November 18, 2006
Not Always Full Speed Ahead
By MATT RICHTEL and KEN BELSON
What is a megabit worth? And what the heck is a megabit anyway? These questions are hard to avoid for consumers trying to make sense of the fast-growing menu of options for high-speed Internet access.
More than ever, the nation’s phone and cable companies are trumpeting the speed of their Internet connections with ads that pitch “blazing broadband” at “up to 100 times faster than dial-up.” But as with so many consumer services, the devil is in the fine print.
In more densely populated areas, many Americans now have not only a choice of broadband providers but also a range of different speeds to pick from. As the options proliferate, consumer advocates say it is getting tougher for people to tell what service is best for them — and which packages promise more than they deliver.
Confusing matters, broadband lines are increasingly being bundled with television and phone services, making it difficult to determine how much the high-speed connection actually costs.
The offers, consumer advocates say, are not always straightforward. With few exceptions, they include language that says consumers will get “up to” a certain speed, typically expressed in megabits per second. (An MP3 song file that takes 12 minutes to download over a dial-up line would take 27 seconds on a 1.5-megabits-per-second broadband line, and 8 seconds on a 5-megabit connection.)
In many cases, consumer advocates and industry analysts said, customers do not get the maximum promised speed, or anywhere near it, from their cable and digital subscriber line connections. Instead, the phrase “up to” refers to speeds attainable under ideal conditions, like when a D.S.L. user is near the phone company’s central switching office.
“They don’t deliver what’s advertised, and it’s inherently deceptive,” said Dave Burstein, editor of DSL Prime, a newsletter that tracks the broadband industry. “ ‘Up to’ is a weasel term that should be taken out of the companies’ vocabulary.”
The companies argue that their marketing is not misleading because the speeds they promise can actually be reached.
Steve Howe, vice president for voice products at EarthLink, said his company’s use of the term “up to” was accurate even though the speeds actually provided depended on other factors. The maximum is “a number that you very much can get to,” Mr. Howe said.
Eric Rabe, a spokesman for Verizon, acknowledged that the maximum speed promised was what was available “under optimal conditions.” He argued that advertising those numbers was not disingenuous because the optimal speed at least provided a benchmark for comparison. Verizon cannot control, among other things, how quickly Web sites can deliver information that is requested by users.
“Once you get on the public Internet, all bets are off,” he said.
While Mr. Rabe defended his company’s advertising policies, he said he could not do the same for competitors, particularly in the cable industry.
“We deliver the full speed or close to it more often than our competitors,” he said. But Mr. Rabe said he did not have statistics that would back up that contention.
Determining the speeds consumers are actually getting is tough to measure. Cable speeds can vary if many people in one neighborhood are online at the same time, like after dinner. Access over phone lines can be slower if the customer is far from the switching office, where the Internet signal originates.
Consumers may end up with slower browsing speeds if they use computers with older processors or visit crowded Web sites, things that are beyond the control of the cable or phone company.
In a survey last summer in which 12,000 readers of PC Magazine downloaded software to test their connections, the magazine found that the average speed provided by major broadband companies during surfing of popular Web sites was typically less than half of the advertised speed.
DSL Reports, a news and discussion Web site for broadband customers, keeps track of the results of speed tests that its users perform on their connections. In one recent week, the average speeds of major providers included 5.97 megabits a second for Comcast and 2.84 megabits for BellSouth. But those numbers can include results from customers who are paying for different speeds of service.
Given all the variables, “it’s getting more tricky to know what speed you’re really getting,” said Justin Beech, the founder and operator of DSL Reports. But Mr. Beech said he felt providers were getting more reliable with their speeds, in part because all the speed-test sites were enabling people to verify if they were getting what was advertised.
“In general, an I.S.P. that advertises a speed and doesn’t provide it will get crucified online until they fix it,” he said, referring to an Internet service provider. “The vocal minority will check the line — sometimes daily.”
Upload speeds, the rate at which information is sent from the subscriber’s computer, are often far slower than download speeds. This is typically only a concern for customers who often need to upload photos and other large files, or those doing tasks where split seconds count, like online gamers and day traders.
Complicating the debate, analysts and consumer advocates say consumers often do not need the high speeds that companies are pitching to them. The companies, they say, are spreading the false premise that more speed always leads to a better online experience, when in fact most online tasks like surfing the Web or sending e-mail messages can be done with more modest connections.
That is what Greg and Robin Bernstein discovered when they wanted to get rid of their dial-up connection this past spring. They chose 1.5-megabit-per-second D.S.L. service from Qwest, the phone carrier in their Minneapolis neighborhood, mostly because they already had a local line from the company.
“The priority was to get faster service,” Mrs. Bernstein said. At the same time, she said, “I wasn’t interested in a bill that would creep up. It doesn’t really matter to me as long as it works.”
Even so, telecommunications providers say many consumers respond to ads for faster connections.
Verizon, for instance, is building a state-of-the-art fiber optic network that lets it offer the fastest speeds of any major company. The service, called FiOS, now passes close to six million homes and includes broadband speeds of (up to) 5, 15 and 30 megabits per second that sell for $34.95, $44.95 and $179.95 a month.
Verizon said that about 15 percent of those who can get the service are signing up within 12 months of it becoming available, a number that analysts say is promising. The company expects to have 725,000 subscribers by the end of the year. In parts of the New York metropolitan area, Verizon this summer raised the maximum speed of the service at no additional cost, to 10, 20 and 50 megabits.
“The network is future-proof,” said Virginia Ruesterholz, the president of Verizon’s telecommunications group, noting that the faster speeds are popular with gamers and people who watch video online.
