The Mossberg Solution » music

A Clicker To Watch TV Online

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:43:07 +0000

Finding TV shows online can be a major hassle. If you can remember which network hosts the show, you then must hunt through a maze of listings of several other television shows on that network’s Web site to find it. The show you want to watch might not even be available since many networks rotate only a handful of recent episodes online at a time. And if you do finally find the correct episode, you may be required to download a special media player to watch it.

Some services make this process a little easier. Hulu holds episodes from 1,200 television shows, but is still missing many. Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes Store offers over 50,000 episodes, but unlike network sites or Hulu, it requires viewers to pay to download and watch them (though they are commercial-free). Video search engines like Truveo browse the entire Web, returning an often-overwhelming number of results. And while YouTube is the king of Web video, it can too easily return a search result that isn’t a complete and genuine episode of the show you’re seeking.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I’ve been testing Clicker, a free Web site that aims to be the TV Guide for all full episodes available to watch on the Web. It searches over 1,200 sources, so it can index some 400,000 episodes from 7,000 shows. Results include television programs as well as “Web originals,” or shows that are native to the Internet and are of broadcast quality. Clicker either plays the video on its site or links you to where this content is shown on another hosting site—like NBC or Hulu. If a show isn’t available online, Clicker tells you so you don’t have to keep hunting all over for it.

I like Clicker and found it to be a quick resource for finding all sorts of shows online. In many cases, it directed me to find the episodes I wanted to watch and saved me the hassle of less efficient searching. It also suggested shows I might like and offered a playlist where I could subscribe to receive episodes as they became available or save available videos to watch later.

Clicker makes descriptive pages about each show

Though it has a search box, Clicker feels more like a directory than purely a robotic search engine that relies mainly on algorithms. In fact, Clicker created a descriptive page for almost every show, and these pages can be edited or created via user submissions, which Clicker will review before posting them to the site. And because it’s focused on TV shows or Web originals, it won’t clutter your results with kids’ birthday parties or cats on skateboards.

The site is still rather new, so it has some kinks to work out—like links to videos that didn’t actually play if, for example, they were pulled by the network. But these were rare, and for the most part, if a video wasn’t available, a clear, brief explanation was displayed at the top of the page. Also, if Clicker sends you back out to a network’s site and that network uses a special player for videos, you’ll still have to download that player.

Filtering Results

Clicker’s program pages contain a description of the show, and a way to filter results by season, airdate or popularity. And the site shows the actual airdate of each video—something that not many other sites do. A column on the right side of each page displays several related shows, like the suggestion of “Modern Family” for fans of “How I Met Your Mother”; and “Roswell” and “Dead Like Me” suggested for people who like “Heroes.” In December, these recommendations will become even more personalized.

Some of Clicker’s sources include NBC, Fox, ABC, PBS, the Food Network and Web original content (i.e. “The Onion”). It also can search movies and music videos; the movies can be watched free in some cases, or paid for via Amazon’s (AMZN) Video on Demand or Netflix (NFLX) Instant Streaming. In January, Clicker plans to incorporate shows and movies from iTunes, using Apple’s pay-and-download method.

Clicker is especially handy when you’re looking for a show that isn’t where you think it should be. “Seinfeld,” for example, is on TBS rather than NBC, where it originally aired, and only nine episodes are available at once before they rotate out and are replaced by nine more. “Friends” is found on theWB.com, rather than on NBC’s site. “Damages” isn’t available on its network site, FX; instead, it can be found at Crackle.com, another video-hosting site. It’s easy to understand why people settle for missing an episode rather than trying to find a show online.

Clicker finds over 400,000 television and Web-original episodes so you can search less and watch more.

Clicker also comes in handy when you’re querying something or someone you need to learn about. By typing in a term like “Thanksgiving travel,” I get news results from NBC’s “Nightly News with Brian Williams,” the “CBS Evening News” and the Associated Press. I also get tips for traveling during this busy time of year from an AOL Travel online video, as well as a 1968 episode of “The Beverly Hillbillies” called “The Thanksgiving Spirit.”

Clicker isn’t the site to use if you want to find the hot video clip that everyone is watching. When I searched for “Whitney Houston” the morning after the American Music Awards, the most recent video I found was the singer performing on “Good Morning America” in September—not the one showing her singing during the awards show the night before.

But the fact that Clicker can find Whitney Houston on “Good Morning America” is useful in itself. A search for Warren Buffett’s most recent appearance on the “Charlie Rose” show can be conducted in a similar manner—either by typing his name into the box at the top of the page or by opening the show’s page and searching within that show for anyone who has appeared as a guest. Performing a search within a show like this anywhere else is nowhere near as easy as on Clicker.

Playlist of Your Shows

Clicker can be used as a TiVo (TIVO) of sorts if you create a username on the site or simply sign in using Facebook Connect, which I did.

Users can make playlists where they can add just one episode, all episodes, or new episodes to this list—subscribing to receive all new episodes in the playlist as they become available. I added episodes of “The Amazing Race” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” to my playlist. This list can be accessed anytime, and it’s helpful for people who don’t have enough time to watch a show that they found. In December, email and Facebook notifications will be added to tell users that new episodes are in their playlists.

If you spend a lot of time in front of your computer and find yourself searching all over the Web for the TV shows you’d like to watch, Clicker will be a huge help. And even if your show isn’t available, you might find something similar—or better—in Clicker’s recommendations.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg. Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Palm Pixi Needs a Dusting of Speed

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:52:55 +0000

Since the debut of the Palm Pre in June, Palm has talked about the value of the device’s webOS operating system, which offers fast responsiveness, multitasking, universal search and smart synchronization. These features are accessed using delightful multitouch gestures like swiping with a fingertip. So it makes perfect sense that Palm would want to expand its family of products running this great mobile operating system.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, Palm (PALM) introduced a second device with webOS: the Palm Pixi (palm.com/pixi). This is a stripped-down version of the Pre and it costs $100 (after a $50 instant rebate and a $100 mail-in rebate and with a two-year service contract) compared with the $150 Pre. Walmart.com is currently selling the Pixi for even less—$50 (http://3.ly/oSE). Both the Pixi and the Pre run on Sprint’s (S) network.

I’ve been testing the Pixi and I’ve found that the physical differences from the Pre are acceptable variations that most people won’t mind and may not even detect. These include a smaller, lower-resolution screen, a two-megapixel camera rather than the Pre’s three-megapixel camera and stationary keyboard instead of one that slides out. The Pixi isn’t as pebble-shaped as the Pre, but its back cover is rounded to fit comfortably in a hand. And like the Pre, it has an eight-gigabyte storage capacity and it’s thin and light enough to forget in a jeans pocket or to comfortably hold up to your ear during phone calls.

