My Motorola Android phone does not work outside of the U.S. Does the Samsung Galaxy have the same problem? Will the forthcoming Verizon iPhone work in Europe?

A:

I combined two reader questions here, because they both touch on a common source of confusion. I presume that the Motorola Android phone that only works in the U.S. is sold by either Verizon or Sprint, because they use network technology that is primarily found in the U.S., and not, say, in Europe. Thus, phone makers like Motorola and Samsung tailor their Verizon and Sprint models to this U.S.-centric technology, called CDMA.

However, both Motorola and Samsung also make Android phones for AT&T and T-Mobile, which use a network technology called GSM that is standard in most of the rest of the world. These models should work outside of the U.S. There are a few “world phones” sold by Verizon and Sprint, which include both network technologies. For instance, Verizon sells two Android phones, the Droid Pro and the Droid 2 Global, which fall into that category.

As for the reported forthcoming Verizon iPhone, I don’t know if it will be limited to CDMA, which would make it essentially a U.S.-only device, or whether it will also be compatible with GSM, which would make it a world phone.

Q:

I live in South Africa, and want to buy the Samsung Tab to make my job easier, but to do that I must be able to work with Microsoft Excel documents. Editing and using dropdown boxes is essential. Can this be done?

A:

The Tab, and other Android devices, can view and edit Excel documents using either a built-in mobile office suite (ThinkFree was pre-installed on the Tab I tested) or one you can obtain through the Android Market, like Quickoffice. You can also use online spreadsheet apps.

However, as with the same or similar apps for the iPad, these are limited compared to using Excel on a PC or Mac, and I cannot say whether they’d have the features and two-way document fidelity you personally might require. I didn’t test editing Excel documents on the Tab.

Q:

I am considering purchasing the iPad but have learned that it does not allow users to create folders in which documents can be stored. This would be incredibly useful for me for business purposes while I travel (i.e., separate client folders with client-specific documents in each). I have heard that Apple’s new operating system upgrade might make this possible, but I haven’t been able to confirm it. Do you happen to know whether that is the case?

A:

The new folder feature coming to the iPad is meant for grouping apps, not documents. Apple’s operating system for its mobile devices, called iOS, doesn’t have a global document folder capability.

However, individual iPad apps, such as the very powerful GoodReader, do allow you to create folders that can hold all manner of documents, and you can name and organize these folders as you wish. But these folders are only accessible from within the app that creates them.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns at the All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

The new features include an innovative, if odd, vertical “accordion” tab.

“We have been actively working on the algorithmic transition of search, which was completed in August, and we are already releasing new features to the search experience,” said Shashi Seth, SVP of Yahoo Search and Marketplaces, in an interview with BoomTown today. “Since we are not actively spending a lot of energy on back-end stuff, we can focus our efforts on new things.”

Among the new enhancements to Yahoo (YHOO) search: A vertical “accordion” paradigm with shortcuts on search results that allow for new kinds of information presentation; “quick apps,” beginning with one for Netflix (NFLX) that lets its members add movies to their queue directly from the search results page; slideshows within search from the “Trending Now” lists on Yahoo; more immersive and theater-style photo and video search, as well as “the ability for people to view personally meaningful public Facebook albums from friends,” when they sign in to Facebook; and a new mobile search experience for Apple (AAPL) iPhone and Google Android smartphones, as well as feature phones, that uses HTML5 technology.

“We wanted users to see that things had changed dramatically,” said Seth. “Consumer needs for search engines have changed.”

He said that in testing so far, engagement–an increasingly important measure for advertisers–had spiked with the new features, especially in “taking search from an information need to action at an end.”

Seth promised a “huge pipeline of stuff” to come in search, where the Silicon Valley Internet giant holds the No. 2 position in market share, well behind Google (GOOG) and ahead of the Microsoft (MSFT) Bing service.

Both Google and Microsoft have been adding a series of search upgrades over the last year, such as Google Instant, while Yahoo has not.

Yahoo has a blog post up about it here.

And here are some screenshots, as well as the official press release and an overview by Yahoo of the new search features (click on the images to make them bigger):

Yahoo! Makes Searching More Relevant, Productive and Fun

New features help people explore their interests and do more

SUNNYVALE, Calif., October 7, 2010–Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) today introduced new Search enhancements that will help millions of people be entertained, productive, and informed anywhere they are across Yahoo!. Leveraging Yahoo!’s rich content and robust technology platforms, these new Yahoo! Search features will help people get to the entertainment and news content they care about on all connected devices–and do more with the things they find.

“Our goal is to understand what people care about and to make it fun for them to explore the most personally relevant, interesting, and informative content so that they can get things done faster and stay in the know,” said Shashi Seth, senior vice president, Yahoo! Search and Marketplaces. “Yahoo!’s new immersive Search is a cornerstone of the overall Yahoo! experience, creating more ways to connect people with whatever and whoever interests them.”

