Dell V305W Inkjet Multifunction Printer 16-09-2008 GTM 1 @ 14:39
systemas —Dell aims its V305W color inkjet multifunction printer ($130 as of August 4, 2008) at budget-constrained small-office users, stuffing it with a multitude of features for the price. Regrettably, a bear trap lies hidden in that low unit price: Very high ink costs overshadow this printer's many good attributes.
The V305W is well-equipped for a low-volume small or home office. It has integrated 802.11b/g wireless connectivity, a 100-sheet rear input slot, and a 25-sheet front output tray. It offers manual duplexing (two-sided printing) with helpful prompts. Two media-card slots let you work with photos easily. Dell bundles ABBYY FineReader 6.0 Sprint (a simple OCR package) and Dell Imaging Toolbox, which centralizes scanning, copying, and photo-editing features. The only thing I missed was an automatic document feeder (the similarly priced HP OfficeJet J4680 does offer that feature).
Dell put a lot of thought into the documentation: There's plenty of it, and it's extremely thorough. Though the company had some ups and downs on various criteria in our most recent Reliability and Service survey, its overall rating was average.
The control panel's layout, though very simple, has some quirks. You surf menu options, shown on the two-line OLED text display, using two navigation buttons and a third, big button labeled with a checkmark. The display also shows ink levels, but you can't tell which cartridge is which. It's also hard to guess how to wake up the printer; you're supposed to press an arrow button, but Dell doesn't document this explicitly.
In our tests, the Dell ranged from awesome to adequate. It blasted through plain-text documents at a rate of 10.7 pages per minute--more than twice as fast as Epson's Stylus NX400. The text itself was black and crisp. But when we sent color photos and other graphics through the pipeline, the V305W slowed considerably, to 1.2 ppm or less. Images printed on plain paper looked anemic; on Dell's own photo paper, the same images smoothed out and looked a little yellow, but had nice detail. Scan and copy quality were mediocre: dark, rough, and fuzzy.
The ink costs will make your jaw drop. The machine ships with a standard-size black cartridge and a tricolor cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridge. Each of these cartridges lasts for a mere 125 pages in a best-case scenario. The (relatively) high-yield versions of the cartridges offer little relief: A 210-page black cartridge costs $19, which translates into 9 cents per page, while the corresponding color cartridge costs $25 and last 190 pages, or 13.2 cents per page.
It's too bad about the inks, because the V305W is a nice printer in many ways. But even if you don't print all that much, you'll notice the dent in your wallet fairly quickly. And unfortunately, this printer doesn't print money.
Meneame
del.icio.usSeinfeld-Windows TV commercial premieres to a baffled audience 16-09-2008 GTM 1 @ 14:38
systemas —Microsoft Corp.'s $300 million advertising campaign for Windows starring comedian Jerry Seinfeld launched Thursday night with an extra-long television commercial almost entirely devoid of any talk of Windows, Microsoft or anything, really.
(Update: Microsoft explains Seinfeld-Windows TV ad: just a 'teaser')
That was oddly appropriate, considering that Seinfeld's eponymous '90s hit comedy was described by both admirers and detractors as "a show about nothing."
The minute-and-a-half commercial can be seen below.
It co-stars Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and is set in a shopping mall. Seinfeld, who did most of the talking, helps Gates buy a pair of shoes called the Conquistador. He also asks if Gates ever wears his clothes in the shower. The commercial ends with Seinfeld asking Gates if Microsoft will "come out with something that makes our computers moist and chewy like cake so we can just eat them while we're working." Gates wiggles his rear to answer in the affirmative.
The commercial ends with the Windows logo and the phrase "Delicious."
It was aired early during the broadcast of the first National Football League game of the season.
Immediate reaction online was almost uniformly negative, with bloggers calling the commercial baffling and unfunny.
The part that bloggers liked the most was when Gates showed off his "Shoe Circus Clown Card." The picture was of Gates' notorious mug shot when he was caught speeding by New Mexico police in 1977 at the age of 21.