The Pixi’s internal changes are much tougher to accept. It lacks Wi-Fi capability and so must rely solely on Sprint’s 3G network for its connection, which I found to be frustratingly slow at times. This littler phone also runs on a weaker processor than the Pre, a decision that Palm says helped cut costs and make the Pixi small. But this processor’s speed is slow enough to notice immediately and it robs webOS of its lightning-fast speed. The Pixi’s progress indicator—a spinning, white circle—appeared on my screen too often.

The $100 Palm Pixi is like a mini version of the Pre. A $70 Touchstone accessory (right) magnetically holds the Pixi as it charges.

Like its super-smartphone competitors, including Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, Research in Motion’s (RIMM) newer BlackBerrys and Google’s (GOOG) Android phones, the Palm Pixi taps into a virtual store from which users can download apps for the device. But Palm’s App Catalog currently holds fewer than 400 apps and roughly 80 of those aren’t yet configured for the Pixi. This means that people who buy the $100 Pixi can choose from just around 300 apps for download, compared with the 100,000 apps available for Apple’s $100 iPhone 3G.

Some apps come preloaded on the Pixi, like Facebook and NFL Mobile Live. I downloaded others, including Pandora radio, Tweed for Twitter and a game called Word Whirl Lite. I logged into my Pandora account and played songs from one of my personalized radio stations while reading through email. A tiny “P” icon at the bottom of the Pixi’s screen notified me that Pandora was running. Other notifiers, like new emails or instant messages, appear at the bottom as well.

If you aren’t familiar with webOS, it’s easy to learn. Functions are designed to be more people-centric rather than program-centric. For example, I can look at a name in Contacts and see how I’m linked to that person—like through Facebook or Google Talk. If I want to start an instant-messaging conversation with that person, I can do so right there rather than opening AIM or Google Talk first to find a person’s name and then initiate conversation. I logged onto the Pixi with a Google account and the device was smart enough to also synchronize data from my Google Talk, Google Calendar and Gmail contacts.

The Card View, a display of all the programs that are simultaneously running at any given time, can be exposed with a simple, upward finger swipe starting below the screen. To close a program, simply touch it with a finger and toss it upward, as if throwing it away. This is one of the most satisfying gestures in webOS. And it’s a good thing, too, because Pixi users will need to use it more often than they did with the Pre. Palm suggests running only seven programs at once for the best performance, rather than the 10 you can leave opened on the Pre.

But my Pixi stuttered with just five programs—sometimes fewer—opened. Simple tasks like opening an email or searching for an app in the App Catalog were painfully slow. I received an email containing one digital photo, and the process of opening just the email—not even the photo—took about 10 seconds. When I finally opened the email and its photo, I saved it to my Pixi and tapped on a menu option to upload it to Facebook. But five minutes later, the spinning progress indicator was still on my Pixi’s screen and I gave up. I tried again and the same thing happened. Finally, on the third try, my photo posted to Facebook.

As was the case for the Palm Pre, the Pixi can be charged by plugging into a normal AC adaptor or by resting it on the Touchstone, a $70 accessory that, with the help of a special back cover that snaps onto the Pixi, magnetically holds this device as it charges. A handful of stylish “Artist Series” back covers will sell on Palm.com for $50 each and will ship in early December.

The Pixi’s 2.6-inch screen has a 320×400 resolution, which is a step down from the Pre’s 3.1-inch, 320×480-resolution screen. Palm estimates the Pixi’s battery lasts for five hours of talk time, the same as the Pre, but for 350 hours of standby time—or 50 more hours than the Pre.

The Palm Pixi’s keyboard is tiny but sufficient. People who are used to BlackBerry or even iPhone keyboards might be irked that the Pixi keyboard doesn’t have built-in shortcuts like holding down a key to capitalize it or pressing the space bar twice to add a period to the end of a sentence.

Like its predecessor, the Pixi has a designated Gesture Area just beneath its screen where users can swipe a fingertip for quickly navigating through screens, like swiping right-to-left to go back a screen. Unlike the Pre, the Pixi doesn’t have a silver button below its screen that immediately takes users to Card View, but I didn’t miss this button.

Though the Palm Pixi is $50 less than the Palm Pre, its downgraded performance doesn’t make that dollar savings worth it.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Netbooks That Are Easier on the Eye

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:07:40 +0000

Like clockwork, retailers were ready for Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Windows 7 release last week with new desktops, laptops and netbooks, those inexpensive, smaller laptops that have become popular in the past year. Included in this selection of netbooks are some that improved the poor screen resolutions that have plagued these tiny PCs.

[ See post to watch video ]

Screen resolution isn’t the same as the size of the screen itself. Rather, it is related to the number of pixels—or distinct dots—on a display, and an indication of how much material can be seen on the screen without scrolling. A higher-resolution screen allows you to see more of a Web page, spreadsheet or list of emails than a lower-resolution screen, even if both are the same physical size.

Because higher-resolution screens cost more, most netbooks come with low-resolution screens to keep prices down. But poor resolution combined with a small netbook screen results in frustrating visuals, like Web pages that display just a small portion of their contents, forcing you to scroll down or horizontally to see the rest of the page.

This week, I tested two Windows 7 netbooks with unusually high-res screens: Hewlett-Packard Co.’s (HPQ) HP Mini 311 with an 11.6-inch screen and a resolution of 1,366-by-768 pixels, and Nokia Corp.’s (NOK) Booklet 3G with a 10.1-inch screen and a resolution of 1,280-by-720-pixels. Both these small computers display the bulk of most Web pages without any scrolling necessary—a big relief on a netbook.

Though high-resolution screens make these netbooks easier on the eyes than others, I still had trouble adjusting to their shrunken features. I liked typing on the HP Mini’s generous keyboard, which H-P says is 92 percent of full size. But its touchpad buttons felt stiff and uncomfortably located at the edge of the computer. The Nokia Booklet had the opposite problem: Its touchpad and buttons worked fine, but its tiny keys made me feel like I was typing on a kiddie computer.

Nokia’s Booklet 3G has a long battery life and sleek design.

Nokia is a bit more of a newsmaker here, because when the Booklet 3G (nokiausa.com) comes out in mid-November, it will be the first foray by the Finnish mobile-device company into the laptop space. Best Buy (BBY) began taking advance orders for them this week. It costs $300 if purchased with AT&T Inc.’s (T) two-year Data Connect plan, which costs $60 a month for five gigabytes of data and allows users to toggle back and forth between two kinds of wireless connections, cellular 3G and Wi-Fi. If purchased without the AT&T plan, the Booklet 3G costs $600—a lot for a netbook—including only Windows 7 Starter, the low-end version of the new OS, and one gigabyte of memory.

