PCWorld Apr-12

NATE RALPH BUILT his first PC before he was 6. That’s not a typo. At an age when most kids are learning their ABCs, our future beat editor for desktop PCs was focused more on CPUs: scavenging old floppy drives and monitors, dismantling and reassembling cast-off chassis, and attempting to turn a ragtag collection of discarded parts into working computers. Now, to be fair, Nate had a lot of help from his father, a talented tinkerer who had been trained in his native Jamaica as an electrician. But when the senior Mr. Ralph moved to New York, he got a job as a sanitation worker. That’s when Nate’s love affair with the nuts, bolts, and guts of computing began. “New York City didn’t have a good recycling program for electronics back then,”…

Airports for Tech Travelers This story [“The 20 Best Airports for Tech Travelers,” February] is limited to 40 commercial airports. Generally, the smaller airports offer free Wi-Fi and other amenities that aren’t found at the big airports. They do this to attract customers who are tired of being nickeled-and-dimed at the bigger airports. ChrisW716y, PCWorld.com forums As an Oregon student from Minnesota, I frequently use the tech-related features at both the Minneapolis airport and Portland International. To see Minneapolis outrank Portland in your survey is simply astounding. Minneapolis charges exorbitant fees to use its Wi-Fi, making it unaffordable on a student budget. Also, I hardly get cell phone reception at MSP, whereas Portland offers excellent 3G and 4G reception for Sprint (not that I need it, as Portland provides free Wi-Fi). And due to the…

BIG, BEAUTIFUL HDTVs earned the highest accolades at the International CES trade show this year. Sure, 3D is still around: We’ll see more 3DTVs in 2012 than ever before. But 3D has moved significantly down the list of marquee features. Some of the most interesting TV technologies we saw at CES are too content- or price-prohibitive to make a splash in 2012. That said, they offer an intriguing look at the near future of HDTVs. OLED Stunners Judged by their initialisms alone, LED and OLED may seem similar—but they’re entirely different animals when it comes to TV tech. A traditional LED-backlit set employs light-emitting diodes to illuminate an LCD screen from behind or from the edges. But in an OLED (organic light-emitting diode) TV, the source of illumination and of the resulting image are…

SOUNDJAW If you find the Apple iPad 2’s tinny sound intolerable, look into a SoundJaw. Just snap this small plastic part onto your iPad 2 at the back corner where the tablet’s perforated speaker ports reside. The $13 SoundJaw then directs the audio from the iPad 2’s speakers toward you, thus increasing the sound quality and the volume. www.soundjaw.com BULLETTRAIN EXPRESS HOME THEATER KEYBOARD TRAY This stylish, lap-friendly keyboard platform lets you combine a wireless Apple keyboard and a Magic Trackpad, and it enables you to work with a desktop Mac while you’re seated, say, on your sofa. The silver version of the tray is $79; it also comes in nine metallic colors for $99 each. www.bullettrain.com NOMAD BRUSH You can make using art apps on an iPad even more fun with one of these…

TABLETS WITH SCREEN sizes of up to 10 inches and Google’s Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) OS will soon become available at prices ranging from $100 to $250. Some of them run on phone processors and may lack the power of Apple’s iPad 2. But with cameras, high-def video functions, and HDMI ports, they could offer good value to budget buyers. ViewSonic’s $170 ViewPad E70, which is set to ship this spring, will have a 7-inch, 800-by-480-pixel capacitive touchscreen, a MicroSD slot for expanding storage to up to 32GB, and a Micro HDMI port to connect to HDTVs. Other inexpensive Android 4.0 tablets include the 9.7-inch Nextbook Elite 10 from E Fun (due in the spring for about $229), and Velocity Micro’s 7-inch Cruz Tablet T507 ($150) and 10-inch Cruz Tablet T510…

Big Internet Companies Unite to Fight Phishing A group including Facebook, Google, and Microsoft announced a new specification to streamline how email providers figure out whether messages lead to phishing attacks based on spoofed domain addresses. Called DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance), the initiative is designed to drive scammers away from major domains and toward less-convincing ones. As a result, phishing attacks should become easier for antispam filters (and recipients) to spot. Intel Offers Protection Plan on Unlocked Chips Intel’s new Core i5-2550K desktop CPU is the latest to qualify for the company’s Performance Tuning Protection Plan (www.intel.com/go/tuningplan). The pilot program offers out-of-warranty service and replacements in case of damage caused by overclocking or overvoltage. For the i5-2550K, the plan costs $20. Intel will decide within six months whether to continue…