Webroot SecureAnywhere Complete 2013

Pros Top scores in PCMag's malware blocking and removal tests. Fast install, fast scan. Excellent password management. Can protect and manage Android devices. 25GB hosted online backup. Can sync files between PCs. System Analyzer finds security/performance problems. PC Tuneup. Minimal performance impact.

Cons Antiphishing component not so accurate. Zero-day threats remain on your system (with limited access) until Webroot can analyze them. No antispam or parental control. Bottom Line Webroot SecureAnywhere Complete 2013 omits spam filtering and parental control, but it packs everything else you might want from a security suite into a ridiculously small package. Its antivirus aced our tests, and it comes with 25GB of hosted online backup.

By Neil J. Rubenking

Just what goes into a security suite? Some vendors pack in all the expected components and add backup and tuneup, creating a kind of mega-suite. Others extend protection to Macs and mobile devices, for multi-platform protection. Webroot SecureAnywhere Complete 2013 manages to do both in a package that's unbelievably small.

Your $79.99 subscription lets you install Webroot protection on any combination of five PCs, Macs, or Android devices. It also includes 25 GB of hosted online backup, accessible from any of your devices. Like Webroot SecureAnywhere Internet Security Plus 2013 it offers password management powered by LastPass, and like Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus 2013 its antivirus protection topped PCMag's hands-on tests.

Fast Installation, Quick Scan
Webroot's installer is less than a megabyte in size; many competing products weigh in at well over 100 MB. Actual installation is almost instantaneous, but the installer also spends a little time optimizing the product's configuration for your system and running a full scan.

Some malicious programs actively work to prevent installation of security. Gettting some products installed on my twelve malware-infested systems has required days of back-and-forth with tech support. Not so withWebroot; it installed with only a bare minimum of help from tech support, and its fast scan let me complete the malware removal test in a single day.

Excellent Antivirus
Webroot doesn't rely on a database of file signatures to identify malicious programs. Rather, it matches file attributes and behaviors against an online database. This approach proved effective in my malware-blocking test. Webroot identified 100 percent of the threats and blocked them from installing on the test system, earning 9.9 of 10 possible points. For full details, see my review of Webroot's entry-level antivirus. The chart below shows how the competition matches up. For a full explanation of my testing process, see How We Test Malware Blocking.

Webroot SecureAnywhere Complete 2013 malware blocking chart

In my malware removal test, Webroot shared the top score of 6.6 points with Norton Internet Security (2013) . Kaspersky Internet Security (2013) and AVG Internet Security 2013 were close behind with 6.5 points. The article How We Test Malware Removal explains my testing and scoring process.

Webroot SecureAnywhere Complete 2013 malware removal chart

Because Webroot doesn't work the same way most antivirus products do, it isn't compatible with some independent lab tests. False positives have also caused problems. By contrast, Kaspersky and Bitdefender Total Security 2013 get top marks in all the tests I follow. For more about the independent testing labs, see How We Interpret Antivirus Lab Tests.

Webroot SecureAnywhere Complete 2013 lab tests chart

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Barnes & Noble Nook HD

Pros Spectacular screen. Well built. Smooth performance. Memory card slot.

Cons So-so battery life. The most locked-down of any tablet we've seen. Other than books, much less content available than on competing tablets. Bottom Line The Barnes & Noble Nook HD is a gorgeous little tablet, but outside of reading, there's not enough you can do with it.

By Sascha Segan

The Reader's Tablet strikes again. The Barnes & Noble Nook HD ($199 for 8GB, $229 for 16GB) has the best hardware of any 7-inch tablet in its price class. It's light and well built, with a grippy body and an absolutely stellar screen. As long as you use it to read Barnes & Noble's books, it's spectacular. But tablets nowadays do a lot more than that, and the Nook HD doesn't. That makes the Nook HD a great reader's tablet, but not a leading tablet overall. 

Design and Storage
The Barnes & Noble Nook HD is a pleasure to hold in the hand. It comes in gray and white. At 7.65 by 5 by .43 inches (HWD) and 11.1 ounces, it's narrower than the Amazon Kindle Fire HD but slightly wider than the Google Nexus 7 , and the whole thing is covered in a tactile gray material with a bezel just the right size for wrapping your fingers around.

