Gadgetory

this week on the CNET tech review the blackberry playbook gets the hands-on treatment see how it holds up against the iPad 2 in our speed test Marshall headphones that are major cool and back up your Android phone before it's too late it's all coming up right now hi everyone I'm Molly wood and welcome to the CNET 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 some unique tech wisdom in the form of the bottom line let's start with the good in what has really been a two horse race between iOS and Android sorry windows a new contender in the tablet battle emerged this week with the release of rims BlackBerry PlayBook billed as the future of the BlackBerry platform itself the PlayBook is designed with business users in mind and here is Donald Bell with his first look hey i'm donald bell and today we're taking a first look at the blackberry playbook from rama this is a 7-inch tablet priced at $499 for a 16 gigabyte version $599 for 32 gigabytes and $6.99 for 64 gigabytes this version here only connects to the internet over Wi-Fi or a tethered connection to your smartphone but a 4G model is coming out later this year the screen quality is nice there's a pair of stereo speakers on the sides here a 3 megapixel camera up top and a 5 megapixel camera on the back that can also record video at 1080p on the bottom you get connections for an optional charging dock a microUSB port for charging and syncing and an HDMI port that can also crank out smooth 1080p video the top of the PlayBook is a sour note for me there's a headphone jack and a pair of stereo mics that's fine but the power button if you can see it is this little teeny tiny thing made for baby fingers it's also the button you'll need to use for waking the screen out of sleep mode so you'll have to contend with it every day we thought a case might help but for us it actually made the situation worse as for the tiny volume and play/pause controls next to it they do work but I'm not sure why they're even up here or why dedicated play/pause button is even necessary if you can get past the tedious little button the real centerpiece of this whole thing is the OS this is a brand new piece of software built by RIM from the ground up it's fast it's fluid it can multitask and juggle apps like a maniac and if Apple and Google aren't scared yet they probably should be May favorite part of the whole system is the web browser which fully supports Adobe Flash and presents webpages just as they would look on your desktop that means flash video flash games and for better for worse flash ads but as great as it is the browser is trapped inside a tablet that is half the size of the iPad not to mention the 10-inch honeycomb tablets that are due out this year some may find the small size an advantage but when it comes to full scale webpages and document editing those tasks really deserve a larger screen so that's the BlackBerry PlayBook from rim a powerful tablet at a good price and one of the best 7-inch tablets we've seen even though I wish it were bigger for cnet.com I'm Donald so it's not as pretty or as big as the iPad 2 but how does the PlayBook stack up in terms of performance Eric Franklin put them side-by-side in a good old fashioned speed test to find out hey guys we're gonna see that labs here today another week another a tablet to test it seems you've seen our previous speed tests well you know what to expect if not it's pretty self-explanatory this week is the iPad 2 versus the rim blackberry playbook now we have some web speed tests to get to so let us begin first web speed test is giant bomb calm let's go they're going an iPad 2 is ahead okay now the rim is done and there you are next up cbsnews.com and they're off and running and CBS news on the i cartoons holding holding they're both holding up CBS news on the iPad 2 is done and now the RAM Dekker is done as well now we're going to this little-known site you may have heard of its called cnet.com okay so yet calm on the iPad - is coming in and it's done and the rim is lagging behind a couple seconds and it's done now - all right there is cnet.com and there it is both the iPad 2 and the PlayBook are fast as you can see the iPad 2 is a little bit faster however the PlayBook has full flash support so that may have adversely affected its performance check out my full blog as I'll have more detail results these rolls results for the Motorola Xoom until next time personally I don't mind waiting a couple extra seconds for a page to load if it means that the page is gonna look right yay flash but I also wouldn't mind watching my flash video on a bigger screen a couple of weeks ago we showed you how to take advantage of Amazon's new cloud drive and cloud player services on your Android phone well sharon's back again this week and as you're about to see the cloud drive still isn't really that helpful if you have an iPhone but there are some alternatives out there that you should check out storing and streaming music from the cloud is a nice alternative to storing it locally on your phone or computer it gives you more storage space on your devices and allows you to access your music from anywhere but when Amazon launched its cloud drive and cloud player it gave I Oh s users no love I'm Sharon Vaknin for cnet.com with a guide for iOS users who want to stream music from the cloud when Amazon's Cloud Drive and player were first announced we quickly figured out that even though there isn't a dedicated app for iOS you can still stream music to your iPhone iPod or iPad it's sort of clumsy but here's how it works head to amazon.com / cloud player you'll be warned that your browser is not supported but you already knew that hit continue and you'll see the cloud player dashboard - play a song tap it and hit the blue arrow on the right you'll see a drop-down menu select download and safari will open the song with QuickTime the first time you do this Amazon will ask you