Eric Grevstad

At Microsoft’s Tablet PC launch event in New York just over a year ago, one of the featured celebrities was actor Rob Lowe, shown happily using a Tablet PC to manage his solo projects after leaving “The West Wing.” Today, neither Lowe’s new show nor Tablet PCs have set the world on fire — the […]

We’re going to get hate mail from New Mexico again. Last December, inspired by a surprisingly positive experience with a $599 review system, we included a line in our year-end roundup complimenting the new management of budget vendor eMachines for continuing “to whittle away at its previous owners’ toxic reputation with bargain-priced, well-equipped desktops.” That […]

Computer Associates has lowered the price of its eTrust EZ Armor anti-virus and firewall package. Formerly $50, the home-PC version of the enterprise security vendor’s suite is now $0 — free for the download through June 30, 2004, including a one-year subscription to CA’s daily virus signature updates. The offer is a collaboration between Computer […]

Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates celebrated the first birthday of the company’s Tablet PC push by announcing the second version of its pen-centric operating system, scheduled to ship sometime in the first half of 2004. Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2004 will be a free upgrade for existing customers and come preinstalled […]

In August, HP Chairman Carly Fiorina hosted a press event in New York City to launch a load of digital imaging and home entertainment products. One corner of the room featured a handful of auto-show-style future concepts or technology demonstrations; we noticed, next to the kitchen-counter PC and Star Trek voice translator, a silver tower-cased […]

A small-footprint, all-in-one PC isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Conventional desktops are cheaper, and more expandable and upgradeable. Notebooks are just as good at saving desk space, and more portable. But for an apartment or small office without much room, and for a bigger display than all but the bulkiest notebooks — and the ability […]

Two years ago, it was a guarantee of boutique style and status to have a flat-panel LCD instead of bulky CRT monitor on your desk. These days, LCD monitors are much more common, but there are still boutique LCD brands — like AG Neovo, the Taiwanese vendor that joined the U.S. market in the summer […]

There’s an easy way to stop 100 percent of annoying spam: Give up e-mail. If that’s not an option, you’ll have to devote some effort to fighting the tidal wave of unwanted, often offensive, and always time-wasting offers for windfall investment deals, dream vacations, industrial equipment, miracle drugs, anatomy enlargers, and shameless hussies that swamp […]

We all have private information, but not all of us have a private PC. If you can’t keep your computer under lock and key, but would rather not let office coworkers wander through customer records or family members peruse your home office financial files, Kanguru Solutions has a clever solution: The $50 Kanguru Wizard looks […]

You can say that $1,299 is too much for anyone except a wealthy, status-seeking executive to spend on a monitor, or you can say that such a screen would have cost three times as much just a couple of years ago. It’s like seeing the glass as either half empty or half full, except instead […]

Readers of our quarterly PC survey know we have a thing for $1,000 computers (or other products, for that matter; we didn’t start reviewing color laser printers until they fell below the $1,000 psychological barrier for homes and small offices). So when Gateway introduced its M305 entry-level laptop a few weeks ago, we asked for […]

If we’ve told you once, we’ve told you many times. Your PC’s hard disk needs regular defragmentation to reunite pieces of files and directories that get scattered or stored in 10 or 20 or 200 places across the drive, slowing access and adding wear and tear, and Executive Software’s Diskeeper utility is a nifty, painless […]