Gadgetory

this week on the CNET tech review avoid the gas station for weeks with the 2011 Chevy Volt samsung's new edgelet 3d tvs are no joke turn your favorite tunes into ringtones plus our top 5 personal digital disasters and how to avoid them it's all coming up right now hi everyone I'm Molly wood and welcome to the cena tech review where we collect our hottest videos of the week and tell you what's good and what's bad in the world of tech plus offer unique tech wisdom in the form of the bottom line let's get started with the good the Chevy Volt was first introduced as a concept car way back in 2007 and it quickly became one of the most anticipated cars in years now as the bolt makes its way to showrooms Bryan Cooley takes it for a spin this is the most anticipated car in your life no pressure there let's find out about it as we drive the 2011 Chevy Volt and check the tech the 1970 Z car the 76 accord the 86 taurus all watershed introductions and all pale in the glare of the hype around this guy the 2011 Chevy Volt it's being asked to save the environment your fuel budget and GM's reputation in one stroke I don't envy it now inside the first thing you notice is into production this white stuff this was in all the concepts and I thought oh that's interesting they're trying to do like an what an iPod Classic meets a you know imperial stormtrooper but it is more notable than that though are these touch sensitive buttons almost every button here is a touch contact kind of like on current my Ford in my link in touch which have not been a big fan of that part of touch now if you're looking around you may have already noticed something else really cutting-edge on this car no dials no gauges all screens you've got one in the center that we've seen before this is all new a complete LCD square instrument panel it's basically like a 7-inch tablet just sitting in front of you all the time you've got a huge array of media options on this car and they aren't the main story but let me just run you through them you've got your usual radio categories as well as XM radio on this guy you've got the hard drive disk aux button right here again Touch cycle through at 30 gigabytes of hard drive space - rip - and of course aux USB you do have bluetooth streaming and of course - hands-free another indication that a volt is being moved as a mid to high-end car is the fact that it has navigation standard on it as you might imagine aside from in the driver's seat you can also run your volt from your phone OnStar mobile lets you lock and unlock the doors start the Volt to prep the cabin climate check your charge state tell the car when and how to charge even blow the horn to find the thing okay here's where GM has been spending all their time and their bajillions of dollars developing the voltec powertrain here's what makes this car interesting it's an electric car but it has a gas engine there's a 1.4 liter inline-4 super lean-burn gas engine here that does nothing but turn a generator that generator puts juice into a big old t-shaped power cell that's in the middle of the car and that power is an electric motor that drives the front wheels through a one speed gear reduction transmission bottom line 150 horsepower 273 foot-pounds of torque huge Delta there because it's all electric power zero to sixty about eight and a half seconds not bad you're gonna get about 35 40 mpg but there's also a number called mpge or equivalent that's 93 and your evie your range before the car starts to burn any gas to replenish its batteries is around 25 to 40 miles there's a whole lot going on here this guy into 120 or 240 outlet charging apparatus right here this guy lives on this kind of wind-up thing in the back you see you got a regular plug on there that can plug into whatever outlets you've got and then this will go into the door here that guy on the side of the car that's this new universal thing that all the electric cars are using that plugs in there so yes there's nothing wrong with charging this car it works really well you do get a bunch of electric-only range a nice amount that might even handle your entire commute I just think there's an awful lot of hassle that goes around with it if you're not really committed and for most folks just putting gas in it and getting like around 60 mpg it's pretty good and all the hassle of charging may not be worth that 93 MPGe interesting trivia about this guy you can go potentially a year without burning gas if you've got a short commute and you plug in every night and only commute in this car so what happens to that gasoline sitting in your tank gas does go bad you know it jellified it gets real nasty well they have a pressurized gas tank on this car also sensors that will run the engine and burn off some gas about every couple weeks I understand it if you never use gas otherwise okay so you decided the volts for you here are the numbers $41,000 with destination now there's a little bit of I don't know I think it's a little misleading on the Chevy Volt website that shows the price of this in great big bold numbers with a $7,500 tax credit already - doubt of it but that's a tax credit that's not a rebate as of today's taping though the Obama administration is trying to convert it to a rebate that'll be different right now it's a credit it's a $7,500 deduction if you will off any federal tax that you owe in the tax year you buy this car if you don't own a federal tax you don't get any benefit and even if you do get a benefit it can never turn into a refund all I can do is reduce your tax to zero so in other words you've got to at least $7,500 federal tax to get the full $7,500 tax credit from buying one of these cars it's not as simple as getting a check from the government if the Obama administration just changed the law as they're trying to you will actually get a $7,500 rebate deal time at the showroom that will be different Brian had a lot more to say about this car and you don't have time to show it all to you so head over to scene ITV and search for 2011 Chevy Volts for the full review you will not be sorry now yes a lot of us scoffed at 3d TVs when they first started showing up but some of the new sets like this one from Samsung are winning over our AV crew just don't