to get the mp3 download err your song will start playing and will play in the background if you exit Safari which is fine but as you can see you can't skip songs save them or do any of the cool things that the Amazon mp3 app for Android can personally I would skip this option it's too sloppy and I can't find any practical use for this method instead I use sugar sync a similar service which is actually iOS compatible like Amazon Sugar Singh gives you five gigabytes of storage for free but the best part is that for every friend who signs up for sugar sing through a referral you made you get 500 megabytes of extra storage to keep forever and there is no maximum right now the promotion is only offered until May 31st 2011 so now's the time to start spamming your friends to set up the cloud go to sugar Singh Kham and hit try sugarsync free you'll see several pricing options for now let's get the five free gigabytes of storage by scrolling down and hitting sign up next to the fine print after that follow the sign up and download instructions and get sugar sync on your computer once it's there open the sugar sync file manager to add music to your cloud hit add sync folder and select all the folders you want to sync if you have iTunes you can choose to sync your entire iTunes library if it fits now download the sugar sync app on your iOS device once you're signed in open the icon for your computer you'll see all the files you backed up to your cloud to stream your music just open a folder in top if you're on a slow connection it'll take some time to buffer sugarsync supports multitasking so music will play even when you exit from this player window you can skip songs within the folder so if you want to be able to skip through all of your music make sure to put all your files into one folder unlike the Amazon mp3 app there's no support for playlist creation or shuffling but according to sugarsync these features should be coming soon remember you need to be connected to the Internet to stream music from your cloud but if you know you'll be offline cache songs by tapping the arrow next to a file and selecting sync to iPhone SugarSync is my chosen alternative to Amazon Cloud Player but Dropbox can offer you a similar deal the difference is that you only get two gigabytes free and the app won't let you skip songs in other words it's pointless for media streaming but if you're stuck on Dropbox you can download a $2.00 app called Boxey tunes it lets you skip songs create playlists and cache your library at this point SugarSync and dropbox are probably your best bet for streaming music from the cloud but since the Amazon mp3 app would directly compete with iTunes and the fact that Apple is rumored to be developing its own cloud service it might be a while before we see an Amazon Cloud players show up in the App Store if you have anyhow your request of your own email them to how to at Cena comm for C net I'm Sharon Vaknin and I'll see you on the interwebs and of course once you finally get your cloud situation figured out you don't want to listen to all that music on crummy headphones do you assuming that you don't I suggest you at least consider this new pair from Marshall the guys that make the amps if you're a musician that already owns martial gear well now you can add these headphones to your collection I'm Justin you with cnet.com this is your first look at the marshal major headphones the majors are the company's first over ear a headphone and they definitely live up to the company's strong legacy with a familiar shape and excellent acoustics to match its line of amps they feature a closed back on ear design that does well at eliminating ambient noise around you so you can focus on your music instead of that conversation going on next to you along the same lines the sealed design actually helps keep others from hearing what you're listening to as well aesthetically it's easy to tell who makes the headphones they're clearly branded on both ear cups and the interior even features Jim Marshalls own signature Marshall adds even more distinction with a headband line with Marshalls own tolex flexible vinyl fabric that's been historically used to cover Fender guitar amps and guitar cases since the 1960s other small details of note include a swiveling wire cage for transport tough rubber throughout for durability and a straight wire that also features a coiled portion for extra slack sonically speaking the majors actually do sound great across all genres of music they reproduced all of our test tracks with accuracy and a spatial sound that gives the audible illusion that the music is playing outside of your head instead of just between your ears so whether you're married to the Marshall brand or you're just shopping for a new pair of passive noise-isolating headphones you certainly will not be disappointed with this purchase you can read all the details in our full review on cnn.com but that's gonna do it for me I'm Justin you these are the Marshall major headphones and that sounds good to me now I know headphones are basically just little speakers you wear on your ears but I'm not sure they need to look like little speakers that you wear on your ears although if Justin says they sound good I would at least be willing to give them a try and while I find out if those little Marshall amps go to 11 let's take a break we'll be right back for more tech review right after this you welcome back to the CNET tech review our weekly video digest of all things good and bad we've seen here at C net TV continuing on in the good one of the cardinal rules of computing is backup backup and backup your backups well that motto is just as true when it comes to your phone iPhone users have it easy because iTunes can backup your phone every time you plug it into sync but for all of us Android folks it's not that cut and dry so that's why we have Sharon Backman to show us how I'm Sharon Vaknin for