Submit a Story!

Personal Technology

http://ptech.allthingsd.com/

from The Wall Street Journal

Posts per week: 1

Recent Articles

Intel Makes Leap in Device to Aid Impaired Readers

 

Published 3 days ago by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

Despite all of the advances in digital technology, too few high-tech products have emerged to help the blind read books or other paper documents, or to make reading such texts easier for people with impaired vision or language-related learning ...

Tags:

Price Is Heavier, but These Laptops Are Very Sleek

 

Published 10 days ago by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

PC makers this fall are trying to get consumers who want small laptops to move up from low-profit netbooks to larger, costlier models called “ultrathin” or “thin and light.” These models are lighter and thinner than many ...

Tags:

Motorola's Droid Is Smart Success for Verizon Users

 

Published 17 days ago by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

Verizon Wireless customers tend to love the company’s fast 3G network. But many tech-oriented Verizon loyalists gripe about the carrier’s high-end smart phones, which haven’t matched the cachet and versatility of the Apple iPhone ...

Tags:

Operating Systems Offer New Choices in PC Shopping

 

Published 24 days ago by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

Now that both Microsoft and Apple have finally shipped the new versions of their operating systems, Windows 7 and Snow Leopard , respectively, it’s time for my annual fall computer-buying guide. This guide stresses laptops, which have ...

Tags:

Apple's New iMac, MacBook Grow Better, Brighter

 

Published 10/22/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

This is the week when Microsoft finally starts selling Windows 7, its much-improved successor to the disappointing Vista version of Windows. PC makers, who have suffered from Vista’s poor reputation, will begin touting models that come with ...

The CLIQ, Storm2 Join Long Parade of iPhone Threats

 

Published 10/15/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

It’s raining smart phones. No, make that super-smart phones, the type of hand-held computer, like Apple’s iPhone or the models powered by Google’s Android software, that browse the Web well, have sophisticated communication ...

Tags:

A Windows to Help You Forget

 

Published 10/7/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

In just two weeks, on Oct. 22, Microsoft’s long operating-system nightmare will be over. The company will release Windows 7, a faster and much better operating system than the little-loved Windows Vista, which did a lot to harm both the ...

Sprint's HTC Hero May Be Your Scene In Smart Phones

 

Published 9/30/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

Super-smart phones based on Google’s Android operating system have been relatively slow to take off since the first one appeared a year ago. Despite Google’s iconic brand, they have yet to develop the strong bond with U.S. consumers ...

Apple's iTunes 9 Makes it Easier to Share, Organize

 

Published 9/17/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

Apple’s iTunes program is one of the most popular software products in the world. The company says hundreds of millions of copies of iTunes have been downloaded, far exceeding the 220 million iPod music players it has sold. That’s because ...

Tags:

These Apps Help Users of iPhones Find Their Way

 

Published 9/9/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

Among its many features, Apple’s iPhone is equipped with GPS and includes manual, written driving directions built into its standard Maps application. But that function doesn’t automatically bring up each turn sequentially, and it lacks ...

Apple Changes Leopard’s Spots

 

Published 8/27/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

For a company known for breakthrough products with cool features, Apple this week is doing something unusual: It is introducing a key product with very few new features that are visible to its users. This new release, the latest major version of the ...

A Service to Make 401(k) Tweaking a Piece of Cake

 

Published 8/20/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

In the current economic turmoil, with investment portfolios melting in value, it’s become harder than ever to plan for retirement. Many people lack good investment advisers, or the time and skill to do their own investment research. So, a ...

Tags:

Taking Software For Older Drivers On a Quick Spin

 

Published 8/13/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

If your driving is getting a bit worse as you grow older, it may be because of a natural decline in the brain’s ability to process visual information. Some scientists believe that, as people age, their capability to rapidly grasp and act on ...

Tags:

New Netbook Offers Long Battery Life And Room to Type

 

Published 8/6/2009 by By Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

The brightest spot for Windows PC makers in this awful economy has been the relatively new category of small, light, minimalist and cheap laptops called netbooks. But there are some significant compromises for consumers who rely on netbooks, which ...

New Netbook Offers Long Battery Life and Room to Type

 

Published 8/6/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

The brightest spot for Windows PC makers in this awful economy has been the relatively new category of small, light, minimalist and cheap laptops called netbooks. But there are some significant compromises for consumers who rely on netbooks, which ...

Hasta la Vista: The Many Versions of Windows 7

 

Published 7/30/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

Last week, this column laid out the painful, tedious process that awaits Windows XP users in October if they choose to migrate their existing PCs to Microsoft’s forthcoming new edition of Windows, called Windows 7. This week, I aim to explain ...

Tags:

For Some, Move To Windows 7 Will Be Tough

 

Published 7/23/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

On October 22, Microsoft will finally release a new version of Windows that will be as good as the deeply disappointing Windows Vista should have been when it came out in January 2007. The new edition, called Windows 7, is a big ...

