The Mossberg Solution » Windows XP

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.

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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

Windows 7 Upgrade Made Easy

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:16:03 +0000

Windows 7, Microsoft Corp.’s new operating system due out next week, is giving the company a lot to be happy about. By early reports, it’s fast, easy on the eyes and fixes most of the problems that plagued its predecessor, Vista. But while Microsoft (MSFT) employees are doing the dance of joy, some consumers are confused and scared about the prospect of upgrading their computers to Windows 7.

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The upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 is particularly daunting because it requires first wiping the computer’s hard disk to perform what’s called a “custom” or “clean” install. This clears out the old operating system—as well as all of your programs, files and settings. To save personal files, XP users must back them up first, typically on an external hard disk, then transfer them back. Programs, however, will be lost altogether, so users must re-install these using their original CDs or installation files, and then also re-install all the program updates they’ve accumulated over the years.

People upgrading to Windows 7 from Vista may have it easier. In some common cases, they can upgrade to Windows 7 “in place,” which means they can save programs, files and settings right where they were. But since Vista was such a dud, many Windows users still use XP.

This week, I tested a program that tries to make the upgrade to Windows 7 just as easy for XP users as it is for some Vista users. I tested Laplink Software Inc.’s PCmover Windows 7 Upgrade Assistant (http://bit.ly/JeafI), a $15 program that saves programs, files and settings on the computer in a place that won’t be affected by the installation of Windows. This eliminates the hassle of using an external hard disk or re-installing programs. The company uses the analogy of a moving van to load up your computer’s information, storing it locally until it can be unloaded again on the same PC with a new operating system.

I tested this program using an Acer Aspire One netbook running Windows XP. It took me two hours from start to finish, a three-part process of installing the Upgrade Assistant, installing Windows 7, and then re-installing the PCmover program. I followed instructions and the process of upgrading was really quite easy, showing me the programs and files (photos, videos and documents) I had on my old operating system.

Afterward, I did have to dig around on my computer a little bit to make some adjustments, like fixing Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes music program so it opened in Windows 7. And I found it a little annoying that, throughout the process, the Upgrade Assistant tried to get me to buy more software programs, like RegistryBooster and DiskImage, by saying the programs would better prepare my old PC for the switch.

Laplink’s $15 PCmover Windows 7 Upgrade Assistant helps smooth the way for some XP users to upgrade to Windows 7.

The Upgrade Assistant also works with PCs running Vista. Microsoft offers an in-place upgrade option from Vista to 7, but this mainly works for people transferring from an identical version of Vista to an identical version of 7, like Windows Vista 32-bit Home Premium to Windows 7 32-bit Home Premium.

This program won’t magically fix every upgrade issue you face. If you bought your computer many years ago, it may not be able to run Windows 7 at all, because the hardware may be insufficient.

Another problem is that most netbooks and some laptops don’t come with built-in disk drives, making it a challenge to install Windows 7, since it comes on a DVD. I had to call around town to find a Radio Shack selling an external DVD disk drive that plugged into my Acer netbook via a USB cord.

Some security software programs, like that from McAfee Inc. (MFE) and Symantec Corp.’s (SYMC) Norton Antivirus, may not transfer over to Windows 7, though you should be able to manually install them after the migration.

When first installing the Upgrade Assistant, you can choose to do a full migration (files, settings and programs); just move files and settings; move files only; or perform a custom migration. You also can specify which user accounts to include or exclude and you can opt to exclude certain types of files, like temporary files.

After the PCmover program assessed the contents of my PC, it explained that it was packing my content into a “moving van”—a file for holding the content—and offered to break the moving van’s content into smaller parts for people who have storage limitations while transferring.

It’s a little nerve-wracking to think about transferring your computer’s entire contents over without being able to see where the files are going. At least on an external hard disk, you feel like the files are stored on something tangible and accessible—even if some step in the migration goes terribly wrong and the laptop never starts again, however unlikely.

After installing Windows 7 and then re-installing the PCmover program, I was finished. The next time I turned on the PC, a program called StartUp immediately started to run. This appeared to show me a list of programs that automatically ran on my old operating system but which PCmover disabled from running automatically on Windows 7. A quick step allowed programs that I selected to automatically run again.

One thing to note as you upgrade from Windows XP is that your PC may not be equipped to deliver the full Windows 7 experience. Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Beta, Microsoft’s own tool, analyzes what will and won’t work properly when the newest version of Windows installs. The Upgrade Advisor warned me that Windows Aero, the name used for some of the gorgeous visuals in Windows 7, wasn’t capable of working with my netbook’s graphics adapter. Sure enough, Aero’s ability to show tiny, pop-up previews of programs that are running in your taskbar as you hover over them didn’t work. Instead, the names of the files and programs appeared in text-only preview panes.