The thing most people will notice right away about Nokia’s netbook is that it seems to take its design cues directly from Apple Inc. (AAPL) Like the MacBook Pro, the Nokia Booklet 3G is made from a single piece of aluminum, and its keyboard is made of black Chiclet-style keys. Its edges are rounded and smooth. I used one with a glossy black lid, but it will also come in shades of ice white or azure blue.

Nokia boasts that this netbook’s battery will last for 12 hours; after running it through a harsh test with its screen cranked up to the brightest setting, Wi-Fi on, music playing on a continuous loop and all power-saving features turned off, it ran for almost eight hours straight. This means that under normal circumstances, the battery might last for a remarkable 10 hours.

The Booklet 3G that I used differs from Nokia’s final release version in a few ways: Mine wasn’t loaded with AT&T’s Connection Manager software, which enables switching between Wi-Fi and 3G; it lacked the Nokia Social Hub software, which the company says allows users to track social-media feeds and text messages; and the GPS wasn’t yet connected to the U.S. map data server. My Booklet 3G included Ovi Suite, a Nokia-designed software program to bridge the connection between some Nokia smartphones and the Booklet 3G, like iTunes for the iPhone or BlackBerry’s Desktop Manager. But the software I had wasn’t the final version.

Unlike Nokia, H-P is no stranger to netbooks, having released nine of its Mini models in the past year. The HP Mini 311 (hp.com/go/mini) costs $400 when purchased with Windows XP and costs an additional $50 when loaded with Windows 7 Home Premium. The Mini that I tested costs $474 because it also had two gigabytes of memory rather than one gigabyte.

The H-P model is a little bigger all around compared with the Nokia, with an inch-larger screen; it weighs 3.22 pounds compared with 2.76 pounds for the Nokia. Both felt relatively thin and light, and I carried them home together from my office with ease. The HP Mini 311 had H-P’s subtle Black Swirl pattern on its lid—a faint pattern of silver swirls noticeable only at certain angles. It also comes in White Swirl.

I ran the same battery test on the HP as I did with the Nokia, and it lasted four hours and 15 minutes, giving it roughly six hours of juice under normal circumstances. H-P estimates that the Mini 311’s battery will last for six hours and 25 minutes.

I didn’t run into any problems while installing and using several programs on each of these netbooks, including Windows Live Essentials, Mozilla’s Firefox browser, Picasa 3, TweetDeck, Adobe (ADBE) Reader and iTunes. The HP Mini felt more responsive and, in fact, loaded some programs a little faster, but it had twice the memory.

Both netbooks have slots for memory cards, HDMI ports for connecting to HD screens and three USB ports. And they come with built-in Web cams, a common feature on netbooks.

A cold start on both the Mini 311 and Booklet 3G required roughly the same amount of time: one minute and eight seconds for the H-P, and a minute and 12 seconds for the Nokia. But restarting was a different story. While playing a song in iTunes, running three Web pages in Firefox and using TweetDeck, I selected Restart. The HP Mini 311 took a minute and 20 seconds while the Nokia took nearly two minutes.

Even without the AT&T discount, the Nokia Booklet 3G’s extra-long battery life and sleek design will be worth the extra money for some people—just beware its tiny keyboard. The HP Mini 311 is a good all-around netbook with a comfortable keyboard for typing. No one will be disappointed by the terrific screen resolutions.

-Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

A New Search Engine Specializing in Fun

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:54:04 +0000

If you’re like me, you like to make the most out of what little free time you have. One way of finding ideas for activities without wasting precious minutes is by searching online. But sometimes the process of browsing the Web can suck you in and waste more time than it saves.

This week, I tested a tool called Goby (pronounced go-be), www.goby.com, which works as an activity search engine to help you find things to do. It tries to be simple enough so that you can get some ideas and start doing the things you want to do rather than wasting hours in front of the computer.

[ See post to watch video ]

Goby uses three boxes—What, Where and When—with drop-down menus to find results for your query. It crawls the Web searching what it considers high quality information from 500 sources and employs a part-human, part-machine review process to ensure first-rate results. Goby searches through over 200 categories, including live music, art exhibits, outdoor festivals, spas, bed-and-breakfasts and restaurants.

Using Goby was an emotional roller coaster. With very little effort I found things in Washington, D.C., that I’ve never heard of in the seven-plus years I’ve lived here, including tea with Martha Washington and a stuffed Civil War hero horse on display at the Smithsonian. But I also found inaccurate Goby results like an activity in Washington state rather than Washington, D.C., or photos that were supposed to represent a tennis center but instead showed a celebrity’s child with the same name. And sometimes the same results were listed four times in a row.

Goby’s results took a serious nose dive when I looked outside the city in my hometown of Allentown, Pa. I searched for all performing arts and theater near Allentown, an area that I know first-hand has plenty to offer in the way of music, theater and dance. Goby returned two results—one for the Nutcracker in December and another for a Shakespeare play that was put on last July. A quick check of my hometown newspaper’s Web site showed hundreds of performances to attend in the coming months.

The Goby home page

Goby.com has been available to the public for only a few weeks and it is still working out some kinks. The more people use it, the more accurate its results will become—or at least that’s what its founders hope will happen. When Goby’s search results are accurate, they include the kinds of thing locals would want to see or do in their own hometown, and that’s no small feat. But people won’t have a lot of patience for some of the erroneous results that now show up in Goby. Also, this activity search engine currently lacks features like the ability to build and save itineraries, make one-click ticket purchases or book reservations.

Though Goby’s query boxes ask users to enter What, Where and When, the When is always an optional specification, and people can enter either What or Where if they only know one of these factors. General suggestions of categories also are made in Goby’s drop-down menus. The What box opens five categories: things to do, food and drink, events, places to stay and, right now, fall fun; many of these open several, more-specified subcategories. For example, I started a search and followed a four-part trail: things to do, outdoor recreation, horseback riding and horseback riding trails—all within the same drop-down menu.

If you know what you want to do but not where you want to do it, the drop-down arrow in the Where box opens an interactive map of the U.S. Users can pan around the entire country, zooming in on specific areas or small towns. I even zoomed in on Minot, N.D. (population 35,000) and found out about an event taking place at the Northwest Arts Center on Nov. 2.

This map comes in handy if you know the general geographic area where you would like to spend time, but don’t know the area’s name.