To start using the new enhancements, go to Yahoo.com and search for topics such as “Lady Gaga” or “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” The features include 3D multifaceted results and tools that let people:

• Cut to the chase–Intelligent shortcuts for movies, musical artists, celebrities and news topics conveniently organize the most important details such as images, articles, videos, tweets, event listings, and ratings. They also provide quick and easy ways to purchase movie or concert tickets while searching.

• Find favorite flicks–The first in a series of unique “quick apps” from Yahoo! Search, a new Web app for Netflix provides an easy way for Netflix members to add movies to their Queue right from the Search results page. In the coming months, Yahoo! plans to launch additional apps that change the search paradigm from finding to doing.

• Watch what’s happening now–Continuing to bring Search to more people in more places across Yahoo!, the company is helping people feed their curiosity by displaying image slideshows right above the standard results for interesting topics from Yahoo!’s Trending Now lists on Yahoo.com and elsewhere.

• Lean back and browse more pictures–An immersive new Yahoo! Image Search delivers engaging slideshows with public photos from Flickr and Yahoo!’s leading content sites, as well as the ability for people to view personally meaningful public Facebook albums from friends when they sign-in and connect their Yahoo! accounts to Facebook.

• Search on the go–Android and iPhone users can now get faster, more sophisticated Search results, thanks to the latest HTML5 technology. Rich content on entertainment, finance, and local topics is surfaced in more unique and compelling ways for high-end mobile devices.

Working toward its vision to be the center of people’s online lives, Yahoo! is dedicated to re-imagining Search by creating new ways to bring people closer to what they need and want on the Web. Today’s visually stunning new Search experiences throughout the Yahoo! network, along with innovative technology enhancements and quality improvements for rich local and shopping searches, all supplement organic algorithmic Search listings from the recently transitioned Microsoft search platform. Yahoo! expects current and future innovations to redefine Yahoo! Search and drive greater consumer engagement and loyalty.

New features began rolling out to Search users across the U.S. today, and Yahoo! expects to launch them for additional global markets in 2011.

Search Launch Overview Oct 2010

Today, The Wall Street Journal published its special tab, both online and offline, featuring edited transcripts of some of the interviews Walt Mossberg and I did at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference last week.

The excerpts come from interviews we did with Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer, Hollywood megadirector James Cameron, Federal Communications Chairman Julius Genachowski, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller and Ford (F) CEO Alan Mulally.

Also: A look back at quotes from past D conferences, which just makes BoomTown feel old.

Check it all out here.

And you can also see the full video of the interview with Jobs here. All Things Digital will be posting all the videos from D8, with a new one going up each Monday and Thursday.

The Wall Street Journal published a special tab (click the image to make it larger) about our sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place live two weeks ago.

The Journal editors selected about half of the interviews done there by Walt Mossberg and me, either separately or together, and edited the longer transcripts down to the parts they thought readers would like best.

Those interviews include: Microsoft’s (MSFT) Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer; Yahoo’s (YHOO) Sue Decker and Jerry Yang; Amazon’s (AMZN) Jeff Bezos; Activision’s (ATVI) Bobby Kotick; the Gates Foundation’s Melinda Gates; TiVo’s (TIVO) Tom Rogers; and Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. (NWS) (owner of this site and the conference).

We hope you’ll enjoy the tab, which is both in print and also online. And you can always read all about it in our D6 highlights here, including super-duper live-blogging from the conference by Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski.

There is also a podcast about the conference with Walt and me, conducted by The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Totty.

Unfortunately, every attempt at this concept has included too many compromises to justify their often surprisingly high prices. I’ve been testing the latest effort at such a device, the Eee PC, from a Taiwan-based laptop maker called Asus. It does better than some of the earlier contenders in certain respects, such as text entry and price. But it still is likely to prove unsatisfying for many road warriors.

Asus doesn’t even call the Eee a computer, referring to it as a “mobile Internet gadget.” Instead of using Microsoft Windows as its operating system, the Eee uses a specially designed version of the open Linux operating system, and comes preloaded with a variety of open-source programs for Web browsing, performing office tasks, playing music and videos, running games and managing photos.

The Eee has a much smaller footprint than even the subnotebook category of laptop, such as the much-publicized MacBook Air unveiled by Apple this week (which I’ll review after I have thoroughly tested it), or subnotebooks from Sony and Lenovo. It weighs a mere two pounds, is just under 9 inches wide and just over 6 inches deep. It is thicker than the new Apple and some other subnotebooks, ranging from 0.79 inches at its thinnest point to 1.26 inches at its thickest. The overall effect is small, but stubby.

The Eee’s price is only a fraction of what typical subnotebooks cost — from $300 to $500, depending on configuration. The model I tested, called the Surf, is the base $300 entry. With its pastel blue lid, and tiny size, it looks like something Barbie might use. But it can perform real work, even though it comes with only 512 megabytes of memory and a scant two gigabytes of storage space.

One reason the device costs and weighs so little is that there is no hard disk. Files are stored on memory chips. It is possible to add storage by popping in a flash memory card or by connecting a USB drive to one of the three USB ports.

