Some Good Ways to Upgrade Your Netbook

Netbooks are universally regarded for their portability, but no two netbook models are exactly alike, and each seems to come with different trade-offs. A netbook with a superior battery might have a horrible keyboard arrangement; a netbook with a solid-state drive might slip out of your price range; a netbook with a killer list of specs might be missing 802.11n connectivity. These are all common problems--and you won't find common solutions.

you can make a wealth of netbook customizations, and they range in difficulty from 5-minute routines to soldering-gun-based surgeries. We'll take you through some customizations for a Dell Mini 9, as it's one of the more tweakable netbooks we've come across. While your mileage (and procedures) will vary with your own netbook model, this guide will give you a good idea of the kinds of upgrades that could be possible for your machine and skill level.

Insert a Better Battery

n our testing the Dell Mini 9's battery lasted around 3 hours, 34 minutes. That's not too shabby for a four-cell battery, but you can do better. Though you may find a few guides online that teach you how to create a laptop battery using a number of aftermarket batteries all wired together, that's a recipe for disaster. Instead, look to eBay: There you can pick up a 77-watt-hour, eight-cell battery that's entirely compatible with the existing connections (and size) of your Dell Mini 9. You'll double the longevity of your netbook--provided you aren't bothered by the unruly mass sticking out from underneath your system. To replace the battery, flip your netbook upside-down and move the two switches from the locked icon to the unlocked icon, and push up on the battery tray.

Upgrade the Operating System

If you want to install a new operating system onto your netbook, you certainly can: Just pop the CD in any external USB optical drive and install away.

Want to dual-boot your netbook? Grab the GParted utility, by downloading the .iso file for its LiveCD and burning the file onto a disc. Insert that disc into the external optical drive, restart your netbook, and jump into the BIOS to change the boot settings for your machine. Boot off of the optical drive first, and GParted will load. Right-click on the primary partition and select Resize/Move. Microsoft recommends at least 16GB of space for Windows 7; if you were hoping to use that OS but your netbook doesn't have that much room, your experiment ends here. For any OS, if your netbook does have space for it, enter a new partition size of your choosing. Click Resize, and you'll see the newly unallocated space sitting to the right of your primary partition in GParted's graphic. Right-click on this area and select New. Enter zeros for the 'Free Space Proceeding' and 'Following' selections, select Primary Partition under 'Create as', and click the add button.

If you prefer not to use an external optical drive, you can follow these steps for using GParted and installing the new OS with a simple USB thumb drive.

Rearrange the Keyboard

Is the default layout of your netbook's keyboard conflicting with the muscle memory you've built for desktop keyboard layouts? Pop an offending key off of your netbook by wedging a tiny screwdriver under the key and gently applying upward pressure. As long as the keys you're swapping around are of the same size, you'll be able to interchange them as you please. Once you've made the physical transformations, use the Sharp Keys utility to reassign how your operating system interprets the keystrokes. If you don't mind a bit of visual confusion, you could leave the physical keys exactly where they are and simply redefine their purpose with this helpful application.

Upgrade the Hard Drive

What's worse: the underwhelming capacity of the typical solid-state drive that comes with a brand-new netbook, or the price difference you'd have to pay just to get a larger drive in your preconfigured netbook build? Here's a way around both of those nightmares. First, pick the lowest-capacity drive you can purchase when you're building your netbook on the manufacturer's Web site (or, if you have no configuration options, just buy the netbook as it is). Next, consult the appropriate user forums to get a sense of which aftermarket solid-state or magnetic hard drives are compatible with your machine. Finally, grab your screwdriver.

Upgrade the RAM

Did you know that memory is one of the main areas of a netbook where system manufacturers can jack up the price? It's true. Don't let a netbook maker empty your wallet by selling you RAM that you can find on the aftermarket for a lot less. In the case of the Dell Mini 9, we purchased the bare minimum of RAM necessary to complete the configuration: 512MB. To upgrade your machine's RAM, first open the back of the netbook and look for the memory. On the Mini 9, it's in the upper-right quadrant (with the battery facing north). On the RAM you should see its specifications. Either you can purchase the same type of RAM in a larger size (in our case, that came out to a 2GB stick of DDR-2 SODIMM running at 533MHz), or you can check the manufacturer specifications for your netbook to discover the maximum supported speed. You'd barely notice the speed difference between DDR2-4200 memory and DDR2-5300 memory, but there's no sense in maxing out with DDR2-6400 if your machine can't support its full speed.

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Microsoft Apologizes for Racially Charged Image Alteration

Microsoft apologized Wednesday after a Polish version of the company's ad had a black man's head replaced with the head of a white man. News of the image alteration in the picture was making the rounds on forums last night. Microsoft pulled the picture today from the Web site hosting the image.


