Top 10 Best Desktops

Don't write off the desktop PC just yet—the workhorse of the PC world still has a place. The desktop continues to evolve with stunning new designs, extremely affordable prices, and a range of uses that extends far beyond the home office. Whether you're looking for a standard tower PC or a sleek All-in-One, we've got you covered. Whether you're looking for a crazy fast gaming rig or a computer for streaming movies and TV shows, you'll find something here.

Top 10 Best Desktops

The standard desktop tower still reigns as the basic PC, ranging from smaller budget-priced systems to powerful towers that can double as workstations or gaming rigs. You'll get a lot of performance and plenty of features even at budget prices, but perhaps the biggest draw for desktop buyers is the fact that, unlike slim laptops that won't even let you swap the battery, the tower still allows the user to maintain and upgrade their system. Even the simple tasks of upgrading RAM or swapping out an old hard drive with a newer, faster solid-state drive will extend the life of a PC for months, or even years.

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How To Buy A Gaming PC

When many people think of gaming, they automatically think of gaming consoles. And, sure, many households have at least one (if not all) of the three major gaming consoles available: the Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony Playstation 3, and Nintendo Wii. But for a truly connected and immersive gaming experiences desktop PCs reign supreme. 

How To Buy A Gaming PC

Gaming PCs are more upgradable than laptops, and it's still easier to install expansion packages to PC games than on consoles. There are vast online communities dedicated to modifying games to get desired results ('mods'). You need to use a PC for the best in 3D gaming, and you simply can't get all the new gaming bells and whistles unless you have a high-powered gaming PC. That said, you don't necessarily have to buy the most expensive desktop to play the most popular games.

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How to Buy a Business Desktop

Business PCs may not be the sexiest players in the PC market, but where the actual number of units the big PC makers ship each year is concerned, they do represent a significant segment. Think about it: You can still write a novel on a typewriter, shoot photographs with film, or play music live and record it with a DAT deck, but very few businesses can get their work done without a PC. Even a mom-and-pop shop that caters to a non-technological audience (say, a buggy whip maker) needs a PC to communicate with suppliers, customers, and potential customers. email, Twitter, the Web: All of these technologies make today's business happen.

How to Buy a Business Desktop

While it may be tempting to buy a simple consumer PC from a big-box store like Best Buy or Wal-Mart, you'll probably be doing yourself and your customers a disservice if you do. Specialized business PCs have extra features that make them better suited to the office than the $250 sales-circular special. For one, business desktops are built to last longer, and are usually easier to service, than consumer PCs. After all, the longer a business PC is down, the more money it costs you in lost earning time. Business PC makers may have specialized tech-support lines to help you troubleshoot your QuickBooks problem. At the very least, you can add a service contract to your business PC so that on-site tech-support calls are handled by techs who respond in hours or minutes rather than in days or weeks, like the ones who handle consumer tech support.

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Top 100 Best iPad Apps

The Apple iPad $499.00 at Apple Store is one of the most popular and influential consumer electronics devices in history. Its sleek design and extreme portability have made it an excellent slate for Web-surfing, movie-watching, email-checking, and numerous other activities. That said, the role that the Apple App Store has played in its success should not be overlooked. According to Apple, over 375,000 iPad apps have been released worldwide. That's a lot of apps that run the gamut from the entertaining to the business-centric. You can transform your iPad into virtually anything.

You can't (and don't want to) install them all due to storage or quality limitations. So you're probably wondering how one goes about finding quality iPad app. Easy. Check out PCMag.com's picks as the staff has tested hundreds of iPad apps and weeded out the ones not worth your time. You could scour the App Store for user reviews, but, really, do you want to go down that road? First of all, it's an incredible time sink. Secondly, user reviews can be highly biased, and a little-known app may have only a handful of reviews.

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The Best Android Tablets

Android tablets had a rocky start, but as Google continues to refine its mobile operating system, we're finally seeing a steady flow of high-quality Android tablets. And that's a good thing, since they provide viable alternatives to the Apple iPad, which has dominated the tablet market since its first release in early 2010. One of the major benefits of Android over the iPad, is that instead of a single hardware choice, you can access the OS on a number of tablets in different sizes with varied designs.

The only hitch there: There isn't a single version of Android. The latest iteration, Jelly Bean, adds so many valuable improvements that it's our Editors' Choice for mobile operating systems. It's the best Android yet, especially with the tweaks in the 4.2.2 update, and you can get it on Google's own Nexus tablets, but it's not yet widely available on other tablets. Android has notorious problems with timely OS updates.

