LoJack Hunts Down Stolen Laptops

If you’ve ever lost your laptop and felt like a dolt, consider a report released in February by the Justice Department. Apparently, losing laptops isn’t a habit displayed only by common folk, because the FBI lost 160 laptops between February 2002 and September 2005, according to the report.

If a top-secret government organization can lose laptops, including some containing classified data and agents’ names and addresses, it’s understandable that just about anyone can lose a laptop, whether due to absentmindedness, theft, or any other cause. However, one computer manufacturer is taking steps to help users recover laptops if someone else nabs them.

Dell announced that customers who purchase select Inspiron laptops and opt for the CompleteCare Accidental Damage Service will receive Absolute Software's Computrace LoJack for Laptops, a theft protection service that can track, locate, and recover stolen computers. If you’re familiar with LoJack for vehicles, you already know that the service hides a tiny transceiver in your vehicle, and when the vehicle is reported stolen, the transceiver emits a signal that law enforcement can intercept, in turn helping to locate the vehicle.

LoJack for Laptops (www.lojackforlaptops.com) works in much the same fashion, but instead of a hardware device, LoJack for Laptops relies on software to announce its location. When installed on a laptop, the software contacts a Computrace monitoring center each time the laptop connects to the Internet. If the laptop is stolen, the owner will need to file a police report and then notify the Computrace Recovery Team. Afterward, when the laptop connects to the Internet and contacts the monitoring center, the computer continues to contact Computrace every 15 minutes, allowing the company to identify the computer’s location.

Once located, Computrace works with the police to provide tracking information and documents needed for search warrants, and the company claims it has “close partnerships” with thousands of police departments in North America. Computrace says it recovers three out of four stolen computers, and if it doesn’t recover a missing laptop within 30 days, it will refund the price of the software.

Dell’s CompleteCare service ranges from $99 to $139 and, in addition to LoJack theft recovery, provides coverage for issues not covered under warranty, including spills, drops, and electrical surges. If you don’t have a Dell computer and don’t plan on buying one, you can still purchase LoJack for Laptops for whatever model you own. A one-year subscription to the service costs $49.99, and you can add an additional year of protection for $29.99.

STORAGE

Google Pinpoints Source Of Hard Drive Deaths

Why do hard drives fail? In the past, experts have pointed to numerous factors that could contribute to a hard drive’s early (or not so early) demise, but new research from Google shows these conventional beliefs might be inaccurate.

Excessive usage and high temperatures are often identified as drive-killing culprits, but Google found that these factors might not actually impact drives as severely as previously thought. Instead, the researchers discovered that parameters found in the self-monitoring facility, or SMART (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology), in drives tend to have more damaging potential.

For example, drives that report higher-than-usual scan errors, which can indicate surface defects, during background scans are 10 times more likely to fail than drives with no errors. Also, reallocation counts, which occur when the drive remaps potentially damaged sectors to a new physical sector, can also contribute to a drive’s death. According to Google, drives with one or more reallocations fail more often than those with none.

The study collected data between December 2005 and August 2006 from systems across all of Google’s services and included more than 100,000 hard drives ranging in speeds from 5,400 to 7,000rpm and in sizes from 80 to 400GB.

DISPLAYS

LEDs Light The Way In New LCDs

Samsung and LG.Philips LCD are working hard to change the landscape of LCD design, moving from CCFL (cold cathode fluorescent lamp) backlights to LED (light-emitting diode)-lit panels.

In conventional LCDs, fluorescent lamps provide the light necessary to illuminate the screen, but because the light is constant across the panel, “leakage” can occur. In these situations, LCDs can have difficulty displaying true blacks and can even display white areas in the parts of the screen where the backlights reside.

LCDs with LED backlights, on the other hand, use local dimming to enable or disable the backlight in certain areas of the screen, allowing for truer blacks and more overall intense colors. Samsung introduced a 40-inch LCD panel that has a 100,000:1 contrast ratio made possible due to this local dimming technology. While this panel is slated for the HDTV (high-definition television) market, Samsung also unveiled a PC-targeted, 30-inch model that also features an LED backlight.