As Verizon’s network grows it is forcing competitors to respond. Cablevision, which competes head-to-head with Verizon in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, this year raised the speeds of its broadband connections after Verizon began selling FiOS in its territory.
The company now offers connections at 15 megabits per second for $44.95 a month, up from 10 megabits last year. Customers can also buy a 30-megabit line — faster than is needed by most small businesses — for an additional $14.95 per month.
Time Warner Cable, which competes with Verizon in and around New York, has also raised its download speeds. Its $39.95 plan is now 8 megabits per second, up from 7 megabits, and its $49.95 plan is now 10 megabits, up from 8 megabits.
All three companies said they were simply ensuring that their customers would have sufficiently fast connections given the growth in music and video downloading and other bandwidth-hogging practices.
“We think we’ve found that sweet spot” between speed and price, said Sam Howe, the chief marketing officer at Time Warner Cable. “If there’s a speed arms race, it will become meaningless as consumers find out they’re buying more than they need.”
Despite the rush of new offers, the United States still lags behind many countries when it comes to broadband speeds and prices. In 2005, it ranked sixth globally on a price-per-kilobit basis, according to the International Telecommunications Union. Prices were cheaper in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Iceland and Sweden, countries where the government took an active role in promoting broadband use.
If experiences overseas are any guide, Americans can expect advertised broadband speeds to continue rising and, in places where there are competing companies, promotional prices to nudge lower or stabilize, particularly for customers who sign up for bundles of services that include phone and television.
The variety of broadband speeds, price plans, discounts and technical hurdles that slow connections, have made it hard for shoppers to decide what is a good value, said Gene Kimmelman, vice president for federal policy at Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports. “Go into a TV store and look at different TVs; the picture you see is pretty much what you’re buying,” he said. “But with D.S.L., do people really know what they’re buying?”
Promotional offers for service often come with strings attached in the form of yearlong commitments and penalties for breaking them.
With all the noise in the marketplace, some people shopping for broadband rely on the old word-of-mouth approach. “I’m not real familiar with the technical part of the speeds,” said Lyle Rhodes, who lives near Chattanooga, Tenn., and recently signed up for a D.S.L. line from BellSouth. “But from talking to friends who had BellSouth and Comcast, I figured it out. The numbers matter less as long as it’s fast.”
Mr. Rhodes, who previously had a dial-up line from AOL, said price was another factor. His D.S.L. line will cost only a few dollars more than his dial-up, and he received a coupon good toward a new Dell computer. Comcast offered a good promotional price for six months, but after that, he worried that the price would exceed his budget.
While added speed will not make a difference to most people, that is what the broadband providers are emphasizing, said Jim Louderback, editor in chief of PC Magazine.
“They’re definitely pushing speed more — cable providers in particular, because they need to differentiate themselves from D.S.L.,” he said.
Mr. Louderback had some simple buying advice: “Unless you’re watching YouTube, or downloading a lot of video, go with what’s cheapest.”
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Digital Camera Review
November 1, 2006
In Focus
At Last, Digital S.L.R.’s That Won’t Break Your Budget
By IAN AUSTEN (New York Times)
ABOUT six years ago, Anthony J. Kinney bought the first of a series of compact digital cameras. Some were bigger, some were smaller, and their features were as varied as the cameras’ brand names. But one thing was constant: none of them were satisfying.
Mr. Kinney, a research scientist in Wilmington, Del., was particularly frustrated by the lag that occurred with all the compact cameras, when the shutter was pressed and the exposure was made.
“Kids move around a lot,” he said of his favorite subject, his two sons. “By the time any of the cameras took a picture, the kid would have moved out of the frame.”
Mr. Kinney’s disappointment lifted — and his digital camera buying spree eased — about a year and half ago when he bought a Canon EOS Digital Rebel, the first digital single-lens-reflex camera offered at a price (about $1,000 with a lens) that a middle-class father of two could consider.
Not only did the Digital Rebel prove to be infinitely superior to the last film S.L.R. Mr. Kinney owned — a robustly crude, Soviet-made Zenit — he said it also transformed how he took digital photos.
“The whole thing about point-and-shoots is convenience,” Mr. Kinney said. “With the S.L.R., you’re not just taking a snapshot, you’re thinking more. Ultimately that’s what makes a good picture: your brain.”
Mr. Kinney is not alone in his fondness for digital single-lens-reflex cameras, which do not yet dominate digital cameras in the way that they ruled film cameras during the late 1970s. But the success of the Digital Rebel has led to a rush by every camera maker, as well as newcomers like Sony and Samsung, to introduce digital S.L.R.’s priced and designed with consumers in mind. Nikon alone now offers four such models.
Despite their comparatively low prices (the Olympus Evolt E-500, in a package with two zoom lenses, sells for $800; and the Pentax K110D, with one zoom, sells for about $600), digital single-lens-reflex cameras help manufacturers make up for profits lost to the even steeper price drops for compact digital models over the last two years.
For camera buyers, however, determining if digital S.L.R.’s are worth the extra money (as well as the added bulk, weight and, in some cases, complexity) is less straightforward. It requires balancing those drawbacks against the cameras’ generally higher image quality, more capable autofocus, viewing and exposure systems and their ability to change lenses.
As their name suggests, digital S.L.R.’s most obviously distinguish themselves from compact cameras by their reflex-viewfinding system.
With compact models, users compose their photos either through a tiny separate viewfinder or by previewing the shot on the camera’s liquid-crystal-display monitor. (Extra-small compact cameras usually offer only the monitor.)
All S.L.R.’s, whether film or digital, let users compose by looking through the lens through a system of mirrors, lenses and prisms. That mechanism — which must quickly flip the mirror out of the shutter’s way for picture taking and then immediately drop it down again — is what accounts for most of the larger size and weight.
