The Best Vista Notebooks

The new version of Windows can be a challenge for some notebooks to run. Our tests will point you to the laptops with the power to handle Vista.

Carla Thornton; testing by Thomas Luong

Right now could be a great time to splurge on a laptop, given that many come with Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system to sweeten the deal. But is the new OS reason enough to jump now, or should you hang on to your trusty Windows XP laptop for a while longer?

To find out, we rounded up 15 Vista-equipped laptops from Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, HP, Lenovo, Micro Express, and Toshiba, in two categories: desktop-replacement models powerful enough to serve as your Primary PC, and ultraportables weighing less than 5 pounds. We tested speed and battery life and carefully evaluated screens, keyboards, and other vital features.

We ranked the best five notebooks in each category and awarded Best Buys to the $2301 HP Pavilion dv9000t, a desktop replacement, and the $2150 Dell XPS M1210, an ultraportable. The jazzed-up dv9000t is a snazzy multimedia laptop with a 17-inch screen and designer exterior, while the M1210 is Dell at its best in a 4.9-pound package complete with a dedicated entertainment interface, smoking speed, and great battery life.

This roundup also marks the debut of WorldBench 6 Beta 2, the latest version of PC World's test suite for computers. Our PC World Test Center team refreshed the benchmark with Vista support and expanded tests that give multicore systems a workout. We also improved our battery test with a new automated script that rotates simulated typing with full-screen DVD-quality videos. (In view of its various updates, of course, WorldBench 6 Beta 2 scores are not comparable to previo

The 20 Most Annoying Tech Products

roducts aren't necessarily bad, buggy, or dangerous. But they all have one or two traits that make you want to wrap them in 200 pounds of steel cable and toss them off the side of a boat. From stupid features and rude behavior to brain-dead design and poor corporate policies, these 20 products have truly annoyed us over the years, and some continue to do so. This list hardly covers every annoying tech product ever made. But where did this list of 20 come from? You picked the worst



Top 10 most annoying products flagged with icons. Just for fun, we've added 10 more products that didn't get enough votes from you in our poll but that we found particularly irksome.

It's still possible, though, that a product not listed here or in our reader survey really got under your skin, so please post a comment below. If nothing else, you might feel a little better.

CVS Exposed Customers to Identity Theft

The Texas Attorney General has taken legal action against CVS Pharmacy for exposing customers to identity theft the old-fashioned way.

According to a press release issued by Attorney General Greg Abbott's office on Tuesday, employees at a CVS store in Liberty, Texas, chucked hundreds of customer records into a dumpster behind the storefront. Left in the trash were documents including customers' names, addresses, Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, prescriptions and doctors, according to the release.

Many of the credit and debit card numbers were still active when found, the release says, as expiration dates were included in the information.

While CVS's actions won't likely end up exposing as many customers' to the risk of identity theft as other recent breaches, such as the colossal , the Attorney General's office is warning customers of that CVS location to monitor their finances for suspicious activity.

Such action on CVS's part violates the 2005 Identity Theft Enforcement and Protection Act, a Texas state law that requires businesses to protect customer records that contain sensitive information, the release says. The law allows for prosecutors to seek up to US$50,000 per violation.

Adobe to Show off Media Player to Broadcasters

Adobe Systems has developed its first desktop media player and plans to give the industry an early peek at it at the National Association of Broadcasters trade show in Las Vegas this week.

The company is already a major player in the exploding market for online video with its ubiquitous Flash player and accompanying authoring and streaming products. Adobe hopes to extends its presence with Adobe Media Player: a desktop application that will let content owners embed ads in clips that users can play back offline.

The ability to let consumers "download and carry" ad-supported videos and play them back offline makes the product an important one for media companies, which already use Flash to distribute 80 percent to 90 percent of their content, an analyst said. "It provides a way to share media and make money, which until now has been a scary proposition for most media companies," said James McQuivey, a principal analyst of television and media technology at Forrester Research.

Would You Buy a Green PC?

Your mission this weekend: Gather up your used computers, cell phones, batteries, CDs, DVDs, and other electronic garbage and get it ready for the weekend after that.