This monitor includes a 2,560 x 1,600 resolution, 900:1 contrast ratio, 16.7 million colors, 300cd/m2 brightness, 6ms (millisecond) response time, and a 180-degree viewing angle. The company also appears to have plans to release the technology for the mobile market, unveiling a 15.4-inch, LED-backlit LCD panel with 1,440 x 900 resolution, 330cd/m2 brightness, 262,000 colors, and just 3.1 watts of power consumption.

PRINTERS & PERIPHERALS

Transfer Your Files, Part Deux

Last month, we reviewed a file transfer device called The Tornado (www.thetornado.com) and came away impressed with its simplicity and power. This month, we tested a similar product, called PC Personality Clone, that promises similar ease and functionality.

SaberData, the creator of PC Personality Clone ($69.95; www.saberdata.com), claims you can use its device to automatically clone your old PC to a new one in as little as 15 minutes. However, users of true cloning, or ghosting, software will discover that PC Personality Clone doesn’t actually clone systems, but instead copies most data from one PC to another. The device will not copy applications, nor will it copy the operating system that resides on the source PC (but it will copy OS [operating system]-specific settings).

Although the device does not technically require software to be installed on either the source or destination PC, it does require CDs in each computer for the migration process to be accomplished, unlike The Tornado, which places all necessary software directly in the device itself.

Otherwise, PC Personality Clone performs similarly, using a USB-based device to connect computers, transferring files quickly and easily with the help of a split window that allows migration of data or dragging and dropping of specific files or folders.

CPUs, CHIPS & CARDS

On-Chip Memory Takes The Fast Lane

Future multicore CPU designs received a boost thanks to a recent innovation from IBM, whose new eDRAM (embedded dynamic random-access memory) sports the fastest eDRAM access times ever recorded.

Designed using IBM’s SOI (Silicon-on-Insulator) for high performance at lower power, the new technology improves microprocessor performance in multicore architectures and ramps up the movement of graphics in gaming, networking, and other image-intensive applications.

“With this breakthrough solution to the processor/memory gap, IBM is effectively doubling microprocessor performance beyond what classical scaling alone can achieve,” says Dr. Subramanian Iyer, distinguished engineer and director of 45nm (nanometer) technology development at IBM. “As semiconductor components have reached the atomic scale, design innovation at the chip-level has replaced materials science as a key factor in continuing Moore’s Law.”

According to IBM, the new eDRAM technology improves on-processor memory performance while using one-third the space and one-fifth the standby power consumed by conventional SRAM (static random-access memory).

IBM’s eDRAM can be used as temporary, quick-access storage by processors, helping to speed the overall performance of the chip. The company’s strategy of integrating memory into processors differs from Intel’s plans, which appear to call for memory stacked on top of processors.

DIGITAL MISCELLANEA

Turn To The Bot For Photo Correction

If you don’t have the time or patience to color-correct your digital pictures—and if you’re willing to trust a program to do it for you—check out Photobot, a digital photo finishing program that automatically fixes your pictures.

With Tribeca Labs’ Photobot ($29.95; www.photobot.com), you won’t even need to load your pictures into the program. Instead, Photobot actually operates like a bot, continually searching your hard drive for images and applying corrective measures to your pictures. Designed for computer and/or photography novices, the software corrects problems such as bad color, red-eye, and dark photos using adaptive technology that analyzes each pixel in an image.

“Photobot is designed for people who just want their pictures to come out looking great,” says Mike Bevans, partner, Tribeca Labs. “People like my mom love to take snapshots but have no desire to spend even one second doing photo-finishing work on their computers. Taking pictures is fun, but image-editing is homework.”

Each copy of Photobot includes a free, three-month trial for Swiss Picture Bank, a digital picture site that stores your pictures in Swisscom IT Services data centers, the same places where Swiss banks store their electronic assets. When Swiss Picture Bank is used in conjunction with Photobot, your photos will automatically be backed up to the secure site.

