Comparison

A new study comparing the 3 U.S. iPhone carriers shows that AT&T is tops for data and browsing, more than doubling the download speeds offered by Verizon and Sprint.

While the data speed news does not come as too much of a shock for many who follow the mobile phone industry, it is interesting to note that the iPhone also reported better-than-expected call quality and reliability on AT&T's network. The study, performed by wireless communications analysts Metrico, shows that AT&T's call failure rate sits at 2.8 percent, slightly higher than … Read more

With a tap of your finger, Amazon's Price Check app for iPhone lets you cross-check prices against those on Amazon.com. Big time shoppers should definitely consider adding it to their download queues.

Using Price Check is as simple as it gets. Just fire it up, and point your phone's camera at the bar code of a product while you're out shopping. The app will then pull up the matching product (if available) for you to see its price on Amazon.com. If you can't access the bar code, you can also search by typing or … Read more

With a tap of your finger, Amazon's Price Check app for Android lets you cross-check prices against those on Amazon.com. Big-time shoppers should definitely consider adding it to their app drawers.

Using Price Check is as simple as it gets. Just fire it up, and point your phone's camera at the bar code of a product while you're out shopping. The app will then pull up the matching product (if available) for you to see its price on Amazon.com. If you can't access the bar code, you can also search by typing or saying … Read more

Digital Folio today announced $1.2 million in funding that it will use to expand its comparison shopping technology and go after the crowded market.

That level of funding isn't going to grab headlines (oops, it just did) but price comparison engines are powerful and steady money makers. Look at the success of PriceGrabber.com, Nextag.com, Shopathome.com, Shopzilla.com, Pronto.com, ShopLocal.com, etc.

Founded this year and fresh out of beta, Denver-based Digital Folio lets shoppers drag and drop items from major retailers, including Amazon.com and Target, into one shopping list. Prices for the items … Read more

Now that we've reviewed all of the flagship LED TVs this year, it's time to round up the winners to date.

With one very notable exception, these TVs aren't as good in our book as the very best plasmas, but each delivers excellent or very good performance overall. So without further ado, here they are in descending order of picture quality--beginning with the best TV we've seen in years.… Read more

With last week's release of floor plans for Apple's proposed Cupertino, Calif., campus reboot, we finally got details on the interior bits of the complex Apple hopes to have finished by 2015. We also have a better idea of how enormous the main building, which will hold some 12,000 employees, will really be.

Over at The Mac Observer, John Martellaro has done the math on the size of the main campus, which up until last week was depicted only in renderings. His findings? The finished building will be ever so slightly larger than the Pentagon.

Using measurements … Read more

(Read our new head-to-head buyer's guide for an updated comparison between the 2012 13-inch MacBook Pro and Air.)

Just a few short months ago (in March, to be exact), we wrote about an odd glut in Apple's otherwise streamlined lineup of products: instead of one or even two 13-inch laptops to choose from, Apple was offering three. The white MacBook, the MacBook Air, and the MacBook Pro each had a slightly different value equation in terms of design, features, and price.

That glut's been lessened a little now that the white MacBook has been discontinued. The MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro are the only two MacBook product lines left, and they represent two different solutions to same problem. The unibody aluminum Pro used to be considered thin, but it's--relatively--thick at 1 inch, and weighs over 4 pounds. The Pro offers better specs, while the Air, which has just been recently updated, leans toward light weight and quick booting as its advantages.

There's more to consider, though: the 2011 13-inch MacBook Pro and new 13-inch MacBook Air have become more similar than they've ever been before, for several reasons: performance, battery life, and a Thunderbolt port.

Two 13-inch MacBooks: which do you choose?… Read more

Fancy a thin ThinkPad? Lenovo's venerable ThinkPad brand may seem from a distance to look the same every year, since lately the interesting changes have been made under the surface lately. It's also a confusing landscape to navigate, even when you know what size you want. Case in point: the ThinkPad X1 and the ThinkPad Edge E220s.

In one sense, they're completely different laptops. The X1 is a full-powered 13-incher, with a serious professional bent and durable construction. The Edge E220s is a smaller, low-voltage laptop, a 12.5-incher with a more reasonable price tag. And yet, … Read more