Stories by Nick Mediati

Windows 7 Performance Tests

Windows Vista never was particularly speedy in most people's eyes. Whether it deserved the reputation or not, the word on the street was that Vista was both slow and bloated.

New AMD graphics card drives six displays

In the future, everyone will have their own Matrix: Reloaded-style video walls. Or at least that's the future AMD envisions.

Will Apple's new iTunes put you on cloud nine?

Earlier today Apple introduced iTunes 9 at the "It's Only Rock and Roll, But We Like It" media event. iTunes 9 has a number of new features, such as iTunes LP (which tries to bring full-blown album art, liner notes, and so on to the digital world), H...

The future is now? Augmented reality comes to the iPhone

If you're traveling to Paris, France anytime soon, consider taking Metro Paris Subway 3.0 along for the trip. This 99-cent iPhone app integrates an augmented reality feature (called Your New Eye) that will show you where the closest Paris subway stat...

Snow Leopard versus Windows 7

Snow Leopard’s Finder and Windows 7’s Explorer have strikingly similar interfaces, with quick-search fields in the upper-right corner, path bars (OS X’s is optional and can be switched on in the View menu), and sidebars that provide easy access to va...

Layar brings augmented reality to Android phones worldwide

Netherlands-based Android developer Layar has announced that its Layar Reality Browser 2.0 is now available globally. Layar Reality Browser is an augmented reality browser.

Apple screws up again, censors iPhone dictionary app

Just when you thought the iPhone App Store approval process couldn't possibly become more of a debacle, it did. John Gruber of Daring Fireball details the story of Ninjawords, an iPhone dictionary that Apple censored.

It's official: Windows 7 goes RTM

Microsoft has announced this afternoon that Windows 7 has been released to manufacturing. In other words, Windows 7 development has wrapped up, and it'll now go on to PC manufacturers so they can prepare for October's Windows 7 launch.

Is Chrome OS the future of computing? I hope not.

Google's idea of an operating system sounds pretty cool: Lightweight. Speedy. Secure. Web-centric. But while I'm sure Chrome OS will pick up some fans, I have a hard time seeing this as the way of the future for computing.

What to look for in Firefox 3.5

Mozilla today released Firefox 3.5, which you can download from Mozilla's Web site. Firefox 3.5 boasts a number of significant changes--ranging from new ways to work with the browser features to under-the-hood improvements that Mozilla developers say...

5 things you should know about Snow Leopard

For years, Apple has churned out versions of Mac OS X pumped full of new features geared toward the average user. And it seems like with every iteration of Mac OS X, the new feature count balloons. While many of these new features are small -- for ex...

Microsoft proposes wordy new name for netbooks

The marketing geniuses in Redmond are at it again. From the folks who brought us "Zune," "Bing," and "MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search" comes a new name for the venerable netbook.

Speed test: Windows 7 may not be much faster than Vista

Tests of the Windows 7 Release Candidate in our PC World Test Center found that while Windows 7 was slightly faster on our WorldBench 6 suite, the differences may be barely noticeable to users

Two weeks without Twitter: an experiment

I joined Twitter in September 2008 to see what all the fuss was about. This, of course, was right in the middle of the economic meltdown, and the US presidential race between Obama and McCain was just heating up, so there was plenty to talk about. Pr...

Optoma Pico PK-101 pocket projector

Optoma's diminutive projector makes a great traveling companion, despite somewhat fuzzy image projection. The prospect of projecting an image anywhere becomes a reality with Optoma's Pico PK-101 pocket projector, the first shipping product we've test...