Bill Howard

The average american spends weeks each year in a car. Its no wonder were demanding smarter, safer, and more entertaining automobiles. Yet for all the billions spent on development, the fusion-powered flying cars of science-fiction movies have stubbornly failed to appear. Cars still run on rubber tires powered by the same gas-powered, environment-unfriendly engines. But […]

As more and more of your lifes records and memories are stored in digital form, it makes sense to explore the best ways to keep them secure. All methods have drawbacks, some of them glaring. Floppy disks are all but dead as a format. ZIP disks are expensive for their capacity. CD/DVD backups are great—if […]

With the arrival of the best-in-class IBM ThinkPad X40, other ultraportables have a lot of catching up to do. Even with a system weight of just 2.7 pounds, the X40 still has the features serious road warriors demand—notably that wonderful-feeling, full-size IBM keyboard. Best of all, IBM has priced the X40 very competitively: Prices start […]

The dazzling Toshiba Portégé R100 notebook is an impressive 2.4-pound ultra-ultraportable (most ultraportables weigh 3 to 4 pounds) with a full-size keyboard, 40GB hard drive, and 12.1-inch XGA display. The only flaw in this otherwise impeccable system is low battery life—an unavoidable trade-off given the systems diminutive size. The R100 is Toshibas follow-up to last […]

Portable computers are again closing in on and surpassing the 10-pound mark. At a time when almost every feature that road warriors desire can be slid, snapped, or screwed into a notebook of 5 pounds or less, a compelling case can be made for heavier notebooks. And the heavier the better. When a notebook weighs […]

With computers, one size most certainly does not fit all, which is why a few companies, such as NEC, keep cranking out handheld PCs. The NEC MobilePro 900 ($900 street) is the latest and arguably one of the best of the clamshell “tweener” products—bigger and more versatile than a PDA, but smaller and more portable […]

The floppy disk is so dead that most people have stopped declaring that its dead. One of the culprits is the USB memory drive, which lets you carry far more data in a device small enough to stick in a pocket or use as a keychain. But while these storage accessories have become commodities, companies […]

Anytime Philips introduces a new product, its likely to be stylish and well-designed, and thats just the case with the DesXscape 150DM ($1,500 street), a wireless smart display tablet that accesses your desktop PC apps and the Internet. The trouble is that the smart displays in this first generation are pricy for their limited uses, […]

For playing MP3 music on your stereo and showing digital photos on your TV, the Linksys Wireless-B Media Adapter is the new front-runner among digital media hubs. For $200 (street), the Wireless-B offers essentially the same functions as the HP Wireless Digital Media Receiver ew5000 does for $100 more. And although the Wireless-B has a […]

How many gigs of music, photo, and video files are you storing on your PCs hard drive? Uh-huh, we are too. Thats why home entertainment hubs make so much sense. This new type of gadget serves as a bridge between your PC and your AV equipment, allowing you to experience your digital media in a […]

With portable PCs doing so many tasks once reserved for desktops, it was only a matter of time before a notebook computer doubled as a Windows Media Center Edition (MCE) PC. First out is the Toshiba Satellite 5205-S705 ($2,699 direct). Like the first MCE desktop machines of last fall, the weak spot is the TV […]

The MP3 player market is thoroughly fleshed out, even if many of the players are still somewhat clunky: Try to name all the insanely great players besides the iPod. Its time to declare victory for the iPod and move on to the next big thing in personal entertainment. That may well be the personal video […]