Related Blog
Preston Gralla: Is Microsoft's Seinfeld spot the worst TV ad ever?
The commercial lacked the flashy camera work that is considered the trademark of French director Michel Gondry. Gondry reportedly shot a Microsoft commercial earlier this summer.
Epson Stylus NX400 Inkjet Multifunction Printer 16-09-2008 GTM 1 @ 14:37
systemas —Low-cost color inkjet multifunction printers like Epson's Stylus NX400 ($100 as of August 4, 2008) have to pack a lot of features into an affordable package. But something's got to give, and in the case of the Stylus NX400, the victim is text-printing speed. Still, matched against similarly priced models such as the HP Photosmart C4480, the NX400 is a better-balanced choice.
Overall, the Stylus NX400 has a good design. The roomy, 120-sheet rear input tray can handle many types of paper. The output tray is barely there--a series of thin, bendy plastic sections pull out from a front panel--but it's adequate, holding 30 sheets. The control panel includes nicely labeled buttons for copying, working with photos from a media card, or restoring scanned photos: Press a button, and task-specific options appear on the tiltable, 2.5-inch color LCD. Helpful cues make navigation easier.
The photo-restoration feature is interesting: You load photo paper in the machine, place a discolored photo on the scanner plate, and press the Photo button. The Stylus NX400 automatically scans the photo, fixes color flaws, and prints out a restored version. It doesn't send a digital version of the restored photo to your computer, but if you restore the photo using Epson's installed software on your computer, you can save the restored image as a file.
The Stylus NX400's performance in our speed and output quality tests varied. Text printed on plain paper came out very slowly--5 pages per minute (ppm). On the other hand, graphics pages came out as quickly as 3.4 ppm. On plain paper, text looked a little fuzzy, but nicely black. Graphics looked grainy, but nicely colored. Printed on Epson's own photo paper, the same graphics looked smoother. A routine copy of a plain-text document looked fine, but color scans looked dark and, in some samples, a little rough.
As is often true of low-cost inkjet printers, replacement ink is expensive. The machine ships with four standard-size cartridges--one black, plus cyan, magenta, and yellow. If you buy the three-color multi-pack, each color cartridge costs about $12.34 (which works out to 3.7 cents per page each at Epson's specified yields, for a total of 11.1 cents per page for all three colors). The high-yield (385-page) black cartridge is pricey, too, at $20 (or 5.2 cents per page).
Epson gets some of the unit's details wrong. For example, the Stylus NX400's rear USB port is very difficult to see. The documentation does not provide a thorough overview of the control panel, and a survey of the printer's parts is hidden in the troubleshooting section. Epson logged an average overall score in our most recent Reliability and Service survey.
If you're printing out your novel, don't get the Epson Stylus NX400: its text speed is way too slow and its ink prices too high. But in most other respects, it's as good as or better than its peers. Bargain-hunting users should be pleased.
Fujitsu LifeBook T4220 31-08-2008 GTM 1 @ 18:20
systemas —The Fujitsu LifeBook T4220 is designed to weather outside use better than your typical convertible tablet. It has a nice keyboard and performs well, too, all at a competitive price.
This successor to the LifeBook T4020 offers several improvements. The T series now uses Intel's Santa Rosa processor line, and the hard drive, sealed before, is now user upgradable.
Most important, the T4220 has a single, bidirectional hinge that is a first for a convertible and a major convenience breakthrough. When you want to switch between the tablet and notebook forms, you can swivel the screen right or left on its hinge--no worries about having to double-check a directional arrow or twisting the screen the wrong way on the first try.
The T4220 has a few protective features, starting with a shock sensor that protects hard-drive components during a fall by retracting the drive's read-write head. Sturdy plastic port covers attach to the notebook, so they can't fall off and disappear; they keep dirt and moisture out of the network, modem, and monitor ports. The T4220 also automatically shuts down the optical drive during tablet use to protect it from breakage.