But it is also the feature that allows the use of different lenses. Many photographers, including Mr. Kinney, also find that it provides the most accurate preview of the resulting photo.
“The viewfinder is much bigger and brighter than any point-and-shoot,” Mr. Kinney said. “It was just such a joy to look through it.”
But arguably the most significant differences between compact point-and-shoot cameras and digital S.L.R.’s lie hidden well inside their plastic and metal shells.
The shutter lag that irritated Mr. Kinney, for example, occurs mostly from the fact that the compact camera’s imaging sensors are doing a wide variety of jobs besides capturing a photo. Chuck Westfall, the director of technical information for Canon in the United States, said that a big cause of shutter lag is the image sensor’s doing extra duty as an autofocus sensor. (The need for the sensor to switch from a preview to exposure duty when the shutter is pressed is another factor.)
In digital S.L.R.’s, however, the image sensor’s only job is to take pictures. Specialized sensors handle autofocus readings, exposure measurement and white balance (adjusting the camera’s color settings to eliminate unnatural color shifts caused by light sources other than the sun). On top of that, the larger size and higher prices of these cameras mean that they generally have more powerful computing chips to make sense of that data.
The other major difference internally is the image sensor chips themselves.
From the beginning, digital camera marketing has emphasized the pixel count of imaging sensors. What it does not say is that not all pixels are equal.
Compact cameras use much smaller sensor chips than digital S.L.R.’s. Mark Weir, the senior product manager for digital S.L.R. cameras at Sony, said that a typical compact camera sensor is “about half the size of your smallest fingernail.”
“A digital S.L.R. sensor is pretty big,” he added, “about the same as a good-size postage stamp.”
As a result, every pixel on a compact camera’s sensor chip is much smaller than its counterpart on a digital S.L.R.’s sensor. Mr. Weir, whose company also produces sensors for a number of other camera makers, estimates that pixels on a 10-megapixel compact camera sensor are about 2 microns across, compared with 6 microns for a digital S.L.R. sensor of the same resolution. A micron is one-thousandth of a millimeter.
That creates several problems. Makers of compact sensors are hitting physical limits on the ability to align the tiny individual lenses that sit on top of every pixel to concentrate the incoming light. Those tiny sensors, at the same time, place a heavier burden on lenses because the images they create eventually undergo high levels of magnification, even when viewed at snapshot size.
The only compact model with a sensor as large as those in digital S.L.R.’s is the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-R1, Mr. Weir and many others argue that the sensor size difference and the division of labor with other sensors give digital S.L.R. cameras a big edge in image quality over compact cameras.
“Digital S.L.R.’s have advantages in these areas that point-and-shoot cameras are very, very challenged to enjoy,” Mr. Weir said. “People are willing to trade off the simplicity, compactness and affordability of point-and-shoots because they’ve been in situations where their point-and-shoot camera could not get the shot they wanted.”
Bob Sanferrare, a retiree in Merrimac, Mass., owned several Nikon and Canon film S.L.R.’s over a 40-year period. But in the fall of 2001, he bought a 2-megapixel Sony compact digital camera. Its photo quality did not match that of his Nikon FA, a conventional film S.L.R. But he liked the idea of not having to take film on long overseas trips.
Six months ago, Mr. Sanferrare upgraded to a digital S.L.R., the Nikon D200. While its price, $1,700 without a lens, puts it firmly at the high end of cameras for consumers, Mr. Sanferrare chose it over less expensive models available at the time because it offered the greatest compatibility with his collection of old Nikon lenses. (Nikon later introduced another model, the D80, with similar backward lens compatibility that sells for $1,000 without a lens.)
Like Mr. Kinney, he has found that there is no comparison between the D200 and his admittedly aging compact camera.
“I don’t see any downside to the D200 except for its weight,” Mr. Sanferrare said. He added, however, that like most digital S.L.R.’s, the D200 appears to have been designed with the assumption that it will be used with autofocus lenses. As a result, it has a focusing screen that while very bright, makes it difficult to distinguish fine changes in focus when using manual focus lenses.
Although different models of digital S.L.R.’s accept older lenses from the same manufacturer to different degrees, there is still one major change when the older lenses are used on any consumer-priced digital single-lens-reflex camera, even those in which every lens feature is fully compatible.
While the imaging chips in consumer S.L.R.’s are much bigger than those in compact cameras, they are still smaller than a standard 35-millimeter film frame. (Canon makes two digital S.L.R.’s with film-size chips, but both are expensive and mostly used by professionals. Kodak offered similar cameras but has discontinued them.)
That size difference between film and chips means that lenses effectively take on different properties when used with a digital S.L.R. On his film camera the Nikon FA, Mr. Sanferrare’s Nikon 50-millimeter lens had a standard focal length, neither telephoto nor wide angle. On the D200, it is the functional equivalent of a 75-millimeter lens, making it ideal for portraits.
The smaller imaging chips allow manufacturers to design lenses for the consumer digital S.L.R.’s that are more compact than models for film cameras. Along with his D200, Mr. Sanferrare bought a Nikon 18-200-millimeter zoom lens, one that effectively goes from a wide-angle setting to one with enough telephoto power for most sporting events.
Not only is the lens (which has a suggested price of $900) unusually compact, it also contains an electronic system for eliminating blurred photos caused by camera shake.
Mr. Kinney’s Digital Rebel (which has been replaced with a new model, the EOS Digital Rebel XTi, selling for about $900) came with a zoom lens that goes from wide angle to slightly telephoto. He has since augmented that with a zoom that offers more telephoto settings and a 50-millimeter lens with a wide f1.4 maximum aperture for use in low light. Among other things, that allows him to photograph his two boys indoors without using a flash.