Unlike some computers in its category, the Eee isn’t a tablet. It takes the clamshell form of a traditional laptop and, when opened, reveals a full, if very cramped, keyboard. By including a real keyboard and charging so little, Asus has overcome two of the problems that plagued Samsung’s Q1 ultramobile computer awhile back.

Asus Eee PC

The user interface on the Eee is simple and clear. It consists of tabs labeled Internet, Work, Learn, Play, Settings and Favorites. Each tab contains large, colorful icons. For instance, the Work tab includes icons for Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations. These tabs lead to various modules of the free OpenOffice suite, a competitor to Microsoft Office.

The Internet tab has various icons, such as Web Mail, Web and Wikipedia, that open the Firefox Web browser. You get to this tabbed screen by just pressing a Home button.

In my tests of the Eee, I was able to use all manner of Web sites, send and receive Web-based email, compose and open Microsoft Word documents from other computers, play music, and view photos.

So, with a low price, a small size, a real keyboard, and a clean user interface, what’s not to like about the Eee?

Well, for starters, its tiny 7-inch display is just too stingy for serious work. You can make up for a small screen size with high resolution, but the 800 by 480 resolution on the Eee — which can’t be changed — is so wimpy that very few lines of text can be seen at any one time. This means you’ll have to do so much scrolling, it’s likely to drive you crazy.

Also, the lack of a hard disk, and the relative paucity of truly simple Linux software, means that most nontechie users will be stuck with the included programs, which can’t be removed and which don’t include a calendar or contacts program, or even an email program. You can only use Web-based email.

And just below the Eee’s simplified user interface lurks the complicated terminology and software design characteristic of Linux. Some error messages I saw were indecipherable.

Beyond that, many of the Linux programs included were far cruder and harder to figure out than, say, Microsoft’s Photo Gallery or Apple’s iTunes. The Eee wouldn’t automatically reconnect to a known wireless network, and it wouldn’t recognize my Kodak digital camera.

Some of these problems can be solved if you install Microsoft Windows XP on the Eee. Asus includes instructions on doing so. But you have to supply your own copy of Windows.

The Eee is a valiant effort, but it still has too many compromises to pry most travelers away from their larger laptops.

Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online, free, at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

When will Google offer its much-discussed cellphone for sale?

Google says it isn’t planning to build or sell mobile phones. Instead, it is developing a cellphone operating system, or software platform, called Android. And it has assembled an alliance of companies, including phone makers and cellular network providers, to create phones based on this new platform. This group is called the Open Handset Alliance. In addition, since Android will be so-called “open source” software, Google expects numerous developers around the world, large and small, to modify the operating system and create programs that will run on it.

If all goes according to plan, Google says it expects to see many different Android-based cellphones and other mobile devices, from a variety of manufacturers and carriers, in various designs and with differing functionality and capabilities. Some may be larger-screen “smart phones,” similar to an iPhone or BlackBerry. Others might be smaller, simpler phones. Still others might fall somewhere between an iPhone and a small laptop.

Google officials say they expect the first Android devices to be available later this year.

After reading your Jan. 3 column, I looked unsuccessfully for a Home and Student version of Office for Mac 2004. Does such a version exist?

In the 2004 release of Microsoft Office for the Mac, this low-priced version had a different name: the Student and Teacher edition. Microsoft presumably changed the name of this $150 product to the Home and Student edition in both Office 2007 for Windows and Office 2008 for the Mac, because, while it was technically limited for sale to families containing students or teachers, no proof was required and it was widely purchased by consumers in general.

However, there’s a big difference between the latest Windows and Mac versions of the Home and Student edition. In the Mac version, it includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage, Microsoft’s equivalent of Outlook on the Mac, which, like Outlook, includes email, calendar and contact functions. But the new Windows version now omits Outlook, and instead substitutes OneNote, a note-taking and information organizing program that is far less commonly used. So, Windows users must spend much more money to get a version of Office that includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.

Is there a way to back up Microsoft Outlook Express emails, particularly Inbox items?

Outlook Express stores your emails in database files, with all the messages in each of your mail folders lumped into a single such file. These files can be backed up, or copied, onto other hard disks, or storage media.

The email data files are usually buried in obscure subfolders in Windows. But you can locate them by clicking on the Tools menu, then Options. This will open a tabbed window. In this window, click on the tab called Maintenance, then the button called Store Folder. This will generally give you a long, complicated path to the folder.

Next, copy this path by selecting it and pressing Control and C. Then, click on the Start menu, select “Run…”, and then press Control and V and then click OK. This should open the folder that contains your email. The inbox is contained in a file called Inbox.dbx. This is the file you will want to back up. If you want to back up other folders, such as the Sent mail folder, you will find them along with the inbox file, with the same “.dbx” suffix.

Some backup programs may automate this process by simply allowing you to designate that you want to back up your Outlook Express emails. There are even some programs specially designed to back up Outlook Express messages. You can find some of these by simply performing a Web search on “backup Outlook Express.”

• You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online for free at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.