The Nook HD's screen is distinctly better than the Kindle Fire HD and Nexus 7—or for that matter, the Apple iPad Mini. It's the best small-tablet screen available right now. That's not just about the tight 1,440-by-900-pixel resolution, which makes text sharper than on the other tablets. The screen is also noticeably less reflective and has deeper blacks than either the Kindle's or Nexus's screens, which makes reading easier. The viewing angle is the best I've seen on a tablet so far. I thought I loved the Kindle Fire HD's screen; this one is better.

On the bottom is a microSD card slot, which takes up to 64GB cards, along with an annoying, proprietary charging port. Barnes & Noble says it'll have an HDMI-out cable for the Nook HD in the future, but that still compares poorly to the Kindle Fire HD's more standard micro HDMI port. There's also a relatively quiet speaker. The headphone jack is on the top.

The microSD card lets the Nook HD store a lot more data than competing $199 tablets, but its utility is limited by what you can play. The Nook HD plays MP3 and AAC music files, and MPEG4 and H.264 videos. The tablet can also view unprotected ePub-formatted eBooks, CBZ-formatted comics, PDFs, and Microsoft Office documents stored on a memory card, but they're buried two levels down in the Library screen.

DivX and Xvid videos are out, and you can't sideload apps. Although the ePub and CBZ support is welcome, there are no alternative video players or book readers in the Nook store to display content not downloaded from Barnes & Noble, so support for third-party formats falls well short of the Kindle Fire HD and Nexus 7.

Battery life, at 5 hours 16 minutes of video playback with the screen at full brightness, was noticeably shorter than the 7 hours I got on the Kindle Fire HD.

Performance and Apps
The Nook HD runs a TI OMAP 4470 processor at 1.3GHz, which is considerably faster than the processor in the Kindle Fire HD. I couldn't run our benchmarks on the tablet, but page turns were smoother, applications loaded more quickly, and there were fewer delays as page thumbnails loaded than I saw on the Kindle Fire HD. Casual games like Bad Piggies and Fruit Ninja played smoothly. 

This is a Wi-Fi-only tablet with 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, but not the 5GHz support featured on the Kindle Fire HD. That's important because the Nook's HD video files are often quite large, so they'd have benefitted from 5GHz Wi-Fi's faster download times.

Like the Kindle Fire HD, the Nook HD runs a heavily altered, basically unrecognizable version of Android 4.0. It's even simpler and more pared-down than the Kindle's interface. When you turn on your Nook, you get the option to choose between your user profiles—I'll explain those below. Then you see a screen with a configurable "shelf" of your favorite apps and five options: Library, Apps, Web, Email, and Shop. That's it.

Hitting a button at the top of the screen pops down Your Nook Today, which gives you the weather and some shopping suggestions based on what you've been reading.

The Library is, essentially, the file list, both of your B&N content and the stuff from your memory card. The Web browser is a skinned version of the Android 4.0 browser. It has a neat reader-style "article view" option and the ability to save pages offline, and it had comparable performance to the Nexus 7. There's no Flash, but that's becoming less important nowadays.

(Next page: Reading)

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LinkedIn

Pros Efficient for connecting with professionals from just about every industry. Deep search and filtering features. Lets you create a detailed professional profile others can search. Great job boards.

Cons Glut of menu options and services. Difficult to figure out how to unsubscribe from unwanted emails. Expensive Premium accounts. Bottom Line LinkedIn is the most developed business- and career-oriented networking site out there. A great job board and plenty of services for connecting hiring companies to talented staff make it one of the most important resources for people will find new jobs and opportunities, while also building their reputations.

By Jill Duffy

For millions of people, LinkedIn (free; premium accounts available) is the number one online network for developing a professional network, finding new opportunities, and building a career. Everyone over the age of 20, should have a LinkedIn account. I've heard the odd complaint that the site isn't well designed for certain job functions, such as academics, and that users have been enrolled against their wishes in multiple email lists (not to mention that unsubscribing isn't as straightforward as it should be)—and yes, I'll give you that. But the benefits of LinkedIn far outweigh its nuisances, making it a clear Editors' Choice site and one that I would recommend virtually every adult use.

The site, which launched in 2003, is the place where professionals stay connected. You can think of it as a social networking site—and certainly, a good deal of socialization does take place—although it's really more of a professional networking site. I use it as an exclusive replacement for business cards, which are almost always out of date within a year. With LinkedIn, I can find people from past jobs, volunteer work, schools, professional groups, and put the onus on them to keep their contact information current. Similarly, people in my network can find me. Whether they're searching for someone with specific skills for a new opportunity or are merely looking for an introduction to another contact, LinkedIn facilitates that communication and many others that have real business and career value.

