Gadgetory

this week on the CNET tech review 5 slim laptops that will make MacBook Air owners think twice how to keep your deepest secrets from falling into the wrong circle zon Google Plus find out if it's time to dust off your blockbuster card in a video rental prize fight and let everyone know what disc you're watching with get clue 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 our own unique tech wisdom in the form of the bottom line let's start with the good if you're among the extremely vocal minority that think we spend too much time shoving Apple products down your throats this one's for you although the MacBook Air is arguably the prettiest laptop ever made a number of notable specimens from the windows world are available for a price the MacBook Air it's helping make Apple the hottest laptop maker on earth so that begs one question isn't there something else I'm Brian Cooley with the top five alternatives to a MacBook Air these are all Windows machines by the way but that's fair since the MacBook Air runs Windows just fine through boot camp number five is the Lenovo ThinkPad x1 now like most thing pads and unlike a lot of other Windows laptops this guy doesn't feel like it's made by Mattel it's rock solid with a clean look and Intel Core i5 CPU like some of the new MacBook Airs solid-state drives available and it has a webcam that works really well in low light you won't realize how much you'll like that until you have it for all those little nasty videos you shoot that I don't want to see on the downside that solid construction gives this 13-inch machine kind of a porky weight about 3.8 pounds versus 2.3 for the same size MacBook Air and the battery life on this guy is weaker as well number four the Dell XPS 15z this is the thinnest 15-inch Windows laptop out there with an available full 1080p display to take advantage of that big screen size and a nice metal case to give you that luxury hand feel that Apple MBAs have in spades now a MacBook Air trait you won't get here is battery life we got a mere three and a half hours in our video playback test compare that to six and three quarters from the 13-inch MacBook Air the sweet spot price for this guy though is pretty good around 1,200 bucks number three the toshiba portage a r 835 it's also powered by the Core i5 Intel chip as a battery that lasts three hours longer than the last model for a full seven hours that's even nosing out the 13-inch MacBook Air also the price is pretty good for this guy about 800 bucks that's cheap for this class what it's missing is sexy this is not a machine you'll ever have to wipe any drool off of number two is the samsung series 9 this little hottie has one thing even a MacBook Air doesn't have an even more outrageous price at 1650 list this machine requires a commitment and probably a second shift to pay for it it's the most direct assault on the MacBook Air though with the same weight solid-state drive five and a half hour battery life stylish lines and a really good display and it's all powered by the latest Intel Core i5 but you know even for this money it doesn't quite have that machine from an ingot feeling of quality still it's hot but make sure you shop aggressively for price if you're gonna buy one of these always check the links to the best merchants prices in the CNET review okay here's the number one ultra portable you want to carry when you don't want to carry anything with an Apple logo it's the Sony Vaio Z thin light powerful blah blah blah that's basically par for the course at this point but two things set this guy apart this interesting docking station that graphs on an optical drive including blu-ray ability a bunch of extra ports and a dedicated AMD Radeon 66 30 graphics processor we've never seen anybody create an ultra-light with that kind of range that we'd actually want to own oh the other big difference it's a fortune a voz starts at 2 grand well you asked for number 1 Dan Ackerman and Scott Steiner are busy every week digesting the latest ultra light laptops and you're gonna want to find their reviews at CNET's laptop review section it's right there on the front door and for more top 5s like this and links to all the reviews of these machines go to top-5 dot cnet.com i'm brian coulis thanks for watching or maybe you're not worried about thin and light and portable maybe big and thick skin hefty is more your speed if that's the case Alienware has you covered with the m18 X of beast of a laptop that has all the bells and whistles you're looking for plus pretty flashing light I'm going to acronym we are here taking a look at the brand new Alienware and 18x now I'm sure you're all familiar with these super high-end gaming laptops that this dell subsidiary puts out they've got the m11 X which is an 11 inch laptop the 14 X - 15 X the 17 X so I think pretty much guess what's so unique about the 18 X it is an alienware with a massive 18 inch screen now it's still got the same 1920 by 1080 resolution that the 17 and even some of the 15-inch versions have you can't really get much higher in a laptop screen but just adding that little bit of extra screen size really makes a difference this is the ultimate sort of home theater in your face laptop screens like all alien where's this guy's super configurable it starts at 2 grand this particular version it's about $5,000 and it comes with a quad core Intel Core i7 CPU it comes with 2 Nvidia 580 graphics cards and 16 gigs of ram there are all kinds of other options like for blu-ray drives and solid state hard drive so you can really spend a lot of money building the perfect gaming laptop and of course like all alienware is it's got that very distinctive ailing whereas style that's based on a couple of things it's got these cool