will require significant coding.
With these thoughts in mind, let’s look at the ETU.

Running ETU

When you first run ETU, you’ll be looking at a web-like interface that gives you tons of detail about the underlying system.

The interface is laid out in discrete panels, with the main adjustment panel in the center, menus on the left, column detail on the right and monitoring data on the bottom.

You can manually tune parameters via sliders or actually changing the numbers. If you have an unlocked CPU (Intel Extreme Edition or K-numbered parts, like the Core i7 875K or Core i5 655K), you can alter all parameters, including turbo and non-turbo boost multipliers.

If you’re using ETU with a locked processor, you can still change the memory multiplier and the BCLK (base clock). In both cases, you’ll get more aggressive settings and a little more flexibility if you’re running Intel XMP certified memory, which offers multiple profile settings built into the module SPD.

ETU also features an autotuning capability. It’s surprisingly flexible, offering three levels of aggressiveness for voltage settings. You can also specify how long the tuning can take, which really defines the stress testing period. This ensures the final setting is stable. You’d never use autotune to try to hit really high clock speeds.

We played around with Autotune, using the “Slightly Over Specifications” setting and were able to hit overclocks of about 7% -- it looks like “slightly” is a euphemism for  “really, really safe settings.”

Image: autotune.jpg

When you use autotune, it keeps logs of everything it does. So you can scan through the logs, which lives in \ProgramData\Intel\Extrme Tuning Utility\Logs. Note that ProgramData is a hidden folder on your boot drive, so you either need to set up Windows Explorer to show hidden folders, or just type the folder name in the Explorer breadcrumbs bar.

Whether you tweak manually or use autotune, you can save profiles which you can load at any time.

Multiplatform ETU

It’s all well and good that Intel has a useful tweaking tool for their own motherboards. But ETU will also be available for other manufacturers’ boards as well. Asus is offering it on their P7X58D Premium and all versions of the P7P55D. If you have one of these Asus boards, you can give ETU a whirl by downloading it from the Asus support site (http://bit.ly/bx4NDi. )

Note that you’ll need the latest BIOS update. In the case of Asus boards, you’ll have to go into BIOS setup, get into the AI Tweaker screen and change “Asus/3rd Party UI Priority” to the 3rd party setting.

Acer and Dell will be making ETU available for their high end gaming boxes – the Acer G7750 and Dell / Alienware Area 51 and Aurora PCs. Clevo will be adding it to their X8100 high end gaming laptop. Other motherboard makers are in discussion with Intel.

It’s worth pointing out that AMD has had their Overdrive tool, which also supports multiple vendor boards, though you’ll need to get that direct from AMD. Even the look is somewhat similar, though Intel’s looks a little cleaner and more logically laid out.
Having a universal tweaking tool for Intel-based system that’s not tied only to Intel-made motherboards is a big step forward. Given the somewhat arcane language used by some tweaking tools, using ETU is like a breath of fresh air. If you’ve got a supported motherboard or system, it’s worth checking out.

Giveaway: Clash of the Titans on Blu-Ray and DVD

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:59:44 +0000

 

 

Comic-Con 2010: Intel Dishes about Smart TV

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 00:59:54 +0000

At this year's Comic-Con, Maximum PC's own Editorial Director Jon Phillips got to interview Intel about the future of TV and the Smart TV concept. Check out what we heard below!

Master Your Smartphone: The Best Android Tips and Tricks

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:10:26 +0000

Everything you need to know to master Google's smartphone OS

From its auspicious start as the brainchild of Internet giant Google, Android has matured into a well-rounded, extremely capable smartphone operating system. Advocating open source, Google released Android to the masses, opening the doors to application developers. There were a few growing pains, of course, such as weak Bluetooth support and a lack of multitouch support, but today Android is knocking on the door of the iPhone mansion, and it's knocking hard.