The edit of the Microsoft ad for its Polish division was crude. The U.S. ad depicted three people at a conference table: an Asian man, a black man, and a white woman. When localizing the marketing image for Poland, Microsoft replaced the black man's with that of a white man.

The photos are basically identical (as pictured above). However, in the picture, only the black man's head was replaced -- the hands noticeably a different color.

Originally many thought this was originally a joke, but Microsoft's public apology set the record straight. Microsoft told Cnet it was "looking into the details of this situation."

A couple of other details are peculiar about Microsoft's (even unedited) image. First of all, the laptop in front of the black man is an Apple MacBook (yes, another Apple product in a Microsoft ad with the logo covered) and the computer monitor in front of the woman is not plugged into anything, even though the keyboard is.

Perhaps Microsoft should either look twice before buying stock photography or just hire a local photographer when they want to localize some marketing images.

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Which Free Antivirus Software Is Best for You?

When the results came in, Avira AntiVir Personal claimed the top spot in our rankings. It excelled in the essential malware-detection tests and also boasted the top scan speed. We weren't big fans of its interface, but function matters more than form here. Even the shiniest security tool wouldn't be worth a darn if it couldn't keep a PC safe. As such, our detection, disinfection, and speed tests account for the lion's share of each app's final score.

Despite Avira's number one finish, some of the other free programs still merit consideration. For example, if you dislike Avira's daily pop-up ad, you might opt for Avast Antivirus Home Edition's Web traffic scanning and less-intrusive ads--but then you'll have to deal with an even worse interface. Meanwhile, AVG 8.5 Free is a good deal easier to use, but its protection lags a bit behind the other two programs'.

And then there's Microsoft Security Essentials, which uses the same antivirus engine as the company's canceled OneCare paid suite. It isn't yet publicly available as of this writing, and won't be done until the end of the year. But since it promises to shake up the world of free antivirus, we ran tests on the current beta to give you an idea of how well the final version might work.



Rounding out your primary-care options are PC Tools Antivirus, Comodo Internet Security, and the new Panda Cloud Antivirus. Panda's use of online servers to analyze potential malware holds promise, and the app did better than any other in malware detection. Its unfinished-beta state and its unique approach, however, prevented us from giving it a full score and ranking. We did rank the PC Tools and Comodo apps, but both fell flat in detecting malware. PC Tools says that its program purposely leaves out antispyware protection and thus shouldn't be compared with other security apps; but when every other company has left distinctions such as "spyware" and "virus" behind in favor of keeping everything bad off your PC, the artificial separation of categories seems tired.

We also tried two free products that are designed to supplement existing security. PC Tools Threatfire proved a real winner with its excellent, proactive malware detection. It can capably spot a nasty intruder based solely on what the file tries to do on the computer, without the need for signatures. It can work in tandem with any of the free antivirus apps we tested. ClamWin Free Antivirus represents the open-source entry in the free-antivirus competition. It scans only when you tell it to, and it won't automatically run a safety check when you save or run a file. You could use it for a second-opinion scan as backup for your main antivirus tool--but its rock-bottom malware detection means you wouldn't get much extra protection from it.

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Google Should Fear Microsoft-Yahoo Partnership

With the arrival of the Bing search engine and the Microsoft-Yahoo search partnership, it's been a hectic summer for search -- not that you'll see market leader Google sweating.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said back in June about Bing: "I don't think Bing's arrival has changed what we're doing. We are about search, we're about making things enormously successful, by virtue of innovation." For the most part Google is ignoring Bing, at least publicly. Google has not made any outward strategic moves that imply worry about Bing or the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership, other than to state that it's bad for innovation and competition.

Indeed, the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership will face the scrutiny of antitrust regulators and some experts question whether the partnership will be approved.

But if the partnership does pass legal muster, the search wizards in Mountain View will have a legitimate threat on deck. Microsoft has the money ($100 million is being spent on Bing marketing) and Yahoo has the users (98 million Yahoo Mail users in the United States, four times as many as Gmail). Both companies have the technology.

Google's plan, according to an upcoming Time magazine feature story, is to keep on innovating in search and let Microsoft mass market the heck out of Bing. But here are three reasons why quietly innovating may not be enough to keep the tenacious Microhoo at bay.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has made it clear that Microsoft's foray into search is not a flirtation, it's a marriage. He said at Bing's launch in late May: "Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search."

Microsoft has said that it plans to spend 5 to 10 percent of its operating income on search over the next five years, a number that works out to be roughly $10 billion per year.

From the outset, Microsoft pointed all its guns at Google with Bing, working to make its interface warm and colorful and structure its search results into categories, as opposed to Google's minimalist interface and long list of links. The subsequent $100 million ad campaign for Bing has focused on how it is more organized and user-friendly than Google.