As with other networking sites, users set up a free account and draft an online profile, only here profiles resemble resumes and CVs. Where social networking sites frame tiresome lists of movies, bands, and favorite quotes as evidence of one's persona, LinkedIn emphasizes professional affiliations, work experiences, skills, and job titles. I've noticed that some of my contacts use Facebook, in much the same way that I use LinkedIn. Hundreds of millions of people are on Facebook, and you can add your job history and professional skills to your profile, too. But I see too many gaps in Facebook that make it unsuitable for business. Its privacy settings aren't as well designed as LinkedIn's for professional use. Facebook requires too much vigilance ("babysitting") to keep your reputation squeaky clean and still publicly searchable. If you lock down your Facebook profile and enable all the privacy settings and approval requirements, no one but your friends will be able to find you, which limits your ability to network effectively in a business sense. Facebook doesn't have a job board, either, or a way for employers to search widely for candidates that meet very specific criteria.

LinkedIn simply provides a huge array of business-networking services, which can seem overwhelming or unnecessary at times, but most people don't need to use every last one to reap the benefits of having an account. In that sense, LinkedIn can be low maintenance, which is a huge benefit to busy professionals.

Setting Up
Free to use, LinkedIn requires little more than an email address and password to get started, although you'll want to fill in your profile completely to get all that the site has to offer. As mentioned, the profile is similar to a resume, with a summary section and job history prominently displayed. LinkedIn prompts you to upload other information about yourself, including a photo. Until your profile is 100 percent filled in, the site will remind you periodically to complete the process, and it's mutually useful that it does. Users get more out of the site when their profiles are complete, and the more user data the site has, the better an experience it delivers.

The next step is to connect to people you know. You can find them by importing names and addresses from a variety of email programs: Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, Aol, Mac.com, Gmx in several languages, and many others. If one of your providers isn't supported, you can always upload a .csv, .txt, or .vcf file containing other contacts.

As you connect with co-workers, friends, and business partners, LinkedIn will begin to suggest people you may know based on shared relationship and company affiliations. Sometimes I find these suggestions, which appear on the right rail of the main dashboard, a little obtrusive, nagging me to connect more, more, more!

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Y-Cam Bullet HD 1080

Pros High-quality HD video. Supports motion detection and night vision. Can store data on SD card or NAS.

Cons Very expensive. No frills or special tools for easy use. No SD card included. Unpolished software. Heavy. Bottom Line The Y-Cam Bullet HD 1080 is a more enthusiast security camera than most homes or small offices will be able to afford (or want to fuss with).

By Eric Griffith

The Y-Cam Bullet HD 1080 ($671 direct) is a wireless outdoor security camera that delivers a sharp, high-definition video stream. Unfortunately, that's not enough to overcome its overly complex setup, lack of online streaming extras, and high price—especially when compared with the competition. The Bullet HD 1080 is a camera an IT enthusiast might enjoy, since it supports features like Power over Ethernet (PoE) with some extra work, but it's not for those who just want to set up surveillance quickly and inexpensively.

Design and Setup
The Bullet HD 1080 is a heavy-duty, 1.8-pound, 2.75 by 4.44-inch (HW) surveillance camera. It comes with an adjustable base you can screw into a wall or ceiling. The camera is designed primarily for outdoor use, as it's weatherproof and can withstand temperatures ranging from -14 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit. It's not obtrusive when mounted, but it's not stealthy, either. Once you've connected the Bullet HD to your network, all it needs is a supply of power to stay running. 

Setup requires plugging the Bullet HD into your wired network first, using the Ethernet dongle at the end of the thick cable on the back of the camera. That cable also houses connectors for power, external speakers, and a digital I/O port for hooking into some security systems. Power-over-Ethernet is also an option, but requires removing the camera's back panel to perform some internal surgery.

Once you've connected the Bullet HD, if the network supports DHCP, the camera will be assigned an IP address. That's what you'll use to access the camera's video feed in a Web browser. To discover the address, you need to run a small utility called Y-Cam Setup (for Macs or PCs), which provides a grid displaying all the Y-Cam cameras on your network, with their MAC addresses and IP addresses. 