Our unit came with a nonglare screen coating for outdoor use, a $150 option. The 12.1-inch, XGA, standard-aspect screen feels thicker than a standard tablet screen, needs firmer taps, and has a visible sheen. These things aren't too bothersome, however, and the special coating allows you to work in direct sunshine--as long as the screen is displaying a light-colored background. When I tried it with a solid-colored desktop, I could barely make out its icons, but the white input panel stood out and was easy to write in with the T4220's tethered digitizer pen.
The T4220 is a nice-looking, squarish, tri-tone unit that is thoughtfully designed overall. It has a small but comfortable keyboard. At 4.6 pounds, it weighs a tad more than the average convertible, but it doesn't feel heavy. Tablet buttons are plentiful and all within easy reach, plus they double as a combination-number input panel--serving as yet another layer of security beyond the built-in SmartCard slot and fingerprint reader.
Another nice extra is the modular bay, capable of holding the standard DVD burner, the included hollow weight-saving piece, or a second six-cell battery ($134 extra). A handy side release lets you eject and swap devices with one hand. Wireless communications is not completely covered--integrated mobile broadband is not an option--but Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are included. A $150 port replicator, which snaps onto the bottom of the T4220, adds a DVI port.
Equipped with a 2-GHz Core 2 Duo T7300 processor and 1GB of RAM, our $2099 review model earned a WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 65. It's unimpressive in comparison with a ThinkPad X61t convertible that scored 75 (13 percent better), but the T4220 we tested came with a slower processor (a 1.6-GHz Core 2 Duo L7500), and the score is still well above the ultraportable average of 53. The T4220 can handle anything but sophisticated 3D games; in our tests such games wouldn't play at all because of the machine's shared video memory. Battery life was good, though, at almost 4.5 hours, about 30 minutes longer than the average ultraportable.
The only false step in the design is the screen latch, which you must manually rotate and line up for insertion into a small slot below the keyboard; with practice, though, even this goes fast. All in all, the Fujitsu T4220 might not be the cheapest or lightest ultraportable you can buy, but for tablet users desiring a little extra ruggedness and peace of mind, it gets along nicely with Mother Nature.
Micro Express JFT2500 Ultraportable Laptop 31-08-2008 GTM 1 @ 18:19
systemas —The small, white Micro Express JFT2500 defies expectations by being both extremely fast and affordable, two qualities not often found in the same ultraportable laptop. The catch? Lousy battery life. Still, if saving money on a light, fast laptop is paramount to you, the JFT2500 is a good choice for some home- and small-office workers.
Equipped with a 2.4-GHz Core 2 Duo T7700 processor and 4GB of RAM, the JFT2500 notched a WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 92. That result is faster than the mark of any other model in our current test batch of ultraportables. In fact, only three desktop-replacement laptops have come close to matching its performance. A midsize HP Voodoo Envy M:152, equipped with Intel's new 2.6-GHz Core 2 Extreme X7800 gaming processor, earned a tying score of 92. Two large notebooks equipped with desktop quad-core processors, the Micro Express NP9261 and Eurocom D900C Phantom-X, scored 96 and 97 respectively.
Battery life, on the other hand, was way shorter than average in our tests--2.2 hours shorter, in fact, than the 4.2 hours that the typical ultraportable lasts on one charge. Only two other ultraportables (out of a field of 17 currently tested machines) ran down faster.
The rest of the design is satisfactory. At 4.4 pounds, the JFT2500 is a little heavy for a notebook with a 12.1-inch screen. The 1280-by-800-pixel display is reasonably bright and easy to work with. The small white keyboard felt a little too snug at first, and I was disappointed to find my favorite keys--Ctrl, Del, and Page Up and Page Down--somewhat buried, but typing quickly became comfortable. The lower casing, a nice contrasting black, has a fair assortment of ports and slots, including three USB ports and an ExpressCard/54 slot--but no FireWire.
Our review unit came with no productivity applications. If you don't need the Windows Vista Business operating system, you can save $20 by configuring the JFT2500 with Windows XP Home. Full Wi-Fi comes built in, but Bluetooth is an extra $25.
