reliability

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

Many PC users love to tinker with the hardware and software on their machines. Other people consider any time they spend using Windows' built-in system tools a total waste. In between are those of us who understand the value of a little preventive maintenance--as long as it doesn't take all day.

Windows 7's arsenal of maintenance and system-tweaking utilities has been enhanced through the addition of new tools and improvements to existing programs. Unfortunately, one of my favorite Windows utilities isn't available in the Home Premium version of Windows 7: the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) is … Read more

BLT--Better Link Tester, formerly known as Braxton's Link Tester--is a fast, simple Web-development utility for verifying the quality of links (and avoiding "the dreaded 404 error").

Fitting for such a narrow-purpose app, BLT has an easy-to-use, streamlined interface: you just enter a location URL in the top of BLT's main window (by browsing, typing, or pasting), then hit Return. BLT will then automatically start testing links for that location, including in subdirectories and even within JavaScript. The results are shown in a long list (with status, from, to, and line number data), and a set of … Read more

The good people at Twitter should send a bottle of champagne to Mike Wise.

Wise is the freshly chastised sportswriter from The Washington Post who was suspended last week for taking his company's reputation too lightly when he intentionally used Twitter to post false information on the Web. When Wise keyed in a phony scoop about Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger--using a Twitter account that identified Wise as a Washington Post reporter--he was trying to show how some journalists and bloggers will republish unfounded rumors without doing any fact checking. He intended to illustrate the weakness of blogs and … Read more

Reliable Task Timer is an extremely basic program that allows users to track the time spent on specific tasks in a CSV spreadsheet. Although the program works, we've seen similar applications that offer many more features.

Reliable Task Timer's interface is extremely plain, consisting of a single screen with four labeled steps. Users first select a destination and file name for the CSV spreadsheet, enter a title and description for the task to be tracked, and then click Start Timer. When users have completed the task, clicking Stop Timer records the entry on the spreadsheet. Or at least … Read more

Personal computers have become much more reliable over the last 10 years or so, mostly due to the introduction of advanced operating systems with memory protection and hardware abstraction. The hardware itself has gotten better too; uncorrectable random errors are rare in PCs and extraordinarily rare in server-class systems.

These and other improvements have largely eliminated machine crashes. Blue-screen errors on Windows and kernel panics in Linux and Mac OS X still occur, but much more rarely.

Error-reporting services have become common, helping software developers figure out what went wrong. Most large developers now issue regular patches to fix newly … Read more

The motherboard on my HP laptop fried 18 months after I bought it—and six months after its warranty expired. Even though it uses the same overheating NVidia chip that convinced HP and several other notebook vendors to extend the warranty for machines using the faulty GPU, my make and model isn't covered.

When I asked the HP case manager to confirm or deny that my dead notebook shipped with the faulty part—the documentation that shipped with the machine indicates that it does—he said I had "no right" to that information because it was an &… Read more

This virtual diary, called myDiary, lets you record your daily activities, thoughts, and tasks. Novices will appreciate its easy-to-navigate user interface.

When first accessing the program through its executable file format, the program requires that you enter a master password. The user interface could benefit from some color because it's pretty plain, but it consists of a slender window with a calendar at the top, a large search button, and a open panel for diary entries. The menu toolbar at the top includes features for navigating between diary entries (the program refers to them as blogs), and inserting time … Read more

Customers paying Google for Gmail are guaranteed the e-mail service will be available 99.9 percent of the time or they get a refund. Now the company has extended the promise to Google Calendar, Google Docs, and all the other elements of its Google Apps service.

"Today, we're announcing that we will extend the 99.9 percent service level agreement we offer Premier Edition customers on Gmail to Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites, and Google Talk," said Matthew Glotzbach, director of Google Enterprise product management, announced on the promised Google Apps reliability on its blog Wednesday. … Read more