Android hardware offers some of the most powerful smartphones we've ever seen. The Android Market app store is growing strong, and the Android user base is growing just as fast. Android phones are flying off the shelves faster than they can be created, so we think it's about time we put together a guide for the Android power user. On the following pages, we’ll walk you through what you need to know about Google’s mobile OS and how to make the most out of it.

General Usage Guide

Using Androids basic touch-screen interface is relatively straightforward. You'll find that many applications and functions utilize the "long press," where you hold your finger to the screen rather than just tap it. Think of a long press as a right-click on a mouse; it will bring up additional functionality for the object you press. All of this will be familiar to anyone coming from any other touch-enabled smartphone.

When coming from an iPhone, though, the transition can be somewhat awkward because the Android platform brings several additional buttons over the iPhone's single button interface. Get comfortable with Android’s Menu button, as it’s essential. You'll find that many settings, functions, and options can only be accessed via the Menu button. Holding the various hard keys can also bring up additional functions; for instance, holding the Home button will open a list of recently used apps.

For the Android devices with a hardware keyboard, you also have the option of using keyboard shortcuts, which are done through combinations of keys. You can also create custom shortcuts under the Quick Launch option in the Applications section of your phone's settings.

Default Keyboard Shortcuts

Quick Launch

Search + B = Browser
Search + C = Contacts
Serach + E (or) G = Email (or) Gmail
Search + M = Maps
Search + S = Messaging

Inside the Browser

Menu + B = Bookmarks
Menu + W = New Window
Menu + R = Refresh or Stop page load
Menu + F = Find on Page
Menu + J (or) K = Navigate Backword (or) Forward

Inside Maps

Menu + D = Directions
Menu + M = Change Map Mode
Menu + O = My Location

Optimize Your Android Experience

One of the key features Android offers is the ability to customize nearly every aspect of your device. You can download widgets to keep information available right on your home screen, install custom skins and keyboards, and create notifications and ringtones.

Stay Up to Date Using Widgets

Widgets are like small applications that run on your home screen and keep information right at your fingertips. A simple long press on an empty space on your home screen will bring up the option to add widgets. Because many apps in the Android Market have widgets, there are widgets for just about everything including texting, Twitter, and email; weather, stocks, and news information; and music controls. Because Android lets you configure several home screens, you can group messaging widgets on one screen, news and weather on another, your music library and Pandora on the next, and so on, keeping all of your important information just a finger swipe away. Widgets on your home screen are kept active and update regularly, so you have to be careful not to add too many, especially on older and lower-end devices. If swiping between home screens begins to appear sluggish, you may want to consider removing a few widgets.

Stay Organized with Shortcuts

Just as with widgets, Android lets you add shortcuts directly to your home screen. Adding a shortcut is done the exact same way as adding a widget; just long press on an empty space and you'll see the option to create a shortcut. If there's anything you find yourself doing often with your phone, creating a shortcut can make it even easier. Shortcuts can be created for launching a bookmarked website, calling a specific contact, accessing settings, playing a music playlist, opening a specific inbox, and, of course, applications. If you find your home screen becoming cluttered with shortcuts, you can create home screen folders that let you group similar shortcuts together. For instance, you can put all of your email inboxes into one folder, your work contacts into another, and your personal contacts into yet another. One common practice is to create application shortcuts on your main home screen for your top four to eight apps, generally messaging, email, browser, and maps. Then, one screen over, put the runners up, like the Market, contacts, calculator, etc. It doesn't particularly matter where you put your shortcuts or how you group them as long as it's intuitive to you, and you can find them quickly.

Find Your Perfect Software Keyboard

One of Android's most criticized features is its default software keyboard, but thanks to Android's unrestrictive nature, there are several great alternatives available both on and off the Android Market. We recommend Better Keyboard (available on the Android Market for $2.99), the HTC IME modified keyboard, and Swype.