The downloadable version of the Upgrade Assistant is now $15 for one license to use on one PC—a special pre-release price before Windows 7 is available Oct. 22. After that, the downloadable version will cost $20 from Laplink.com for one license to use on one PC. If you would rather not download this program, it also will be available for purchase in retail stores by the end of October. Of course, you also will have to buy a copy of Windows 7; the version most consumers will want is called Home Premium and it costs $120 as an upgrade.

If you are considering Windows 7 and you are currently using Windows XP on a relatively new PC, a simpler and better-organized migration process is worth the nominal price of Laplink’s PCmover Windows 7 Upgrade Assistant.

Edited by Walter. S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Countertrend: H-P Says Please Print Often

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:18:02 +0000

If your company makes printers but general trends are leaning toward using less paper and moving digital content to e-readers and smartphones, what can you do? Hewlett-Packard’s solution is to find new ways to get people to print more.

The $399 H-P Photosmart Premium All-in-One with Touch-Smart Web (hp.com/go/touchprinting) will print, copy, fax and scan like other all-in-ones. But it connects to the Internet using built-in Wi-Fi and displays customized Web applications on its 4.33-inch touch screen. These apps are designed to promote printing in any way possible, including photos from Snapfish, Sudoku puzzles, movie tickets from Fandango, coupons, maps from Google (GOOG) Maps, coloring-book pages and news articles—all without using a computer.

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The print apps are part of the new H-P App Studio, H-P’s (HPQ) answer to the flurry of app stores—Apple’s (AAPL) App Store, RIM’s (RIMM) BlackBerry World, Android Marketplace, Palm’s (PALM) App Catalog and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Zune Marketplace—that ease the process of downloading onto mobile devices. A “Get More” icon on the printer’s touch screen presents descriptions of available apps. There are currently 15 available for download onto your printer, and more will be added in coming months.

The Photosmart All-in-One connects to Web apps that promote printing of everything from photos to tickets.

This printer is designed to work with more than just the H-P App Studio. A downloadable tool called the H-P Photo Print Gadget installs on computers running Windows 7 or Vista (not Windows XP) so people can drag and drop photos to it for printing. PlayStation 3 owners can capture and print screen shots as evidence of their game success. And a long-available free app in Apple’s App Store called H-P iPrint Photo lets iPhone and iPod Touch owners send photos to this and other H-P printers.

The goal of this product is obviously to get people to print more, and in my case, it worked. I used more paper in a week of testing the Photosmart Premium All-in-One than I normally print out in three weeks at my office. The printer quickly churned out dual-sided pages with photos in rich colors.

But the concept of adding apps to a printer while also asking people to become more paper-reliant seems like one step forward, two steps back. I could see this concept working on a thin, stylish printer that could fit neatly on an entryway table, making it a cinch for people to grab maps, movie tickets and coupons on their way out the door. But this is a large, all-in-one machine that takes up some serious space.

And if this all-in-one is truly meant to work without a PC, it should do a better job of letting you interact with pages, like zooming in on a document to preview before printing. In the current document preview screen, the text is too small to read. Likewise, the Google Calendar app printed a nice one-page calendar month view, but I couldn’t zoom in on the print preview to see specific appointments. This forced me to print the page to see its contents, using more ink and more paper.

Other apps are shamelessly begging users to press Print. A Toys and Crafts app made by H-P itself includes paper dolls with cut-out clothes that can be snipped and folded to stay on the doll’s form. For the doll’s face, kids are encouraged to use a photo of themselves that–surprise, surprise—they can print using their all-in-one.

Coupons.com supplies two apps—one for coupons and one for recipes. I browsed through 87 product coupons in my ZIP Code and marked those that I wanted to print using a small check-box on the touch screen. Pressing “Print” compiled three coupons on one piece of paper. Recipes from Coupons.com printed with brightly colored photos of the end result; I’m looking forward to following one for Curried Chicken Salad.

For now, the Google Maps app isn’t ready for prime time: It prints only maps, not directions. H-P says it’s planning to add directions but wouldn’t say when. And a Nickelodeon app couldn’t load on my printer. Some apps took from 10 to 30 seconds to load—precious time when you’re running out the door.

One of the smartest apps, Tabbloid, lets people assemble a personalized tabloid-style print-out of news from a variety of sources like Daily Kos for politics and FanHouse for sports. But this assembling must be done on a computer, thus negating this printer’s no-PC approach. I chose from a list of 10 topics including automotive, celebrity, politics and sports and created a printable Tabbloid that, with one click, was sent wirelessly to the corresponding app on my printer. I printed it out to read during my commute.

I liked using the Photosmart Premium All-in-One’s generous screen for touch gestures like flicking left-to-right through a carousel of icons that represent apps. An on-screen keyboard appeared when I had to type in passwords for things like my Snapfish account.