Lists of query results are deliberately designed to show more than just Web links, like what Google (GOOG) often displays. Suggested activities are displayed in a numbered list on the left side of the screen, and a map with corresponding numbers is displayed on the right, moving along with your cursor as you scroll on the page. A blue flashlight tool on the map can be dragged anywhere to pinpoint exactly where you want to find activities, and after you drop the flashlight on a spot, the left-hand list dynamically changes to correspond with that map view.

A “More Info” tab shows vital information for each query result like a description, time, address and Web site for the activity. If you are looking at lodging, you can adjust a price scale to limit or expand results for rooms that cost a certain amount per night. Lists of results can be sorted according to category: Art events can be sorted by relevance, distance, date or name; bed-and-breakfasts also can be sorted by price.

Photos representing these activities are pulled in from source sites like bedandbreakfast.com as well as from Google and Flickr. While these images can provide a quick glimpse of something while saving users from navigating to another Web page, some of the results weren’t accurate. For example, when I searched for tennis in Washington, D.C., a tennis program that I didn’t know about called “Tennis at Shiloh” was listed in results. But four out of six photos showed images of Shiloh, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s child of the same name. I called the organization to confirm that it is indeed a real program, but without calling, I would have seen the photos, doubted the quality of the place and looked for another spot to play tennis.

A “What’s Nearby” function is designed to help people expand their activity searches. It takes the address of a selected activity and suggests other things nearby like places to go for dinner or where to listen to live music.

Unfortunately, Goby doesn’t let you build an itinerary. So if you find a few possible activities for a weekend trip to Williamsburg, Va., and then use “What’s Nearby” to find a pub for lunch, a restaurant for dinner and a bed-and-breakfast for the night, you can’t save all of these findings using Goby. The company says it plans to incorporate these features in the near future.

Goby would be incredibly helpful if it had a mobile app. This Sunday when I was across town from my house and had an unexpected block of free time, I could have used Goby to find a nearby art exhibit or a spot for apple picking. Goby says it is working on an iPhone app, which it expects to release later this year.

If you get lucky with Goby, you’ll find activities that let you do as its name says: Go, be and enjoy your surrounding area. But the site’s results need to be much more accurate for me to start relying on it full time.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Microsoft Packs The New Zune HD With Bells, Whistles And Plenty of Style

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:58:03 +0000

At long last, Microsoft has made a portable media player that you can be proud to carry around: the Zune HD.

This fourth-generation Zune (Zune.net) is ultra thin and has a stunningly vivid 3.3-inch touch screen that covers most of its surface, doing away with the old device’s touchpad. It comes in one small size rather than the older large and small versions, and has capacities of 16 and 32 gigabytes for $220 and $290, respectively.

[ See post to watch video ]

The Zune HD does a nice job of integrating and artistically displaying content about an artist, song or album whenever possible. It has an acceptable built-in browser that surfs the Web using a Wi-Fi connection, and a customizable Quickplay menu on the home screen that displays your content using tiny, stylish tiles. The corresponding Zune Marketplace finally offers movies—about 500 for renting or buying, half of which have HD resolution. And a $90 docking station works with the device to display its HD content on your HDTV.

Given all the improvements of this new Zune, it’s a shame that this makeover stopped short of revamping its commerce system, which is still too confusing. Rather than inviting newcomers to the Zune and its online store by allowing them to use real money to buy content, it is still tied to the points system made popular by Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox gaming console. In this gamer-friendly system, the cost of one song is 79 points, roughly the equivalent of a dollar, and users must buy points in buckets ranging from 400 for $5 to 5,000 for $62.50. People who are trying to watch their budgets don’t need the hassle of calculating points per purchase. And Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle e-reader and Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes Store have proved that using dollars and an uncomplicated one-click system is a successful strategy.

The way I prefer to get the most out of the Zune system is by using the Zune Pass for $15 monthly. This charge allows free continuous streaming of music from any computer’s browser as long as you log in, and includes 10 free MP3 downloads a month that are yours to keep even if you bail on using the Zune software. The Zune Pass lets you listen to Smart DJ playlists that can be built in one of three ways: using your own library; using a mix of Marketplace content and music from your library; or using only songs from the Marketplace. These also can be set to last for a certain amount of time—say for a 30-minute jog or a two-hour party.

I created several Smart DJ playlists including one using Dierks Bentley as the seed artist from which other suggestions were generated. This country singer was a good test for the Zune software because Mr. Bentley’s music blends new and old country sounds. I set the Smart DJ to produce a mix using only content from Marketplace and it returned a great list that included songs from newer group, Little Big Town, as well as older stuff like Joe Diffie’s “John Deere Green.” Any Smart DJ list can be dragged onto the Zune HD.

Apple’s iPod Touch is the Zune HD’s biggest rival and its iTunes Store has much more content in all categories compared with Zune Marketplace. But let’s put music, movies, TV shows, podcasts and music videos aside and say we’re satisfied with the amount of content offered by Zune Marketplace.

One of the iPod Touch’s best features is its ability to access Apple’s App Store, a catalog of 75,000 applications. The Zune HD only dips its pinky toe into a pool where Apple is already swimming laps: Only nine apps can be downloaded from the Zune Marketplace (all are free). They’re colorful and simple to use, but nine apps won’t be enough to compete head on with the iPod Touch.

The Zune HD uses Quickplay (shown on second player from left) to instantly display certain content.

It would be a real boon to Zune if it somehow inherited the gaming genes of Microsoft’s already-established Xbox, especially considering how Apple has heavily marketed the iPod Touch as a portable gaming system. Microsoft will only say that later this year Zune will offer apps for Twitter and Facebook as well as 3-D games like “Project Gotham Racing: Ferrari Edition.”

The only same-capacity model in the Zune HD and iPod Touch is the 32-gigabyte, which costs $290 and $299, respectively. The Zune HD is smaller than the iPod Touch so its organic light-emitting-diode touch screen is 3.3 inches compared with the Touch’s 3.5-inch screen. The Zune fits easily in any pocket and is just 0.35-inch thick. A thin horizontal button on the face of the device takes you to the home screen, and a hidden button on the left side pulls up an on-screen menu for volume and playback controls—or just tap the screen when content is playing. It doesn’t have a speaker like the iPod Touch, so you’ll always need earbuds to hear anything that’s playing.

Quickplay is one of my favorite features on the Zune HD. It uses tiny tiles to visually represent your content in four categories: currently playing; anything pinned (or labeled with a shortcut tile) to Quickplay; a history of recently opened content; and anything that’s new to the player. This includes all of your photos, videos, music, Web pages and apps. I easily pinned AllThingsD.com, a “Saturday Night Live” video and a favorite photo to the Quickplay menu. Clever animation sends this menu to the background of the home screen or swiftly pulls it into the foreground when needed.