kind of automotive drills in the front and it's got this backlit keyboard and backlit touchpad and a couple of other lights right here that you can actually go in and adjust with the alien FX software package that comes with this it's got a couple of different tabs within it the first is Alien FX and that lets you actually change the color of the backlighting underneath the keyboard in four different sections and of course the touch pad and the quick launch buttons and even the Alienware logo and the little lights in the front you can actually just pick the section you want to change let's say I want to change my mind make a different color and I will make it blue and it just changes on the fly and of course you can set up all kinds of different weird effects doing this there's also alien fusion that's basically a power management utility and it goes through you know the same power management options you can get through Windows but dresses them up nicely and gives you access to a whole bunch of options that it may be hard to find when you're just going through Windows and of course this alien touch that controls some of the options for the touch pad you can change obviously the color of the board of the touch pad the sensitivity where the scroll bars are for your finger and lastly you can control the macro keys along the left side of the keyboard you can again change the background color and also assign each key to something different whether it's launching a program or doing a particular combination of buttons and again of course you're not gonna go carrying this thing around in your backpack or to the coffee shop it's just too huge but if you do want to set it up let's say in a dorm room or in a den as your home entertainment center it not only has an HDMI out jack it actually has an HDMI in so you can actually use this big 18 inch screen and hook other things like game consoles and blu-ray players or other devices up to it of course if you're in the market for nailing where you kind of already know who you are this is not a laptop for somebody who just wants to surf the web and check their email it's really designed around high-end PC gaming and of course that's more than enough power to do anything else a high-end PC user would want to do like HD video editing or anything like that of course you are gonna pay dearly for the privilege but at least you're gonna have a laptop that's a little bit different than everybody else I'm Dan Ackerman and that is the Alienware m 18x since that computer folds in half I guess it is technically a laptop but if you fork over the dough for that big boy I'll be surprised if it ever leaves your desk when it comes to controlling your privacy on social networks like Google Plus the golden rule is to not post anything you don't want anyone else to see but sometimes it's not that easy luckily Sharon Vaknin has a few tips for locking down your info in Google Plus hey everyone I'm Sharon Vaknin for cnet.com and today I'll show you how to customize privacy settings for posts photos and your profile on Google+ the main feature that sets Google+ apart from Facebook is circles which lets you selectively post to different people you need to know a few things about how this works first any posts you make public are indexed by Google so anyone who searches for your name or something related to those posts might find them in Google search but most of the time you'll probably post a limited circles the problem is that if you're not careful anyone in your circles can reshare your post to their audience but there is a way to prevent this once you publish a post click the arrow and select disable reshare you also have the option here to disable comments if you want now that you understand how posts work let's tweak privacy settings for photos how did the Photos tab in your profile and hit view all albums if there's a globe next to the album its public a lock means it's private and a couple heads means it's limited to change your sharing settings for any album click it then hit the link next to visible to and under circles or email addresses of people who can view it Google+ also lets people tagged you in photos which are added to the photos of you album but if you don't want just anyone tagging you in photos go to Google+ settings then scroll down to the bottom and select which circles can tag you here in this area is another important privacy feature the Google+ app for Android and iPhone has huddle which lets you chat with people in your network by default anyone can start a conversation with you which is really creepy to disable this from happening change the setting to just your circles unfortunately there isn't a way to block it altogether but I have faith that the option will come in time now head to your profile and hit edit profile we're gonna make some changes here you can basically select any element your profile and decide who gets to see it but I'll point out a few important options scroll to the bottom of your About section and check out an option called search visibility if you don't want your profile to show up in search results click the setting and uncheck help others find me in search results now look at the left sidebar when people visit your profile they can see who's in your circles and who has you in theirs you can hide either or both of these modules by clicking change who is visible here and unchecking the boxes once you've made all the changes in your profile hit done editing then see what your profile looks like to the public by clicking view profile as and selecting anyone on the web if you're satisfied hit done and enjoy Google+ without worrying about your privacy as always if you have questions ask me on my Facebook page and visit how