H-P says it will introduce other products with TouchSmart Web capability and access to the HP App Studio, and one hopes these products will include low-end printers rather than expensive all-in-ones. The apps on the H-P Photosmart Premium All-in-One with TouchSmart Web are user-friendly, but I’m not convinced they’ll incite people to print more things more often.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Family Snapshots in the Splendor of HD

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 01:28:02 +0000

This Thanksgiving, families across the country will gather around the television just as quickly as they gather around the turkey. And with good reason: Many people will be staring at beautiful high-definition TV sets. (According to the Consumer Electronics Association, 47% of U.S. households had HDTVs as of July, a percentage that’s likely to increase as the date for analog-to-digital conversion approaches.) But if Eastman Kodak (EK) has its way, many people will be gathered round the TV this holiday season, gazing at family memories in full HD splendor.

The Kodak Theatre HD Player’s motion-sensing pointer remote works much like a mouse on a TV screen.

This week I tested the Kodak Theatre HD Player, the photo-centric company’s attempt to snag valuable real estate in the living room. This small, black box pulls photos and videos from computers around the house and displays them on an HDTV. It also enables the sending and receiving of photos via Kodak Gallery, and connects to Web-based photos stored on Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, .Mac and others. Podcasts, Internet Radio and updates from news feeds, weather forecasts and stock quotes are also accessible using the HD Player. And it has a terrifically simple motion-sensing remote that works like using a mouse on a TV screen.

But the HD Player isn’t all smiles. Its $299 price doesn’t include any built-in storage for keeping content directly on the device. It currently has no way of accessing HD movies or television shows, nor will it work with Macs. In comparison, Apple’s (AAPL) $229 Apple TV has 40 gigabytes of storage, can access HD television shows and movies via the iTunes Store, and works with Macs and Windows PCs. This is important because as budgets tighten in the current economy, gadgets have to prove their value and versatility more than ever.

After using the Kodak Theatre HD Player with Windows XP and Vista machines over the past week, I can conclude that this device’s interface shines in its simplicity and is a lot of fun to use. Kodak teamed with Hillcrest Labs to make the player’s motion-sensitive remote and corresponding software, which includes satisfying extra features like images that automatically magnify when the remote control’s cursor points at them and icons that make chirping sounds when selected. The remote itself is shaped to rest comfortably in a hand and has three simple buttons and a scroll wheel.

Quick-access memory-card slots for six types of memory cards appear on the box’s front, and two USB ports can connect to digital cameras or USB storage devices.

Currently, the player’s software works directly with Flickr, RadioTime (8,750 radio stations) and FrameChannel, which grants access to various “channels” like Facebook, .Mac, Picasa, People.com news and National Geographic. Kodak says it will incorporate YouTube access in January; I got a sneak peek at the interface for this and it looks well-organized.

Yet the HD Player’s smart combination of software and remote left me wishing it did a bit more. Photo sharing is enabled only via Kodak Gallery, so you can’t use another Web-based account to share photos directly from your TV. Likewise, a blue light on the box slowly blinks only when new Picture Mail (a message containing shared photos) is received on a Kodak Gallery account, not when new photos are added on other sources such as Flickr Photostreams or Facebook pages.

The Home screen of the HD Player shows four categories: Pictures & Videos, Kodak Gallery, Music and Entertainment. Subcategories are where you might guess they would be, for example podcasts are listed under Entertainment. And a tiny Home icon appears in the top right corner of every screen so you can always get Home with one click. The Pictures & Videos category holds photos and videos from a currently selected Windows PC.

An unlimited number of Windows PCs can wirelessly pair with the player as long as they have special Kodak software installed on them. But only one PC’s content can be accessed at a time. I toggled between two paired computers without a problem, but would’ve preferred accessing music and photos from both sources simultaneously.

The HD Player’s motion-sensing pointer remote works much like a Wii remote control. Wherever you move it, a tiny leaf-shaped cursor appears on-screen. A Hide button on the remote will hide the cursor while you watch slideshows. The remote’s Back button is helpful; when pressed, it backs you out of one screen using visual effects that make the screen shrink into the TV as if you were moving backward.

A play button appears on the first photo in a folder so users can select this icon to quickly start slideshows. Whenever the HD Player receives new Kodak Gallery Picture Mail, or a slideshow is created on a connected PC, yellow alert circles appear on the screen to notify users and a number in the middle of these yellow circles indicates how many new items are available for viewing.

Some content on my PCs took a little while to be recognized by the HD Player, including podcasts that I subscribe to on iTunes. When they did show up, both audio and video podcasts played without issue and on-screen playback buttons made them easy to control.

The HD Player uses your photos to create automatically generated slideshows, called Picture Chronicles, once a week. These Picture Chronicles use up to 50 photos from the same time of year in all of your folders, for instance grouping all Thanksgiving photos together from the past five years.