The greater number of digital S.L.R.’s aimed at consumers, of course, also makes choosing the ideal model more difficult.
In general, more expensive models like the D200, which overlap with the professional market, are larger and, their makers say, more robust. (Officials at Canon, Sony, Olympus and Pentax all say, however, that digital S.L.R.’s are more durable than their compact counterparts.)
Compactness is nice on holidays but not always an advantage. Mr. Kinney found the Digital Rebel too small for his hands and eventually bulked it up with an accessory battery grip.
The more expensive models also remove some features that less sophisticated photographers may find useful. Most semiprofessional models, for example, do away with settings marked by little pictographs that set up the camera for specific kinds of shots like portraits, sports or landscapes.
Mr. Sanferrare said that most amateur photographers who do not have older Nikon lenses would probably find another Nikon S.L.R. camera, the D50, much easier to use than his D200, and with little or no tradeoff in picture quality. They would also walk out of the store with $1,000 still in their pocket, as the D50 sells for just $700.
While they are more capable, digital S.L.R.’s will not solve every photographic problem.
“I definitely think that I’ve taken some of the best pictures of my life with the Digital Rebel,” Mr. Kinney said. “And some of the worst.”
In Focus
At Last, Digital S.L.R.’s That Won’t Break Your Budget
By IAN AUSTEN (New York Times)
ABOUT six years ago, Anthony J. Kinney bought the first of a series of compact digital cameras. Some were bigger, some were smaller, and their features were as varied as the cameras’ brand names. But one thing was constant: none of them were satisfying.
Mr. Kinney, a research scientist in Wilmington, Del., was particularly frustrated by the lag that occurred with all the compact cameras, when the shutter was pressed and the exposure was made.
“Kids move around a lot,” he said of his favorite subject, his two sons. “By the time any of the cameras took a picture, the kid would have moved out of the frame.”
Mr. Kinney’s disappointment lifted — and his digital camera buying spree eased — about a year and half ago when he bought a Canon EOS Digital Rebel, the first digital single-lens-reflex camera offered at a price (about $1,000 with a lens) that a middle-class father of two could consider.
Not only did the Digital Rebel prove to be infinitely superior to the last film S.L.R. Mr. Kinney owned — a robustly crude, Soviet-made Zenit — he said it also transformed how he took digital photos.
“The whole thing about point-and-shoots is convenience,” Mr. Kinney said. “With the S.L.R., you’re not just taking a snapshot, you’re thinking more. Ultimately that’s what makes a good picture: your brain.”
Mr. Kinney is not alone in his fondness for digital single-lens-reflex cameras, which do not yet dominate digital cameras in the way that they ruled film cameras during the late 1970s. But the success of the Digital Rebel has led to a rush by every camera maker, as well as newcomers like Sony and Samsung, to introduce digital S.L.R.’s priced and designed with consumers in mind. Nikon alone now offers four such models.
Despite their comparatively low prices (the Olympus Evolt E-500, in a package with two zoom lenses, sells for $800; and the Pentax K110D, with one zoom, sells for about $600), digital single-lens-reflex cameras help manufacturers make up for profits lost to the even steeper price drops for compact digital models over the last two years.
For camera buyers, however, determining if digital S.L.R.’s are worth the extra money (as well as the added bulk, weight and, in some cases, complexity) is less straightforward. It requires balancing those drawbacks against the cameras’ generally higher image quality, more capable autofocus, viewing and exposure systems and their ability to change lenses.
As their name suggests, digital S.L.R.’s most obviously distinguish themselves from compact cameras by their reflex-viewfinding system.
With compact models, users compose their photos either through a tiny separate viewfinder or by previewing the shot on the camera’s liquid-crystal-display monitor. (Extra-small compact cameras usually offer only the monitor.)
All S.L.R.’s, whether film or digital, let users compose by looking through the lens through a system of mirrors, lenses and prisms. That mechanism — which must quickly flip the mirror out of the shutter’s way for picture taking and then immediately drop it down again — is what accounts for most of the larger size and weight.
But it is also the feature that allows the use of different lenses. Many photographers, including Mr. Kinney, also find that it provides the most accurate preview of the resulting photo.
“The viewfinder is much bigger and brighter than any point-and-shoot,” Mr. Kinney said. “It was just such a joy to look through it.”
But arguably the most significant differences between compact point-and-shoot cameras and digital S.L.R.’s lie hidden well inside their plastic and metal shells.
The shutter lag that irritated Mr. Kinney, for example, occurs mostly from the fact that the compact camera’s imaging sensors are doing a wide variety of jobs besides capturing a photo. Chuck Westfall, the director of technical information for Canon in the United States, said that a big cause of shutter lag is the image sensor’s doing extra duty as an autofocus sensor. (The need for the sensor to switch from a preview to exposure duty when the shutter is pressed is another factor.)
In digital S.L.R.’s, however, the image sensor’s only job is to take pictures. Specialized sensors handle autofocus readings, exposure measurement and white balance (adjusting the camera’s color settings to eliminate unnatural color shifts caused by light sources other than the sun). On top of that, the larger size and higher prices of these cameras mean that they generally have more powerful computing chips to make sense of that data.
The other major difference internally is the image sensor chips themselves.
From the beginning, digital camera marketing has emphasized the pixel count of imaging sensors. What it does not say is that not all pixels are equal.
Compact cameras use much smaller sensor chips than digital S.L.R.’s. Mark Weir, the senior product manager for digital S.L.R. cameras at Sony, said that a typical compact camera sensor is “about half the size of your smallest fingernail.”
“A digital S.L.R. sensor is pretty big,” he added, “about the same as a good-size postage stamp.”