cnet.com here to show you how to backup your Android phone backing up is simple but many people only realize they should when it's too late it only takes a second for your phone to get stolen lost or dunked in coffee so here's my advice to keep your data safe even if you end up phoneless if you have a rooted device go download titanium or an Android and you're set but if you don't know what I'm talking about or you'd like to backup your device before rooting your phone here are some easy solutions Android users have any number of options to choose from so where do you start consider the most important things that you want to keep safe for most of you it'll be apps contacts SMS and photos luckily Google takes care of some of these things and more go to settings privacy and make sure that backup my settings and automatic restore are checked off go back to the settings menu and select account and sync and open your Gmail account check off everything and your calendar Gmail and contacts will be backed up to Google servers now if you ever lose your phone and purchase a new Android all you have to do is sign into your Gmail account and your applications contacts email calendar and system settings will be restored text messages get handled a little differently to back up your text conversations download an app called SMS backup plus it'll automatically backup SMS MMS and call logs to your gmail account as threaded messages download the app connect it to your Google count and choose backup to start syncing your text messages will show up under a new label in your gmail account and your SMS will continue to backup in the background for some reason Google hasn't configured automatic photo syncing yet so here are some other options if you use a cloud service like Flickr Picasa or photo bucket there are third-party apps that will help you backup your photos wirelessly photo bucket Mobile is neat because there's an option to auto upload all of your mobile photos the way i fi does flickr companion and picasa tool are also free apps that will let you upload your photos to their server but they're not automatic if you don't want to deal with all of those apps and all you want to do is store those photos on your computer use the good old drag and drop method plug your phone into your computer put it in disk drive mode and open the drive it should appear in my computer on Windows or on your Mac desktop open it find the DCIM folder and drag and drop all the photos you want saved onto your hard drive the only problem with this method is that it's not automated so remember to do this at least once a week now if you want the peace of mind knowing that somebody else is taking good care of your data there is an app for that my backup Pro is the best and least expensive app that I found that will back up everything to their online servers or your SD card for five bucks my backup will store photos call logs apps and text messages and more it also gives you the option to schedule backups and if you get a new Android or your current Android is somehow wiped just reinstall my backup and hit restore just realize that some apps and settings might not transfer because of software or hardware compatibility these are my favorite ways to backup my Android phone but there are many other options if you have a preferred way let me know on Twitter or email your suggestions questions and ideas at how-to at cnet.com for CNET I'm Sharon Vaknin and I'll see you on the interwebs I have to say the fact that you can do all that without ever having to plug your phone into a computer so much better than iTunes for many photographers half the fun of taking pictures is tweaking all the settings and adding effects afterwards to create fun artistic photos and while there are hundreds of photo editing apps in the iTunes App Store FX photo studio is by far one of our favorites here's Jason Parker to tell you why you should tap that up welcome to tap that app I'm Jason Parker and this is the show where we cover the hottest apps in the mobile space anyone who spent any time browsing the iTunes App Store knows there's no shortage of CAM related apps but one of our favorite photo effects apps received a price drop recently and offers so much after numerous updates that it's almost silly not to get it it's called FX photo studio and like many other apps lets you quickly edit images right on your iPhone you get the standard set of basic image editing controls including gamma cropping and rotation tools all these are controlled using on-screen sliders and other simple touch controls so it's easy to get the exact look you want or FX photo studio truly shines is the amount you can do with your photos by selecting from an enormous amount of effects as of today FX photo studio includes 187 high-quality effects you can add to your images start by either taking a picture with your iPhone camera or picking one from your photo library from there the app defaults to showing you its entire list of 187 effects with previews so you know what you're getting well so many effects it can be a bit overwhelming but fortunately you can also view effects by category making it easy to figure out what you want you can get the retro look by selecting vintage for example which gives you selections like old photo burnt paper or old film frame each of the effect types can be saved for later by touching the star at the upper right adding it to your favorites list you also have the ability to layer your image with multiple effects for a custom look you can save as a preset to use later simply add an effect to your image then select another effect to layer on top when you're finished turn to the effect selection screen and hit the preset button at the bottom you can then save the preset and give it a name that you'll remember later now you only need to go to the preset screen to add those same effects to other images when you're done you can share