2008-05-09T22:46:07Z tag:blog.washingtonpost.com,2008:/fasterforward//275 Copyright (c) 2008, WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive 2008-05-09T22:46:07Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-09:/fasterforward/2008/05/windows_xp_service_pack_3.html

Tuesday, Microsoft released its last big update to Windows XP--Service Pack 3. Like Microsoft's two earlier Service Packs for XP, "SP3" packs earlier bug fixes and some new features into a single download. But unlike Service Pack 2, a must-have update that added numerous, badly needed security upgrades to XP's fragile defenses, SP3 isn't that big of a deal. Its primary value, as I write in this Sunday's Help File column, is giving Windows users...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Rob Pegoraro 2008-05-08T13:52:08Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-08:/fasterforward/2008/05/blog_burnout.html

It's something of a comfort to see something new at your favorite blogs every day. But as each morning brings a new posting--maybe followed by one at lunchtime and others in the afternoon and at night--you may forget that there's a human being with a day job and non-computing interests at the other end of the line. And so, sadly enough, some of the best bloggers sometimes elect to call it quits. That happened Tuesday...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Rob Pegoraro 2008-05-06T14:54:58Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-06:/fasterforward/2008/05/tmobile_launches_3g_service_in.html

About four and a half years after the first of its competitors began to offer wireless broadband, T-Mobile is starting to catch up. Yesterday, the company announced the start of its "3G" service in New York City. T-Mobile's service will debut with a technology called UMTS, with speeds only about a third or a quarter of entry-level DSL--"a range of 200 kilobits per second (kbps) to 300 kbps," wrote spokesman David Henderson in an e-mail....Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Rob Pegoraro 2008-05-06T17:57:08Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-05:/fasterforward/2008/05/microsoft_to_yahoo_fine_be_tha.html

Silicon Valley printers can go back to their usual summer plans: They won't need to gear up to crank out new business cards for thousands of Yahoo staffers who would have found themselves Microsoft employees later this year. Microsoft announced Saturday that it would abandon the merger attempt it launched at the end of January. In a "Dear Jerry" letter to Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer wrote that while Microsoft's...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Rob Pegoraro 2008-05-02T20:14:50Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-02:/fasterforward/2008/05/tied_up_by_cables.html

I often spend Friday afternoons packing up old review hardware to send back to whatever PR agency originally shipped it my way. (In case you were wondering: No, I don't get to keep any of the stuff I write about.) This routine comes with two challenges. The first is erasing whatever data I'd loaded on the machine, just in case the people running the company's product-loan program forget to do so and so wind up...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Rob Pegoraro 2008-05-01T13:36:00Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-01:/fasterforward/2008/05/status_consciousness.html

This morning's column, like an increasing number of my Thursday pieces, started out as a blog post. I thought I'd write a short bit about the art of writing a clever Facebook status update. I'd seen this form of concise creativity take off on that site (especially after this Palo Alto, Calif.-based social network stopped requiring status updates to begin with the deadening verb "is"). I'd been both amused by my friends' wordplay (how much...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Rob Pegoraro 2008-04-30T19:31:15Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-04-30:/fasterforward/2008/04/paring_your_plugins.html

After recently writing a column that noted how many different third-party programs in your Web browser can pose security risks for you -- and then being prompted yet again by Major League Baseball's MLB.com site to install Microsoft's Silverlight plug-in to watch a video -- I thought I'd take a moment to inventory all the stuff running inside my browsers on various machines. Here's the list: * Flash: This one's the most essential one of...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Rob Pegoraro 2008-04-29T15:50:51Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-04-29:/fasterforward/2008/04/bonus_review_apples_time_capsu.html

It only took some three decades of personal computing, but when Apple's Time Machine software arrived as part of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard last fall, we finally had a backup program easy enough for anybody to use. But as I noted at the time, Time Machine requires a second, high-capacity hard drive, which many people still don't own. So in January, the company introduced Time Capsule, a box that combines a fast 802.11n WiFi...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Rob Pegoraro 2008-04-28T15:33:26Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-04-28:/fasterforward/2008/04/facebook_adds_chat_office_prod.html

At the start of this month, the social-networking site Facebook began adding an instant-messaging application. It's not a separate program, or even a separate Web page that you need to launch to start zipping notes back and forth in real time. Instead, this little Web widget pops in and out of the bottom right corner of the Facebook page. Like the instant-messaging feature in Google's Gmail, Facebook's chat widget wisely emphasizes simplicity and speed. You...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Rob Pegoraro 2008-04-25T18:55:35Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-04-25:/fasterforward/2008/04/microsofts_spot_watch_winds_do.html

Remember the SPOT watch? Of course not. It was a brick-like timepiece, equipped with a radio data receiver and ran Microsoft's Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT) software. Microsoft unveiled this concept at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2003; a year later, the first of these products went on sale. I tested a $300 Suunto model in January 2004 and found it wanting in almost every aspect--too big, too ugly, too useless, too expensive (especially...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Rob Pegoraro 2008-04-24T14:59:31Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-04-24:/fasterforward/2008/04/cameras_with_high_ambitions_fo.html

As I've noted before, I'm not a fan of having to carry around multiple devices if a combination gadget can do all of their jobs. So I had to check out a pocket-sized, point-and-shoot camera--make that, two of them, Kodak;s V1073 and Panasonic's Lumix DMC-FX500. (Other HD-capable cameras are available or will soon be from Casio, Canon and Samsung.) And as you can see in today's column, I may have just reviewed too soon. They...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Rob Pegoraro 2008-04-23T17:02:36Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-04-23:/fasterforward/2008/04/a_techsupport_request_map_out.html

I love as much as anybody to complain about tech support -- what else can I do about it most of the time? But for today, I'd like to talk about one way to make it better. I don't have in mind something crazy like, say, hiring people who actually know the products in question. What I do have in mind would cost nothing more than a few minutes of a Web designer's time: I...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Rob Pegoraro 2008-04-22T15:34:16Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-04-22:/fasterforward/2008/04/apples_itunes_plus_no_longer_a.html

I got a $25 iTunes gift card for Christmas, but four months later I've only spent $6 of it. I have no idea when I'll use up the rest. I haven't uninstalled iTunes or hawked my iPod. The single greatest improvement Apple's made to the the iTunes Store since its 2003 launch, iTunes Plus, seems to have gotten stuck in limbo. These downloads come without any "digital rights management" usage restrictions and offer better sound...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Rob Pegoraro 2008-04-21T17:12:47Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-04-21:/fasterforward/2008/04/energy_savings_for_earth_day.html

Tomorrow is Earth Day, which apparently means that we'll be treated to lots of full-page ads from various large corporations touting their environmental consciousness. And some of them may even mean it! If you'd like to make some changes of your own to help this particular planet--a goal you may also describe as "forking over less money to the utilities that you're already subsidizing"--here's a summary of my advice: * Use your computer's power-saving options...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Rob Pegoraro 2008-04-18T14:09:09Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-04-18:/fasterforward/2008/04/new_techsupport_resource_revie.html

As I was making yet another futile attempt to clean the accumulation of paper off my desk earlier this week, I noticed how much of those printed products were the reviewer's guides that tech publicists usually hand out to critics. I have long ignored these documents while writing a review, simply because you, the user, don't get any such help from the company when you're trying to use the product. But it finally hit me...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Rob Pegoraro