Home Office: Still Shopping? More World Class Winners

Multimedia players and content, a great printer, twisted animation.

Steve Bass

I was a little chagrined to find that I hadn't heard of a few of the products in PC World's 20th World Class Awards. My guess is that if I fell off technology's bleeding edge and missed some, so did you.

Sit back and relax--I culled through the awards myself to show you the winners that intrigued me. BTW, if you're a new subscriber (welcome), you might have missed last week's column, which kicked off this World Class extravaganza. Feel free to check it out right now.

Open the Curtain, Guys and Gals

For the Best Digital Audio Player, PCWorld.com's editors voted for the IRiver America SlimX IMP-350. I'll grant you it's slim, has a built-in FM tuner, and plays a day's worth of tunes. To read about it, scroll down to the fifth item on this page.

But I listen mostly to the spoken word--so for my money, I'll take Otis, a 64MB digital audio player from Audible.com. (The cost is $59 with the purchase of an audiobook or a one-month subscription to a newspaper or public radio program.) You can read what I said about it in "Another Batch of Hot Gifts for a Cool Home Office."

What, you'd rather read? Okay, maybe I was wrong. So check out our pick for Best News and Information: NYTimes.com. You can read about what the site does and why it does it so well, and take a look at our other Best Web Site winners.

Dig this: Did you hear that illegal file sharing has come to a screeching halt? Yup, it's true. The recording industry's developed an innovative antipiracy device.

Crank Up the Spotlights

By now, you know how much I harp on backing up your PC. Even with Windows XP and ME's System Restore, or with Roxio's GoBack, a CD-ROM or tape backup is essential. Our editors gave Stomp's $79 BackUp MyPC a thumbs up for Best Backup Utility. You can try the product by zipping over to our Downloads area and grabbing a copy.

My alternative? Datz's Retrospect, which I've used for a year. With the Desktop version, I enjoy the ability to back up my wife's networked PC as well. Try Retrospect Express--or trial versions of other backup programs--compliments of PCWorld.com's Downloads mavens.

With all this talk about backing up, I'm worried that your hard drive isn't big enough. If you need one, take a look at the Maxtor DiamondMax D540X--which got our kudos for Best Hard Drive, all 160GBs of it.

No matter what drive you're using, it's likely that you have more stuff on it than you need. Stan Miastkowski tells you how to shed those extraneous files in "Step by Step: Reclaim Hard-Drive Space," his How-To column for July.

Two That I Knew

One product that I did know about is the Brother HL-1440. We voted it the Best Personal Laser Printer because the price comes mighty close to those high-end ink jets. I'm using a $300 Brother laser because it can print my user group newsletter proofs in a crisp 1200-by-600 dots per inch resolution. And while I give up color, the laser cartridges last longer than ink-jet refills and are a heck of lot cheaper. Want proof? Check our Product Finder for pricing. I found the Brother HL-1440 for about $250.

Another gem--and the one I thought should have received Software of the Year award, but got Best Presentation instead--is Serious Magic's Visual Communicator (it's midway down the page).

The name's dumb, but the product's a knock-out for producing professional video presentations. My boss Harry McCracken (yeah, I have lots of them) reviewed it and he loved it, too.

Nifty trick: There's a handy, free feature on PCWorld.com's Product Finder page that I whizzed right by. It's the Product Tracker. Stick a price for an item you want in its field and when the price meets your target, you'll get an e-mail alert. The only hitch is that our pushy circulation department insists you register to use this feature.

Dig this: It's Wednesday and there's not much going on, right? How about turning the sound down on your PC and spending a few minutes grinning at Yes and No. (Warning: The animation may take a while to download... but it's worth it.)

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