17+

Philips recently released its Ambient LED 17/75-watt-equivalent retailing for $39.97. As it indicates, the bulb gives off roughly the equivalent light of a 75-watt incandescent bulb, but uses only 17 watts of power to do it.

Many sites have been doing head-to-head tests of various LED (light-emitting diode) bulbs coming on the market. However, I'm often asked where someone can find just a "regular person review" on how LEDs stack up against CFLs (compact fluorescent lights) and the soon-to-be-phased-out incandescents without getting too buried in stats on lumens, kelvins, wattage, and the rest of the … Read more

A good point-of-sale system can be the difference between happy employees and frustrated ones, and between speedy transactions and those that drag on forever, often requiring manager intervention. Intuitiveness is the name of the game when it comes to POS software. Based on that criterion, we can't say that we're particularly impressed by Easy POS-Gold Point of Sale. Its interface is neither attractive nor easy to navigate, and it doesn't have much to recommend it over other POS programs.

When we first launched Easy POS we were a bit taken aback by the interface; its garish colors, … Read more

Today Nvidia unveiled its latest high-end laptop GPUs, the GTX 570M and 580M. That's not a huge surprise: the new GTX cards round out the "500 series" of GT and GTX graphics that have been available throughout the year. One feature Nvidia's particularly touting is the GTX 580's Optimus automatic switching, which should offer up "5 hours of battery life in Facebook," in case you measure your juice through social networking.

Nvidia promises that the GTX 580M is the fastest laptop graphics card anywhere, ever--the benchmark comparisons were leveled against the AMD Radeon … Read more

Comma Separated Value (CSV) files pack lots of information into an easy-to-handle text format that uses commas to separate individual fields. CSV files make it easy to transfer large volumes of data between programs, such as transferring e-mail addresses between clients. CSVStar is a free tool that can create, edit, and manage CSV files.

CSVStar's interface uses colors to delineate functional sections, but it's unintuitive and uninformative in its layout and labeling, and we quickly turned to the PDF-based Help file to figure out how to get started. Using CSVStar involves creating templates, but the program doesn't … Read more

We've often commented on Toshiba Satellites becoming a confusing galaxy of letter-based lines that share similar looks. Today's announcement of the back-to-school Satellite P700 series should help in this regard, since it's effectively replacing the Satellite A660 and M640 lines, both of which we've reviewed in a variety of versions at CNET.

The P700 isn't anything truly new chassis-wise: it's available in 14-, 15-, and 17-inch variations, and share a Fusion X2 finish we've seen on many models. These laptops do, however, offer the newly announced AMD A6-3400M processor with discrete Radeon graphics, … Read more

Graphics editors need an angle to compete with Photoshop. Many hit Adobe's pricey program where it's most vulnerable by taking the freeware route. Others offer portability, or an emphasis on photographs, or different methods. Hornil StylePix Portable does a little bit of all of that. It's a full-featured desktop graphics application in the Photoshop mode, with layers, highly customizable tools, multiple undo, browsing, batch processing, histogram, slideshows, filters, and effects. It's also totally portable and compact enough to run from a USB drive or portable PC; in fact, it's designed to be light and speedy … Read more

The new 17-inch MacBook Pro comes with the same specs as the highest-end 15-inch model: 2.2 GHz Core i7 processor, AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics, and a 750GB hard drive. There are a few small differences: an ExpressCard/34 slot instead of an SD card slot, and, of course, the added benefit of a large 1,900x1,200 display.

For related information, read our review of the 15-inch 2.2 GHz Core i7 MacBook Pro.

The Dell XPS 15, though bulky, was one of our top mainstream laptops in 2010. Updates to the XPS 15 and 17 line of high-end Dell laptops retain the somewhat homely look of their predecessors, but add new second-generation Core i-series processors, upgraded graphics options, increased display resolutions, and even a few 3D models. These are the laptops announced at CES 2011, but they're finally available for purchase.

You can check out the prices for yourself, but they remain pretty affordable. While the XPS 17 with a new 1080p 3D display starts at $1,099, its specs are impressive: 2.3GHz Core i5-2410M CPU, Nvidia GeForce GT550M graphics, that revamped 1,920x1,080-pixel display, 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB 7,200rpm hard drive. An entry-level non-3D XPS 17 starts at $899. … Read more

CleanMem is a free tool that clears up your system's memory on a scheduled basis, thus preventing your system from running out of memory, turning to the hard drive for help, and slowing your system down. It calls a Window API, using built-in processes to do the work for it, which means fewer conflicts. While users whose systems are a bit short on memory will get the best out of CleanMem, even those with massive amounts of RAM can use it to good advantage by keeping their hard drives free of junk. It can keep SSD boot drives free … Read more