Google Doesn't Market Itself

Google is one of those companies, like Starbucks, that doesn't do much consumer advertising. Why should they? When your company name is a worldwide verb, you don't exactly need to get the word out. But with the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership, the ground is starting to shift under Google.

The Bing ads have changed perceptions. They rather humorously portray Google's search results as a random collection of links, many of them useless. If anything, the ads have made people question, for probably the first time, whether Google's search is the best way.

The Time magazine story mentions that Google's search engine does have features that most users don't even know about such as providing "the local weather and movie times and performing currency conversions with a single search query."

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Five reasons Apple fears Windows 7

Here are the five reasons Apple fears Windows 7:

1. Clean and Simple User Experience.
There is now very little difference between the easy user experience on Windows 7 and Mac OS X. Gone from Windows 7 are Vista's loads of unnecessary bloatware applications, confusing and poorly designed configuration dialog boxes, and moronic UAC popups that impeded a user's productivity at every turn. The new task bar is more simple and straightforward than Mac OS X's crowded icon bar. Windows also has very good screen configuration settings that make switching between monitor configurations extremely easy. And the Control Panel has been redesigned to the basics of what end users need to manage Windows 7. Like it or not, we're now down to personal preference when it comes to usability and ease of use.

2. Mac Crashes More.
Fact is, my Windows 7 systems don't crash... ever. Those days of frequent Windows Explorer crashes went away when I installed the Windows 7 RC. My Mac now crashes more often (about once a month or so) than Windows 7, and my Mac isn't over laden with junk on it.

3. Flexibility and Lower Cost.
Microsoft has updated its "PC hunter" commercials but they still show how easy it is to find a better value when buying a Windows PC over a Mac. You have to use some pretty convoluted math to come to the conclusion Macs don't cost more than PCs for the equivalent devices. If you buy a Mac it's going to be because you consciously have decided you want a Mac instead of a PC, you hate Microsoft, you prefer the Mac user interface, etc.

4. Performance.

We may not have side-by-side Windows 7 and Mac OS X performance comparisons yet (I'm sure we will soon) but Windows 7 isn't the performance hog Vista was. The experience is great. Windows 7 tools are fast, applications don't freeze up waiting for resources, disk I/O performance is great, memory utilization is much more efficient. Startup, shutdown and sleep are fast. Outlook still has its issues with not responding but overall we're talking a speedy experience on Windows 7. Now add that to the fact that Windows has access to the latest hardware advances -- you can crack the core on the latest Intel i7 or other hardware advances.

5. Mac Security Is NOT Better Than Windows 7.
Many still live with the myth that Mac OS X doesn't have any security issues while Windows does. That myth ignores the facts. For example, Apple just released 18 security patches (the smallest collection of patches this year) for Mac OS X on August 5th. Many try to argue that not all the fixes are for Mac OS X, but rather for other software that might be included with it. To compare apples-to-apples (pun intended) you have to stack up the software each vendor ships with their products, not selective parts of it. While it is true that Windows is still a much larger security target because of it's market share, it isn't true that the Mac doesn't have plenty of security issues of its own.

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Toshiba Portege R600-ST520W Review

While Toshiba's new Portege R600-ST520W hits the ground running with a base weight of 2.4 pounds (3 pounds with the power supply included) and a thickness just over the 1-inch mark, its price tag of well over 2 grand and its so-so hardware reduce the Portege R600 to a good--not great--showing (and it becomes a tough sell when compared to netbooks that cost less than a quarter of its price).

Toshiba sent us their midlevel R600 configuration. Priced at $2149 at the time of review, it includes an Intel Core 2 Duo SU9400 processor at 1.4GHz, 3GB of DDR2 RAM, integrated graphics from Intel, a Wimax-capable wireless card, and a 160GB hard drive with a 32-bit version of Vista Business Edition installed. (That choice of operating system should make this machine's intended audience clear enough.)

In general office performance, the R600 does all right, but it won't win any medals: It scored a 67 in Worldbench, beating out Fujitsu's LifeBook T2020 and Dell's Adamo (these notebooks scored 64 and 65, respectively), but came up short compared with the Macbook Air's 78. You probably wouldn't expect to play any games on this thing--and we confirmed that. Unreal Tournament 3 couldn't squeeze out more than about 6 frames a second at its lowest supported resolution. At least the R600's battery hung in for just under 6 hours to a charge.

While the numbers might indicate a lackluster user experience, I didn't find this to be the case. The R600 felt very responsive, handling several running programs and DVD playback simultaneously with no hitches. This is probably due to the 3GB of installed memory, but in any case, the R600 was easy on my patience, and on my wrists.

