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Google TV: No Need to Tune In Just Yet

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 02:07:11 +0000

The quest to bring the full range of Internet video to your TV in a simple way continues, but it isn’t going well. The latest team to try—Google, Logitech and Sony—has made an admirably bold effort, but, like others before, it has missed the mark, at least in its first effort.

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Google TV—software built into hardware made by Logitech and Sony—is very different from competing products, such as Apple TV and Roku. Unlike the others, it aims to merge Web video and regular TV in one simple interface, via one box, with one easily usable controller. Also, unlike the others, it isn’t limited to just customized channels that bring specific Web-video services to the screen. It lets you browse to almost any website with video, and play it on the TV.

But, for now, I’d relegate Google TV to the category of a geek product, not a mainstream, easy solution ready for average users. It’s too complicated, in my view, and some of its functions fall short.

You can get Google TV in three ways. One is through a small, black $300 set-top box called the Logitech Revue. The second is through a special Sony Blu-ray player that costs $400. The third is through a Sony TV with built-in Internet that starts at $600. All are much costlier than the $99 Apple TV or the $60 Roku, but they offer more of the Internet’s video and make the effort to integrate it with cable or satellite programming.

Logitech Revue for Google TV

Google TV cleverly piggybacks onto your existing cable or satellite box and can control it, at least to some extent. So there is no switching of inputs or remotes required, at least theoretically, to go between Internet video and regular TV—something that has plagued competing systems. But if you try to watch an Internet version of a show from a big network site or from Hulu on your Google TV device, it’s blocked, because the studios want to channel those shows through your cable or satellite box.

I tested Google TV using the Logitech Revue product, though I also met with Sony and had a briefing on their version, which looks and works pretty much the same. Setup took 12 steps and about 40 minutes and went pretty smoothly. It might have been worse if, as Logitech warns, your cable or satellite box requires you to install special cables to allow the Revue’s controller to operate it, or if you use a separate audio system. You need an HDTV with HDMI jacks on your TV and cable or satellite box to use the Logitech Revue.

The controller on the Revue is a wireless keyboard. Yes, that’s right, a keyboard, something you might find unattractive in the living room and no better than what you might use if you just plugged a PC into the TV.

Logitech does offer an optional “mini” controller for $130, but it is essentially a tinier keyboard with minuscule buttons and track pad crammed into a smaller space. It is more complex to operate than the big keyboard and much more complicated than a typical TV remote. Sony’s box comes with a similar, complex-looking mini-controller.

The key to Google TV, however, is the software, not the hardware. There is a home screen with a list of core functions, but, Google being Google, the principle activity is meant to be search. You just start typing what you want to see and Google TV brings up a list of hits from both regular TV and the Internet.

Unfortunately, in my tests, this search-and-viewing process was frustrating. For one thing, you only get a few results, and in my experience, they usually weren’t the right ones. When I was looking for the telecast of the Mark Twain Award ceremony for Tina Fey, all Google pointed me to were short clips on YouTube. I had to do a full Web search (a standard option in the brief list Google gives you) and then navigate through a standard Google results screen, which was unreadable at 10 feet without zooming in, to find the full show on the PBS website.

When I finally got to the PBS page, we watched the show, but it was noticeably pixelated on our large TV screen, even though my Internet connection is very fast.

In another case, I wanted to see the new Beatles-themed ads from Apple, but Google’s first results didn’t include them. The closest they came was an old fictional ad on the topic produced by a fan years ago. I manually navigated to Apple’s website, where the ads were prominent, but found that Google TV doesn’t support QuickTime, Apple’s video format. (The company says it plans to do so in a future release.) I knew the ads were also on YouTube, so I went there and eventually found them, with some effort, but they stuttered on playback.

To use the Logitech Revue for Google TV, you need an HDTV with HDMI jacks on your TV and cable or satellite box.

I was similarly frustrated by finding and using regular TV shows from my cable box. Unless you have a box from Dish network, Google TV can’t search in your recorded shows, or allow you, when it finds a show coming up, to set it to record. You’ll likely switch to your regular remote to do those things, which defeats Google’s aim of integration.

Also confusing is Google TV’s home screen, which has overlapping categories. For instance, there is a Queue, for some of your favorite podcasts and sites, and a Bookmarks for others. There is an Applications menu that takes you to specially designed apps that spare you from navigating the regular Web, such as the Netflix video service or Pandora Radio. But there is also a Spotlight category that has customized, simplified websites that, to an average user, amount to the same thing. And, so far, you can only search for the names of most applications, not any content they contain.