All of these keyboards offer significant improvements over the stock Android keyboard. Better Keyboard has a multitude of skins as well as many customizable settings. HTC IME modified keyboard is a well-made imitation of the keyboard found in HTC’s popular SenseUI custom Android skin. Swype offers a unique and original text input interface that greatly improves texting speed. Installing a custom keyboard is not entirely straightforward, though. You will need to both enable the keyboard in the Keyboard and Language section of your phone's settings, as well as long press on a text box and select the new input method.

Use Identifiable Ringtones and Notifications

Like all modern mobile phones, the Android platform lets you select and create your own ringtones. Creating ringtones and notifications can be done manually or with the help of an app from the Android Market. Manually adding a ringtone to your phone involves creating several specific directories on your SD card, based on the type of ringtone you'd like to add. The other method is far easier. Simply download the Ringdroid app free from the Android Market and use it to edit and trim your audio files before saving them as a ringtone, notification, or alarm. You can customize notifications and ringtones on a per contact basis by opening the desired contact's information and selecting Set Ringtone. You can change email notifications within the Gmail app (though you might want to select Silent if you receive a lot of emails).You can also set a different song to wake you for each day of the week by creating an alarm ringtone of your favorite songs, and creating an alarm for each day of the week, then selecting the desired song.

Create a Unique Look

The keyboard and ringtones aren't the only things Android lets you customize. You can also select your own background wallpaper, which for many Android 2.1 devices, includes Live Wallpapers that actually move and react to your interactions. Wallpapers are just the tip of the iceberg, though. Apps like aHome, found on the Android Market for $4.99, let you apply skins to just about every aspect of your interface. With aHome, you can download skins, themes, fonts, and widgets to make your Android phone look as unique as possible. Some themes not only change colors and add flare, but also make significant changes to the interface itself, allowing you to customize the way you interact with your phone to exactly how you want it.

Next page: Under the Hood: Tweak Your Settings >>

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Under the Hood: Tweak Your Settings

With GPS, Bluetooth, 3G (even 4G), and astounding processor speeds, smartphones are smarter than ever. All of this extra intelligence means that the apps can be more complex, information can come faster, and battery management is far more critical. It's important that you configure your settings properly to get the most out of your phone.

Sync More with Integrated Accounts

When first setting up your Android phone, you have the option to add several different types of accounts, including Facebook, Flickr, Microsoft Exchange, and of course Google. You can always add more accounts after setting up your phone by going into Accounts & Sync under your phone's settings, although only Android version 2.0 and later allows for multiple Google accounts. Here, you'll be able to add additional Google accounts for syncing calendars and email, Facebook accounts, which can sync your contacts (including contact photographs and phone numbers), Exchange accounts for syncing with Microsoft Exchange servers, and Flickr accounts for sharing photos.

Network Speed vs. Battery Life

Having 3G connectivity is extremely convenient, especially when accessing large amounts of Internet data, like when streaming music or videos, but there are still some areas where 3G just isn't available yet. When you live in an area where a 3G signal is poor or nonexistent, it can have adverse effects on your phone's battery life. When a 3G phone is on a 2G network, it significantly boosts its transmitting power in hopes of finding that faster 3G tower, which drains your battery even faster. Fortunately, Android lets you disable your 3G antenna if you are on the edge or outside of a 3G coverage area. You can do this by going into your phone's settings under Mobile Networks in the Wireless & Networks category. You will see an option called Network Mode or Use Only 2G Networks, depending on your device. You will want to select the GSM Only option or check the box for 2G Networks. This same concept can also be applied to 4G phones like the EVO 4G.

Configure Your Search Settings

Being a creation of Google, it's not surprising that Android offers a plethora of search functionality. If you're constantly using your phone to search the web, you've probably found the Android Search widget and have it smack in the middle of your home screen, but there's more to that little search bar than meets the eye. Hidden under the Search category in your Android phone's settings are some very useful tools. Under the Google Search Settings, there is a check box that enables web suggestions. When you're typing with your thumbs, this is extremely useful, as it lets you type the first couple letters of your query and returns a list of probable entries. You'll also want to look into the Searchable Items option where you'll be able to configure exactly where that Search widget looks. You can set it to search the Internet, your contacts, your music, your mail, even your text messages.

