The Next Top Gadgets

Pogoplug Upgrades Its Network-Attached Storage

Pogoplug Series 4

POGOPLUG LETS YOU turn any USB-attached drive into a network-accessible drive. Pogoplug’s Series 4 is a vast improvement over previous models, starting with the upgrade of the USB ports to the 3.0 standard. In addition, Series 4 offers a SATA/USM slot on the top of the unit and an SD Card slot.

Pogoplug makes establishing your own remotely accessible storage easy. Power up the unit, attach it to your network router or switch, and step through a simple online setup procedure using your browser you then can access the unit (as well as any attached drives) from anywhere you have an Internet connection. You don’t even have to enter a unit ID, as in the past.

The Pogoplug website portal where you upload, download, share, and view files is capable enough to get the task done. You use an email address and a password to log on. Of course, you're limited to the speed of your connection, but if you connect from the same local network, the Pogoplug is smart enough to bypass the Web portal and use the local connection for much faster uploads and downloads.

With Series 4, Pogoplug has finally addressed a major concern about the company's devices that they would be useless if the company/portal ever went belly up. The company now has a PC/Mac/Linux software client that lets you directly access (restore) the files contained on the connected storage, and back up files from your PC. Portal or no, you can now use the Pogoplug for local network storage.

Wondershare's Advanced DVD Slideshow Builder

DVD SLIDESHOW Builder Deluxe helps you build slideshows that you can burn to DVDs for playing back on a TV. In addition, you can save the slideshows as video files compatible with mobile devices and Web services.

After you add photos, you can easily rearrange, delete, or tweak them with the built-in (but basic) editing tools. Once the photos are set, you can apply a style and other customizations to the slideshow. The software can be a bit much if you just want to create a basic slideshow; but if you're willing to put time and effort into using DVD Slideshow Builder Deluxe, you'll find plenty of features.

You can add music, clip art, credits, and other elements.

Microsoft's free Windows Movie Maker, included with most Windows PCs, provides some of the same features. Windows Movie Maker lets you import photos, add music, set transitions, and more, but you get fewer advanced options there than you do in Wondershare’s application. Microsoft’s program is a bit simpler to use than DVD Slideshow Builder Deluxe, but the results are somewhat less sophisticated, too. And though Windows Movie Maker lets you publish your video slideshows to the Web or share them via email, it doesn't allow you to burn them to a DVD unless you have Windows DVD Maker. One significant advantage of Windows Movie Maker is that it includes some basic video editing features, whereas Wondershare's program creates video slideshows exclusively.

Love Theme

Review love theme movie style to see how your photos will be turned to.

Portrait Professional 10 Lets You Fine Tune Faces

VERSION 10 OF Anthropics' Portrait Professional includes a few nice changes to the interface and controls, but it continues to provide a good platform for improving photo subjects' attractiveness.

Like Portrait Professional version 9, version 10 Lets you create minimal to sweeping changes to a face to make it more appealing. Once you upload an image, you mark five spots on it outside corners of the eyes, tip of the nose, and corners of the mouth. Then you adjust the points on the image to correspond to the features of the face, and click. In seconds, the software changes the face's features in accordance with predetermined beautifying algorithms. The result: a new face.

After Portrait Professional is finished, you can make changes using the sliders at the right side of the screen to fine-tune each effect. Version 10 introduces the option of identifying a subject as a child and using a special set of controls for correcting the image.

Portrait Professional's sliders let you adjust various enhancements as you like.

Anthropics also offers better algorithms for different ages and textures of skin. I tested the sliders on a wide range of people, including a man in his 70s, a man in his 40s, a woman in her 40s, and a child. The program did a good job of subtly improving each person’s skin and facial structure, yielding a more attractive look without going too far toward an air brushed result.

HP Omni 27 1015t Desktop PC: Beautiful, Affordable, Boring

HP Omni 27 1015t Desktop PC

THE $1549 HP Omni 27-1015t is a glossy 27 inch all in one that could almost pass as an HDTV. It has a high-definition resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, but lacks touch support.

The PC’s Core i5-3550S CPU a low-power version of Intel's new Ivy Bridge processor runs at 3.0GHz normally, but it can accelerate to 3.7GHz thanks to Intel’s Turbo Boost. On our WorldBench 7 tests, it earned an impressive mark of 115.