Google plans to add the Android Market of third-party apps to Google TV. That could be good, adding more functionality. But it also risks adding more complexity, unless Google redesigns the interface.

Google TV has its strong points. The integration of Web video and regular TV, while flawed, is a smart move. There is even a picture-in-picture feature that lets you keep watching TV while, say, using Twitter or any other Web function. And the Logitech box has an optional $150 camera that allows you to make free video calls. It worked well in my one test. Logitech also allows you to control the Revue from an iPhone or Android app.

But this is a 1.0 product. For now, I’d suggest average users dying to watch Internet video on a TV, either plug in a PC or use one of the wireless systems, like Intel’s Wi-Di, that wirelessly beam video from a PC to a TV. Or, you could wait for Google TV to improve.

Find all his columns and videos at walt.allthingsd.com Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Netbooks Come Into Their Own

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:10:04 +0000

Somewhere between the laptop and the smart phone, the computer industry has long believed there could be a small, low-cost device that would please consumers and sell well.

The device would be more versatile than, say, an iPhone, but much cheaper and more portable than, say, a ThinkPad. The trouble is, every attempt to create such a category of computer has met with failure — until now.

This year, that in-between type of computer now called a “netbook” has finally caught on. Since I reviewed a pioneering model, the 7-inch, $300 Asus Eee PC back in January, the market has been flooded with new and better, if somewhat more expensive, netbook models. Nearly every company — from big names such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard, to obscure ones like MSI — has jumped into the fray.

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Netbooks still constitute a smaller niche than laptops and the exploding smart phone, or hand-held computer, category. But they are threatening to break into the mainstream in a big way, especially in an economic climate where a low price and fewer bells and whistles are suddenly more attractive.

They are much more portable than most standard laptops. They are easier to use on a plane or carry around town. And they are way cheaper, between $300 and $500, than the very lightest, thinnest standard laptops, which often top $1,000.

Compared with even an amazingly powerful pocket device, like the iPhone, the Google (GOOG) G1, or the forthcoming BlackBerry Storm, a netbook, at about twice the price, offers a much larger keyboard and screen. And they can run far more sophisticated software and perform a much wider variety of computing tasks.

But netbooks come with serious compromises. While they are great for light use on the go, their cramped screens and keyboards, and slow processors, make them much less potent and less comfortable to use than even a so-called ultraportable laptop. And, as small as they are, they can’t fit in a pocket like smart phones can, be as easily used as a still camera, or function as a cellphone.

Netbooks aren’t tablets. They look and act like regular clamshell-style laptops with keyboards and track pads, but are much smaller. Most current models have 8.9-inch screens, though some now sport 10-inch displays. Dell (DELL) is even planning soon to launch a netbook with a 12-inch screen for around $600, which will blur the line with traditional laptops, some of which can be bought for less with larger displays.

Compared with sleek, thin, but much costlier notebooks, such as the Apple (AAPL) MacBook Air or the Lenovo ThinkPad X300, the netbooks of today are stubbier and chunkier. But they take up much less room on an airline tray table. When the person in front of you reclines, you can happily keep using them, because their screens are so much smaller and extend upward so much less.

The early netbook models relied on the unfamiliar and somewhat geeky Linux operating system, and most still offer it as an option. But many now also can be purchased with Windows XP, with which consumers are far more experienced, and which can run many more well-known programs.

At the start of this year, most netbooks lacked hard disks, instead offering very limited storage via memory chips — often less storage than a $199 iPhone. They were pitched as limited devices mainly meant for using the Internet — thus the name “netbook” — and their makers assumed users mainly would use Web-based applications.

Now, many offer decent-size hard disks and include serious programs, such as Microsoft (MSFT) Office or Microsoft Works. But none offers a built-in DVD drive, which makes it hard to install some new software.

To offer readers a feel for today’s netbooks, I selected four representative models to test and review. I am not declaring these four as the best on the market, nor do I mean to slight makers like H-P, whose entries aren’t included in this review. The truth is, there are far more similarities than differences among competing netbooks that might make one model stand out from the others.

All four of the models I tested use Intel’s new low-power Atom processor. All have decent screen resolution — much better than the original Asus. But none can display a full Web page, or even most of a Web page, without scrolling. Each has three USB ports.

Three of the four have good battery life, but getting good power in most models means using a larger battery that adds weight and bulk.