The keyboard takes up about half of the notebook's main body below the screen. While you won't find a 10-key input or a lot of function keys, you will find a comfortable and uncompromised layout. Unlike the truncated, clipped keyboards of netbooks and other ultraportables, the R600 features full-size keys and a well-placed FN key that doesn't get in the way. My only complaint is related to one of my major issues with the notebook itself. Its superlight weight and thin construction make it feel positively dainty at times, and as a user with large hands, I often felt I was going to break it. There's also a moderate amount of flex toward the middle of the keyboard. The touchpad is smaller than those on many full-featured notebooks, but it isn't tiny, and it gets the job done.

The R600's display is pretty impressive for its size. Packing a 1280-by-800 resolution into a small footprint, it features excellent brightness and a glare-resistant screen that remains viewable in any lighting conditions it's likely to see. It also has an outdoor lighting option, which deactivates the monitor's backlight. Though the vertical viewing angles are slightly spotty, this isn't an issue for the most part. Color reproduction is good, image quality is razor-sharp, and text is readable without causing too many headaches.

Maybe Toshiba would really prefer you didn't upgrade the R600 at all on your own. While the laptop has a pretty wide array of kits, including a WiMax radio (you'd need to find an area with WiMax coverage to use it), upgrading it is a nightmare. You'll need jeweler's screwdrivers to open the expansion panels on the R600's underside, only to be met with a paltry DIMM slot and not much else.

Sound is where the R600's nature as an ultraportable presents its other big compromise; the mono speaker's maximum volume is too quiet to be heard over even low levels of ambient noise, and the sound quality is awful. Even the external audio controls leave something to be desired--the old fashioned dial on the left side of the notebook looks dated and awkward. The R600 fares a little better with headphones, landing somewhere around the lower end of average for sound quality, but volume remains quiet.

As an ultraportable, the R600's inputs are reasonable. You get two dedicated USB ports and a third that pulls double duty as both a USB and an e-SATA port (the latter is always nice to see), plus gigabit ethernet, SD and Express Card slots, and a VGA output. The business audience will likely appreciate this last touch, as most office projectors continue to support primarily VGA. As for included software, you have the standard packages for backup and for hotkey and wireless management. The HDD Protection utility (which stops the hard disk's heads in a safe position if movement is detected) is well-intentioned, but you'll want to turn down its sensitivity right away.

The R600's design looks stylish enough, at least with the lid closed. It features a brushed metal surface in silver--subdued but not boring (and it's nice to see Toshiba move away from high-gloss, high-fingerprint surfaces). With the lid open, the design is not so great, at least in my opinion--mismatching surfaces don't look modern, they usually look bad. Other than this (admittedly minor) qualm, the R600 is a handsome ultraportable that will catch more than a few glances.

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Lenovo Ideapad U110 Review

Lenovo's supersvelte IdeaPad U110 is about as flashy as ultraportable laptops get. Somewhere between the fire-engine red, laser-etched lid and the rugged rubbery base coating, the U110 establishe itself as a bonafide MacBook Air rival.

This IdeaPad weighs 2.9 pounds with the seven-cell battery in place. It measures 10.8 inches by 7.7 inches by 0.72 inch, and for an ultraportable it packs a reasonable amount of power under the hood: A 1.6-GHz Intel L7500 Core 2 Duo CPU and 2GB of RAM help the U110 run a little faster than Apple's Air. In our WorldBench tests, the U110 scored in the middle of the pack with a score of 65 versus the thin-and-light MacBook's slower 57.

The U110's reasonably roomy 120GB hard drive spins at a pokey 4200RPM, but the notebookit had a respectable battery life of 4 hours, 38 minutes on a single charge.

Lenovo's business-class ThinkPad X300 beat the Air by the same margin in our performance tests. But unlike the U110 (and the Air), it squeezes in optical and solid-state drives (for a higher price, of course).

The rugged, rubberized IdeaPad matches the durability and design of its stablemate, with three USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire port, PC Express and SD card slots, an ethernet jack, and VGA out.

On a laptop with an 11.1-inch screen at 1366 by 768 resolution, a scrunched-up keyboard with inhumanly small buttons would hardly seem out of place. But the U110's buttons are huge by ultraportable standards. Though the wide, flat keys took a little getting used to, I had no trouble tapping out this review on it.

One negative: The U110 is a fingerprint magnet. Its glossy coating renders the four shortcut keys almost unnoticeable. Run your fingers along the top of the keyboard for the faintly lit, stylized buttons to appear. Good luck seeing them in broad daylight, though.

As on the IdeaPad Y510, Lenovo's glossy treatment creates an annoying amount of glare, even with the brightness control set all the way up. At least you'll be fine indoors.

The software included with ThinkPads is vastly superior to what included you get with an IdeaPad. Exhibit A: the ThinkPad's smartly executed ThinkVantage Suite versus the U110's Shuttle Center II entertainment hub, which borders on being useless bloatware.

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