Type the Bullet HD's IP address into the browser and you're in. The camera actually is a Web server, so it's like accessing a full Web site to get to the video and settings, much like when you change settings on your router. Y-Cam's internal software prefers Microsoft Internet Explorer, as it defaults to it even if it's not your default browser; Y-cam even wrote a special ActiveX control to display the video and capture motion or stills from the stream. Firefox or Chrome are still usable, as long as you have QuickTime installed. You'll need the default username ("admin") and default password ("1234") to get access. And you should change them, since I've now made them public knowledge.

Features and Performance
The Bullet HD 1080 streams sharp video at a resolution as high as 1,920-by-1,080 pixels at 30 frames per second to a Web browser (you can set the resolution lower as needed). While the Bullet HD 1080 connects via Ethernet during setup, it's actually a wireless webcam with 2.4GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi. Turn this on in the settings, and thereafter, the Bullet HD only requires power to operate. There's no battery option, unfortunately, as delivering a high-definition video stream isn't a low-power activity.

Another price of the high-quality stream is that it's all local to your network. The Logitech Alert 750e Outdoor Master System (our Editors' Choice) and the Dropcam HD both use a "DVR" service; they send video directly to servers on the Internet and let you view it with a browser or smartphone app. Not so for Bullet HD, which keeps it all at home. Even the Y-Cam MultiLive app for smartphones (I tried it on an iPhone 4) is all about local access, asking for the camera's local IP address, username, and password. No matter what I tried, that app wouldn't access the camera even when the stream was obviously viewable on my desktop. However, I could access the video by simply typing the IP address into Safari.

There's a way around that local limitation that lets you view a stream when out and about, but it's complicated: Using a dynamic DNS service. Some ISPs provide one free, and the camera specifically supports FreeDNS, no-ip, and Dyn, among others. But they're not all free, and worse, they pale in comparison to the services Dropcam and Logitech offer. Those not only make it easy to view a stream anywhere, but they also have "DVR" capability for storing your video surveillance off-site for later access.

With the Bullet HD 1080, you can store video in two ways. The camera has a microSD card slot that supports up to a 32GB card. But no card is included, and to install the card, you need to remove the back of the camera by taking it off its mount and removing three recessed screws—so swapping cards regularly is a problem. A better bet is to take advantage of the support for network attached storage if you have a NAS device. After all, keeping HD video can take a lot of space. With either storage method, you can schedule recordings for, say, during the week, or just whenever there's motion.

Like most modern home/office surveillance cameras, the Bullet HD supports infrared night vision, which looks good and works well out to about 30 feet. Night vision used to seem really cool, but it is now an expected commodity—and it still isn't worth the price you'd pay for this camera. The Bullet HD also has a microphone so you can listen in on those you surveil. The camera's microphone is pretty sensitive; ambient room noise comes through as loud as people talking. If you plug speakers into the dongle you can talk to them from your computer (if you use IE to access the video stream).

Conclusions
Liking the Y-Cam Bullet HD 1080 comes down to what you can afford and how much work you want to put in. The price—almost double that of the Logitech Alert 750e Outdoor Master System, not to mention the even less expensive Dropcam HD—immediately hurts Y-Cam's chances. For that cost, a microSD card should be included, at the very least. The 750e does everything the Bullet does for less per camera—though paying a monthly fee to Logitech for the DVR service means it costs more in the long run, but the mobile access and online storage make the fee worth it.

It's the Y-Cam's lack of a true online video storage service option that hurts it the most. A total gearhead may get a lot of joy out of playing with the Bullet HD's options. But everyone else will likely prefer the simplicity of the competition.

More Webcam Reviews:
•   Y-Cam Bullet HD 1080
•   Logitech BCC950 ConferenceCam
•   Logitech Alert 750n Indoor Master System
•   Warpia ConnectHD Wireless Webcam SWP400VC
•   Dropcam HD
•  more

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Microsoft Sculpt Touch Mouse

Pros Ambidextrous design. Bluetooth connectivity saves up USB ports. Mac compatible. Bluetrack technology yields smooth tracking.

Cons Non-rechargeable. Bottom Line With its ergonomic, ambidextrous design and compatibility with Windows and Mac operating systems alike, the Microsoft Sculpt Touch Mouse is a versatile choice for lefties and righties alike regardless of which operating system they use.

By Ahmer Kazi

The Microsoft Sculpt Touch Mouse is a compact wireless mouse that connects via Bluetooth and has been designed with the touch-centric tiled user interface of in mind. To that effect, it features a touch-sensitive strip in lieu of a traditional scroll wheel that's capable of horizontal and vertical scrolling as a means of navigating through Microsoft's new operating system. It's also useful for those without Windows 8, as it's compatible with Windows 7 and, lo and behold, Macs. Factor in an ergonomic, ambidextrous design, and you've got a solid choice for a mouse that works for lefties and righties alike.