Location, Location, Location

Mobile phones have had Assisted GPS for quite some time now, but it wasn't until somewhat recently that true turn-by-turn directions and other location-based services came to the mobile phone platform. That being said, you'll notice a couple options under the Location settings of your Android phone. The first, Use Wireless Networks, is a course-positioning system, which triangulates your approximate position based on tower signal strength. It's accurate to about 1.5 miles, which makes it useful for most any location service that goes by zip codes. The other, Use GPS Satellites, is the true AGPS setting, which can be accurate up to three meters. This must be enabled for features like turn-by-turn direction and track recording. While using network location only will save some battery power, Android is actually very adept at managing the GPS receiver to the point that you will not see much of a difference in battery life with both settings enabled at all times.

Get More out of Maps with Google Labs

Google Maps is by far one of the most used apps on the Android platform. You can use it to search for nearby businesses, complete with addresses and contact information. It can also give you directions, and for the devices with Android version 2.0 and later, live turn-by-turn instructions. While all of these features are great, there are actually more, somewhat hidden features, available through Google Labs. To access these features, hit the Menu button while in the Maps app and select More. You'll see the Labs option, inside of which is a list of independently created and unreleased features, such as a scale bar, a point-to-point measuring function, and additional shortcut buttons.

Root Your Phone for Extra Functionality

Although Android is an open platform, cellular carriers still like to put certain restrictions on their devices. Wireless tethering is a prime example. The Android platform is more than capable of wireless tethering, but without root access to the system, it’s impossible. Up until the release of Android version 2.2 Froyo, you had to “root,” or hack, your Android phone to get wireless tethering (with a few exceptions). Prior to Froyo, running applications from the SD card was also not possible without hacking root privileges. Rooting also allows for various other functions that apps on the Android Market provide, such as overclocking and taking screenshots.

Rooting has another great advantage, as well. It allows you to install custom ROMs. While Froyo is bringing a lot of root-only functionality to official Android releases, it's hardly available on a single model. By way of a custom ROM, Froyo can be ported to devices that do not yet have Froyo or may never get it. The same has already taken place for 2.1 Éclair, bringing it to devices months before the manufacturers released an official update. For a more detailed guide to installing custom ROMs see our article.

Next page: Staples in the Android Arsenal >>

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Staples in the Android Arsenal

Just like the iPhone, Android is nothing without apps. We consider to the following applications to be essential for getting the most out of your Android phone.

Astro File Manager

Today's smartphones are quickly approaching the capabilities of modern computers. They can already browse the web, play music and video, take photos, and edit documents, all while streaming it up and down the internet. Managing all of this data would be impossible without the help of a file manager. Astro File Manager, available on the Android Market, is currently the pinnacle of Android file managers, and, at least for now, is completely free. Astro doesn't just let you look at a file tree of your SD card; it gives you a full-featured toolset for managing your files. With Astro, cut, copy, paste, and delete as well as zip and unzip files, install apps, view photos and documents, play videos, and search and transfer files.

Add a Task Manager

Android is touted as the king of multitasking, and it certainly does that very well. Unfortunately, this puts a lot of faith in the developers, trusting that they will manage their resource consumption fairly and diligently, but this isn't always the case. There are always a few apps that will run unnecessarily in the background, slowing down your phone and eating up your battery. A task manager allows you to close the background processes you don't need, freeing memory and saving battery life. There are several great task managers that can be found in both free and paid versions in the Android Market, the most popular of which are Advanced Task Manager and TasKiller, which both allow for configurable automated task killing. Both are available in free "Lite" or add-supported versions, but the full versions are less than $1.