All of my test models ran XP, not Linux, because I believe that’s the better choice for average consumers.

Here are minireviews of these four netbooks.

Acer Aspire One: The $349 blue Acer One weighs a little over two pounds with its standard battery, and has a bright, sharp 8.9-inch screen. It comes with a 120-gigabyte hard disk and 1 gigabyte of memory. It’s a little over an inch thick, and its footprint is much smaller than that of a standard sheet of paper.

As on all the other models, I tried a word processor, either Microsoft Word or Works, and several popular non-Microsoft programs: Adobe Reader, Apple’s iTunes and Mozilla’s Firefox browser. The Acer handled all of them well, though, as with all the other netbooks I tried, its speakers are mediocre.

The Acer’s small keyboard is very nicely done. Its keys are large enough, and separated and sculpted enough, to make typing comfortable and accurate, though I wouldn’t want to write a novel on it.

But the Acer has two big drawbacks. Its battery life is miserable. On my tough battery test, where I turn off all power-saving features, crank up the screen brightness, turn on the Wi-Fi, and play a continuous loop of music, it couldn’t even squeeze out two hours. In normal use, that might mean 2½ hours. To fix that problem, you can spend $50 more on a version with a double-size battery, at the cost of added weight and bulk. This costlier version also boosts the hard disk to 160 gigabytes.

The other problem, which can’t be fixed with any factory options, is that the Acer One has a terrible track pad. It’s too cramped vertically for comfortable use, and the buttons, which are mere slivers, are arranged on the sides instead of below the pad. Moving the cursor or selecting text is awkward and inaccurate.

Lesser problems are that the Acer includes only the older, slower, “G” flavor of Wi-Fi and a low-resolution Webcam.

The Dell Mini 9 has an 8.9-inch screen, is compact and has a big battery, but it lacks a hard disk and offers just 8 gigabytes of flash memory.

Dell Mini 9: Like the less costly Acer, the $399 Dell Mini has an 8.9-inch screen, but it’s a bit narrower horizontally. Its standard battery is larger, making it slightly heavier but still very light.

The Dell is a throwback to the older concept of netbooks. It lacks a hard disk and offers just 8 gigabytes of flash memory, plus 2 gigabytes of free online storage. It has just half a gigabyte of memory. For extra money, you can double the flash storage and memory.

Because of its bigger battery, and its lack of a power-sucking hard disk, the Dell beat the Acer handily in my battery test, getting just under three hours, which means that, in normal use, you would likely see four hours.

The Dell has the same wimpy Wi-Fi and Webcam as the Acer. But its track pad, while small, is much larger vertically and easier to use, with buttons where you expect to find them. It ran all my test software OK.

However, the Dell had by far the worst keyboard in my test group. Because of its compact width, the tab, arrow and other keys are squeezed to a ridiculously narrow size that impedes typing.

MSI Wind U100: This is a $399 machine (after a recent price cut) with a 10-inch screen, and comes from a Taiwan company better known in the U.S. for making computer components than entire computers. The model I tested, with a double-size battery, is $429. My test unit was white, weighed a tad over three pounds, and had 1 gigabyte of memory and a 160-gigabyte hard disk.

Despite the larger screen, the Wind still fits very well on a cramped airline tray, and it has a well-designed keyboard. It comes with a button that can slow down or speed up the processor to save battery life or add oomph. And there’s a function that can magnify portions of text.

It has a standard, decent Webcam and can use the newest “N” flavor of Wi-Fi. It ran all my test software just fine.

With my test model’s bigger battery, which protrudes from the bottom, the Wind did very well on my test at its standard processor speed, lasting three hours and 37 minutes. That suggests you could get four to five hours in normal use. Presumably, the standard model with the smaller battery would get half of that life, though you could stretch it by stepping down the processor speed.

Overall, I liked the MSI Wind a lot. My only real gripe is that the track pad is small and has only a single thin button, which performs a left or right click. This button is too small and sluggish for optimal use.

Asus Eee 1000H: Asus, another Taiwan company known as a component maker, is the king of netbooks. In fact, it has so many different, and frequently changing, netbook models that its product lineup can be a blur. The one I tested has a 10-inch screen and costs $475, making it the costliest netbook in this group. It’s also the heaviest, edging out my test Wind slightly.

Like the Wind, my Eee 1000H had a large battery that protruded from the bottom. It doesn’t come with a smaller battery. Also like the Wind, it has a standard Webcam, the faster “N” Wi-Fi, and a 160-gigabyte hard disk with 1 gigabyte of memory.