With its short battery life, the Micro Express JFT2500 would be a poor choice for frequent travelers; but if you can work around this shortcoming, it's a cheap entry into the world of fast, light notebooks.
Lenovo ThinkPad X300 Ultraportable Laptop 31-08-2008 GTM 1 @ 18:18
systemas —Lenovo's buttoned-up ThinkPad X300 ultraportable laptop computer may not have the MacBook Air's superslim, spartan style, but from rock-solid construction to piled-in perks, this notebook--with a street price of $2696 at time of testing--offers just about everything that matters to the business traveler.
The Air and the X300 do have some similarities. They both have crisp 13.3-inch displays, although the X300 has a higher resolution--1440 by 900 pixels versus 1280 by 800--and with both, you can get a 64GB solid-state drive (it comes standard with Lenovo's machine, but tacks about $1000 onto the Air's price).
Whether you're afraid of dropping your laptop at the airport or accidentally spilling some coffee on the case, the X300 is built like--and resembles--a black-box recorder. The keyboard is spill-resistant, and the textured carbon- and glass-fiber exterior is supposed to protect the innards. Unlike most ultraportables, the unit has both an eraserhead and a touchpad. The keyboard feels great, with full-size keys.
The X300 is a little on the chunky side for a true ultraportable--just over an inch thick and weighing 3.4 pounds (4 pounds with an AC adapter) versus the Air's 3-pound heft. Then again, you can pop a disc in the ThinkPad's integrated, paper-thin, 3-ounce DVD drive and watch movies (the Air's optical drive is an external model).
The X300 has a decent amount of power for an ultralightweight notebook--in fact, it performed surprisingly well against other ultralight models. With a 1.2-GHz Core 2 Duo L7100 processor and 2GB of RAM, it scored a 64, outpacing the MacBook Air by a healthy 7 points in our WorldBench 6 benchmark tests. On the other hand, the X300's performance is exactly average compared with the broad field of ultraportables we've tested. It also posted an average score in our battery life tests, lasting 4 hours, 22 minutes on a charge.
Another thumb in Apple's eye is the X300's many features. Here you have a notebook not much thicker than the Air, yet not only does it manage to include a DVD drive, it also has three USB 2.0 ports, a VGA-out port for an external display, a Webcam, headphone and microphone jacks, and an ethernet port. The Air has a Webcam, but it has only one USB port, and you have to use an optional adapter to connect via ethernet.
To make life even easier, the X300 has the one shortcut key to rule them all--the ThinkVantage button. Most notebooks have some sort of shortcut to helpful utilities or a "For Dummies..." version of the control panel. However, the ThinkVantage button accesses by far the most helpful, complete, and concise collection of such tools. You can use the button to access a backup utility, to set security protocols, or to find a wireless data connection, and if your computer won't boot, the button will make the computer boot a small non-Windows OS from a hidden hard-drive partition, after which you can diagnose problems and even download drivers, if necessary.
And when you do start searching for wireless connectivity options, you are fully covered with the X300: The notebook has built-in support for 802.11a/b/g/n, wireless WAN, wireless USB, and Bluetooth. Finally, it has the "gee-whiz" feature of the month: GPS (somewhere, an army of travelling salesmen are cheering over that addition).
What the ThinkPad X300 lacks in style, compared with the Air, it more than makes up for with better features and more functionality.
MobileMe 31-08-2008 GTM 1 @ 18:16
systemas —To coincide with the release of the company's iPhone 3G, Apple overhauled its Mac-centric .Mac service and renamed it--seemingly without irony--MobileMe. In addition to the new name and the vaguely Windows ME-esque logo, the new service introduces one notable new feature: the ability to sync with iPhones, iPods, and PCs.
The new MobileMe service also arrived with about 70 new bugs, many of which PC World had occasion to experience during the service's first few weeks of life, and many of which remain unresolved as of this writing. Apple is aware of the problems, however; Steve Jobs himself admitted that the application was "not up to Apple's standards" and said that it would have benefited from more time and testing.