As a result, every pixel on a compact camera’s sensor chip is much smaller than its counterpart on a digital S.L.R.’s sensor. Mr. Weir, whose company also produces sensors for a number of other camera makers, estimates that pixels on a 10-megapixel compact camera sensor are about 2 microns across, compared with 6 microns for a digital S.L.R. sensor of the same resolution. A micron is one-thousandth of a millimeter.
That creates several problems. Makers of compact sensors are hitting physical limits on the ability to align the tiny individual lenses that sit on top of every pixel to concentrate the incoming light. Those tiny sensors, at the same time, place a heavier burden on lenses because the images they create eventually undergo high levels of magnification, even when viewed at snapshot size.
The only compact model with a sensor as large as those in digital S.L.R.’s is the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-R1, Mr. Weir and many others argue that the sensor size difference and the division of labor with other sensors give digital S.L.R. cameras a big edge in image quality over compact cameras.
“Digital S.L.R.’s have advantages in these areas that point-and-shoot cameras are very, very challenged to enjoy,” Mr. Weir said. “People are willing to trade off the simplicity, compactness and affordability of point-and-shoots because they’ve been in situations where their point-and-shoot camera could not get the shot they wanted.”
Bob Sanferrare, a retiree in Merrimac, Mass., owned several Nikon and Canon film S.L.R.’s over a 40-year period. But in the fall of 2001, he bought a 2-megapixel Sony compact digital camera. Its photo quality did not match that of his Nikon FA, a conventional film S.L.R. But he liked the idea of not having to take film on long overseas trips.
Six months ago, Mr. Sanferrare upgraded to a digital S.L.R., the Nikon D200. While its price, $1,700 without a lens, puts it firmly at the high end of cameras for consumers, Mr. Sanferrare chose it over less expensive models available at the time because it offered the greatest compatibility with his collection of old Nikon lenses. (Nikon later introduced another model, the D80, with similar backward lens compatibility that sells for $1,000 without a lens.)
Like Mr. Kinney, he has found that there is no comparison between the D200 and his admittedly aging compact camera.
“I don’t see any downside to the D200 except for its weight,” Mr. Sanferrare said. He added, however, that like most digital S.L.R.’s, the D200 appears to have been designed with the assumption that it will be used with autofocus lenses. As a result, it has a focusing screen that while very bright, makes it difficult to distinguish fine changes in focus when using manual focus lenses.
Although different models of digital S.L.R.’s accept older lenses from the same manufacturer to different degrees, there is still one major change when the older lenses are used on any consumer-priced digital single-lens-reflex camera, even those in which every lens feature is fully compatible.
While the imaging chips in consumer S.L.R.’s are much bigger than those in compact cameras, they are still smaller than a standard 35-millimeter film frame. (Canon makes two digital S.L.R.’s with film-size chips, but both are expensive and mostly used by professionals. Kodak offered similar cameras but has discontinued them.)
That size difference between film and chips means that lenses effectively take on different properties when used with a digital S.L.R. On his film camera the Nikon FA, Mr. Sanferrare’s Nikon 50-millimeter lens had a standard focal length, neither telephoto nor wide angle. On the D200, it is the functional equivalent of a 75-millimeter lens, making it ideal for portraits.
The smaller imaging chips allow manufacturers to design lenses for the consumer digital S.L.R.’s that are more compact than models for film cameras. Along with his D200, Mr. Sanferrare bought a Nikon 18-200-millimeter zoom lens, one that effectively goes from a wide-angle setting to one with enough telephoto power for most sporting events.
Not only is the lens (which has a suggested price of $900) unusually compact, it also contains an electronic system for eliminating blurred photos caused by camera shake.
Mr. Kinney’s Digital Rebel (which has been replaced with a new model, the EOS Digital Rebel XTi, selling for about $900) came with a zoom lens that goes from wide angle to slightly telephoto. He has since augmented that with a zoom that offers more telephoto settings and a 50-millimeter lens with a wide f1.4 maximum aperture for use in low light. Among other things, that allows him to photograph his two boys indoors without using a flash.
The greater number of digital S.L.R.’s aimed at consumers, of course, also makes choosing the ideal model more difficult.
In general, more expensive models like the D200, which overlap with the professional market, are larger and, their makers say, more robust. (Officials at Canon, Sony, Olympus and Pentax all say, however, that digital S.L.R.’s are more durable than their compact counterparts.)
Compactness is nice on holidays but not always an advantage. Mr. Kinney found the Digital Rebel too small for his hands and eventually bulked it up with an accessory battery grip.
The more expensive models also remove some features that less sophisticated photographers may find useful. Most semiprofessional models, for example, do away with settings marked by little pictographs that set up the camera for specific kinds of shots like portraits, sports or landscapes.
Mr. Sanferrare said that most amateur photographers who do not have older Nikon lenses would probably find another Nikon S.L.R. camera, the D50, much easier to use than his D200, and with little or no tradeoff in picture quality. They would also walk out of the store with $1,000 still in their pocket, as the D50 sells for just $700.
While they are more capable, digital S.L.R.’s will not solve every photographic problem.
“I definitely think that I’ve taken some of the best pictures of my life with the Digital Rebel,” Mr. Kinney said. “And some of the worst.”
Speed Up Your Connection
November 1, 2006, 2:26 pm
A Faster Web–for Free
Is it just me, or are the freebies starting to blossom once again on the Web? Feels like it’s 1999 all over again.
I’ve got yet another great free one for you today, and it’s a doozie. I read about it in PC World, and couldn’t believe it: a service that purports to speed up your broadband Internet connection. It’s called Open DNS.
Works great, at least for me. Once I plugged the Open DNS addresses into my router, the wait time for a complex Web page went from 3-4 seconds down to 1-2, on both my Macs and PC’s.