to see Netcom for more videos like this for CNET I'm Sharon Vaknin and I'll see you on the interwebs now that you've got that all sorted out ready for another network to join this week's edition of tap that app highlights a service called get glue and Jay marca BB has all the details what's up folks i'm jay mark BB and welcome to tap that app the show where we cover the hottest apps on planet earth this week we're checking out an app for a unique kind of social network called GetGlue now I know some of you might be thinking what is the point why should I care about checking into yet another social app well first get glue is an awesome place to discover new forms of entertainment you see it processes all of your check-ins your likes favorites reviews etc and uses them to recommend other things you might enjoy new shows in the movies books and honestly it's pretty on point where there's recommendations at the same time you can check out trending shows or look at your friend streams to maybe discover new things from them and of course there's a game element to the app kind of like four squares badge system GetGlue gives you stickers for your activity you can unlock hidden stickers or limited edition stickers and post them all on your GetGlue profile it's it's really addicting but what sets these stickers apart from say four squares badges is that you can actually have physical printed copies sent to you for free so if you really want to represent you can stick them on your computer your phone Locker whatever but in order to get them for free you've got to earn at least 20 stickers first so get cracking get glue is available for free in the Android Market and the itunes app store or if you like you can also access it through your desktop browser that's it for this week if you know of any apps worth tapping through this up tap that app at cnet.com I'm J Markham BB thanks for watching oh so it's basically Foursquare for people who never get off the couch I get it all right the time has come to take a break but stick around we still have a lot 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 the folks from rim kept our cell phone editors busy this week with three new BlackBerry handsets for three different carriers my favorite of the bunch is the blackberry torch 9810 418 t with its slide-out keyboard here's Nicole Lee with her first look I'm the totally senior associate editor for cnet.com and this is a first look at the blackberry torch 9810 for AT&T the blackberry torch 9810 is a successor to the blackberry torch 9800 from the previous year as you can see the design is very similar it's in fact it's almost identical the key differences between the two devices seem to lie within the brighter and cleaner display as well as a slightly wider keyboard one key difference is that it has BlackBerry's latest OS 7 BlackBerry 7 offers a number of different improvements over OS 6 for example it has improved html5 video support and has a new liquid graphics technology that promises fluid animations instant response times to taps and improved graphics it also now has voice-activated Universal search another improved feature with OS 7 is augmented reality this is enabled with the digital compass and accelerometer aside from that OS seven looks and feels the same to OS 6 you get the same menu interface for example you can switch from different home screens and the home screens can be collapsed down to a smaller invisible tray some of the improved apps that come included with the torch 9810 include a premium version of Docs to go bbm 6 blackberry balanced and Blackberry protect the torch 9810 as you can see here is a very nice and bright 3.2 inch display very nice and colorful as you can see here but if the display are the usual shortcuts for the menu the back key as well as the senate end functions if the touch pick isn't enough for you you want more precise control you can use the optical trackpad as well the phone up and you get the very infamous a blackberry keyboard it's a little shallow to our taste and you might not be comfortable with it if you have very large thumbs but generally we found it decent and easy to use another key upgrade over the old torch is that the torch 9810 has a 1.2 gigahertz processor this makes navigation and really speedy really fast the phone also has Wi-Fi and support for the AT&T HSPA+ network on the back of the phone is a 5 megapixel camera and for the first time the torch 9810 can record 720p HD video the torch 9810 is a gigabytes onboard memory but if you want more is always a micro SD card slot on the back for pricing and availability please check out my full review on CNET com I'm Nicola this has been a first look at the blackberry torch 9810 isn't the right blackberry for you check out the torch 9850 for Sprint which does away with the keyboard or the bold 9900 which offers the more traditional blackberry form-factor that we all know and love we've got reviews for both right now it's seen at tv.com but before you do that let's see what showed up this week in the bad if you haven't noticed already I have had a bit of a cold this week so Brian coolly filled in for me on the buzz report and boy am I glad he did cuz it meant that I didn't have to look at this atrocity for very long the gadget of the week is Jesus something too hideous to live and too crafty to die a robot head that can read music with its cold dead camera eyes and OCR brain and then sing it to you you know it's sings the way a corpse whistles this thing in Taiwan also has facial movements so it can interpret the message of the song oh great I'm sure it works really well as long as the message is always I want to kill you so I can more readily access your gallbladder with my teeth the inventors at a