I rented and downloaded the movie “Girl with a Pearl Earring” and opted to pay 360 points for the HD version rather than paying 240 points for the standard-definition version. A helpful on-screen explanation described the advantages of each according to where it would be played. Movie rentals last for 14 days or 24 hours after you first press play.

Listening to music on the Zune HD is a lot of fun—and even educational. Whenever the screen goes idle while playing a song, large images of the artist and album cover fill the entire screen while text—album name, artist name, song name—scrolls across these images. With one touch, I saw a list of other albums and songs by that artist, an artist biography, related artists, and pictures of the artist. This is a lot more interesting than staring at one image on the screen, and I learned a lot of new information about musicians I’ve been listening to for years.

The newly added Web browser on the Zune HD gets the job done, but has downsides. Its on-screen keyboard for entering names of Web pages has very small keys and doesn’t use predictive typing to fix your mistakes. Some Web pages rendered normally on the browser, but a couple—like Georgetown.edu—looked normal only when I turned the Zune HD horizontally.

As with other Zunes, this Zune HD has a radio receiver and now uses HD radio for finding more stations with clearer signals. If you like a song, an on-screen button tags it for buying and downloading immediately or later.

The Zune HD is a great-looking little player, and users will especially appreciate its Quickplay menu, rich collection of artist information and mesmerizing screen. If its points system was scrapped and its Zune Marketplace was filled with more content, I’d like it better.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Bluetooth Headsets That Up the Chic Factor

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:08:04 +0000

The cover of Wired magazine’s August issue showed Brad Pitt wearing a Bluetooth headset with the words, “Ditch the headset. He can barely pull it off—and you are not him.”

[ See post to watch video ]

Fashionable or not, more people are wearing these wireless headsets for making phone calls in the car and in everyday life. This week, I reviewed two that look stylish enough that you won’t mind being seen wearing them: Plantronics Inc.’s Discovery 975 (Plantronics.com) and Aliph’s Jawbone Prime (Jawbone.com).

These Bluetooth headsets cost $130 each and use the best technology from their respective companies, including impressive-sounding features like AudioIQ 2, WindSmart, NoiseAssassin 2.0 and an Acoustic Voice Activity Detector. Each headset aims to deliver clearer incoming and outgoing sound.

After using these two headsets in an office, while walking through noisy city streets and as I drove a car with its windows open, I found that I liked the Plantronics Discovery 975 more than the Jawbone Prime. It felt more comfortable and stable in my ear, and its longer boom fit my face better than the Jawbone Prime’s stubby build. I was able to hear people more clearly while using the Plantronics (PLT) earpiece. But on the other end of the call, friends said the Jawbone Prime did a better job of muffling noise.

The Plantronics Discovery 975 also has something that the Jawbone Prime doesn’t have: a carrying case that holds the earpiece and charges it on the go. This charging case can triple the device’s talk time from five to 15 hours, and it holds its charge for a week on standby. A display on the case shows how much battery remains both in the charged case and on the earpiece itself when it’s held in the case.

Aliph’s Jawbone Prime

I liked using this case because it meant I didn’t have to think so often about charging my headset. It also gave me a place to keep the small Discovery 975 earpiece, making it harder to lose in the bottom of a purse or large work bag. Though people who don’t carry briefcases or purses wouldn’t likely use this case, it’s convenient to have the option.

None of the Jawbone models come with carrying cases, though stores like Best Buy sell some cases that will hold Jawbone headsets. In the future, Aliph says it plans to make its own cases that will hold and charge its Jawbone headsets.

Aliph’s Jawbone has always been one of the most stylish Bluetooth headsets, thanks to its compact form factor and disguised buttons. The Jawbone Prime follows suit with a design that makes it appear slightly smaller than its predecessor. It comes in seven colors, including four especially bright “EarCandy” hues: Drop Me a Lime, Lilac You Mean It, ‘Yello! and Frankly Scarlet. The Prime maintains the original Jawbone’s namesake design feature: If worn properly, it touches your face near your jawbone and removes background noise. But a new feature also uses sound to detect the speaker’s voice and eliminate extraneous noise, so the headset doesn’t always need to touch the face.

The design of the Plantronics Discovery 975 ups the company’s chic factor by replacing its former model’s triangular boom with an elegant boom made of a single thin metallic sliver. It reminded me more of jewelry than a tech gadget. Like the Jawbone models, it looks less geeky because buttons are disguised, and it doesn’t emit a blinking blue light while in use—an improvement for Plantronics. The Discovery 975 comes only in graphite, though AT&T (T) stores will carry it in silver.

I started testing the Plantronics Discovery 975 and Jawbone Prime from my quiet office, without any distracting background noise. There, the Plantronics headset sounded better than the Jawbone, making my voice sound crisper, according to the person on the other end of line; likewise, his voice sounded louder to me. He also said he couldn’t tell I was using a headset while I was on the Discovery 975, but definitely knew I was on a headset while I used the Jawbone Prime.

The Plantronics Discovery 975

Next, I walked along the streets of busy downtown Washington, D.C., chatting on each headset while standing steps away from the squeaky sound of car brakes and taxis honking. Here, the Jawbone did a better job of fading that street noise into the background, compared to the Plantronics headset.

I also took turns using the Jawbone Prime and Plantronics Discovery 975 while driving through the city with all four car windows open to test the antiwind capabilities of each. Here again, the Jawbone Prime sounded better to the person on the other end, though the Plantronics didn’t sound bad. My friend said it would have been impossible to guess where I was while making the phone call using the Jawbone Prime. But from my end of the call, I was able to hear slightly better while using the Plantronics Discover 975.

While using the Jawbone, I accidentally hung up on friends in midconversation a few different times because the place where I pressed to secure the earpiece in my ear was also the Talk button. I tried each of the Jawbone Prime’s three fit earbuds, three round earbuds and its included earloop, but none of these felt as comfortable as the Plantronics headset.

Both headsets are capable of using Multipoint technology, allowing them to connect to two Bluetooth devices at once. They’re each lightweight at .28 ounce and .35 ounce for the Plantronics and Jawbone, respectively; the Plantronics case weighs 1.27 ounces. According to each company, the Plantronics headset takes one-and-a-half hours to fully charge and lasts for five hours of talk time; the Jawbone takes 50 minutes to fully charge and lasts four and a half hours of talk time.

When both headsets were in front of me and I wanted to make a hands-free call, I reached for the Plantronics Discovery 975 because of its overall fit and feel in my ear. It stayed in place using a soft, gel insert that wasn’t uncomfortable, even after long conversations. Its sound quality was good enough for me.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

A BlackBerry Priced Right For Newcomers

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:52:03 +0000

Web browsing and email have comfortably migrated to mobile handhelds like the iPhone, BlackBerry and Palm (PALM) Pre. But many of these gadgets still cost a lot compared with cellphones that come free with renewed two-year contracts.