In short, Open DNS works by caching a key phase of Web-page requests (namely, DNS requests) from its thousands of users, so that the site you want is blasted to you in a fraction of a second.
There’s no fee, no software to install, you don’t give them any information about yourself, and you don’t have to do anything different once you change your router’s DNS server addresses. (Sounds technical, but the site walks you through the instructions.) As a bonus, Open DNS intercepts phishing scams and corrects Web-address typos, sparing you those headaches. (The typo-correcting feature is where Open DNS plans to make its money; read the site to learn the whole plan.)
My wife and I are totally loving the new speed. Don’t tell Open DNS, but we even would have paid for it.
David Pogue
New York Times
Link: Open DNS
A Faster Web–for Free
Is it just me, or are the freebies starting to blossom once again on the Web? Feels like it’s 1999 all over again.
I’ve got yet another great free one for you today, and it’s a doozie. I read about it in PC World, and couldn’t believe it: a service that purports to speed up your broadband Internet connection. It’s called Open DNS.
Works great, at least for me. Once I plugged the Open DNS addresses into my router, the wait time for a complex Web page went from 3-4 seconds down to 1-2, on both my Macs and PC’s.
In short, Open DNS works by caching a key phase of Web-page requests (namely, DNS requests) from its thousands of users, so that the site you want is blasted to you in a fraction of a second.
There’s no fee, no software to install, you don’t give them any information about yourself, and you don’t have to do anything different once you change your router’s DNS server addresses. (Sounds technical, but the site walks you through the instructions.) As a bonus, Open DNS intercepts phishing scams and corrects Web-address typos, sparing you those headaches. (The typo-correcting feature is where Open DNS plans to make its money; read the site to learn the whole plan.)
My wife and I are totally loving the new speed. Don’t tell Open DNS, but we even would have paid for it.
David Pogue
New York Times
Link: Open DNS
Saturday, November 04, 2006
How To Reinstall System Restore
The System Restore feature in Windows XP is a great one - but sometimes it quits working properly (or at all). In this case, you may need to reinstall it. Here's how:
1. Click Start | Run.
2. In the Run box, type %Windir%\INF. This should open your WINDOWS directory to the INF folder.
3. Find a file named SR.INF (if you have Explorer configured to hide common file extensions, it may display as SR).
4. Right click the SR.INF file and select Install. Windows may prompt you for your Windows installation source path. If you have service packs installed, point it to the %Windir%\ServicePackFiles folder.
After the System Restore files are reinstalled, restart Windows.
1. Click Start | Run.
2. In the Run box, type %Windir%\INF. This should open your WINDOWS directory to the INF folder.
3. Find a file named SR.INF (if you have Explorer configured to hide common file extensions, it may display as SR).
4. Right click the SR.INF file and select Install. Windows may prompt you for your Windows installation source path. If you have service packs installed, point it to the %Windir%\ServicePackFiles folder.
After the System Restore files are reinstalled, restart Windows.
Office Live
November 2, 2006
State of the Art
A Web Site to Call Your Own
By DAVID POGUE
If you operate a small business, you might already use technology to conceal just how small you are — by setting up multiple e-mail addresses and phone extensions, for example (“for Asian operations, press 7”).
Unfortunately, the illusion that you’re a big, competent corporation evaporates the minute you reveal your Web address — and it’s http://hometown.aol.com/CaseyCorp/myhomepage/index.html.
So how do you get an actual domain name like CaseyCorp.com? You have to pay a registrar company around $10 a year for it. You might then pay another company a few bucks a month to “host” your Web site, and somebody else to design the Web pages themselves. For nontechnical people, it’s all an expensive headache. No wonder half of all small businesses don’t even have Web sites.
But starting Nov. 15, somebody will offer to pick up the entire bill. You’ll be able to pick any dot-com (or .net, or .org) Web address that hasn’t already been taken — no charge. You’ll get to design a Web site, complete with links, graphics, search boxes, tables, forms and navigation bars, and hang it on the Web for all to see — no charge. You’ll even get crystal-clear traffic reports whenever you want them, showing how many people are beating a path to your door — and still no charge.
So who’s your mysterious benefactor? A little outfit called Microsoft.
The service is called Office Live. Ignore the confusing name, which falsely implies some connection with Microsoft Office. Instead, Office Live is a suite of services, mostly free, to help the little guy get into the game of online sales and marketing. It’s intended for small businesses, but individuals can use it, too.
It’s a sweet suite (Internet Explorer for Windows required) that every small-business owner should investigate — quick, before somebody else snaps up the dot-com name you want.
The free Web site is the crown jewel, but there’s more to it than that. The free plan, known as Office Live Basics, also offers you 25 matching e-mail accounts (sales@caseycorp, litigation@caseycorp, and so on). You get a password-protected online calendar, too, and even free tech support by e-mail.
The Basics plan shakes up the status quo in another way, too, thanks to a free service called AdManager, now in beta testing. It lets even novices get into search-engine advertising — you know, so that your ads pop up when people use Google or Yahoo to search for something.
AdManager lets you specify a budget, say $100 a month, and walks you through deciding which search terms (keywords) will bring up your ad. At the moment, you can place ads only on Microsoft’s own search sites, MSN Search and Live.com. Microsoft says, however, that it is working with Google, Yahoo and other search sites, which it will add to the options soon after the introduction.
Later, AdManager’s analysis tools show how many clicks each of your keywords attracted and from which search sites, so that you can decide which were the most effective.
If you’re still printing brochures and coupons (and not tracking the response rates), this is an incredible tool. The world has gone electronic, and AdManager represents a free, self-service means of playing the search-engine advertising game. (Your alternative is paying monthly fees to search-engine management services.)