The good news: If you're a long-time Mac user with an existing .Mac account, switching to MobileMe won't be much of an adjustment. MobileMe's existing support for syncing iCal calendars, bookmarks, and connecting two Macs via the Back-To-My-Mac feature still work as they always have. In our tests with the iPhone and the iPod Touch, the service reliably synced calendars and bookmarks with our Macs.
With our PCs, it has been a different story. MobileMe's support for Windows focuses almost entirely on Microsoft Outlook. If you aren't a fan of Outlook and would just like to sync calendar events to Vista's built-in Windows Calendar, forget it. That omission wouldn't be so bad if Outlook syncing worked smoothly, but it doesn't. Instead, we continue to get daily error messages informing us that the MobileMe Sync Server is configured incorrectly, along with a vague message directing us to the MobileMe control panel, which offers no further help.
Even with the service's problems, however, our calendar events do consistently migrate from Outlook to iPhone and iPod and Mac, and back again. And MobileMe's Web interface is one of the finest we've seen, living up to Apple's reputation for slick software design. Snappy menus and intuitive drag-and-drop controls guide you through calendar entries and the iDisk online-storage service.
Nevertheless, it's difficult to justify the $99 yearly subscription fee for such a half-baked syncing tool. In an all-Mac world, MobileMe might be a worthwhile expense, due to the undeniably handy Back-To-My-Mac remote control feature. But with limited support for Windows calendar apps--and a barrel of configuration problems--MobileMe is no bargain for Windows users.
Slacker Portable Internet Radio Player 31-08-2008 GTM 1 @ 18:15
systemas —After a few delays and a lot of grassroots hype, the Slacker Portable Internet radio is finally available. Starting at $200 for the 2GB model, this ambitious music-only device features a 4-inch wide screen, built-in Wi-Fi, and an excellent Web service. The Slacker deserves credit for approaching issues of form and function in its own way--it borrows almost nothing from the iPod--but it's also blocky, buggy, slow, and more than a bit frustrating.
Besides reading this review, you can watch our video of the Slacker Portable Internet radio player in action.
The strongest aspect of the Slacker Portable is the associated Slacker Web music service, which you can listen to for free without the player. I suggest that you do so right away, even if you don't plan on buying the player. As with the Pandora online music service, users can enter an artist's name on the Slacker site, click Enter, and create a custom "station" consisting of free music from that artist and others similar in sound or genre. The Slacker site does a great job of matching your demonstrated tastes to other music that you might enjoy, though Slacker's artist roster and music-matching abilities don't seem quite as deep as what I've experienced with Pandora's service.
Here's where the Slacker Portable is unique: After entering an artist's name and creating a custom station at the site, you can sync your stations to the player, for free. As a result, you'll always have a pocket full of music that you like, plus the element of surprise as to what's coming next on your station's playlist.
The free Slacker Web service is supported by targeted ads that the Slacker Portable will run, beginning with tips on how to get more out of the Slacker experience. Slacker says that a user's station will never begin with an advertisement and that there will be, at most, about 3 minutes of ads per hour. In accordance with Digital Millennium Copyright Act guidelines, users of the free service may skip only six songs per hour on the player. A paid version of the Slacker service avoids such restrictions, for a price.
With the paid version of the service ($9.99 per month for three months, $8.33 per month for six months, or $7.50 per month for a year's subscription), the ads are gone, and the Slacker player lets you save songs for playback later and lets you skip as many songs as you want. However, the paid version still lacks a way to skip backward to hear a previous track again unless you've saved it. Also, any songs that you saved while a paid user will disappear when your subscription ends.
Windows XP and Windows Vista users can transfer their own MP3 and WMA digital music files to their Slacker Portable, with some limitations. On the $200 (15-station-limit) 2GB model, only 500MB of storage space is accessible; that maximum grows to 1.5GB on the $250 (25-station-limit) 4GB model, and to 4GB on the $300 (40-station-limit) 8GB model. The Mac OS doesn't support personal content transfer.