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Belkin WeMo Light Switch

I think more that a few of us have plans of using our Android smartphones to control everything in our homes. You can already control things like your television, your thermostat, your car's door locks and now your lights and small electrical appliances thanks to Belkin's WeMo line of smart home automation equipment. It's easy to use, fairly easy to install, and won't cut too deep into your wallet.

Belkin WeMo light switch 

The idea is simple — install Belkin's smart switches or receptacles, connect them to your home Wifi network via the Android app, and go. Belkin doesn't give away their secret sauce, but from the looks of things you're connecting your switches to the cloud, and sending commands to it from your Android.

The commands come down to the always-connected switches in turn. They install like standard residential electrical products and while the Android app is still new and has a bug or two, they generally work really well. They can also connect to IFTTT, which opens up a huge library of online apps for folks who want to get really serious about automating their house.

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How to Buy a Desktop PC

Does your desktop PC take so long to start up you have time to go get a cup of coffee—and drink it? Tried installing the latest game only to find out your graphics card is six generations too old to play it? Or maybe you just want to take advantage of the speed and reliability of operating systems like Microsoft Windows 8 and Mac OS X Mountain Lion. If any of these are true, then it is time for you to buy a new desktop PC. And we can help you do it.

How to Buy a Desktop PC

Prices for new desktop PCs start as low as $200 and range all the way up to and over $5,000, but most of us would be more than happy with a $600- $750 box, including monitor. You still need to make some choices when it comes to CPUs, memory, hard drive capacity and graphics technology, but the good news is your money has never gone further. And a PC you buy today could very well last you for three to five years.

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How to Buy a Laptop

One size fits all? Just the opposite: If there's one thing that characterizes the laptop market, it's the array of sizes and styles to choose from—flyweights that barely tip the scale at 2.5 pounds, lap-crushing behemoths of 10 pounds or more, and everything in between. Indeed, venturing online or into an electronics store to pick a laptop can be an overwhelming experience if you're not prepared for all the choices and focused on your needs.

How to Buy a Laptop

That's where this buying guide comes in. We'll brief you on the latest buzzwords and trends, help you decide which features matter most, and get you ready to buy the right portable for you, whether it's a super-slim ultrabook or heavy-duty desktop replacement.

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10 Best Business Laptops

Finding a great laptop for work is serious business. After all, you need something that's durable, secure, powerful, light, and can last through an intercontinental flight. With the countless options available, it can be a daunting task to find the perfect one. Fortunately for you, we have already found the 10 best business laptops on the market today.

What constitutes a business laptop these days? The lines get blurrier every time a laptop so classified launches with multiple color options, a metallic finish, different screen option, and all sort of wireless and port acronyms. And with prices for laptops reaching all-time lows, businesses would rather save money buying a whole fleet of cheap consumer laptops than spend three or four times as much on an enterprise model .

10 Best Business Laptops

Lines are even blurring between tablets and laptops. Once they were separated by operating systems, but tablets running "real" versions of Windows are the hot new products aimed at businesses. Some of these tablets have removable keyboards, some don't. But make no mistake, business laptops have their place in the commercial world, and choosing the right one can determine whether you run a company that's successful or one that suffers from too much downtime.

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Top 10 Best Laptops

Shopping for a laptop is a pretty daunting task, more so now given the advent of Windows 8. The sheer number of laptop systems available online or in a store's electronics section is enough to make your mind spin. Most people have a general idea of what their laptop should look like and what they want in terms of features, but are often intimidated by the choices available. That's where we come in, with the 10 Best Laptops on the market today.

Top 10 Best Laptops

The first thing you need to consider is what you need in the laptop. Are you looking for something to compete on the gaming grid? Then a discrete graphics card and big screen are necessary components in the laptop you choose. Are you on a limited budget? Then be on the lookout for anything under $500 that offers at least a Core i3 CPU and 4GB of memory. If a business system is what you need, then security measures like a fingerprint reader and a TPM module are must-haves. For those who spend a lot of time on the road, then an ultrabook or an ultraportable will keep back and shoulder strain to a minimum. For those who need a system meant for watching movies, a Blu-ray player is a must-have feature.

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Top 5 Best Media Players

Streaming video has finally taken off. Services like Netflix and YouTube have become household names, and Hulu Plus and Amazon Instant Video aren't far behind. Blu-ray is still the best format for watching movies with the highest clarity, but a wide variety of streaming media services have become the most convenient and economical ways to watch or listen to what you want.