PROBLEM-SOLVER: TROUBLESHOOTING THE NEWS

I’m having problems installing Windows on my SATA drive.

To properly install Windows on a SATA (Serial ATA) drive, many users need to manually supply the drivers when prompted by the Windows installation program. Download the SATA drivers from your motherboard manufacturer’s Web site, copy them to a floppy diskette, and press F6 when you see the following message: “Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI [Small Computer System Interface] or RAID [redundant array of independent disks] driver.” Follow the on-screen instructions to install the drivers.

The colors on my monitor veer heavily on the red side.

Many color-related video problems stem from faulty cables or connections. Try wiggling the monitor’s cable—if the colors improve or otherwise change when you do so, replace the cable with a new one. You can also try tweaking the color controls on your monitor. If the cable or monitor doesn’t appear to be causing the problem, update the drivers for your video card or try swapping out the video card with a different one to see if your current video card is faulty.

My Logitech MX700 mouse no longer seems to recharge.

If your MX700 is still using the same rechargeable batteries that came with the mouse, you should replace them with new rechargeable batteries. Like many rechargeable batteries, the Ni-MH (nickel-metal hydride) batteries included with the MX700 can be recharged only so many times before they need to be replaced.

When I plug in USB devices, I receive power warnings in Windows.

The built-in USB ports on PCs or notebooks can deliver enough power to handle several devices, but it is possible to overload them. If Windows prevents you from using certain devices (such as your printer) unless you remove other USB devices, consider buying a USB hub that includes its own power supply.

CONVERGENT TECH: PDAs & SMARTPHONES

New Windows Mobile OS Brings Desktop To Handhelds

Not only are we witnessing the continued convergence of cell phones, PDAs (personal digital assistants), and other mobile devices, but with Microsoft’s recent unveiling of Windows Mobile 6 OS, we’re also seeing the convergence of mobile devices and PCs—or at least the ability to perform similar functions on each platform.

In addition to enhanced usability features, the new Windows Mobile 6 lets users view, navigate, and edit Word documents and Excel spreadsheets in their original formatting without affecting any tables, images, or text. Furthermore, the new OS also lets users view PowerPoint demonstrations on their mobile devices, and on the Outlook side, users can view email messages exactly the way they were sent, complete with the original pictures, links, and formatting. In other words, documents and emails will look exactly the same on a Windows Mobile 6-powered device as they do on a PC.

The new OS also increases the power of Outlook Calendar with the new Calendar Bar, which provides quick glances at the following day or week and helps users quickly identify open schedule times. Outlook’s new smart filtering allows users to search and find messages more effectively without scanning through long message lists, and a wide selection of new one-click options expand message tasks with the ability to reply to all, set a flag, move a message to a subfolder, and delete. Also, if you’re using your new Windows Mobile 6 device along with Exchange Server 2007, you can set an automatic out-of-office reply.

A particularly useful addition to Windows Mobile is Windows Live, Microsoft’s new technology that boosts searching and communications. Windows Live for Windows Mobile includes Live Messenger, which includes features identical to the same program on PCs, as well as a presence-enabled contact list, plenty of emoticons, and instant access to friends. Live Messenger also lets users send messages via either voice or text, join multiparty chats, view friends’ display tiles, and send and receive files.

The included Live Mail lets users manage their Windows Live Mail or Hotmail account, complete with HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) compatibility and new technology that automatically sends new email messages to mobile devices. Live Search provides a wealth of search options, including the ability to scour news, local businesses and entertainment, maps, directions, images, and more, with results appearing in easily navigable categories that include click-to-call capabilities. Also included is Windows Live Spaces, Microsoft’s global blogging and photo service for mobile devices.

Following the unveiling of Windows Mobile 6, devices began emerging that include the new OS, including the HP iPAQ 500 Voice Messenger, Samsung’s i760, and the i-mate JAQ4.

Compiled by Christian Perry
Illustrated by Lori Garris