The keyboard on the 1000H was the best of this lot, with well-designed keys. It also had the roomiest and most functional track pad, though its buttons — integrated with a metal border around the track pad — took some getting used to.

The Asus, like the Wind, has the capability to tweak the speed of its processor. It also has a button that can change the screen resolution, though I found that the nonstandard resolutions looked distorted.

In my battery test, at its standard processor speed, the 1000H got three hours and 32 minutes, suggesting that in normal use it could deliver between four and five hours — more if you use the lower processor speed.

The Asus handled all my test software well. It comes with a greater variety of built-in programs than the others and offers 20 gigabytes of free online storage.

Bottom line: If you want a machine for light use, a light price and a light weight, a netbook is waiting and is worth a try. Just don’t expect the same experience as on a standard laptop or the convenience of a smart phone.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Apple Polishes Popular MacBook for a Higher Price

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 01:02:04 +0000

Apple‘s MacBook laptop, the company’s low-end portable computer aimed at average consumers, isn’t just any old product. It’s the best-selling Macintosh in history, at a time when Mac sales are growing much faster than sales of PCs in the U.S. overall. And, according to the sales-research organization NPD Group, the midrange model of the MacBook has been the single best-selling laptop of any brand in U.S. retail stores for the past five months.

So, when Apple completely revamped the design of the MacBook last week, it was a big deal, not only for Mac die-hards, but for anyone shopping for an everyday laptop.

I’ve been testing the base model of the new MacBook for the past five days, and I like it a lot, despite a few downsides. I found this new MacBook to be speedy, solid, innovative, and comfortable to use, with very good battery life.

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The new model sports a sturdy aluminum case, instead of the old plastic one, and looks gorgeous. And it even seemed to run cooler than earlier Apple (AAPL) aluminum laptops. It’s 10% lighter, at 4.5 pounds, and 12% thinner, at 0.95 inch, than its predecessor, and continues to include a built-in DVD drive. Its processor is slower, yet it has good performance because of much faster graphics, and it also offers a far brighter screen in the same 13.3-inch size. But it still gets strong battery life — slightly better in fact than the older model, in my tests.

Plus, the new MacBook includes a huge, innovative glass track pad that functions as a combination of a traditional track pad and the multitouch screen of an iPhone. This track pad allows all sorts of fingertip gestures you can use to navigate Web pages, manipulate photos, and switch among programs.

In another radical step, Apple eliminated the button below the track pad. When you want to perform a mouse click, you just depress the entire track pad. The whole thing is a big button, which can act as either the left or right button on a traditional mouse, and which allows easy, smooth scrolling.

Like all current Macs, the new MacBooks come with Apple’s Leopard operating system, which I consider superior to Windows. But the new MacBooks can run Windows as well. In my tests, the new model ran Windows XP beautifully. I was able to run such Windows-only programs as Microsoft’s (MSFT) Internet Explorer and Outlook right along with my Mac software, at snappy speeds. It can also run Windows Vista.

The cheaper of the two new versions comes with an adequate 160-gigabyte hard disk, though larger disks are available, and two gigabytes of memory, which is plenty for a consumer Mac.

On my tough battery test, where I turn off all power-saving features and play an endless loop of music, the new MacBook lasted three hours and 53 minutes — six minutes longer than the old one. That suggests that, in normal use, with power-saving on, you could achieve Apple’s claim of five hours of battery life, or come close.

There are some drawbacks, of course. The cheapest of the new models costs $1,299, $200 more than the cheapest of the old models. Though that’s the same price as the most popular of the older models, and you get more for your money, the swooning economy may make that price tag tougher for some families to swallow. As a hedge against this, Apple will continue to sell the base model of the old MacBook, at $999.

Another downside to the new MacBook is that the radical new glass track pad will take some time to get used to. At first, I found its surface so slippery that I had trouble accurately placing the cursor on the item I wanted to select. But three other people I asked to test this had no such trouble, and my own woes with this disappeared after a few days, either because I got more used to it, or because the surface picked up enough dirt to become less slick.

It also takes a while to adapt to the lack of a button. For left-clicking, you press the whole track pad with one finger. For right-clicking, you press down with two fingers, or you can set an option to perform right-clicking with one finger by pressing on one of the lower corners of the track pad. You can also optionally use light tapping instead of clicking, a common option on other laptops.

In addition, the model’s bright LED screen comes in only a glossy finish, which some folks hate because it displays more glare and fingerprints than the old matte screens.