Many HDTVs and Blu-ray players can access some of these services directly. But for the maximum number of choices, you'll want a dedicated media hub to really experience the breadth of what can be streamed to your home theater. These set-top boxes are inexpensive and disc-free, and can grant access to massive libraries of media online through Wi-Fi. Whether you want to subscribe to online services to access collections, or buy movies and albums piecemeal through an online store, these devices offer the easiest way to do just that.

Top 5 Best Media Players

Apple TV and Roku offer simple, direct access to multiple services, and Apple TV is still the only way to access the iTunes library of movies and music through a media hub. Apple TV has the added benefit of supporting AirPlay, letting you stream movies or music from your iPad or iPhone straight to the Apple TV and through it to your HDTV. The Roku 3 is even more flexible, with dozens of general interest and specialized channels, each offering their own selections of media. The Roku 3 has some networked streaming features as well, though they aren't quite as streamlined and one-click as Apple TV and AirPlay. These devices' $100 price tags and accessible designs make them an ideal way to access Netflix and other online services on your HDTV.

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Top 10 Best Samsung Galaxy Tab Apps

Samsung's tablet business is booming. According to research firm IDC, Samsung sold 277% more Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Note tablets in the second quarter of this year than last year, putting more than 8 million tablets in people's hands and crushing all of its Android-based competitors.

Top 10 Best Samsung Galaxy Tab Apps

Samsung launched the Android tablet market, of course, with the first Galaxy Tabs back in 2010. They were the first seven-inch tablets, paving the way for the Kindle Fire, Nexus 7 and even the iPad Mini. Since then, the company has broken out all over the place in traditional Samsung style, with a range of sizes, pen options, and wireless choices.

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Apple Wins Patent-Infringement Case Against Samsung

Apple reportedly won its patent-infringement case against Samsung in a decision that limits the U.S. import of certain products.

According to Bloomberg, the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) in Washington today handed out an almost-final verdict in Cupertino's favor; the ban is still subject to review by President Barack Obama, who can overturn it on public policy grounds.

The news comes almost a year after Cupertino won more than $1 billion in a patent battle against Samsung.

Apple Wins Patent-Infringement Case Against Samsung

A federal jury last year found two dozen Samsung devices infringed on patents already held by Apple, but aside from a hefty fine for Samsung, no other repercussions had been doled out. In fact, Judge Lucy Koh in December concluded that damages were enough for Apple, and a full ban of the products in question was not necessary.

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A Captive Wi-Fi Audience Pays Off

Our need to remain constantly connected everywhere is definitely paying off for inflight Internet provider Gogo. The company reported its first quarterly earnings since going public in June, and it shows that not only are more domestic flyers signing up for its pokey airborne connections, but that they’re also paying more for the privilege.

A Captive Wi-Fi Audience Pays Off

Gogo (GOGO) now connects 1,982 American Airlines,United (UAL), Delta (DAL), Air Canada (AC/A:CN), US Airways (LCC), Alaska Air (ALK), AirTran, and Virgin America planes in North America, and each plane brought in an average of $25,600 in the second quarter, up 22 percent from the same period a year ago. That’s a pretty hefty increase for a single year, but that’s not the half of it. Its overall revenue from commercial aviation increased an impressive 53 percent, to $49.8 million, in the second quarter.

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Apple Gets Its Day in Courts

Apple (AAPL) lawyers are in for quite a day Friday. There will be developments in three major legal disputes for the company, with potentially profound effects on its smartphone and e-books businesses. Here’s a rundown:

The International Trade Commission: The trade commission says it will issue a decision at 5 p.m. on Friday as to whether Samsung’s (005930:KS) mobile devices violate Apple patents. The decision will be the latest in a seemingly unending series of battles between the two companies over intellectual property. If the commission rules in Apple’s favor, Samsung could be prohibited from importing some of its products to the U.S.

Apple Gets Its Day in Courts

The outcome will be interesting not just for its impact on Apple and Samsung. Over the weekend the Obama administration vetoed a recent commission ruling (PDF) that would have kept Apple from importing certain models of its iPhones, the first import ban of its kind since the Reagan administration. The commission said that because the patents in question were so-called standard essential patents, meaning they’re related to the basic functions of a device, Samsung was required to license them to Apple under reasonable terms. The administration argued that an import ban shouldn’t be the result of the companies failing to reach a licensing agreement.

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