Once you're listening to music, the Slacker Portable shines. It's like having several iPod Shuffles at your disposal, each focused on a different genre of music. Budget-minded music fans who are also looking to discover new bands will especially appreciate the chance to hear songs by musicians who are similar to artists they already know and love. While playing to the music, the device displays extensive biographical information about the artist on its 4-inch, 480 by 272-pixel wide screen.
The Slacker Portable player is fairly large (2.76 by 0.67 by 4.2 inches) and light (4.6 ounces)--about the size of a cassette tape. The device takes about 3 hours to charge its replaceable battery completely; the battery is rated to last about 10 hours on a charge.
Navigating the on-screen menus is done entirely by buttons and analog scroll wheels. Slacker gives you the option of switching controls to the player's touch strip, which extends down the left side of the player's screen, but I couldn't get the strip to work reliably. Consequently, I recommend sticking with the analog-style buttons and scroll wheel.
Though navigation is easy and intuitive, the scroll wheel is sometimes unresponsive to clicking or takes a few seconds to register clicks. Moreover, because it's located slightly too close to the skip-forward and pause buttons, you may simultaneously select a station and skip or pause the first track. Five buttons run along the device's sides and top: pause, skip forward, 'home', 'heart' (for adding songs to your hard drive if you subscribe to the paid Slacker Premium service), and 'ban' (to remove songs from your stations). A volume rocker appears on the top of the device.
The power button on the right side of the player doubles as a lock switch, which you'll definitely want to use. Though the controls are intuitive and easy to use, you'll inevitably press them unintentionally at times. Accidentally skipping forward on a track is especially frustrating if you don't have the paid service--you'll want to hoard your half-dozen skip-forwards as if they were free steaks.
On the connectivity front, Slacker's Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) capability is a major drawing point. Having a player that can refresh a station's songs wirelessly while you're on the go is wonderful. Alternatively, you can use the bundled USB cable to refresh your station's song lists. In my tests, updating 19 stations over USB 2.0 on the player took about 30 minutes.
You'll also definitely need better earbuds than the awkwardly big pair that come with the player. I doubt that the included earbuds would fit in most peoples' ears, and the sound they produced was neither deep nor rich. Sound quality improved markedly through a pair of Sony MDR-EX71SL Fontopia earbuds, however.
Even with all the bugs, it's hard not to love the Slacker independent approach to things. It doesn't do video at all, but this is an ambitious player. Slacker's Web-based music service is great and accurately matches your musical tastes to tunes you'll like but may not be familiar with. I recommend trying Slacker's music service immediately, but waiting to buy the hardware until some of the kinks are worked out.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 Photo Editing Software 31-08-2008 GTM 1 @ 18:13
systemas —Adobe obviously pays attention to what's hot these days. And online photo sharing is more popular than ever, with sites like Flickr and Facebook and programs like Apple iPhoto keeping people connected through photos, blogs, and blurbs. With Photoshop Elements 7 ($100, or $150 when bundled with Premiere Elements 7 video-editing software; in private beta, due in October), Adobe provides ties to its forthcoming online service, Photoshop.com, and adds enough new features to the desktop app itself to make version 7 a worthy upgrade.
The big news here involves the Photoshop.com service, which due to launch in October as well. Adobe says that the service will supplement its existing Photoshop Express. However, it wasn't accessible at the time I tested this beta version of Elements 7; we'll update this review with more info on the service when it launches.
According to Adobe, Photoshop.com will have two levels of membership: a free, basic membership; and a $50 per year Plus membership. The free membership provides 5GB of storage and automatic backup of your images to Photoshop.com's servers. You can also access your account and online galleries from any Web browser. When you edit your pictures, the changes you make will be synced up with your home PC-and similarly, changes you make on local photo files will be uploaded and synced to your Photoshop.com storage. Adobe is also working on a mobile uploader that will let you post photos from your cell phone. With the Plus membership, you get 20GB of storage, as well as the option to have Adobe send you design advice, new tutorials, tips, seasonal artwork, and templates as these are developed throughout the year.