Design and Features
The Sculpt Touch strikes a nice balance between portability and ergonomic soundness. Measuring 2.56 by 3.76 inches, it's roughly 75 percent the size of a traditional mouse, so while it's not nearly as tiny as the Wedge Touch Mouse, it's still small enough to slip into your pocket or your bag. Unlike other portable mice, like the Targus Ultralife Wireless Mouse , its profile isn't low to the point where it doesn't comfortably fit in the palm of your hand. The plastic chassis is sports a tasteful pewter finish, which is complemented by touches of silver in a strip around the perimeter and the touch-sensitive strip. The only departure from its all-plastic construction is the black rubber material on the sides that serves as a grip. A light directly beneath the touch-sensitive strip, meanwhile, indicates when the battery's running low or when the Sculpt Mobile is in pairing mode. It's no coincidence that the face of the Sculpt Mobile is symmetrical, as its ambidextrously designed to work with right- and left-handed folks alike, unlike, say, the HP Wi-Fi Touch Mouse X7000 , which is geared solely towards righties.

The Sculpt Mobile uses two AA batteries, which Microsoft asserts will last up to nine months. For obvious reasons, we weren't able to independently verify this claim, so we'll have to take it at face value. At any rate, an on/off switch on the underside helps preserve battery life. Alongside the on/off switch are a Bluetooth connection button and two glide pads to ensure smooth movement. The glowing blue light emanating from beneath the Sculpt Mobile signifies Microsoft's BlueTrack technology, which gives the mouse the ability to track movements on a wider range of desk surfaces since its light beam is markedly larger than the laser beam used in standard mice.

Additionally, the Sculpt Mobile is compatible with Bluetooth-equipped Mac computers, wherein its touch-sensitive strip functions as an ordinary scroll wheel would. Given its ambidextrous design and cross-platform capability, it's one of the more versatile mice you'll find in the market. The Sculpt Mobile is covered by a three-year warranty.

Performance
Despite its small size, the Sculpt Mobile fits comfortably in the palm. Moreover, its combination of BlueTrack technology and glide pads made for an exceptionally smooth experience. As is the case with the Wedge Touch Mouse, sliding a finger vertically or horizontally across the touch-sensitive strip, lets one cycle though the tiles on Windows 8 desktop.  A nice touch (no pun intended) is the matter in which the strip simulates the tactile sensation one gets from a typical scroll wheel, as sliding gestures produce a haptic feedback that feels akin to spinning the famed The Price is Right wheel. Within a program, like Internet Explorer, the touch-sensitive strip allows for horizontal and vertical scrolling, as well as hyper-scrolling, both of which can be stopped simply by a gentle tap on the strip. Additionally, clicking the strip over a link opens it up a new tab.

The Microsoft Sculpt Touch Mouse is a solid mouse in nearly every respect. Its compact size doesn't come at the expense of ergonomic comfort, and its ambidextrous design and ability to work in Windows and Mac operating systems makes it quite a versatile performer. Within Windows 8, it especially shines. That said, however, our current Editors' Choice for touch mice, the Microsoft Touch Mouse , retains its title not only for its full gesture support but also for the fact that it will soon receive a free software update that will make it fully compatible with Windows 8. Users with that mouse, then, should stick with it, and anyone in the market for a new touch-sensitive mouse would likely benefit from its greater functionality.

More Mouse reviews:
•   Microsoft Sculpt Touch Mouse
•   Microsoft Wedge Touch Mouse
•   Targus Ultralife Wireless Mouse
•   HP Wireless Mouse X4000
•   Logitech G600 MMO Gaming Mouse
•  more

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Pioneer DVR-XD10

Pros Slim form factor. Mac-compatible, to a certain extent.

Cons Does not handle Blu-ray discs. Requires two USB ports. Y-cable not ideally designed. Bottom Line The Pioneer DVR-XD10 optical drive is a portable, frills-free solution for tablet and ultrabook users looking to access their optical discs.