Kodak has plans to make its player Mac-compatible in the future and also hopes to add other partnerships with new types of content following its YouTube announcement early next year.

The Kodak Theatre HD Player does its job well, bringing photos and videos that might otherwise live only on your PC to your big screen HDTV. For the holidays, this device could be a real plus. But Kodak has some work to do to make this a more useful Web-connected tool.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

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

Cull Web Content With Alerts

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:28:02 +0000

It can be hard to find just what you want in the 24-hour news cycle that constantly churns content out online.

One way to find the information you want is by setting up computer-generated alerts. These electronic notifications are relatively simple to use and offer a range of helpful services, from a virtual heads-up when your name is mentioned online to messages about a product’s price suddenly dropping.

For years, I’ve used Google Alerts as a way of keeping track of myself online. If my name is mentioned in a blog or if this column appears on the Web, such as on the site of a newspaper that syndicates it, a Google Alert sends me an email about it. Google Alerts can work for you to find a variety of things, such as telling you if a video of a favorite band popped up online or that a blogger posted something about last night’s episode of “Mad Men.”

In about a month, Google will begin delivering these alerts to users via feeds, as well as emails. Google (GOOG) certainly isn’t alone in the alerts arena, as Yahoo (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT) and AOL (TWX) are also players. This week I tried two small companies that recently joined the mission to help users find the Web content using alerts.

Pinpointing Searches

I tried Alerts.com and Yotify.com, and found worthwhile features in both. While Google Alerts does a good job of finding search terms in news, blogs and videos, Alerts.com and Yotify use forms that are a cinch to fill out and let you pinpoint your searches.

Alerts.com offers to notify users via email, SMS text messages or even voice calls to a cellphone or landline. The site organizes your alerts on a personalized Web page and uses a desktop application called Elertz to tell you when an alert has generated results. I liked this site’s flexibility: It not only gave me different ways to receive notifications, but also enabled a variety of options for time-specific deliveries of alerts.

But Yotify has advantages of its own, including the ability to integrate with FriendFeed and Facebook so friends can offer their recommendations or opinions. It also lets users search for event tickets or items auctioned on eBay (EBAY). And a smart preview panel gives you an idea of the type of results your search will return before you submit the request for an alert.

Viewing Results

For now, Google Alerts and Yotify will send alert notifications only via email, though all three services will let you view your alert results online. All three are free, but SMS alerts sent to a cellphone via Alerts.com may not be, depending on your plan.

All in all, I found there were certain things each service was good at doing. For example, Alerts.com lets me know college football scores when I want them: only after the final score; at the end of each quarter and after the final score; or at the end of each quarter, after the final score and after each time a team scores points. Yotify gave me detailed options in a Craigslist search for furniture, including showing only listings with photos or just those that included the word “sofa” in a title; it will even hunt for a specific price range.

For the person who wants to spend minimal time creating basic alerts, Google Alerts will do the trick. These can be narrowed down to show results that fall into the News, Web, Blogs, Video or Groups categories, or you can perform more-blanketed searches using a Comprehensive category.

Alerts.com offers plenty of simple alerts that require only a bit of scheduling to set up. Each alert appears as a widget that can be expanded, edited or deleted with a simple click, and this page has a clean look with attractive, cohesive graphics.

I didn’t care much for Elertz, the desktop component of Alerts.com, because once installed, it notified me of new Alerts data using an irksome star that glowed red until I checked my notifications. Elertz didn’t work properly on my Windows XP machine until Alerts.com fixed a bug.

But Alerts.com’s price watch and price protection alerts are incredibly useful. Price watch looks to see if an item’s price drops into a lower price range, at which point users are notified. Price protection watches to see if products you bought are now on sale so you can get a refund. I tried both, and I’m hoping I’ll hear soon that a specific pair of Anthropologie boots is on sale.

Yotify uses the idea of virtual scouts that scour the Web for specific information. Scout findings can be condensed or expanded in one click, and results can be filtered for more specific findings or shared with friends via Facebook or FriendFeed.

Scout Work

But some scouts took too much work to set up. When I tried to set up a scout for college football scores, I didn’t see a sports category (Alerts.com had a colorful NCAA icon right on its home page). Instead, I had to choose News, then select ESPN, then NCAAF and finally enter “Penn State” in a key word box for my scout. And after all that, the scout offered results only daily or hourly via email.

I would also prefer if I could better organize my scout lists. As it was, all of my results appeared in one list: The NCAA scout was right above the scout that found Obama mentions on Huffington Post, and below that were results for YouTube’s most-watched videos. Yotify says it will add ways to more neatly arrange data in the next month or so.

On average, Yotify returned more results instantly, such as 10 instant Craigslist sofa results compared with Alerts.com’s two in the first few hours.

Overall, these sites are worth trying so you can find which alert system works best for you and stop wasting time searching the Web the old-fashioned way.

– Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

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