Eric Grevstad

When we looked at Microsoft’s Works Suite 2003 and found that the integrated Works program came appealingly close to the ideal — even if Microsoft skewed the set toward the bloated, bells-and-whistles camp by replacing Works’ word processor with Word 2002. This week, we can report that Corel uses a different strategy with WordPerfect Family […]

Cable TV’s Discovery Channel has an unexpected hit with the series “Monster Garage,” where hot rodders take sledgehammers and welding torches to turn a Mustang into a lawn mower or a school bus into a pontoon boat. Laptop PC vendors have been doing something similar ever since Intel introduced the Pentium 4 “Northwood” early last […]

Have you talked to your computer lately? (Shouting curses at a system crash doesn’t count.) Chances are, you haven’t — though spoken commands and dictation are options for both Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and Office XP, as well as the latter’s rival Corel WordPerfect Office 2002 Professional, the concept of a voice-controlled PC […]

Just as publicly held companies issue quarterly reports to their stockholders, we make a quarterly survey of vendors’ Web sites to find the best PC buys under $1,000. And this quarter, for the first time, amazing buys are harder to find: Prices have crept up, with systems that fit our budget last time around now […]

The notebook and Tablet PC vendor’s mainstream desktop replacement doesn’t attract stares for sleek or elegant design, though its front-edge CD player is attractive — at 8.2 pounds, it’s a hefty slab, okay for occasional commutes but too bulky for daily travel. And its 2.0GHz mobile Pentium 4 places it merely in the top half […]

Web developers are skilled professionals. So are proofreaders and typists, but the latter are usually paid less — so Webmasters who are constantly called away from their top-level, site-design or page-creation work to perform every little update or editing chore will be eager to tell their bosses about Macromedia‘s new Contribute 1.0. Contribute is a […]

Do you need to print 10 or 20 pages a day? Enjoy your inkjet printer, and don’t bother reading this review. Do you need to print hundreds or even one or two thousand pages a day, want them in a hurry, and crave the convenience of printing on both sides of a page? Lexmark says, […]

We have to confess a prejudice: Just as we cheered when affordable flatbed scanners shoved aside the crummy hand scanners used years ago, we’ve been glad to see flatbed designs largely replace sheetfed models in multifunction printer/scanner/copier peripherals. Putting a photo or magazine page (let alone a book) down on a glass flatbed is easier […]

Do we go with the head or the heart on this one? Microsoft’s Tablet PC push is all about taking pen-based, clipboard computing out of its various vertical-market niches — doctors making rounds, insurance adjusters filling out forms at accident sites — and into the business mainstream. And using the Gateway Tablet PC, you can […]

Are ordinary inkjet printers an endangered species? While basic printer prices fall toward the vanishing point (unlike the costs of their refill ink cartridges), multifunction printers that double as desktop copiers and scanners are proliferating. And Canon USA offers home offices and small businesses one of the newest, cutest, and most compact models in the […]

They’re still way more expensive than the familiar cathode-ray tube (CRT) monitors, but liquid liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors have lost their status as status symbols, with first 15- and then 17-inch flat panels moving swiftly into the mainstream. A big 19-inch LCD, however, is still luxurious enough to attract envious looks — and, if […]

Got 80 bucks? You can buy a nice color inkjet printer for home office use — or just one of the eight printheads and ink cartridges of the HP Business Inkjet 3000. Don’t have enough office space for the $80 inkjet printer? This could be a problem — an inexpensive printer could probably fit in […]