university in Taiwan hope that can go into production replacing receptionists in some businesses in China very soon and they said nothing could stop that economy yikes that thing is just wrong on so many levels in fact let's try to forget that ever happens as we move along to this week's bottom line as you might recall from previous episodes I like many of you was less than pleased when Netflix announced the recent changes to their pricing scheme and as many of us started looking for Netflix alternatives blockbuster emerged as a promising contender let's see how the two services stack up in this week's prize fight what's up prize five fans I'm Brian song and what changes the Netflix is pricing people are looking for alternatives so we're bringing you a Throwdown showdown with two discs in streaming subscription services it's a prize five watch out we Netflix and blockbuster our judges for this fight are senior editor John Game of Thrones Falcone executive editor David the bad-boy car Noi and myself ring-a-ling and dating Tom now we'll take all three judges blind scores and average them out to the nearest tenth each round the final prize five score will be an average of all rounds using the same decimal system these two services aren't exactly alike so we'll help break it down for you but hold on to your butt's round one is all about the disk encryption plan Netflix has the largest physical disk collection with over 100,000 TV shows and movie titles with a plan that starts at $7.99 now if you want blu-rays you'll pay two more bucks a month blockbusters this plan brings its library of over ninety five thousand movies and TV shows but you'll also be able to rent video games from a collection of more than three thousand and there's no additional cost for blu-rays with plans starting at $9.99 but on the fact that blockbuster gets many of its new releases 28 days before Netflix and its blockbuster that takes round one with a perfect five and Netflix gets a 3.7 next round of streaming subscription plans neither company has released specific numbers for their streaming collections but Netflix is $7.99 streaming plan is packed with older movies and it shines when it comes to catching up with TV series from the past but when you're done with that what's left its biggest drawback is its weak library of new and current content that we all care about now blockbuster doesn't offer a monthly streaming plan instead it's an on-demand service with little to no TV show content where you can rent new movies for 399 a pop or purchase them as well its advantages that it still brings new titles 28 days before Netflix but the cost will add up fast Netflix takes round two seven and blockbuster gets a 2.7 dr. averaging two rounds walk what to lose by two tenths of a point round three is device support Netflix is supported on nearly every major connected device from phones to game consoles to TVs and add it all up and it's over 200 pieces of hardware it really feels like it's on every device blockbuster support is growing you can access it on laptops some phones and more but it's still way behind and when 50% of Netflix viewing is done on game consoles you probably want to get in on that action Netflix takes us round with a perfect 5 and blockbuster guest of 3 next round is overall convenience Netflix brings a clean user interface across all its digital devices that feels familiar and getting people to trust and mainly diss because of its ease and reliability was pretty much created by Netflix now blockbusters web interface needs a little streamlining but it's not horrible it's flexible dissed by mail program is solid but the differentiator here is the ability to walk into a physical Blockbuster store and swap out your rentals now that sounds great if you're close to one but there aren't that many left Netflix takes another round with the floor and block what we get at 2.7 after averaging four rounds the tables have turned and Netflix now leave 7/10 of a point the final round that will decide it all his combined value things have cooled to a simmer after a hot boiling period with the new price changes that split Netflix is streaming and dis rental plans but let's do the math even after the split if you add up both the disk plant and the streaming plan at $7.99 each you're spending just under $16 a month now let's look at the blockbuster plant it starts at $9.99 for dis rentals and yes that includes blu-ray and games but if you watch just two on-demand movies in a month you're already at $17 now these plans come down to what kind of content you care about but Netflix looks like the more compelling of the two and it takes the final round with the 4.3 and blockbuster gets a three let's average out all five rounds and enterprise fight where blockbuster took the lead after two rounds Netflix fought back and takes this prize fight for point one two three point three and is your prize fight winner we know these services aren't exactly alike and even though Netflix is king of the Ring your best bet might be getting the combination of Netflix is streaming for $7.99 and blockbusters this rental plan for $9.99 where you'll really get the best of both worlds i'm brian tom thanks for watching we'll catch you guys next time on another prize fight the bottom line this week always bet on red if you want to quit Netflix just on principle blockbuster can be a decent alternative but I like Brian's suggestion of splitting the difference streaming from Netflix and discs from Blockbuster especially if you can get them a month sooner alright folks that's our show come back next week for an all-new CNET tech review until then there are tons of great videos available every day at SEMA tv.com see you next time and thank you for watching