make 3d performance your main priority David Katz minor from CNN and I'm here with the Samsung UND 6400 this is an LED based LCD TV with edge laid configuration which means it's mighty thin and Samsung has actually made this TV even more compact than in previous years it has this really thin bezel around the edge here not quite as thin as the step up models but still pretty darn thin it's less than an inch from the edge of the picture to the edge of the panel and there's a transparent frame around the extreme edge that makes it look even slimmer so all told this is one very compact looking TV it's also Samsung's least expensive LCD to include 3d technology the company is throwing in two pairs of active shutter glasses and additional pairs cost about 50 bucks apiece that's the pricing improvement for sure compared to last year TV also has Samsung Smart Hub internet technologies the first one we've reviewed with that Smart Hub sweep that just means that all the internet apps so streaming services are all grouped into one big home screen here it's actually a little bit jumbled in our experience but Samsung did add the ability to search video services unfortunately that search is pretty crippled that doesn't hit Netflix or any of the other a major service level it does get Vudu another issue with Smart Hub it's missing Amazon Instant which is the streaming services from Amazon although the other content is pretty darn strong smart house also offers a limited recommendation engine for its video services as well as access to Samsung's extensive app store so you can go on to the App Store and download games and Google Maps ESPN even some additional widgets although the company did drop Yahoo widgets overall samsung Smart Hub is very complete although again the interface is a little bit cluttered and people who are getting at it for the first time might be a intimidated TV is very well featured otherwise you can find plenty of adjustments in the menu including a 10-point color temperature system as well as a color management system that I really did a pretty good job of improving the color in our experience TV also has the full ability to adjust the D judder processing you can go in and play around with things like shutter and blur reduction to your heart's content when you took the samsung UND 6400 into the lab we were pretty impressed by its picture quality for an edge lit led the black levels are pretty darn good and color accuracy at least the bright areas is excellent although we did see some blue creep into the darker areas of the picture we also appreciated the excellent video processing which handled 1080p24 well and as an added bonus this TV does 3d a lot better than it did last year we're not sure if that's the glasses or the new panel itself or some combination but it has less crosstalk and overall better 3d picture quality than its predecessors the back panel on the Samsung is four HDMI inputs which is pretty good but the analog connectivity is pretty sparse there's only one component video and one standard video input and they require breakout cables to work Samsung also throws in a PC input in three USB ports that's a quick look at the Samsung at UND 6400 series and I'm David Katz Myer I gotta say for my money I think I'd rather have the apps than the 3d I'm just saying moving on custom ringtones are a great way to tell who's calling you before you look at the caller ID but what if you can't find the right tune to sum up your relationship with that person Jessica dole card has a handful of Handy options for creating your own ringtone in this week's tap that up hey guys and girls Jessica's all-court here with CNET this Tapout apps is all about making your own ringtones good news is there are dozens of good free programs out there for Android and iPhone range ride is one of my Android favorites and it was also one of the first you pick from all the songs in your music library then drag the arrows on the waveform to set the start and end times you can zoom in for more precision or manually enter times into the open fields then just save the ring tone ring droid also records sounds to create new tones lucky stars mp3 ringtone maker is almost identical and look and feel except that it adds a fade setting which is nice that has ads which you can just ignore share tones is another fantastic freebie because it's got a shared database of ringtone timings for songs that you already own so if somebody else has edited the ringtone just so you can quickly apply those settings to your songs to make a ringtone identical to theirs finally there's Mongo ringtone but strangely you have to search for it as top ringtone maker pro in the android market this app pair is an online ringtone store with a voice recorder and with a ringtone editor for your own songs now unfortunately making iPhone ring tones is harder since you can't save the file directly to the device like you can on Android phones but all my picks to offer step-by-step instructions ringtone maker comes with a fate option a recorder and an easy song picker ringtone starlight features a timeline and a fade tool as does ringtones which also looks much more polished ring tone ring mix is probably my favorite of the bunch it's a liqueur it includes album art when available and it has a button to automatically carve out a ringtone selection there's no fade option though but you can choose to escalate the ringtones volume as it plays but uh I'd stay away from that one if I were you all these iPhone apps are free that have inexpensive upgrades that cut the ads and unlock advanced features such as changing a song speed or pitch so there you have it now there are seven ways to make ringtones on your iPhone or Android device well get crackin and if you have more suggestions for great apps you want to see on this show email tap that up at cnet.com i'm is all curt and keep on tapping Wow sex on fire all over that video I don't really think that I have anyone in my contact list who warrants that one right down I like the baby monkey song and with that little TMI let's take a break but come right back for more tech review right after this welcome back to the CNET tech review our weekly video digest of all things good and bad we've seen here at CNET