This week, I tested a new BlackBerry that costs less than any other BlackBerry did at launch—that is, if you buy it at the right place. Research in Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry Curve 8520 costs just $49 at Wal-Mart (WMT)—or $130 if you buy it at T-Mobile. Both prices are with two-year T-Mobile contracts.

[ See post to watch video ]

The BlackBerry Curve has been one of the company’s most popular models. All iterations of the Curve combine a full QWERTY keyboard with a sleeker, more stylish look than bigger BlackBerry models like the Bold. And Curves typically cost less than their larger counterparts. In February, RIM refreshed its Curve brand for the first time in over two years with the 8900. This model was a real upgrade for Curve users, thanks to a brighter screen, faster performance and flatter keys that were easier to press. But six months later, it still costs as much as $199 (after rebate)—a steep asking price considering how some older 8300-series Curves are offered for around $50 with two-year contracts.

This newest $49 Curve 8520 lowers that price barrier. Its monthly T-Mobile service plans are also relatively inexpensive, starting at $55 for voice and data (not including MMS or SMS messaging).

It has two features never before seen on a BlackBerry. First, in place of a trackball or scroll wheel, this Curve uses a trackpad—a mini version of those used for mouse navigation on laptops.

Second, it has designated physical buttons for playing, pausing and skipping ahead or back within media like videos and music. These rubbery buttons are built into the top edge of the BlackBerry.

I like the look of the Curve 8520—especially how the surface covering its screen extends down to the trackpad and its four surrounding buttons, giving it a smooth facade. It comes in two colors, black and frost (I used the black). Its low price, alone, will be enough to draw customers.

But something about the way its keyboard and navigational keys worked felt cheap. Letter keys felt light and hollow while the Send, Menu, Escape and End keys around the trackpad clicked as I touched them.

The specifications of this BlackBerry tell the tale more specifically. Its 320×240 pixel screen looks faded next to that of the Curve 8900, which is 480×360. The blinking red indicator light at the top front corner of all BlackBerrys is a barely noticeable dot on this device.

And its camera is only two megapixels, not 3.2 megapixels like on the 8900, and is the first on a BlackBerry not to have a built-in flash. Also, it doesn’t run on the fast 3G network, though it uses Wi-Fi and automatically connects to trusted networks when in range of them.

First-time smartphone owners may not notice or care about these small details, but veteran BlackBerry users will pick up on them right away.

The Curve 8520 incorporates useful physical features found on previous models like right- and left-side convenience keys that work as handy shortcuts. It comes with a 1-gigabyte microSD memory card so users don’t have to buy their own before loading this device with photos, music and videos.

A strip of rubber runs around the Curve’s edge, covering up and smoothing over its convenience keys and volume buttons. This rugged addition isn’t visible from the front of the BlackBerry and it will probably go a long way in preventing nicks and dings. The word “Curve” is imprinted on the back of the BlackBerry, proudly branding this model.

The navigational trackpad is a cinch to use and moves the cursor up, down, right and left with very little effort. To select, one needs only to press in on the trackpad just as with the trackball. Unlike the trackball, which rolls in place and can get stuck once in a great while, the trackpad doesn’t have any moving parts.

The physical media keys on the Curve 8520’s top edge work to instantly start playing media from any screen, like a music video that I watched. If you were to use your BlackBerry as your sole portable media player, these would be more valuable. And their position on the top of the Curve makes them easy to reach if the device is in a pocket or purse.

In my everyday usage scenarios, I usually forgot about these shortcut buttons and just used the trackpad to find and select a track or video for playing.

BlackBerry’s App World store for applications that users can load onto the device still only offers 2,000 apps, compared to Apple’s (AAPL) 65,000. This means that for now, this new Curve can’t be enhanced with as many outside programs, which is a real downside. And if you do download a lot of apps, or music or videos or photos, you may have to get a bigger memory card.

The Curve 8520 isn’t made for BlackBerry fanatics. But it’s a good entry-level BlackBerry for users who still haven’t let go of their basic cellphones. At Wal-Mart’s $49 price, it’s hard to beat.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

The Swiss Army Knife of Portable Videos

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:50:04 +0000

Every once in a while I watch an online video that’s good enough to send to a friend, share on Twitter and Facebook or save its URL so I can watch it again later. The final piece of the puzzle would be moving the video onto a mobile device to have it with me wherever I went.

Enter RealPlayer SP beta (realplayer.com), the latest in RealNetworks Inc.’s (RNWK) long line of media players that the company has churned out since 1995. RealPlayer SP—the SP stands for social and portable—is a free download that, once installed, grabs videos from the Web, converts them to the right format and transfers them to over a dozen portable devices. While other software programs perform two or just one of these tasks, the RealPlayer SP’s trio of talent makes it like a digital Swiss army knife.

[ See post to watch video ]

After using the RealPlayer for moving several videos of all kinds to an iPhone, BlackBerry Curve 8900 and Palm Pre, I felt like I had more control over my portable devices and the media they held. And the freedom of knowing that this player is compatible with almost anything—including Apple (AAPL) and Palm (PALM) devices, Research in Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerrys, T-Mobile’s G1 and Sidekick, Nokia’s (NOK) N97 and certain basic cellphones—is a major plus.

Behavior Problem

My biggest problem with using the RealPlayer SP has to do with my own behavior. Most of the videos I watch online and share with friends are less than five minutes long. This means that grabbing, converting and transferring videos to a portable device using the RealPlayer SP—albeit a relatively quick process—could easily take more time than the length of the video, itself. And many of the longer videos that I would want to move to a BlackBerry or iPhone are copyright-protected and thus can’t be downloaded by the RealPlayer SP.

Another factor is that more devices now have their own built-in app stores for downloading content to the device, without plugging into a computer for transfers like with the RealPlayer SP. The iPod touch, for example, can now download movies, music videos and TV shows over Wi-Fi thanks to a recent $10 software upgrade.

Mac Version Coming Soon

The RealPlayer SP works only on Windows PCs right now; a Mac version is due out by the end of this year. Likewise, it doesn’t work on Apple’s Safari browser but does work on Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google’s (GOOG) Chrome browser; I used all three with success.

If you’re not interested in using the RealPlayer SP for transferring videos to portable devices, you can still use it for downloading videos, saving them onto your computer and sharing them with friends via Twitter, Facebook or email. Tiny icons representing each of these sharing options appear in-line beside freshly downloaded videos. I shared videos of last week’s Congressional Luau at the White House via Facebook and Twitter, but the icon to share videos via Twitter doesn’t automatically shrink URLs to fit into a tweet. I shrunk the URLs myself, but this took an extra step¹.