the images via Facebook Twitter Flickr tumblr or just send directly through email FX photo studio is not a new iPhone app but over the course of time and numerous updates has become one of the best in the iTunes App Store anyone who likes adding effects to images or just wants to experiment with their iPhone camera should definitely tap this app FX photo studio is only $0.99 at the iTunes App Store for a limited time so make sure to grab it before the price goes back up again that's it for today's show but if you have any suggestions send them to tap that app at cnet.com I'm Jason Parker thanks for watching I bet that would be even more fun on the iPads big screen a $0.99 for all that what is you alright I've put it off for as long as I can but it's time to check out the bad my favorite part of this next video is the fact that Scott Stein makes so little effort to conceal his lack of enthusiasm for this toshiba satellite laptop and i don't think it's because he has to review yet another laptop but the fact that he has to review this one again hi I'm Scott Steiner associate editor at cnet.com and this is the toshiba satellite a 6 6 5 s 51 76 now if I sound a little bit less than enthusiastic about that long series of numbers at the end of this satellite that's because we've seen this satellite before we reviewed satellite a 665 laptops these big 15.6 inch models last year and what's new now well new processors the new Intel Core i3 is in here which uses that new Sandy Bridge architecture that we've talked about which gives you some better performance and some better graphics despite not having any dedicated graphics inside on the other hand yeah I mean it costs $7.99 which is right in that range of laptops it's got a blu-ray drive which is nice it's got a screen that's not as nice it's at 13 6 6 by 768 resolution not bad but it's not as crisp or as bright as we've seen on other blu-ray laptops the speakers are pretty great Harman Kardon speakers and we've liked those on all of those upper range satellite laptops they really do boom but not quite as much as we saw on say the Dell XPS 15 which had fantastic speakers so if you like the idea of multimedia on your laptop that could be a plus it's got into a wireless display and it's got your farms you're giving by a hard drive your 4 gigs of ram overall though it's clunky it's big the battery life is good but not great and you're sort of left in that middle ground honestly you could do better let me give you some advice look at this one but maybe look at some other laptops - I'm Scott Stein and this is the toshiba satellite a6 65s 51 76 now the Toshiba does have a few things going for it but my guess is that if you end up buying it you'll be just as ambivalent about it as Scott was all right let's go ahead and check out this week's bottom line other than the iMac all-in-one desktop PCs don't get a ton of respect these days but HP TouchSmart has intrigued us with previous models and HP might finally have cracked the nut hi I'm rich Brown senior editor for cnet.com then we're gonna take a look at the editors choice winning HP TouchSmart 610 Q so this is a high end all one from HP and it's got a touchscreen but also have some pretty cool features that we've never seen in a touch-based on one for one of the best things about this system is its case it's a brand new design from HP and it comes with a new feature that lets you tilt the system down so it becomes sort of a touch console and it's actually not unlike using an iPad now of course this is still Windows 7 so not every application on here is optimized for touch but there certainly some that are opening up Kindle PC for example using the system in this tilted console mode is really quite natural and of course HP also includes a suite of touch based software some of its good some of it you can kind of forget about but overall it's a pretty well designed interface in addition to the tilting screen HP has also gone above and beyond whether it's HDMI inputs in the system now we like HDMI inputs and all in ones because it lets you connect to a game console or a cable box directly to the system then you can swap the video signal out so this is basically like a smaller TV now HP's done here is that it's not only added two HDMI inputs so that means you don't need an HDMI hub is soon it also has this HP picture and picture software so what the picture-in-picture software does is it gives you a handy software control to kick you out to the various HDMI inputs but it also gives you handy display brightness contrast and other controls and a handy touch-based interface so in addition all those features there's also one of the fastest armed ones we've tested it beats out every windows-based online in its price range and it comes behind Apple's 1999 iMac on only two of our tests now the reason for that speed is a fast 2.93 guy it's Intel Core i7 CPU that makes a system fast enough to handle any day-to-day productivity or even consumer level digital media editing we expect gamers will also appreciate the 2 gigabyte AMD Radeon HD 5570 graphics card that's a pretty solid mid-range card and will play pretty much anything out there at full 1920 by 1080 resolution and with basic image quality for other highlights of the system you get a blu-ray DVD combo drive as well as a pair of USB 3 ports among the various inputs on the system so for its price its performance and the various innovations around this case this is easily one of our favorite on ones so I'm rich brown and this is the editors choice winning HP TouchSmart 6/10 Q the bottom-line this week that's a hell of a biggy reader seriously though the TouchSmart has been all about potential for a long time and it's nice to see it finally be all that it can be and speedy to boot look out iMac alright folks that's our show we'll be back next week with a brand spanking new CNET 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 you