The Omni 27-1015t comes with a discrete AMD Radeon HD 6550A graphics card and a 7200 rpm, 2TB hard drive. Other standard features include a built-in webcam, an integrated microphone, Beats Audio technology, a wireless mouse and keyboard that connect via Bluetooth, and plenty of ports: four USB 2.0 ports on the back and two USB 3.0 ports on the side. The PC also sports a comprehensive SD Card reader to maximize its media capabilities.

The standout feature of the Omni 27-1015t is the HDMI input on the side, which makes plugging in a game console or media player easy. A button above the HDMI port lets you switch the PC into ‘Game Mode’:

One press, and you instantly have a beautiful 27-inch display to play on.

Overall, the HP Omni 27-1015t is a solid, beautiful media center with a bit more power than you can find in the typical all in one system. It fails to be unique, however. On this machine, HP has played it safe, providing adequate features and straddling the line between affordable and overpriced. In the end, however, this model doesn't really stand out.

Asus ET2701 INKI: A Multipurpose All in One

PRICED AT $1299, Asus’s 27 inch, high definition all in one PC carries a Core i7-3770S CPU that runs at a 3.1GHz base speed, with Intel Turbo Boost technology increasing it to 3.9GHz when needed. The 8GB of DDR3 SDRAM makes apps open quickly. You also get a discrete Nvidia GeForce GT 640M GPU (with 1GB of video memory) and a Blu-ray drive.

The ET2701INKI earned a mark of 111 on our strenuous WorldBench 7 test suite.

Though the 1920 by 1080 pixel screen is Large and crisp, it Lacks touch support. On-screen images look good from most angles, but the LCD is very reflective when viewed under direct light.

The system comes with a single 7200 rpm, 2TB hard drive split into two partitions: a small one for the Windows 7 Home Premium operating system and a few programs, and a second partition labeled as a data drive.

Connections include gigabit ethernet, Bluetooth, and wireless 802.11n. The system has a total of five USB ports: two USB 3.0 ports and an eSATA/USB 2.0 one on the side, plus two USB 2.0 ports on the back. An SD Card reader, VGA input, antenna, and HDMI in round out the port offerings. If you are a media maven who is inclined to consider touchscreens to be an unnecessary gimmick, this Asus all-in-one PC may be a great fit.

NTI ECHO 3 Single Minded Drive Cloning Utility

NTI ECHO 3 is a simple and effective utility for cloning hard drives and partitions.

Echo 3 can copy data from a single partition, from an entire drive, and from both while filtering out file types you define. You can also have the program dynamically resize partitions to fit a new drive. If a partition took up 33 percent of a 250GB drive, for instance, you can have it take up the same percentage of a 500GB drive.

I do have two minor complaints. First, although Echo 3 warns you that it will overwrite any data on the destination drive, the warning comes only after you've chosen a disk from a drop-down list. Best practice would be to show the drives and detail exactly what’s on them. Second, Echo 3 performs cloning during a reboot, instead of from within Windows.

Echo 3 is handy, but you can clone your drive (in more steps) with Windows Vista/7 Backup and the Windows boot disk. Also, a number of more-expensive programs Acronis True Image Home 2012 ($50), Paragon Hard Disk Manager Professional 2012 ($100), and R-Drive Image ($45) do cloning and a lot more.

Acronis True Image Home Offers Friendly Backup

ACRONISTRUE IMAGE Home 2012 supports imaging, file backup, online backup, synchronization (local, online, and remote) and even continuous backup. And the user interface is well organized and well thought out.

True Image Home 2012 includes Secure Zone, a hidden partition for restoring your PC without using boot media; a boot manager that adds images to the boot sequence if you’re using Windows 7 Enterprise or Ultimate; a driver for greater than 2.2TB support in Windows XP; a file shredder, a disk wiper; and a CCleaner like system cleanup utility.

True Image Home 2012 Lacks support for Microsoft's dynamic disks (which won't affect most home users) and restoration to dissimilar hardware. Acronis's $30 Plus Pack offers both features.

All of True Image Home 2012’s local functionality worked quite well for me, though enumerating devices on the network proceeded glacially at times.

Perhaps the best new True Image Home 2012 feature is the ability to synchronize data between local drives, the Acronis online service, and remote network Locations. If you work with the same data on different machines and from remote Locations, this capability can be incredibly handy. The online backup service is priced at $5 a month, or $50 a year for 250GB.

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