And though I’ve mostly focused on the RealPlayer SP’s ability to grab, convert and transfer (RealNetworks calls these tools the Downloader feature in the player), it also works as its own media player or helps you discover new content.

RealPlayer SP Beta downloads, converts and transfers videos from the Web to a variety of portable devices.

A premium version called RealPlayer Plus SP is available for $40. Premium features include DVD burning, DVD playback (if your computer can’t play DVDs) and video conversion to a special format called h.264—though the free version performs these conversions for videos being moved to Apple devices.

I jumped around the Web visiting sites and playing videos, which prompted the RealPlayer SP to display a small “Download This Video” message above videos that aren’t copyright-protected. Downloading videos worked on most sites, including AllThingsD.com, Slate, YouTube, Salon and CNET. As expected, I wasn’t so lucky with videos from the New York Times, BBC and Hulu, which hosts loads of TV shows and music videos. That’s because videos from these sites were copyright-protected and didn’t allow for downloading.

A Glitch

In one instance with a WSJ.com video, only the short ad that played before the video was downloaded, even though the download prompt indicated that the WSJ video was obtainable using RealPlayer SP. RealNetworks says this is a glitch it knows about and plans to correct.

The RealPlayer SP’s ability to download videos and transfer them to devices, rather than just copying them onto computers, forced me to be choosier about the videos that I downloaded due to the limited memory of the devices. Because of this, I wished the RealPlayer SP Downloader had a better built-in way to discover downloadable content. Currently, a link to something called the RealGuide pulls up suggestions, but I had a hard time finding clips there that I wanted to download. RealNetworks says it plans to improve the video-discovery process in the future, including adding things like YouTube keyword searches built right into the Downloader.

The Downloader Window

When I did find videos I liked, I clicked on the prompt to download the clip, found the clip in a tiny Downloader window, and chose to move the clip to a device (there’s a list of all available devices) or share it via Twitter, Facebook or email. Transfer times depend on the length of the video.

RealNetworks provides simple instructions on making sure your device is set to transfer when plugged in. For example, BlackBerrys must be set to mass-storage mode, Palm Pres should be set to USB mode and Apple devices synchronize with the iTunes library, where RealPlayer’s converted videos are sent for transferring to iPhones and iPods.

RealPlayer SP can be a real help when it comes to putting the content that you want on your portable device. Its ability to assist from start to finish—finding videos, converting and transferring them—saves time and avoids confusion. To succeed, RealPlayer SP needs to do a better job of helping people find worthwhile videos to transfer, or they’ll stop using it after just a few tries.

Corrections and Amplifications

¹ Real Networks says its RealPlayer SP Beta’s Twitter video sharing capability has an automatic URL-shortening tool built in. This week’s Mossberg Solution product said the product lacked such a feature, because it never activated itself in our tests.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Playing Do, Re, Mi With Wii

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 01:30:02 +0000

This holiday season, instead of gathering around the piano for traditional sing-alongs, some families will gather around their television sets and game consoles to make music — by playing games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

Now, there’s a new option for these digital performers: Wii Music from Nintendo. This $50 game was designed for Nintendo’s hugely popular $250 Wii gaming system, of which there were more than two million sold in November alone, according to the company.

Wii uses motion-sensitive controllers to move characters in games. A game of tennis in Wii Sports, for example, works when you swing the Wii remote like you would a tennis racket. The Wii’s simple graphics and adorable Miis (on-screen cartoons designed to look like you) appeal to the non-gaming set, inciting parents to challenge their kids to games of Wii Golf and spurring senior centers to start Wii Bowling leagues.

People playing Wii Music use the remote as a musical instrument.

Nintendo carries this cutesy, user-friendly style of video gaming over to Wii Music, where the remote works as a musical instrument, cheerful songs abound and a white-wigged character named Sebastian Tute gives instructions. Along with Sebastian, the Tutes — a musically gifted group of Miis that would give the Von Trapps a run for their money — appear and demonstrate how to play various types of music and instruments.

Though it’s comparably priced, Wii Music differs from games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band in many ways, and there are understandable reasons why a frequent user of those games would shun Sebastian and the Tutes. For starters, teenage fans of Guitar Hero and Rock Band who like the games’ variety of popular songs may gripe about Wii Music’s selection, which includes the likes of “My Grandfather’s Clock” and Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”; none of Wii Music’s songs are more recent than the late 1980s.

Perhaps the biggest difference is that, in Wii Music, you aren’t using a few fake instruments like a guitar or drum set. You are instead manipulating the Wii controller to simulate one of many instruments depicted on screen. There’s even one “instrument” called Dog Suit — a dog suit that, when worn by a Mii, uses canine barks in place of notes. Another key difference is that, aside from one game, Wii never penalizes you for playing an incorrect note in a song, because you can’t play a bad note — every press of an imaginary key or strum of an invisible string plays the correct note.

A musically gifted group of Miis — on-screen personas representing players — demonstrate how to play various types of music and instruments.

This “no mistakes” environment is a little bit like a sports league in which every kid gets a trophy. Wii Music got a bit too saccharine at times, like when I scored a lousy 43 out of 100 points in a game and Sebastian Tute assured me that points didn’t much matter so long as I played the way I wanted to play. But for people who are learning about music and don’t want to worry so much about playing the right note, OK: Wii Music fosters a freedom to experiment with style by allowing users to improvise and explore variations of songs.

Outside of the Games section, you are the judge of your own performance, rating it however you see fit, or not at all. Wii Music is divided into Jam, Lessons, Videos and Games. My favorite section was Games, which included conducting a song in Mii Maestro, hitting the right note at just the right moment in Handbell Harmony and arranging Miis from lowest to highest note in Pitch Perfect.

The more activities I completed, the more instruments and songs were unlocked and available for me to use; off the shelf, each copy of Wii Music starts out with 27 instruments, but over 60 can be unlocked in the game. In Lessons, Sebastian Tute explained the importance of each instrument in a song and the role that it played. Before I played drums in a reggae song, he explained that reggae drums lay down an eight-beat rhythm. In the Japanese style of music, I learned how to play and recorded myself playing all four parts of a song: taiko drum, bells, shamisen, a three-string guitar-like instrument that puts bass in the song, and flute.

