Latest Opinion

  • 24 May 2013

  • Opinion: With an SSD, backups are more important than ever

    Welcome to the dawn of the SSD age. Solid-state drives now offer great performance at affordable prices, which is why more and more users are choosing them in new PCs and adding them to older ones.

  • 23 May 2013

  • Opinion: How to photograph the moon

    It's hard to believe today--especially since you can just look up at the sky and see our crater-covered moon with your naked eyes--but there was a time when people weren't intimately familiar with what the surface of our nearby neighbor looked like. Before the Renaissance-era invention of the telescope, the moon was generally thought to be a perfect, unblemished sphere. These days, with even a moderate telephoto lens, you can photograph the moon and see the surface details for yourself.

  • Opinion: Forget getting a new tablet, build a DIY Etch A Sketch for your (inner) kid

    Recognized as one of the 100 most memorable and creative toys of the 20th century, the Etch A Sketch has served as both a children's toy and a platform for those looking to prove they can make art on even the most ridiculous things.

  • Opinion: For security's sake, upgrade to a newer version of Office

    Russell Caplan still uses Office 2003, which Microsoft will stop supporting next year. He asked if he will need to upgrade to a more current version.

  • Opinion: All about About This Mac

    In this week's tip, I'll discuss a cool feature that you may be wholly unaware of--even if you're a long-time Mac user.

  • Opinion: Commodity Clouds, the 'Tuning Tax' and What Cloud Users Really Need

    Application-tuning capabilities coupled with today's commodity cloud offerings are more than many users need. Just like broadband Internet, though, it's only a matter of time before these 'overserved' users turn to the commodity cloud to meet 'unserved' needs. Will this leave enterprise cloud deployments in the cold?

  • Opinion: GeoGuessr lets you get lost in a foreign country without leaving home

    Unless you're in a movie, the chances of you suddenly waking up one day in a random part of the world are fairly low. But if you want to live out your fantasy of being completely and abruptly lost, GeoGuessr is the game for you.

  • 22 May 2013

  • Opinion: Score some geek points at your next cookout with this Power Mac G5 grill

    With Memorial Day and the traditional start of summer just around the corner, you're probably daydreaming about that giant rack of meat you're going to throw on your trusty grill this weekend (don't forget the vegetarian options, too!). But before you dust off that barbecue, consider using one of those old computer towers for your cookout.

  • Opinion: Cut custom circuit boards with the Othermill

    3D printing is all the rage these days, because it's an additive process that lets you basically fabricate any random knick knacks on your mind. But who says making has to be a strictly 3D printing only affair?

  • Opinion: $99 Linux stick turns any HDMI display into a virtual desktop

    Hard on the heels of the news that Dell's "Project Ophelia" thumb PC is expected to ship this summer, thin client vendor Devon IT on Tuesday rolled out a similar contender of its own called the Ceptor.

  • Opinion: Makie is a fully customizable (and slightly unsettling) 3D-printed action figure

    Making custom designs with 3D printing is nothing new--in fact, it's right with the spirit of the technology. However we aren't all superb designers, and it can be challenging--or even impossible--to design something that you're happy with. So if you've been thinking about 3D printing a custom action figure, you might want to check out Makie, by MakieLab first.

  • 21 May 2013

  • Opinion: New pink phone has liquid-cooled processor so women don't burn their delicate lady hands

    Japanese manufacturer NEC recently introduced a gender-specific mobile phone that will go on sale at the end of June. The Medias X 06E, which is available in either white or pink and comes with an attached light pendant, is being promoted for both its feminine design and the fact that it is the world's first liquid-cooled smartphone. Because NEC believes that the top priorities among female mobile consumers is owning a phone that 1) screams "this is a lady's phone!!!" and 2) won't get too hot and sear their delicate manicured lady fingers.

  • Opinion: Mageia Linux 3 brings a raft of key updates

    Mageia has long been what you might call a "best-kept secret" of the Linux world, consistently residing among the top five distributions in DistroWatch's page-hit rankings despite minimal marketing and hoopla.

  • Opinion: 10 tech patents that should have been rejected

    Welcome to the wacky world of tech patents--a place where you'll find not just the crazy-sounding ideas that inhabit any category of patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), but some ideas that seem so minute or so obvious that you wonder how they ever qualified as patentworthy.

  • Opinion: Lightpack protects your precious eyesight while watching TV

    Your eye can clearly see only a small part of your screen any given time. The rest of your field of view is some measure of blurry--a smearing of color your brain pulls, along with the sharp central focus, into a coherent image. That makes it relatively simple to extend the perceived breadth of a scene on your TV screen or monitor. Woodenshark aims to capitalize on this with its Lightpack (funding through May 31), an inexpensive back lighting system that extends your visual experience beyond the borders of your box.

  • 17 May 2013

  • Opinion: Noisy neighbors in your cloud

    As data-transfer shifts increasingly to the cloud, the servers stacked in datacenters handling the data become increasingly crowded. Virtualization means multiple users can share a single server.

  • Opinion: New tablet boots Ubuntu Linux, Android, and Windows 8

    We've seen several Linux tablets emerge over the past year or so, but examples with triple-boot capabilities are much less common.

  • 16 May 2013

  • Opinion: VRcade aims to be the world's first virtual reality arcade

    Turn a corner on the Internet and chances are you'll collide with some news about the Oculus Rift. Almost everyone seems to be working on some way to capitalize on this renewed love for virtual reality. As such, it was only a matter of time before someone (or a team of someones) took it into their heads to combine virtual reality with those coin-operated arcades your parents keep telling you about.

  • Opinion: Why some Web sites are much slower than others

    John asked why one Web page "comes up right away, while another takes quite a long time to load."

  • Opinion: Three simple ways to get a speedy PC

    There are three ways to get a faster PC or laptop: buy a new one, upgrade the hardware, or upgrade the software. We can show you how to do them all.

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