Upgrade Your Messaging App

Apart from the standard keyboard, Android's stock messaging app, while perfectly functional, is another weak link in the platform. It's biggest downfall being a bland interface and barren feature list. Fortunately, all of this can be remedied with a quick trip to the Android Market where you can find Handcent SMS and Chomp SMS, both free, feature-packed messaging apps. Each offers a similar feature list, capable of sending and receiving MMS messages, saving attached files to the SD card, and customizing conversation threads. Which to choose is primarily a personal preference. The most significant difference is that Chomp SMS has a powerful widget while Handcent SMS instead has a sophisticated popup notification box. Both offer a great alternative to the standard messaging app.

Locale

Available on the Android Market for $9.99, Locale is relatively expensive, but it’s one of the best apps on the Android platform. With Locale, you can program your phone to be aware of its location at all times, and adjust its settings accordingly. For instance, when you get home or arrive at work, Locale can automatically enable Wi-Fi and turn it off again when you leave. It can put your phone on vibrate when you walk into the conference room at work or into your favorite movie theatre. It can block calls from specific people based on your location or the time of day. There are also plugins available that allow other applications to launch or perform specific actions with location or time cues from Locale. With the proper setup, you may never have to manually change your settings again.

WaveSecure Mobile Security

Losing your cell phone can be a nightmare. Smartphones are expensive to replace, and then there's always the fear that should someone find it, they can potentially wreak havoc with the information that might be on it, usernames, passwords, phone numbers, maybe even credit card numbers. WaveSecure, a free app from the Android Market, gives you several lines of defense. If you've only misplaced your phone, WaveSecure can enable your phone's GPS and relay its exact location to you. If it turns out that your phone has been stolen, WaveSecure can lock it remotely, back up your data, and even wipe your data clean, ensuring that the thief can't do anything like steal your identity or rack up a huge phone bill.

If Android's So Great, Is There Any Need for Chrome?

Android's adoption rate has been growing steadily, and so has the Android platform, from its humble beginnings on a single device as Android 1.0, to its numerous hardware and software upgrades in its current form as Android 2.2. Of course the updates will keep coming, introducing new features and utilizing new technologies. Just recently, rumors of Android 3.0 surfaced, suggesting that Android was branching out from the mobile phone market. Google was quick to denounce these rumors, of course, as Android is and always will be a mobile phone OS, but that hasn't stopped the OS from spreading its wings.

Android's open nature has allowed manufacturers to experiment with the OS on other platforms, including tablets and netbooks. Even Google's newly announced Google TV is created for Android, giving way to Android-powered HDTV's like Sony's Dragonpoint. It's possible that Android's success has exceeded Google's original intentions and has become a potential threat to the company’s upcoming Chrome OS, an operating system designed to be as lightweight as possible, ideal for tablets and netbooks.

Android and Chrome OS have some similarities. Both are designed to have a small operating footprint, are ideal for ultra portable devices, and utilize an app-driven interface. The similarities end there, though. Chrome OS puts an entirely different spin on the operating system. Instead of providing you an interface with your hardware, Chrome OS is simply an interface with the Internet, basically a web browser with a few system management features. The goal behind Chrome OS is to alleviate the need for local storage; everything is stored on the cloud. Its applications are almost all web-driven, capable of being run in a standard web browser. As Google has stated, "Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web."

Android, while capable of always being connected to the Internet, is designed as much more than just a web browser, and if Android were created to work in the same sense as Chrome OS, every Android user would have his or her data plan revoked due to exorbitant data use. While the two operating systems overlap, Chrome OS has a much more specific target than Android, and the two should be able to survive together without much issue.

Freeware Files: 5 Free Apps to Replace Microsoft Office

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 22:28:19 +0000

Microsoft Office: Can’t live with it, can’t live with… ok, so that’s not entirely true. A number of you likely live without the Microsoft Office suite and, for that, I commend you. That’s not because there’s anything wrong with Office per se; it’s a pricing thing. I don’t always have the money to fork out for a new Office license for whatever systems I acquire, especially when compelling freeware alternatives present themselves in an easy-to-use (and easy-to-download) kind of fashion. Same goes for you.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “But Dave,” you ask, “why not just install OpenOffice.org and be done with it?” That is certainly a solution for your Office woes. However, that doesn’t mean that the OpenOffice.org suite is the end-all be-all alternative to Microsoft Office Insert-Year-Here. From Web apps to downloadable programs, it’s entirely possible to recreate some of the best parts of this paid-for hunk of apps without resorting to the tried-and-true OpenOffice.org open-source bundle.