Tags:

In Browser Wars, The New Firefox Loses Some Edge

 

Published 7/15/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

The war of the Web browsers has taken another turn with the release of a major new version of Mozilla Firefox, the No. 2 browser in market share, but No. 1 in the hearts of many of the most knowledgeable computer users. This new edition of ...

Tags:

Gadgets Show How Much Power Your House Eats

 

Published 7/8/2009 by Geoffrey A. Fowler at Personal Technology

Curtailing your home electricity use is a bit like losing weight: You already understand the basics, but it’s hard to accomplish without help and motivation. An array of gadgets are vying to serve as electricity personal trainers, monitoring home ...

Tags:

Only One Beyoncé: Services Pick Up After Your Music

 

Published 7/2/2009 by Geoffrey A. Fowler at Personal Technology

My digital music collection is over a decade old, and it’s as disorderly as a drawer of mismatched socks. Many songs are missing the correct album titles and cover art—or just show up in Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) iTunes with mysterious names like ...

Tags:

New Mac Laptops Use Batteries Sealed for Power

 

Published 6/25/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

The majority of laptop computers come with removable batteries. This approach allows you to pop in a fresh spare when your battery runs out of juice between charges, and to easily replace a battery when its lifespan is over. The 13-inch ...

Tags:

New Mac Laptops Use Batteries Sealed for Power

 

Published 6/25/2009 by By Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

The majority of laptop computers come with removable batteries. This approach allows you to pop in a fresh spare when your battery runs out of juice between charges, and to easily replace a battery when its lifespan is over. But there’s a dirty ...

Tags:

New iPhone Is Better Model — Or Just Get OS 3.0

 

Published 6/17/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

Apple Inc.’s iPhone has been a smashing success, redefining the smart-phone market and creating a new hand-held computing platform that has attracted over 50,000 third-party apps, or software programs, in less than a year. With its nearly ...

Tags:

The Latest Kindle: Bigger, Not Better, Than Its Sibling

 

Published 6/11/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

There’s a brand-new variant of the Amazon Kindle e-reader, and it’s available from the online bookseller starting this week. This alternative Kindle, called the DX, is a super-size version of the popular Kindle 2, which arrived earlier ...

Tags:

Palm’s New Pre Takes On iPhone

 

Published 6/4/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

In the new era of hand-held computers — super-smart touch-screen phones that run sleek, compelling software — Apple’s iPhone has been king. A new, improved iPhone is expected to be announced on June 8. But on June 6, Apple will ...

Tags:

Little Laptops With Linux Have Compatibility Issues

 

Published 5/28/2009 by Nick Wingfield at Personal Technology

When the cheap laptops known as netbooks first came out over a year ago, computer makers were able to offer them at low prices in part by shipping them with the free Linux open-source operating system, rather than Microsoft’s Windows. Since ...

Tags:

Sharing Where You Are When You Care to Share

 

Published 5/21/2009 by Nick Wingfield at Personal Technology

There’s a tendency in the Twitter era for people to share copious details of their lives with online pals. One way to do that is through new mobile-phone services that let people share their physical locations using the tracking technology ...

Tags:

Verizon Now Sells Subsidized Netbook With Cell Service

 

Published 5/14/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

As laptops have shrunk in size and price, and cellphones have expanded in size and capability, the two are increasingly overlapping in function. Now, their pricing and sales models are blurring, too. For a while, some wireless carriers in Europe ...

Tags:

Quickoffice Brings Editing to iPhones, But Put It on Hold

 

Published 5/7/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

I am typing these words in a full-fledged word processor on an Apple iPhone. It’s a third-party app that allows you to edit, format or create Microsoft Word and Excel documents, and then send them back to a PC or Mac where they can be opened in ...

Tags:

On The Road With The TomTom Navigation System

 

Published 5/5/2009 by Lauren Goode at Personal Technology

“Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?” wrote Jack Kerouac in his well-known ode to the open road. Perhaps Mr. Kerouac would not have rambled so much if he’d had an adequate GPS system. In an effort to limit ...

Tags:

Dell Aims for Style With New Laptop and Family Model

 

Published 4/30/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

Dell is bound and determined to show that it can be a bigger player in the consumer market. The company also is trying to shake its reputation for stodgy design. I’ve been testing two new Dells that aim to prove both points. One is a pricey, ...

Tags:

Computer Buyers Have to Consider System Upgrades

 

Published 4/23/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

If you’re shopping for a computer now, there’s an added factor to consider. Later this year, both of the major computer operating systems, Microsoft’s Windows Vista and Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard, will be replaced with major new ...

Tags:

Latest MobileMe Takes Out Glitches and Eases Syncing

 

Published 4/16/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

Apple Inc. last summer brought out a promising new service called MobileMe designed to synchronize email, contacts and calendars among any combination of its own Macintosh computers and rival Windows PCs, plus Apple’s iPhones and iPod Touch ...

Tags:

True/Slant Tests Another Model Of Web Journalism

 

Published 4/9/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

As newspapers, magazines and TV stations face dire economic challenges, and journalism moves increasingly online, debates are raging about how best to preserve quality news and commentary while still making money. There’s lots of ...