If you’d like, you can opt to save your performances as music videos when you’re finished. These include your mistakes — err, improvisations — and some other funny effects like views of the audience members as they bob their heads listening to you play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Album covers can be made for these videos, and the finished product can be sent to other friends’ Wiis if they also have Wii Music. Those friends can play over parts of your song and send the revised video back to you. While you’re playing songs, small black notes with faces on them called Be-Bops appear in the bottom right of the screen and work as a metronome would, steadily keeping the beat.

But cool accessories like guitars and microphones that are used to play music with other games aren’t available for Wii Music; instead, you must use your trusty Wii remote and Nunchuk to make one of four motions: piano-type, guitar-type, trumpet-type or violin-type. These four motions work to play a variety of instruments in different music styles, but some are easier to pretend to use than others.

While playing the imaginary trumpet I held the remote like one, pressing its 1 and 2 buttons like trumpet keys. But playing the piano uses the same motion as that which is used for playing drums — a downward hitting motion with the remote and Nunchuk — and this felt more like using a hammer than playing a piano. If you own a $90 Wii Balance Board, you can use it in drum mode in addition to the remote and Nunchuk. I tried this briefly, and it was fun to use the balance board in place of drum pedals.

Wii Music isn’t meant to replace a music lesson, but it’s intended to get people thinking about music and their own music style, without fear of making mistakes. It’s fun, unintimidating and will even teach you a thing or two. Just steer clear of the Dog Suit, if you can help it.

Discuss: Share reviews of videogames and systems in Journal Community.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Mossberg Solution will return, Wednesday, Jan. 14. Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

Helping Your Data Decamp to a Mac

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 01:52:02 +0000

With the holidays fast approaching, plenty of shoppers are heading toward their local Apple stores with plans to buy a new home computer. Amid all this excitement, it’s worth taking time to consider how to transfer content from the old Windows PC to a shiny new Mac.

Apple (AAPL) has promoted this PC-to-Mac switching concept heavily over recent years — particularly with its “I’m a Mac” commercials, which bluntly compare the Windows and Mac operating systems. Windows Vista has been a source of consternation all its own, and some people have opted for the Mac rather than risking problems with a Vista PC. Apple recently reported that about 50% of the people buying Macs in the Apple stores are new to the Mac.

[ See post to watch video ]

If you buy a new Mac from the Apple store, staffers there (”Geniuses,” as they call themselves) will transfer your files over to the new machine free. This process takes place in the store, though Apple says it generally isn’t a “while you wait” task. If you buy a Mac elsewhere, such as online or at Best Buy (BBY), Apple stores charge $50 for this transfer.

But some people aren’t comfortable with the idea of handing a computer filled with their personal files over to a stranger. If this is the case for you, some other viable options include copying your old PC’s data onto a portable hard drive or onto discs that are compatible with the new computer. If several home computers are networked, files can be transferred onto a drive accessible by all the machines.

This week, I tried yet another method, copying data from a Windows machine over to a new MacBook using a special transfer cable from Belkin International Inc. The aptly named Switch-to-Mac Cable plugs into USB ports on two computers. It came out a month ago and is available for $50 at places like Best Buy and Apple stores. Like other transferring methods, it moves only files and not programs or applications, such as Microsoft Word (MSFT). (Windows applications can run on a Mac using programs like Boot Camp, Fusion or Parallels.)

The Switch-to-Mac Cable makes it easier to transfer data from a Windows PC to a Mac.

I tested the Belkin Switch-to-Mac Cable by transferring data to a new Apple MacBook from my two-year-old Lenovo ThinkPad X60, which runs Vista. (Most people will transfer from an older PC that doesn’t run Vista.)

After installing the software included and connecting the transfer cable to both the Mac and Windows PC, short, on-screen prompts walked me through the steps for copying data from one computer to the other. On one instructional screen, I checked boxes to indicate what I wanted to transfer, including documents, pictures, music, videos, Internet Explorer bookmarks, desktop wallpaper and desktop files. Here, I could also opt to transfer a custom folder as well as personal information from Outlook like email, contacts and calendar.

I liked Belkin’s simple approach, including unintimidating software and a straightforward cable with a glowing, white indicator. But the files didn’t all properly transfer from my Windows laptop to my Mac. Most notably, the software prompted me to move files on my desktop, but the cable moved only five of the 23 selected files stored there.

Also, I use Mozilla’s Firefox as my default browser, but Belkin doesn’t move Firefox bookmarks to the Mac. Still, my Internet Explorer bookmarks moved over into Safari, Apple’s browser. Belkin explained that it left out Firefox transfers, instead focusing on programs like Safari that come installed on Macs. Even without a cable, Firefox itself will export bookmarks to be moved to the Mac in just a few simple steps.

I had no problems transferring everything else, and things like photos and music moved to the Mac appeared there in logical places. For example, photos stored in the “My Pictures” folder on my Windows PC automatically moved over to iPhoto on the Mac and retained their original folder labels in iPhoto.

In most cases, newly transferred files were clearly labeled on the Mac in folders marked “Windows PC.” After my initial transfer, I used the cable for additional transfers, and the data moved in those follow-ups were labeled “Windows PC-2″ and so on. When my email, contacts and calendar transferred from my Windows Live Mail desktop client, I wasn’t sure where this data had moved within Apple Mail because I didn’t see a “Windows PC” folder. A Belkin representative explained that files transferred to Apple Mail are stored in an “Import” folder.

If your transfer doesn’t work perfectly the first time, try moving stray files into a folder that transferred successfully in a previous attempt. I did this with some of my desktop files when they didn’t move over and it worked, albeit with an extra step.

Over the phone, I walked through numerous troubleshooting scenarios with Belkin to figure out why my desktop files didn’t transfer over to the new Mac, but nothing helped. Belkin said it hadn’t seen my desktop transfer problem in its tests.

I was frustrated to find that Belkin doesn’t offer much in the way of detailed instructions for users, such as a FAQs Web site or troubleshooting steps for common hiccups. Its simplicity is an asset, but when performing an important task like transferring data, I’d rather have the option of knowing more than less. Belkin says it plans to add more help for users in the future.

As its name indicates, the Belkin Switch-to-Mac Cable isn’t designed to transfer data from one Mac to another, nor from one Windows PC to another. Nor will it transfer data from a Mac to a Windows PC. Additionally, all hidden directories and system directories are ignored, as are all files with the following extensions: .exe, .com, .dll, .scr, .ini, .db, .lnk.

Not tested was a competing product from Detto Technologies, the $50 Move2Mac, which comes in two versions: One enables transfers from older PCs without USB ports, the other enables transfers from PCs with USB ports that are running Windows 98, Millennium, 2000 or XP — but not Vista, which the Belkin enables.

If you’re moving away from a Windows PC, Belkin’s Switch-to-Mac Cable is one tool that can make this transition easier.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com