By Ahmer Kazi

Change begets change, and with the rise of ultrabooks and tablets that ditch built-in optical drives in favor of maintaining portability, the once-ubiquitous optical drive has been on the wane. However, change isn't always so easy to embrace, and purchasers of these svelte gizmos may find themselves confronting the sight of suddenly obsolete DVDs and CDs. The Pioneer DVR-XD10 is a basic solution to this issue, offering a portable, frills-free manner of accessing optical discs for those who don't have the means to do so anymore.

Design and Features
At 0.55 by 5 by 5 inches (HWD), the DVR-XD10's dimensions are roughly on par with the svelte Samsung SE-218BB , making it about the size of a standard CD jewel case. Its plastic chassis weighs a scant half pound, so it doesn’t add any discernible weight or bulk to your laptop bag or backpack. Though its plastic housing is predominantly black, the DVR-XD10's lid sports a glossy pewter finish complete with a Pioneer logo in the center.

Like the Pioneer BDR-XD04, the DVR-XD10 utilizes a top-loading clamshell design. The drive must be powered on to open this lid, but a lever on its underside lets users manually open it without a power supply. Opening the DVR-XD10 reveals a layer of aluminum reinforcing on the lid's underside. Unlike the HP dvd560s, the DVR-XD10 can't be positioned vertically, so it will occupy slightly more desk space due to its necessarily horizontal orientation. That said, its top-loading body goes a long way to remedy this issue since the absence of a tray-loading design eliminates the need to clear out space directly in front of the drive, a helpful touch for folks with cluttered desks (myself included). For those who prefer a slot-loading drive, on the other hand, should check out the Lite-On eNAU708 .

The DVR-XD10 connects with an 18-inch USB 2.0 Y-cable through a micro USB port in the rear. Since it's bus-powered, there's no need to worry about AC adapters. Those who prefer the added security of a constant power supply, though, can utilize the drive's connection for an optional power adapter to reap the rewards of wall power. While the Y-cable's 18-inch length is fairly generous, the shorter strand is a paltry four inches long, making it problematic for those who need to utilize two USB ports on opposite ends of their system. Users looking to sidestep this issue altogether would be far better served by the Samsung SE-218BB, which utilizes a standard USB 2.0 cable.

The DVR-XD10 is compatible with Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7). It can also work on a Mac, though Pioneer doesn't guarantee full compatibility with OS X. In my testing, though, the DVR-XD10 was detected on an iMac using OSX 10.8, and performed perfectly fine. That said, Mac users looking for a degree of certainty should stick with the Samsung SE-218BB, which is fully compatible with both operating systems. Regardless of which drive you choose, however, Mac users will need to download additional burning software since the included Nero software only works with Windows (as is the case with the SE-218BB's preloaded software).

Lastly, it bears noting that users looking for something more future-proof should consider the Editors' Choice–winning Pioneer BDR-XD04 , which combines DVD and Blu-ray burning capability into a similarly slim drive.

Performance
During testing, the DVR-XD10 emitted a faint whisper as the disc spun, and its four rubber feet did an adequate job of absorbing the accompanying vibrations. Although writing media resulted in a slightly louder whirring sound, it never rose to the level of a nuisance and won't raise any eyebrows if used in a public setting. Pioneer advertises read and write speeds of 8x (DVD) and 24x (CD), and during both instances the DVR-XD10 maintained a cool temperature below 90 degrees Fahrenheit (as measured using a Fluke IR Thermometer).

Overall, installing and using the DVR-XD10 was a straightforward endeavor, and I encountered no hiccups when reading and writing DVDs or CDs. Although it's designed to be plugged into two USB ports in order to draw an optimal amount of power from your system, I was able to get by with just one USB port when reading and writing discs. This varies according to system, and for this reason Pioneer strongly recommends using both USB cables to "be safe and avoid write errors" on its site.

The Pioneer DVR-XD10 succeeds in doing exactly what it was designed to do, and it's accordingly a decent choice worth considering for users looking for a portable, frills-free device that allows them access or burn CDs and DVDs. That said, however, if I were pressed to choose an external CD/DVD burner, I'd lean heavily towards the Samsung SE-218BB since it doesn't require a cumbersome USB Y-cable. Those looking for a more future-proof optical drive, on the other hand, should opt for our current Editors' Choice, the Pioneer BDR-XD04, whose Blu-ray functionality ensures its usefulness for a while to come.

More Hard Drive reviews:
•   Pioneer DVR-XD10
•   G-Technology G-Drive Slim
•   Western Digital My Passport Edge
•   Western Digital VelociRaptor (1TB)
•   Western Digital My Book VelociRaptor Duo
•  more

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