Even though the Photoshop Elements 7 software that I tested was still in beta form, I found much to like. New to version 7 of Adobe Photoshop Elements is a Smart Brush tool borrowed from Photoshop, as well as a handy Scene Cleaner that has been added to the Photomerge tool. Disgruntled users of Photoshop Elements past will be pleased to learn that this version lets users adjust the background tint from charcoal all the way to stark white. More good news: Photoshop Elements 7 has FTP settings, so you can upload galleries directly to your own Web site.
Unfortunately, Elements 7 still lacks the Fade slider tool available in Photoshop that lets you adjust the intensity of a filter immediately after applying it, so you can get exactly the look you want. Considering its many impressive creative filter options, Elements 7 would benefit from such a tool.
The application continues to straddle the line between novices and more seasoned users, offering three levels of editing: Full Edit, Quick Fix, and Guided Editing. You can switch between the levels by clicking on tabs, and after a while I became familiar with which options are available at each level. Still, the three-level structure feels a bit clunky at times, especially when you're forced to blunder through a combination of menu options and tabbed screens to find more-advanced options such as editing color curves.
Full Edit provides essential controls similar to those in the full-fledged Photoshop, with advanced editing tools, filters, and layers. Quick Fix offers sliders for common tasks such as brightness, saturation, sharpening, color balance, and red-eye reduction. A "touch-up" panel makes Smart Brushes available, including a toothbrush for whitening teeth, a brush for saturating dull skies, and a high-contrast black-and-white tool for applying effects to selected areas in your photo. As in Photoshop, you can customize the brush's size, hardness, and spacing. The program's selections were impressively accurate at whitening teeth; and you can also use the "add" or "subtract" tool or adjust feathering to refine your selection.
If you're new to image editing and not up for all of this complicated stuff, Elements 7's Guided Editing is for you. In this panel you'll find text-based guidelines that you can select from a list. Guided Editing shows you how to adjust specific image properties such as contrast; or it can walk you through the process of antiquing a photo, showing you various effects. Guided Editing can be a useful educational tool for people new to image editing and for more-seasoned photographers who are learning to use the program. It's also fun to play with.
Photoshop Elements' Photomerge capabilities are a boon to anyone who's ever taken a snapshot. With its new Scene Cleaner, the program does an excellent job of removing unwanted interlopers in a photo of your brother in front of the "Rocky" statue. As it could in Elements 6, Photomerge can fuse subjects from several photos into one, creating a scene where everyone is looking at the camera, eyes open. Such compositing used to take hours, but now you can do it in just a few seconds.
For anyone seeking a combination image editor and organizer that doesn't break the bank, Photoshop Elements 7 is a powerful contender. The program's new online components permit you to do more from within a familiar interface, and its new tools alone make it worth the upgrade.
Cell Phones Sub for Cash in Mexico 31-08-2008 GTM 1 @ 18:12
systemas —MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexicans will soon be able to pay for small purchases such as restaurant meals and taxi rides using their mobile telephones, the country's banks said.
Telephone operators Telefonica SA and Iusacell are teaming up with big banks such as Citigroup Inc and BBVA to launch the service, marketed at first toward technology savvy teenagers and expected to debut over the next few months.
Cell phone users will be able to have their bank link their savings account to their telephone so they can make payments to participating stores, restaurants and taxis by sending a text message, Roberto Rodriguez, in charge of the service, said at a news conference.
Most big banks are participating in the service, but Latin American mobile giant America Movil's Telcel, which accounts for more than two-thirds of Mexico's mobile telephones, has yet to sign up.
Using phones to buy items such as train tickets or products in vending machines is commonplace in Japan, but the trend has yet to catch on in the United States.
(Reporting by Noel Randewich; Editing by Andre Grenon)
Copyright 2007 Reuters. Click for Restrictions.
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