The free account also includes a brand-new program called Office Accounting Express, a basic, very simple accounting program. It’s designed for what Microsoft calls the 80 percent of small businesses that keep their books in shoeboxes, or on Excel spreadsheets or Quicken.
Accounting Express is no QuickBooks. But it does have useful links to PayPal, eBay, credit card companies and payroll servicing companies — all features, once again, made to let small-time operators play in the big leagues without hiring consultants or system administrators.
Considering the price (free), these are shockingly useful services. On the face of it, they look like an insane giveaway by a company not especially known for generosity. What, exactly, is Microsoft up to?
Microsoft makes no pretense: Office Live is intended to make money. But it will do so very cleverly, sometimes almost invisibly.
For example, if you do sign up for a payroll service through Accounting Express, Microsoft gets a cut. When you place search-engine ads with MSN Search, Microsoft gets a few cents per customer response for that, too.
In the free Basics plan, big, blinky banner ads appear above the e-mail center and address book module. (To its credit, Microsoft places nothing on your free Web site except a very small “Powered by Office Live” logo beneath your home page. No ads or logos appear on any other pages you create.)
Finally, Microsoft hopes that if it helps your business along enough, you’ll eventually upgrade your free account to one of the more elaborate paid plans.
For example, Office Live Essentials ($20 a month) adds the ability for you to design your Web site offline, using specialized programs like Dreamweaver, rather than using the flexible but essentially prefab design templates available to the free Basics service.
The Essentials program also doubles the amount of Web space (to one gigabyte) and the number of e-mail addresses (to 50), adds free 24-hour phone help, removes banner ads from the Mail page, and offers 10 simple online programs for tracking projects, sales and company information. The Premium plan ($40 a month) offers more of everything. Both paid plans let you set up “workspaces”— private mini-sites for communication and collaboration with, for example, your suppliers.
To many analysts, the significance of Office Live isn’t the small-business tools; it’s Microsoft’s big step into the new world of Web-based software. Surely, the gurus say, this is the future of software. Imagine: No viruses! Instant upgrades! Access from any PC in the world!
Well, O.K. But you could just as easily argue: Can’t get to it when your connection’s down! Can’t work on the plane! Working on a Web site is slow and blinky!
Actually, Microsoft has thought this part through. The paid plans include two-way synchronization of your e-mail, calendar and address book with a copy of Outlook on your own PC. Whenever you can get online, your computer and Office Live bring each other up to date.
Even the data generated by the business programs online (sales tracking, inventory and so on) are brought home to your PC in the form of self-updating Excel spreadsheets.
The finished Office Live is light-years better than the clunky beta version that Microsoft says 175,000 small businesses have been testing. Before, you were painfully aware that you were using a Web site; designing your Web pages, for example, wasn’t so much drag-and-drop as wait-and-blink. Now it feels like a proper desktop layout program.
Still, there are kinks. Lots of software bits have to be downloaded and installed. There are design oddities, too. In particular, the mail and online calendar screens are bizarrely unrelated to the design and navigation of the rest of Office Live; you feel like you’ve been shunted off to a different Web site entirely.
Some of the tools are embarrassingly bare-bones. In the calendar, for example, you can’t reschedule an appointment by dragging it to a different date, or lengthen one by dragging its edge, as you can on Google’s free online calendar.
There are bigger concerns, too. What happens if Microsoft someday decides to pull the plug?
Not a problem. You actually own the domain name you choose, and can transfer it to any other Web-hosting company whenever you like. As for your online data: remember that with the paid plans, it’s always safely mirrored on your local computers.
Finally, there’s the fear factor: some business owners have a nagging worry about entrusting the critical and confidential workings of their businesses to anyone else, let alone Microsoft.
Microsoft makes vigorous privacy promises, but there’s no countering this emotional argument. If the creepiness of letting someone else host your data outweighs Office Live’s enormous value, then that’s the end of the conversation.
But if you have a small business — if you run a dance studio, sell hand-made bracelets on eBay, deal in old comic books, whatever — at least have the conversation. In Office Live, Microsoft has vaporized a number of obstacles that once stood between tiny start-ups and the big time: the cost and hassle of establishing a proper Web site, the complexity and expense of playing the search-engine ad game, and the headache of maintaining proper books.
Best of all, Microsoft makes money from all this in only one situation: if it helps turn your small business into a bigger one.
Office Live
State of the Art
A Web Site to Call Your Own
By DAVID POGUE
If you operate a small business, you might already use technology to conceal just how small you are — by setting up multiple e-mail addresses and phone extensions, for example (“for Asian operations, press 7”).
Unfortunately, the illusion that you’re a big, competent corporation evaporates the minute you reveal your Web address — and it’s http://hometown.aol.com/CaseyCorp/myhomepage/index.html.
So how do you get an actual domain name like CaseyCorp.com? You have to pay a registrar company around $10 a year for it. You might then pay another company a few bucks a month to “host” your Web site, and somebody else to design the Web pages themselves. For nontechnical people, it’s all an expensive headache. No wonder half of all small businesses don’t even have Web sites.
But starting Nov. 15, somebody will offer to pick up the entire bill. You’ll be able to pick any dot-com (or .net, or .org) Web address that hasn’t already been taken — no charge. You’ll get to design a Web site, complete with links, graphics, search boxes, tables, forms and navigation bars, and hang it on the Web for all to see — no charge. You’ll even get crystal-clear traffic reports whenever you want them, showing how many people are beating a path to your door — and still no charge.
So who’s your mysterious benefactor? A little outfit called Microsoft.
The service is called Office Live. Ignore the confusing name, which falsely implies some connection with Microsoft Office. Instead, Office Live is a suite of services, mostly free, to help the little guy get into the game of online sales and marketing. It’s intended for small businesses, but individuals can use it, too.
