power

Apple edges Amazon in J.D. Power tablet satisfaction survey

Apple ranked highest in J.D. Power and Associates' tablet satisfaction survey.

The survey, which J.D. Power plans to conduct yearly, relied on tablet users who had owned their devices for less than two years. The index was a composite of -- in descending order of importance -- a device's performance; ease of operation; styling and design; features; and price.

J.D. Power's survey points to a close battle between Apple and Amazon, which enjoyed a wide lead over the rest of the pack. The industry average was 832, according to the survey. Apple scored 848 of … Read more

How to prevent sleep in OS X

System sleep in OS X systems is convenient to have for saving power without interrupting your workflow, especially for laptop systems. This is easy enough to set up in the OS X system preferences; however, there may be times when despite having sleep enabled you might have an important task running and wish to prevent the system from going to sleep.

In past versions of OS X, the system would not enter sleep if applications were running and writing files to disk or running lengthy computational tasks, but this has changed in the latest releases of OS X, where programs must invoke a power assertion … Read more

Home networking explained, Part 3: Taking control of your wires

Editors' note: This post is part of an ongoing series. For the other parts, check out the related stories.

Now that you have learned about the basics of home networking in Part 1, and how to optimize your Wi-Fi in Part 2, in Part 3, it's time to get your hands dirty and learn how to take control of your network completely.

All home networks start with a network cable. Even if you plan on using all wireless clients, in most cases you will still need at least one cable to connect the wireless router and the broadband modem. … Read more

iPhone again tops J.D. Power satisfaction survey

iPhone owners continue to be the most satisfied smartphone customers of all, at least according to new survey results from J.D. Power and Associates.

For the eighth time in a row, Apple's flagship phone took home top honors for customer satisfaction. Ranking 849 out of 1,000, the iPhone shined in all of the categories tallied by J.D. Power but scored especially well in physical design and overall ease of use.

Based on two separate studies, the results revealed consumer satisfaction with both feature phones and smartphones in performance, ease of operation, physical design, and features. Only … Read more

Troubleshooting sleep in OS X

System sleep in OS X is a convenient feature that saves power while preserving your work flow. This option has been available in Macs and other PC systems for years, and is especially useful for laptops where you might wish to conserve battery power. While computer sleep is nothing new, there are some details of how it is implemented in OS X that may help you troubleshoot situations where sleep does not behave as it should.

For Mac systems sleep is governed by the system management controller (SMC), which has a number of variables it uses to manage when disks … Read more

My favorite high horsepower car under $50k

...the Ford Mustang Boss 302. Oh, I know, here come the Chevy and Mopar folks telling me I'm biased because I own a bunch of Fords, but the Fords I own were all made before Clinton was in office -- some before Nixon. So that's that.

I love the Boss because it moves well, sounds good, looks good, and is enjoyable to be in, not just be seen in. It's an absolute hammer on the road, does so without the lumpy, surging weirdness of turbos and blowers, and is just this side of too wild for daily … Read more

Troubleshooting power-up issues for Mac systems

Most troubleshooting for Mac systems revolves around software-based problems, be it bugs in the system software or a faulty OS configuration or installation; however, sometimes errors can extend beyond the operating system to the hardware itself, and when this happens, you may see no activity when starting up your system. However, even though the system may appear dead, it might have some indications of the problem at hand.

In the Mac's startup sequence the first step that occurs when you press the power button is all components such as hard drives, video cards, I/O controllers, and add-in cards … Read more

Verizon tops 'best quality' report from J.D. Power and Associates

Twice a year, J.D. Power and Associates tests wireless network performance in six regions across the U.S. Once again, Verizon tops the charts.

Released today, J.D. Power's study found that Verizon's network exhibited the fewest dropped calls, audio issues, texting and voice mail failures, connection errors, and slow downloads compared with other major carriers. Big Red bested the competition for the 16th consecutive time in the Northwest region, but also experienced the best network performance in four of the five remaining regions.

For the 14th consecutive report, U.S. Cellular remained sovereign over the North … Read more

Clean stubborn viruses with Norton Power Eraser

Even the best-protected computer can contract a virus, but it goes without saying that an unprotected computer is far more vulnerable. Many users only see the light after spending long hours in the dark, trying to cure an infected PC. Many tools can remove viruses and other malware from your PC, but it's not uncommon for one or two bugs to resist eradication. Reboot, and they're back. Symantec's Norton Power Eraser is a free tool that targets stubborn files and forcibly removes them. Because it cleans aggressively, it can delete critical system files, so it must be … Read more