Tags:

Network Hard Disk by Western Digital Offers Easy Backup

 

Published 4/2/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

External hard disks that can be attached directly to a home network for use by multiple computers have been around for a few years now. They’re valuable tools, making it likelier that all your files on every machine will be backed up, and ...

Tags:

Some Favorite Apps That Make iPhone Worth the Price

 

Published 3/26/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

Despite all the economic misery, the past nine months have been a little like the heady days of the early 1980s when the personal computer was just getting rolling and new software programs were popping up like weeds. That’s because we have a ...

Tags:

Microsoft Ups Ante With New Browser

 

Published 3/19/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

The Web browser is arguably the most important piece of software on a computer. No longer just a tool for perusing or searching for information, it has become, for many people, their principal communications medium, their photo album, their ...

Tags:

The Littlest iPod Packs In Songs and Finds Its Voice

 

Published 3/12/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

In these days of economic distress, it’s nice when technology companies add innovative features to the products at the bottom of their price ranges. So it’s notable that Apple’s cheapest iPod, the oft-forgotten Shuffle model, is ...

Tags:

Is it Time to Upgrade From a Point-and-Shoot Digital Camera?

 

Published 3/9/2009 by Nikki Waller at Personal Technology

Point-and-shoot cameras can be disappointing because it seems impossible to get that one perfect shot – either the camera is too slow and you miss the picture you wanted, or the limited power and smaller sensor leads to a blurry, underwhelming ...

Tags:

New Safari Browser Succeeds at Speed, Flops on Features

 

Published 3/5/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

Apple’s Safari browser has always been speedy and has introduced its share of innovations. While it is mostly used on Apple’s own Macintosh computers, with which it is bundled, Safari also comes in a Windows version and it is the browser ...

Tags:

Amazon’s Kindle 2 Improves the Good, Leaves Out the Bad

 

Published 2/26/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

Amazon.com has fixed the worst design flaws in the Kindle, its popular electronic-book reader, while maintaining the excellent book-buying experience that made the first Kindle model tolerable despite those problems. This week, the company ...

Tags:

Unigo.com Gives Everyone a Say About College Picks

 

Published 2/19/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

Research on choosing colleges takes many forms, including visiting campuses and studying the schools’ Web sites. But for a lot of high-school students and their parents, finding a centralized resource containing information about numerous ...

Tags:

Sony’s Vaio P Has Sportscar Looks Without the Power

 

Published 2/12/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

Of the most famous computer makers, only two, Apple and Sony , primarily aim their products at consumers, instead of the generally conservative IT departments of big companies. So, it’s no surprise that these two tech giants often turn out ...

Tags:

Synchronizing Your Bookmarks on All Your PCs

 

Published 2/5/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

Lots of people now have multiple computers, at home and at work, and many use more than one Web browser. That makes it hard to keep bookmarks straight. If, for instance, you bookmark a Web site as a “Favorite” on your PC at work using ...

Tags:

iLife Gets Better; Just Don’t Ask It to Find a Face

 

Published 1/29/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

While Apple ’s Macintosh computers are known for handsome hardware design, what really makes the Mac distinctive is its built-in software. That software includes a suite of multimedia programs, called iLife, which is preinstalled, free, on ...

Tags:

Even in Test Form, Windows 7 Leaves Vista in the Dust

 

Published 1/22/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

This will be a big year for new operating systems. Apple (AAPL) plans a new version of its Macintosh operating system, to be called Snow Leopard. Palm (PALM) plans an all-new smart phone operating system called Palm WebOS. But the new release that ...

Tags:

Shortcovers, Iceberg Put Latest e-Books On Your Cellphone

 

Published 1/15/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader has been a solid success. The device can access a catalog of over 200,000 digital books, including most current best sellers, according to Amazon (AMZN). Its sharp screen, built-in downloading and long battery life ...

Tags:

Clickfree Backs Up Your Files Easily, So You’re Not Toast

 

Published 1/8/2009 by Walter S. Mossberg at Personal Technology

If you got a new computer over the holidays, you’re probably focused right now on enjoying all its cool features, or savoring how much faster it is than the old warhorse it replaced. The last thing you want to dwell upon is the chore of backing ...

Tags:

Friends and Family Have a New Way to Just Drop In

 

Published 12/18/2008 by Nick Wingfield at Personal Technology

Digital-picture frames have started to take off as a way for people to show off their stashes of digital photos in rotating slide shows. A growing number of frames even connect to wireless home networks so they can easily be refreshed with photos ...

Tags:

Two New Devices Give Presentations Some Portability

 

Published 12/11/2008 by Nick Wingfield at Personal Technology

Digital projectors are the best way to get the biggest possible image for a PowerPoint presentation or a movie. But the projectors are often pretty big themselves, with even most “pocket projectors” too big to stuff into the typical ...

Tags:

Page 1 of 2