It’s a sweet suite (Internet Explorer for Windows required) that every small-business owner should investigate — quick, before somebody else snaps up the dot-com name you want.
The free Web site is the crown jewel, but there’s more to it than that. The free plan, known as Office Live Basics, also offers you 25 matching e-mail accounts (sales@caseycorp, litigation@caseycorp, and so on). You get a password-protected online calendar, too, and even free tech support by e-mail.
The Basics plan shakes up the status quo in another way, too, thanks to a free service called AdManager, now in beta testing. It lets even novices get into search-engine advertising — you know, so that your ads pop up when people use Google or Yahoo to search for something.
AdManager lets you specify a budget, say $100 a month, and walks you through deciding which search terms (keywords) will bring up your ad. At the moment, you can place ads only on Microsoft’s own search sites, MSN Search and Live.com. Microsoft says, however, that it is working with Google, Yahoo and other search sites, which it will add to the options soon after the introduction.
Later, AdManager’s analysis tools show how many clicks each of your keywords attracted and from which search sites, so that you can decide which were the most effective.
If you’re still printing brochures and coupons (and not tracking the response rates), this is an incredible tool. The world has gone electronic, and AdManager represents a free, self-service means of playing the search-engine advertising game. (Your alternative is paying monthly fees to search-engine management services.)
The free account also includes a brand-new program called Office Accounting Express, a basic, very simple accounting program. It’s designed for what Microsoft calls the 80 percent of small businesses that keep their books in shoeboxes, or on Excel spreadsheets or Quicken.
Accounting Express is no QuickBooks. But it does have useful links to PayPal, eBay, credit card companies and payroll servicing companies — all features, once again, made to let small-time operators play in the big leagues without hiring consultants or system administrators.
Considering the price (free), these are shockingly useful services. On the face of it, they look like an insane giveaway by a company not especially known for generosity. What, exactly, is Microsoft up to?
Microsoft makes no pretense: Office Live is intended to make money. But it will do so very cleverly, sometimes almost invisibly.
For example, if you do sign up for a payroll service through Accounting Express, Microsoft gets a cut. When you place search-engine ads with MSN Search, Microsoft gets a few cents per customer response for that, too.
In the free Basics plan, big, blinky banner ads appear above the e-mail center and address book module. (To its credit, Microsoft places nothing on your free Web site except a very small “Powered by Office Live” logo beneath your home page. No ads or logos appear on any other pages you create.)
Finally, Microsoft hopes that if it helps your business along enough, you’ll eventually upgrade your free account to one of the more elaborate paid plans.
For example, Office Live Essentials ($20 a month) adds the ability for you to design your Web site offline, using specialized programs like Dreamweaver, rather than using the flexible but essentially prefab design templates available to the free Basics service.
The Essentials program also doubles the amount of Web space (to one gigabyte) and the number of e-mail addresses (to 50), adds free 24-hour phone help, removes banner ads from the Mail page, and offers 10 simple online programs for tracking projects, sales and company information. The Premium plan ($40 a month) offers more of everything. Both paid plans let you set up “workspaces”— private mini-sites for communication and collaboration with, for example, your suppliers.
To many analysts, the significance of Office Live isn’t the small-business tools; it’s Microsoft’s big step into the new world of Web-based software. Surely, the gurus say, this is the future of software. Imagine: No viruses! Instant upgrades! Access from any PC in the world!
Well, O.K. But you could just as easily argue: Can’t get to it when your connection’s down! Can’t work on the plane! Working on a Web site is slow and blinky!
Actually, Microsoft has thought this part through. The paid plans include two-way synchronization of your e-mail, calendar and address book with a copy of Outlook on your own PC. Whenever you can get online, your computer and Office Live bring each other up to date.
Even the data generated by the business programs online (sales tracking, inventory and so on) are brought home to your PC in the form of self-updating Excel spreadsheets.
The finished Office Live is light-years better than the clunky beta version that Microsoft says 175,000 small businesses have been testing. Before, you were painfully aware that you were using a Web site; designing your Web pages, for example, wasn’t so much drag-and-drop as wait-and-blink. Now it feels like a proper desktop layout program.
Still, there are kinks. Lots of software bits have to be downloaded and installed. There are design oddities, too. In particular, the mail and online calendar screens are bizarrely unrelated to the design and navigation of the rest of Office Live; you feel like you’ve been shunted off to a different Web site entirely.
Some of the tools are embarrassingly bare-bones. In the calendar, for example, you can’t reschedule an appointment by dragging it to a different date, or lengthen one by dragging its edge, as you can on Google’s free online calendar.
There are bigger concerns, too. What happens if Microsoft someday decides to pull the plug?
Not a problem. You actually own the domain name you choose, and can transfer it to any other Web-hosting company whenever you like. As for your online data: remember that with the paid plans, it’s always safely mirrored on your local computers.
Finally, there’s the fear factor: some business owners have a nagging worry about entrusting the critical and confidential workings of their businesses to anyone else, let alone Microsoft.
Microsoft makes vigorous privacy promises, but there’s no countering this emotional argument. If the creepiness of letting someone else host your data outweighs Office Live’s enormous value, then that’s the end of the conversation.
But if you have a small business — if you run a dance studio, sell hand-made bracelets on eBay, deal in old comic books, whatever — at least have the conversation. In Office Live, Microsoft has vaporized a number of obstacles that once stood between tiny start-ups and the big time: the cost and hassle of establishing a proper Web site, the complexity and expense of playing the search-engine ad game, and the headache of maintaining proper books.
Best of all, Microsoft makes money from all this in only one situation: if it helps turn your small business into a bigger one.
Office Live
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