And guess what? By going the piecemeal route, you’ll be able to find some new features that simply don’t exist in either aforementioned bundle! So, that said, click the jump to check out some of the best freeware and open-source Microsoft Office replacement apps for your system!

 

Excel: Gnumeric

 

Why does Gnumeric rock? Because this is exactly how accurate of an Excel replication this app is: “The open source spreadsheet package 'Gnumeric' was such a good clone of Microsoft Excel that it even had errors in its statistical functions similar to those in Excel's statistical functions. When apprised of the errors in v1.0.4, the developers of Gnumeric indicated that they would try to fix the errors. Indeed, Gnumeric v1.1.2, has largely fixed its flaws, while Microsoft has not fixed its errors through many successive versions.”

‘Nuff said!

Download it here!

 

Word: OxygenOffice Professional

Consider OxygenOffice to be a bigger brother to the standard OpenOffice.org suite. As such, you get all the sweet functionality of the latter alongside OxygenOffice’s large chunk of templates, graphics, fonts, sample documents, and tools—like the ever helpful OOoWikipedia app, which lets you search Wikipedia directly from your word processor. In short, you can do a lot with this kitchen sink of a Microsoft Word replacement (though, really, it replaces the entire Office suite as-is).

 

Download it here!

 

Communicator: Tinychat

What the heck is Microsoft Office Communicator? I’ve never used it myself, but it’s apparently a chat system akin to a more professional version of good ol’ Windows Messenger. In theory, one would use it to converse with contacts that one acquires through a centralized Exchange server or Outlook address book, along with fun features like screen sharing and what-have-you.

Well, as far as office communication goes, it doesn’t get much simpler than the Web app Tinychat. Within but a few clicks of a mouse, you and up to 11 of your coworkers can fire up a huge, Brady Bunch-style video chat interface complete with an accompanying text chat. Pony up $20 a month and you’ll even get the chance to share your screen, amongst other features. I normally wouldn’t outright recommend a Web app in place of a downloadable piece of software but, seriously, Tinychat rules.

“Download” it here!

 

Powerpoint: Prezi

Unfortunately, Powerpoint is another instance where I have to go the Web app route instead of a true, downloadable piece of software because, simply put, there just aren’t any good ones out there. Prezi allows you to create slideshows in a super-easy and, dare I say it, fun fashion. You can slap in transitions, insert images, group and layer your various bits of information, and generally create this moving, almost cinematic kind of a display that’s quite a bit removed from the standard slide-after-slide Powerpoint route.

Once you’re done, watch your presentation via the Web (or share it, or embed it in a blog, etc.). Or, if you’re feeling adventurous, you can also download it straight to your system and fire it up using Prezi Desktop.

Download” it here!

 

Project: QuestTracker

There are plenty of offline project-tracking tools akin to what one would find in Microsoft’s Project application. Here’s the problem: They aren’t fun. What is fun—albeit not quite as practical—is software that can turn the mundane elements of a typical project into World of Warcraft-style quests to complete.

I kid you not; that’s how the authors describe QuestTracker. Alas, though, it’s not as if you’re walking up to some 3D avatar and hearing that familiar cadence play when you mash the big ol’ Accept button after reading a particular task’s details. QuestTracker is just a slimmed down task manager—a pretty to-do list that renames said “to-do” items as quests. Not a bad app at all, but not quite World of Warcraft, eh?

Download it here!

 

David Murphy (@ Acererak) is a technology journalist and former Maximum PC editor. He writes weekly columns about the wide world of open-source as well as weekly roundups of awesome, freebie software. Befriend him on Twitter, especially if you have an awesome app or game you're dying to recommend!