Earth Day is coming up on Sunday, April 22, inspiring tech companies to host recycling take-back programs. Dell, for example, is teaming up with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on an Earth Day event in Washington D.C. They'll take back any brand of computer and peripheral from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on April 22nd at Freedom Plaza. California Integrated Waste Management Board is also offering similar at locations throughout the state.

Responsibly disposing of your old e-waste is great, but what if you could buy new equipment that used less energy, came in less-exotic but more biodegradable packaging, and incorporated fewer toxic substances (like mercury and lead). Would you buy them? Would you buy them even if they took a performance hit?

We'd like to know. Be so kind as to take our poll:

Eight Tips for a Faster Hard Drive

Have you uncovered the secret to a faster drive yet? It's removing unnecessary files and defragging your drive. I've got the tools and tricks, so read on...

The Hassle: I ran the Windows Disk Defragmenter, but when I tried another defragging tool, it said that my drive was still mostly fragmented. Which one should I believe?

The Fix: Windows, right? Please. For one thing, the Windows tool misses Restore Points--files that are created and deleted each day, take up 13MB each (on my PC), and are scattered all over the drive. Also, third-party tools permit you to decide how to defrag--say, by packing the files tighter.

One defragger I recommend is Golden Bow Systems' $40 Vopt 8. This program is compatible with Vista and XP, and it defrags Restore Points. Among Vopt's neat extras are tools for deleting temp files; a slick feature that closes unnecessary apps, including Windows Services; and a way to automatically defrag multiple drives and then shut down the system. Get a trial .

No matter which program you use, get a better defrag with these simple tricks:

• Defrag early and often. Theoretically, defragging improves performance. PC World's lab hasn't found that to be consistently true. But here at Bass International labs, it's a different story. I didn't defrag my drive for six months and had thousands of fragmented files scattered about my hard drive. After defragging, my system seemed faster.
• Open applications don't get defragged, so close them all before you begin. Ditto for tools that reside in the system tray.
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Microsoft Will Sell DRM-free Songs

Following digital music pioneer Apple Inc.'s lead yet again, Microsoft Corp. said this week it will soon sell digital music online without digital rights management (DRM) protection.

Microsoft's apparent change of heart on selling DRM-free music came in response to Apple's deal earlier in the week to sell unprotected content from recording company EMI Group PLC. The company previously claimed that DRM was necessary for current and emerging digital media business models.

"The EMI announcement on Monday was not exclusive to Apple," said Katy Asher, a Microsoft spokeswoman on the Zune team, in an e-mail to the IDG News Service Friday. She said Microsoft has been talking with not only EMI but other record labels "for some time now" about offering unprotected music on its Zune players in an effort to meet the needs of its customers.

I applaud EMI for making DRM-free music available to online music stores, and I'm glad it comes with a boost in audio quality. Apple will offer the option of converting any eligible iTMS purchases for $.30 a piece. But I'm sure there are at least a few people out there who are just fine playing their $.99 128kbps tracks on their iPods. The new DRM-free files may be twice as big, but that doesn't mean they'll sound twice as good.

So is the boost in quality worth it? I certainly think so, but then I'm a bit of a freak about sound quality. Here's a quick way to see for yourself. I dug around the office for some CDs and ripped a couple short clips (nothing over 20 seconds) in both 128 kbps and 256 kbps AAC. Download give 'em a listen and let us know if you can tell the difference. Or for an even better test, fire up iTunes and rip a few of your own CDs at different bit-rates. It's cool. I'll wait.

Full-Steam-Ahead DVD

Today's conventional DVD burners can deftly handle writing two layers of data onto a disc, and they can do so significantly faster (by nearly a third, if you pick the right drive) than they could just six months ago. In recent months, drive manufacturers have increased the write speeds of dual-layer DVD-R and double-layer DVD+R burners from their original speeds of 2.4X to 6X and 8X, respectively; and each type should eventually hit the same 16X maximum write-speed ceiling as write-once single-layer DVD drives.