Feed Kudos to the Digital Edition I’m really enjoying the digital form of the magazine. I can pick the story I’m interested in and enlarge it, making it much easier to read.—Lorraine Hall
its product upgrades did not install properly. I look at security suites almost every year, since a new retail version is normally a better deal than a service contract extension.—Don Malchow
Security Thumbs Up
Where Art Thou, USB 3?
I just finished reading your security cover story (“Reclaim Your Online Privacy,” February, page 28). It is by far the most comprehensive and informative security suite review I have read. There are more features to evaluate and report on than ever, and you covered them in a well-organized and easy-to-read way. It takes skill, judgment and most importantly resolve to make any technical article readable without reliance on acronyms and terms unfamiliar to users that are not fluent in the particular geek speak dialect. I have relied on reviews of this type ever since I decided to no longer send money to an arrogant company that thought its customer should pay for tech support when
I am going to be purchasing a laptop in the next few months. I have recently been reading about USB 3.0 technology being developed. When are laptops going to be able to support USB 3.0? If I buy a laptop soon, I don’t think I can upgrade it to USB 3.0 from 2.0 without replacing the motherboard.—Steven Feldman At the CES 2009, we saw a few demos of USB 3.0 in action, meaning manufacturers are finally testing interoperability. But getting working ports into laptops takes longer. Look for manufacturers to finalize the PHYs—that’s industry slang for the physical layer device, or the port itself—late this summer. This means we’ll almost definitely
see discrete add-in cards at some point this year. But it won’t be until early 2010 that manufacturers will build the technology into chipsets, and therefore into laptops. Besides, by all accounts, Windows 7 won’t support USB 3.0 at first anyway—we’ll see what happens once it’s out of beta. So in light of that, I wouldn’t hold off your purchase based on this one factor. —Jeremy Kaplan CORRECTIONS AND AMPLIFICATIONS In our Front Side piece “40 Years of the Mouse,” we mistakenly identified the codeveloper of the Logitech gyroscopic mouse. The correct company is Hillcrest Labs. In our December cover story, “The Best and Worst of 2008,” we mistakenly cited the price of the HP Photosmart Pro B8850. The correct price is $549.99 direct. HOW TO CONTACT US We welcome your comments and suggestions. When sending e-mail to Feedback, please state in the subject line which article or column prompted your response. E-mail pcmag@pcmag.com. All letters become the property of PC Magazine and are subject to editing. We regret that we cannot answer letters individually.
