Reviews

The $80 (as of May 29, 2012) Canon Pixma MX372 color inkjet multifunction will meet the needs of anyone who prints or scans only a few pages a day. The unit offers a single-sided automatic document feeder for the scanner--surprising for a printer this inexpensive. It lacks an automatic duplexer, however, and it omits manual duplexing support on the Mac; its black-ink costs are high, too.

Setting up and using the Pixma MX372 is easy, especially since you have only one choice in connectivity: USB. (If you need Wi-Fi, step up to the nearly identical, $100 Canon Pixma MX432, which also has a PictBridge port.) The Pixma MX372's control panel is plain, but competent. Tasks such as scanning to a PC require more steps with the two-line monochrome display than they do with a four-line or larger one, but the MX372's simple keypad and intuitive controls make it otherwise easy to use.

Author David Allen conceived of, and popularized, the "Getting Things Done" (GTD) concept in his 2002 book.Getting Things Done (GTD) apps are becoming de rigueur for anyone who needs to manage their time, from small-business owners, to employees, to CEOs. I asked a random selection of real-world users what their go-to GTD apps were, and the results surprised me: No one used any single tool in a vacuum, but rather used a combination of software and applications to get things done.

What Is GTD?

Productivity consultant David Allen popularized the Getting Things Done (GTD) method in his 2002 book Getting Things Done: the Art of Stress-Free Productivity. After the book came out, numerous software apps sprang up to help people apply GTD principles. These principles center around the creation of a workflow process and the tracking, storing, and monitoring of tasks that one needs to accomplish.

While I was in Europe last year, I brought along an unlocked phone and purchased refillable SIM cards as I hopped from one country to the next. It was incredibly simple: I bought a SIM card from a carrier such as Orange or Vodafone, picked a voice-plus-data plan, and paid for the SIM card, and I was out the door with a fully functional smartphone. A few SIM-card-only vendors are here in the United States, but I’ve never been satisfied with their plans, their coverage, or their small data caps--until I tried Red Pocket Mobile.

As an AT&T MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator), Red Pocket Mobile uses the exact same GSM network as AT&T does. Service is limited to the United States, including Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Red Pocket sent me a SIM card to test-drive, so I used an unlocked Samsung Galaxy S II to try the $60-per-month plan, which is the priciest of all of the company's unlimited and prepaid plans. The plan gave me unlimited talk and text, unlimited MMS, 2GB of mobile Web, and up to 200 international rollover minutes.

Home and SoHo printer design is highly deceptive these days. Feature-laden inkjet units with touchscreen controls crowd this segment of the market, bearing price tags that seem too good to be true. A few weeks later, when the ink cartridges accompanying the new printer run dry, you discover that the replacement inks cost almost as much as the printer itself. Much the same is true of laser printers, as well. LeanPrint is Adobe's answer to premature ink or toner depletion, promising substantial reductions in your usage of cartridges and paper without hardware upgrades or complex reconfigurations.

LeanPrint modifies print jobs on two levels. The first mode, called TonerSaver, works by reducing the amount of ink or toner used to form text (thereby lightening each letter) and by replacing solid colors with pattern fills where appropriate, such as pie charts and diagrams. The savings in ink and toner are modest but noticeable, and readability isn't seriously compromised.

If you’re in the market for a new all-in-one PC, the Dell XPS One 27 is an appealing option. It’s fast, it handles Blu-ray discs, it delivers a great picture on its 27-inch PLS screen, and it costs all of $3500 less than the current category leader, HP’s Z1 Workstation. That’s no typo: Costing $1999 (as configured, price as of May 30, 2012), the XPS One 27 racks up an impressive series of wins and makes few blunders.

It should come as little surprise that much of the XPS One 27’s speed can be traced directly to its use of an Intel Ivy Bridge processor--namely, the 3.1GHz Core i7-3770S, the lower-power, 65W chip in the high-end Ivy Bridge lineup. The i7-3770S helped the XPS One 27 nail an overall score of 143 on our WorldBench 7 suite of tests. To put that score in perspective, note that the far pricier HP Z1 Workstation posted a mark of 159 equipped with a 3.5GHz Intel Xeon E31280 processor, double the memory (16GB), a 600GB solid-state drive (versus the 2TB hard drive in Dell’s AIO), and an Nvidia Quadro 4000M graphics card, which offers 336 GPU cores versus 384 cores for the integrated Kepler chip on the XPS One, the Nvidia GT 640M.

Square kick-started the mobile processing market, and it still offers a strong product.Square offers a free card reader and app for iOS 4.0+ devices and Android 2.1+ phones (it also works on some Android tablets, but none are officially supported). Through the Square service, you can accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover cards for a transaction fee of 2.75 percent per swipe. You have the option of waiving signatures for charge amounts less than $25 (but customers can’t add tips unless they sign). The fee for keyed-in transactions is 3.5 percent plus 15 cents. You can issue full refunds (but no partial amounts) within the app or via the Square Web interface.

On top of that, you can accept and track cash payments and tips, and Square’s customer loyalty program helps you generate repeat business by rewarding your regular clients. You can send electronic receipts to customers via email or text message, and you can connect a cash drawer or receipt to an iPad.

PayAnywhere's card reader is one of the smallest on the market.With PayAnywhere’s free card reader and app for iOS 4.0+ devices, Android 2.1+ phones (but not tablets), and BlackBerry 4.7+ devices, you can accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover cards with a transaction fee of 2.69 percent per swipe. Keyed-in transactions are subject to a fee of 3.49 percent plus 19 cents.

In addition to performing regular charges, you can perform preauthorizations, forced transactions, voids, and full or partial refunds from either the app or the company’s website. You have the option to waive the customer’s signature if the charge amount is less than $25.

The oversized "sail" on VeriFone's SAIL card reader is intended to prevent the reader from swiveling when you swipe a card.VeriFone, one of the largest payment-processing companies around, developed SAIL after startups such as Square successfully created a new market to provide very small businesses with payment-processing services. SAIL comes with a free card reader and an app for iOS 4.3+ devices; the company plans to add Android phone and tablet support in the months to come. Using the SAIL pay-as-you-go plan, you can accept Visa, MasterCard, and Discover cards for a per-transaction fee of 2.7 percent, or 3.7 percent for keyed-in transactions. The transaction fee for American Express cards is higher, at 3.7 percent.

Sign up for the SAIL subscription service at $10 per month, and your per-transaction fees will drop to 1.95 percent per swipe or 2.95 percent per keyed-in transaction. You can void and refund sales using the app, but only for the full transaction amount; you can issue partial refunds through the Web interface. You can also view and download transaction details (including sales, tax, and tip amounts) on the Web.

Intuit's credit card reader works with Android and iOS devices.The Intuit GoPayment mobile payment processing system includes a free card reader and apps for iOS 4.0+ devices and most Android phones and tablets. Using this pay-as-you-go service, you can accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover cards for a fee of 2.7 percent of the total sale for swiped transactions, or a 3.5 percent fee for keyed-in transactions. Opt for Intuit’s $13-per-month subscription plan, and your fees drop to 1.7 percent per swiped transaction, or 2.7 percent per keyed-in transaction.

You can void and refund a sale, but only for the original transaction amount (partial refunds are not allowed). If you use Intuit’s Web interface, however, you can process partial refunds as well as charge cards, authorize funds, capture authorized funds, and even set up recurring payments.