TV continuing on in the good last week it was reported that some Samsung laptops were being shipped with key logging programs installed on them now it turns out those reports were false but it does bring up a valid concern what if you suspect that someone's trying to spy on you and what you're doing on your computer well here's Seth Rosenblatt to show you how to protect yourself from those prying eyes Samsung does not install its laptops but that doesn't mean you won't encounter a key logger in the future hi I'm Seth Rosenblatt and today I'm going to show you how to detect and remove key loggers those programs that sir fishs Lee record a breach happens with keyboard for parents or your boss to pore over however if you're not already familiar with mucking about in your computer's registry and system directories you really ought to get some help with this key loggers are hard to uninstall because they intentionally hide themselves from the Start menu and it's unlikely that you'll know the name of the program so if you suspect you're being tracked with one start off by grabbing security task manager from download.com once installed it will tell you information about each running process and it will specify if they're dangerous or not note that it may not have rated all processes that are running so you may have to research each one online to make sure they're safe if a dangerous process is detected you can end the process from within security task manager now do not restart your computer otherwise the key logger will start again the next step is to run a full scan from your antivirus program most a v's like AVG Avast or Avira will detect key loggers and quarantine them for you make sure it's up to date of course if your AV doesn't detect it and you're absolutely positive you've been tracked by a key logger there are some more invasive techniques we can use although they require knowing the name of the logger first look for its registry key which is used to load it when Windows is started open a command prompt and type run regedit go to the menu bar select edit then find and the name of your key logger the search should turn up a registry key like this one delete all the keys that turn up from the search next we have to make sure that the key loggers executable files are removed go to windows explorer and hit the Alt key to bring up the menu bar go to tools folder options and view under advanced settings you'll see an option for hidden files and folders make sure that show is checked and then search for the name of the key logger this could be as easy as searching for its name although some key loggers like star logger abbreviate its folder name to just the initials SL next you'll want to unregister the key loggers dll file open a command prompt and navigate to the folder containing the dll then type our eg SVR 32 /u and then the file name of the dll without the quotes and brackets and you should see a pop-up window telling you that the file has been successfully unregistered at this point you may have to check the registry again to ensure that the registry key was deleted restart your computer and once more check the registry and your Windows system folder to make sure that the key logger is gone finally you ought to have a clean bill of health actually the double check after rebooting is the second to last thing you have to do the final step is to figure out who put the key logger on your computer good luck with that for seen it I'm Seth Rosenblatt if I were you I would hold off on trying to dig too deep into the registries of a company issued computer I mean if your IT department went to the trouble of installing a keylogger on your machine they won't take too kindly to you monkeying around in there because they're probably kind of mean speaking of mean let's see what we've got going on in the bed sometimes when products don't compare favorably to their competitors it's hard to call them bad per se so maybe for this week we'll just call this section would not recommend here's a look at an all-in-one printer and a 7-inch tablet that are clearly worthy of that distinction hi I'm Justin you with CMS comm this is your first look at the Dell p5 13w multifunction printer so we actually have mixed reviews about this device it performed well and it output professional quality text prints and we do like the handy eco mode that'll save you money and helps the environment but those features don't really offset a lot of the snags we ran into during testing but before we get into those critiques let's check out the printer itself the white P 513 W sizes up about average for other printers and it's a multifunction printer which means you can print scan and copy all directly on the machine the scanner sits on top of it and can handle up to 1200 by 2400 resolution images but we're remiss to see that Dell emits an auto document feeder on the top now that would normally be really useful for businesses because it lets you scan or copy a stack of documents hands-free unfortunately though you do not get that on this device which is a little strange for $150 printer another issue we take is with the multiple paper jams that came about because of this 25 sheet paper output tray now most printers can hold double that amount so if you're printing a high volume of documents this definitely is not the printer for you like all modern printers you do get an 802 11 B G print server built right in now let's you ditch the cord and hook it up to your computer wirelessly again though we ran into a speed bump here trying to configure the network settings although that problem did eventually fix itself and finally we're not particularly satisfied with the output performance either qualitatively our test sheet a full black text looked presentable from far away but upon closer inspection we did notice several jagged lines at the corners of some characters particularly in italicized text and even at its highest quality setting we wouldn't recommend using this printer for professional documents either the graphics quality just doesn't stand up to competitive printers from HP cannon and Epson that sell for the same price or less and you can read the full review including alternative printer recommendations but that's going