Ed Albro

Wondering which carrier to tie yourself to for the next two-year contract? If speed is a factor, you'd definitely want to check out our 3G and 4G wireless speed tests. On the podcast, Mark Sullivan gives us the lowdown - which carriers are fastest in the real world, and how we tested to determine that.

Ed Albro also discusses the four versions of Windows 8. In realitiy, there are only two you will ever have to choose from, plus one that will come preinstalled on ARM-based tablets and another that is for big volume enterprise customers that develop custom deployments.

Your iPhone's tracking you. Your game network just surrendered all your personal data. And your mom is posting your potty-training videos on Facebook. Like many of us, you're laboring under the delusion that privacy matters--that there's such a thing as too much (public) information. It's time to get over it! Soon we'll all recognize the positives of exposing every aspect of our lives. What a relief it will be when we've finally revealed everything and have nothing left to hide. Herewith, the potential benefits of our upcoming, privacy-free utopia:

• Better security, plus entertainment, 24/7: Tune into the airport security "Grope-cam" channel.

It's hard to believe it has been 25 years since the first release of Windows. In this episode of the PCWorld Podcast, editors Steve Fox, Robert Strohmeyer, Ed Albro, and Jason Cross take a look back at the highlights and lowlights of the ubiquitous operating system's history.

Also discussed are Facebook's new messaging features and a deal with MySpace that leaves us wondering what MySpace is really for anymore. If you want to pay for things with your smartphone, you'll be interested to hear about Near Field Communications (NFC), coming to Android in the near future, and possibly other phones as well.

If you want to make a presentation or share your screen with far-flung colleagues, this is a smooth way to do it. The service doesn't require any heavy downloads by the people you're presenting to and, in our experience, there's little lag time.

Note: This service is available in a number of different levels with different prices. To survey the current offerings, please see the Fuze Inc.'s pricing list. The Download Now link takes you to the vendor's site, where you must register to download the software.

Mindjet's MindManager 9 helps you create visual diagrams of your thinking process. That goal may make this mindmapper seem more esoteric than Microsoft Office, but MindManager finds itself in a similar predicament to Microsoft's ubiquitous productivity suite.

As with Office, most of the basic functionality in MindManager hasn't changed in years. And like Office, MindManager faces competition from competent products that are free or inexpensive. (My favorite, XMind, is free and works on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems.)