Apple still stubbornly refuses to incorporate a slot for the flash memory cards commonly used in cameras and cellphones. And the new model omits the FireWire port, which some consumers used to connect older camcorders and certain external hard disks. The new model uses a common Ethernet networking cable instead of FireWire to transfer all your files and programs from an older Mac, a process I found worked perfectly.

All in all, though, Apple’s new MacBook is a terrific choice for consumers and students, if you can handle the $1,299 price.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Some General Tips for Switch to Mac From Windows

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:41:02 +0000

Sales of Apple’s Macintosh computers have been growing much faster than PC sales overall, with many new Mac buyers switching from years of using Windows computers. For that reason, every month I get emails from readers asking about the differences in using the Windows and Macintosh operating systems.

While the Windows and Mac user interfaces are broadly similar, they do have subtle variations in day-to-day use that require some re-education for switchers. And because there are so many fewer Mac users than Windows users, help from friends and co-workers can be harder to obtain than it is for people switching the other way, to Windows from Mac.

So, here’s a quick tip sheet explaining a few of the most common differences in the daily use of Windows XP (MSFT), from which most people would be switching, and Apple’s (AAPL) Mac OS X Leopard, which switchers would be adopting.

This column isn’t an argument for making the switch to a Mac, merely an attempt to help those who have done so, or who are considering doing so. Of course, all Macs currently sold can run Windows and Windows programs concurrently with the Mac operating system. But this guide is for folks who intend to use their Macs primarily with Leopard, not Windows.

Menu Bars: In Windows, each program typically has its own menu bar. On the Mac, there’s a single menu bar at the top of the screen that changes, depending on which program you are actively using.

Task Bar: The equivalent of the Windows XP Task Bar on the Mac is the Dock. Unlike the Task Bar, which primarily holds icons representing open windows, the Mac Dock primarily holds icons of programs you use most often. To place a program onto the Dock, you just drag its icon there. To remove it, you just drag its icon off the Dock and it disappears in a puff of animated smoke.

Start Menu: There is no Start Menu on a Mac. Its functions are divided between the Dock and the Apple menu at the upper left of the Mac screen.

Control Panel: The Mac equivalent of the Windows Control Panel is called System Preferences, and it can be launched from either the Dock or the Apple menu.

Keyboard shortcuts: Common Windows keyboard commands, such as Ctrl-S for Save, Ctrl-P for Print, and many others, are also available on the Mac. However, instead of using the Control key, they use the Mac’s Command key, which bears either a cloverlike symbol or an Apple logo. So, on the Mac, for instance, Command-S is for Save.

Quitting programs: In Windows, you can quit a program by clicking on the red “X” in a square at the upper right corner of the window you’re using. But on the Mac, if you click on the equivalent button — a red “X” in a circle in the upper left corner — you are merely closing the window, not quitting the program. To quit the program, you must either select Quit from the leftmost menu or press the Command and “Q” keys together.

Maximizing windows: When you click on the blue maximize button in Windows XP, the window you are viewing occupies the whole screen. In Leopard, the equivalent button — a green circle at the upper left — increases a small window’s size to a footprint deemed optimal for its contents, which isn’t always the whole screen.

Switching programs: One common way to switch among running programs in Windows XP is to press Alt and Tab together. This displays icons of each running program and allows you to switch among them. On a Mac, the same trick can be performed by pressing the Command and Tab keys together. The Mac also has a terrific feature called Expose, which shows every open window at once, in miniature form, so you can navigate among them. You can trigger Expose in a number of ways, but the most common is to hit either the F9 key or the dedicated Expose key, depending on your Mac model.

Right-clicking: Contrary to common belief, the Mac has a right-click menu function, just like Windows. Most desktop Macs now come with a mouse that allows right-clicking, and you can use almost any two-button USB mouse with any modern Mac. If you are using a Mac laptop, which has only one button under the track pad, you can simulate a right-click by either holding down the Control key when you click, or by placing two fingers on the track pad while clicking. The latter technique, which I favor, must first be turned on in System Preferences.

Screen: Your desktop picture and screen saver on a Mac are set via a System Preference called Desktop & Screen Saver. Screen resolution is set in the Displays System Preference. In Windows XP, all of these things are included in the Display control panel.

For more information, Apple offers two Web sites. One is called Mac 101, and is at apple.com/support/mac101. The other is called Switch 101, and is at apple.com/support/switch101.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.