Archive: April 01, 2007 - April 07, 2007
Sound Advice For Cell Phone Shoppers
Washington Consumer's Checkbook -- the semi-annual, ad-free magazine put out by the Center for the Study of Services, a K Street nonprofit -- takes a look at cellphone services in its just-released spring/summer issue. I'll summarize the piece, but I can't point you directly to it: Checkbook's Web site requires...
By Rob Pegoraro | April 6, 2007; 12:30 PM ET | Comments (12)
Windows Snapping Shut
You made me write this morning's column. Maybe not you in person, but you The Readers, who have sent in some disturbing e-mails, Web-chat posts and blog comments about being held up by their own legally purchased copy of Windows. Things didn't seem too bad with Microsoft's first anti-piracy effort,...
By Rob Pegoraro | April 5, 2007; 10:06 AM ET | Comments (30)
Podcast, Take Two
Our second weekly podcast is up. This time around, I talk about today's column--a look at the ways Microsoft's anti-piracy software in Vista can target legitimate users. (Just in case you thought we actually knew how to use the audio software around, what you hear of me is a second...
By Rob Pegoraro | April 5, 2007; 6:00 AM ET | Comments (1)
Cell Phones Will Stay Off On Planes; Now, Let's Keep Them Off the Can
For all its other indignities, at least commercial airline travel isn't subject to the racket of random strangers yammering away on their cell phones. Yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission moved to keep it that way. It voted (PDF) to drop a proposal that would have allowed some use of mobile...
By Rob Pegoraro | April 4, 2007; 8:00 AM ET | Comments (30)
One Story, Two Readers, Two Opinions
Was I cruel to Microsoft in my recent review of Windows Vista, or was I far too kind? Let's ask the readers. Yesterday, Reader A wrote: I feel that your evaluation of Microsoft Vista's software was sugar coated. Exactly three and a half hours later, Reader B wrote: Thanks for...
By Rob Pegoraro | April 3, 2007; 11:35 AM ET | Comments (10)
A Death Blow to DRM
Less than two months after Apple chief executive Steve Jobs challenged record labels to stop insisting on "digital rights management" copy restrictions, one of the major record labels took him up on the invitation. This morning, EMI Music announced that it would allow customers to buy music off Apple's iTunes...
By Rob Pegoraro | April 2, 2007; 12:19 PM ET | Comments (56)
New Office Suites For Macs
Last week saw a couple of noteworthy developments in the Mac productivity-suite business: * The most Mac-like offshoot of the free, open-source OpenOffice suite, NeoOffice, advanced to version 2.1, which adds support for the new file formats Microsoft introduced in Office 2007 for Windows. (Confusingly enough, the original OpenOffice project...
By Rob Pegoraro | April 2, 2007; 6:16 AM ET | Comments (22)