to do it for me I'm Justin you you just took a first look at the Dell p5 13w multifunction printer hey i'm donald bell and today we're taking a first look at the Arco 70 this is a 7 inch Android tablet priced around $275 for an 8 gigabyte model there's also a 250 gigabyte model for an extra $50 normally when I see tablets at this price they're pretty horrible but the Arco 70 has a lot going for it the touchscreen is relatively responsive there's a VGA camera on the front for photos and video and on the side here you have a micro SD memory expansion slot and HDMI output that will mirror the screen on to an HDTV and crank out 720p video on the downside the construction quality feels pretty cheap although you have to admire how thin they've been able to make this it's running Android 2.2 which is somewhat antique at this point and there's no support for a Google suite of mobile apps including maps Gmail and most importantly Android Market Arcos has their own app store on here but the selection is pretty thin there's a kickstand on the back which is cool except that's really flimsy and the screens viewing angles are decent but not great there's tons of video format support but unless you're running it out to a TV you're stuck watching it on the screens 800 by 480 resolution if you're the tinkering type there's a community of Android and Arcos fans out there that will help you tweak and customize this thing but there's nothing that will magically turn it into a dual-core honeycomb tablet still the price is right and if your expectations are humble you can have a lot of fun with this name so that's the Arco 70 Android tablet for cnn.com I'm see what I mean they're not completely terrible I'm sure someone out there could find some use for them but they could be better all right let's go ahead and check out this week's bottom line this week Brian Cooley is counting down his top five digital disasters not like a y2k outage or Skynet taking over the world you know more like personal screw-ups that can feel like disasters if they happen to you see how many of these you fallen victim to yourself you know it's easier than ever for your life to go down the tubes these days with just one errant message post or call a thanks technology I'm Brian Cooley with top 5 personal digital disasters and some ways to keep them from happening we're gonna rank these roughly by their potential payload for catastrophe let's get to it number 5 miss posting across your social media it's a mouthful but I can't help the stupid stuff you post in tweet this is about the things on Facebook Twitter or LinkedIn that shouldn't commingle but sometimes they do with disastrous consequences like this recent debacle as you can imagine that was not supposed to show up as an official tweet from Chrysler the guy who posted it and the ad agency he once worked for no longer handle Chrysler's social media if you're using one of those cross-platform social tools like tweet deck as he was ask yourself first is the cross contamination risk really worth the modest convenience of rolling up all your accounts into one interface while you're just one toggle away from disaster number 4 reply all it's old school but still a beauty the inadvertent reply all has made more bowels turn to water than any other screw up on this list in fact a former head of HR here at C net had her intelligence critiqued by a former employee of mine and yes she was on the reply thread so instead of C seeing the person you're dissing remove the reply all button from the toolbar on Outlook it's not hard to do you can still reply all with ctrl shift are now on Gmail and Yahoo they're a little better in this respect since reply all is a drop down instead of a straight click as it is for reply so different behavior but if you use Gmail's keyboard shortcuts that can get dicey so check out Molly's how-to video on customizing those and then you can make the reply all keystrokes something you've never mistake for the reply keystroke and therefore enjoy the continued benefits of employment number three but dialing now with the advent of capacitive touchscreens which require an actual finger press it's not really but piling anymore but Aaron touch dialing nonetheless I could raise your hair with a few stories I know along these lines most smartphones today are all screens you can hardly pick one up without activating something auto lock doesn't always save you due to lock it delays and such on Android phones there are apps like not call log or do not call there are basically crude roadblocks but hey if it avoids this it's worth it number two this one's kind of new and fresh checking in when you're checked out if you tell the office here and then they see you checked in at the ballgame or the beach or the bar you've gone Bueller so before setting out on a great day of hooky remember to drop the Foursquare and Facebook check-in habit stick a post-it note on your phone if you have to you gotta go dark and don't forget to turn off the background locators like Google Latitude or you'll be chatting up the dude from the Chrysler thing in the unemployment line okay our number one personal digital disaster just about anything while drunk email text calls tweets updates after a bender have you ever really not cringed at those the next morning and let's not forget the Facebook pictures that result pictures of you vomiting touching yourself wearing a Nazi outfit all tagged with your identity for easy searching and career-ending a lot of folks forget you can untag yourself from facebook photos just click the little untag link next to your name doesn't mean somebody won't go in and tag you there again but you know you're not really that popular for more top fives like this go to top-5 cnet.com i'm brian coolie thanks for watching the bottom line this week five out of five I win yes I admit I have done all of these things at least once but nothing too bad ever happened I don't think I mean I'm sure I have some enemies out there somewhere but I do still have a job alright folks that's our show we'll be back next week with a brand spanking new scene at tech review until then there are tons of great videos available every day at Cena tv.com I'll see you next time and thank you for watching