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PERMISSIONS, REPRINTS

For permission to reuse material in this publication or to use our logo, contact Ziff Davis Media’s Executive Director of Rights and Permissions, Olga Gonopolsky, at permissions@ziffdavis.com, or by phone at 212-503-5438 or by fax at 212-503-5420. Material in this publication may not be reproduced in any form without written permission. For reprints, please contact the YGS Group: telephone, 800-290-5460; fax, 717-399-8900; e-mail, pcmag@theygsgroup.com. The following are registered trademarks of Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc.: i-Bench, NetBench, PC DIRECT, PC Labs, PC MAGAZINE, PC MAGAZINE AWARD FOR TECHNICAL EXCELLENCE, PC MAGAZINE EDITORS’ CHOICE, PC MagNet, ServerBench, WinBench, Winstone, Ziff Davis Media’s corporate logo, and PCMAG.com. The following are trademarks of Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc.: After Hours, CPUmark, EasyComputing, ExtremeTech, First Looks, First Looks Plus, i-Bench, Lab Notes, Lab Tales, PC Bench, PC Labs Scorecard, PC Magazine At Home, PC Magazine CD, Front Side, PC Magazine Extra, PC Magazine Marketlink, PC Solutions, PC Tech, Power Programming, Quick Clips, ScreenDemos, SMB Boot Camp, Tech Notes, and WinDrain. Other trademarks and trade names used throughout the publication are the property of their respective owners. Copyright © 2008 Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

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Windows Needs a Boost

I read with interest your feature story on the Windows 7 pre-beta demo “What’s Next for Windows” (August, page 57). I am sorry to say that Microsoft and most of the techies around the world miss one essential factor in the success of an OS: performance. This is especially important for the hundreds of millions of us who use PCs for run-of-the-mill tasks like MS Office, e-mail, and Web browsing. By performance, I mean that the OS should cold boot in 5 seconds or less, load a common tool like MS Word in 5 seconds, and provide support for multi-core CPUs. The current Microsoft and Intel support for multi-CPU dynamic task allocation is a joke; when you’re running MS Word, for example, and the antivirus kicks in, the whole system stops, even with a quad-core Intel processor, 2GB of RAM, and an 800-MHz front bus speed! I was better off with an old Pentium 4 machine with similar memory.

Multicore support requires both Microsoft and Intel to get their acts together, and maybe to ask for help from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, since that group does this for its scientifi c supercomputing applications.—Ara Barsamian

Raise Your Voice for Vista

I can’t understand why PC Magazine and, for that matter, Microsoft don’t talk about an amazing feature of Vista. Built into Vista is truly excellent speech recognition capability. This feature requires only a USB microphone and about 15 minutes to take a “tutorial” that trains your PC to understand your voice.

I can tell you that it really works! You can control the desktop with your voice. After you complete the tutorial, speech recognition is ready to go. Just say “Start listening” to turn it on, and “Stop listening” to put it in Sleep mode. Say “Start” and the Start menu opens. Say the name of a program, such as “Internet Explorer,” and that app opens. If you can’t fi gure out how to make something work, just say “What can I do?” and a Help screen opens. Or, if you can’t fi gure out how to get something to start, say “Show numbers” and every active point in the current application or the desktop gets a translucent number. Say the number and the function is performed. You can even dictate e-mail, IM chats, or other documents with pretty good accuracy.

I got one real shock. I told the PC to “stop listening” and went to another room to watch some TV. After a couple of hours I passed my home office and noticed my screen was active. Apparently Vista heard something on the TV that turned on speech recognition, opened Internet Explorer, and surfed to an amusement park Web site! It was really funny to see. So, if you don’t want your PC surfi ng on its own, turn the mic off.—Bob Walter

Getting Tough on Green

Through the years, PC Magazine has at times been pivotal in nudging the industry in the right direction. I remember Bill Machrone being the fi rst to proclaim that the 80286 chip was “brain dead.” And he was right! I remember when PC Mag challenged the software industry to forgo copy protection and to provide functional uninstall routines in Windows, and the industry lined up behind your leadership. I believe it’s time to step into that role again.

The technology is now viable to make green PCs and other consumer electronics devices, and you have created your own GreenTech approval seal for products that meet certain standards of energy effi ciency and use environmentally responsible manufacturing methods. Bravo! Now I urge you to withhold the Editors’ Choice award from any product that does not meet the GreenTech standards. (You may need to update the specifi cations to accommodate more types of gadgets, however.) Giving prestigious awards to products that fail to meet energy efficiency standards or that are manufactured in environmentally irresponsible ways simply sends the wrong signal.—Jason Weston

We’ve certainly considered and discussed withholding an EC from products that don’t meet our GreenTech criteria. But we test a variety of products, and there aren’t consistent green standards for all our product categories. Also, some products, like gaming systems, need more juice to achieve their full potential and don’t necessarily fi t into an overarching green standard. Although meeting green standards is not a necessary criterion for an EC, these days it is becoming an increasingly significant factor in our decision. For now, withholding ECs from all products that do not meet our green standards would be impractical. But we are constantly reexamining our testing