If you can say one thing about Samsung’s Galaxy S line of smartphones, it’s that they consistently pair some of the best hardware with inexplicable software. The S5 scales back Samsung’s bells and whistles, which helps make it easily the best Galaxy phone yet. If only they’d gone even further.
This article was written on January 24, 2008 by CyberNet.
Jeff Jones, the Security Strategy Director for Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group, has assembled a 1-year analysis of Vista’s vulnerabilities. In his 6-month review Vista came out on top when pitted up against other operating systems, and stretching the timeline out over a 1-year period didn’t yield any different results.
In his report he wanted to clarify that he is not reviewing the actual security of an operating system, and is just using vulnerability reports to compile his results:
So, this is not an analysis of “the security”. I don’t look at protective mechanisms and see how they might protect in certain scenarios. Nor do I look at security features and see how they might enable better privacy or help secure business process. And I certainly don’t look at how easy it is to manage the security policy for these products.
The chart below covers the first year of vulnerabilities for 5 major operating systems. Vista was analyzed during November 30, 2006 and November 30, 2007 while the others were analyzed during their first year of release. And third-party applications commonly included with the Linux distributions, such as OpenOffice and Gimp, were ignored to keep things fair.
The results are obviously point to Vista being a secure operating system. Jones said that he plans to do a 2007 (January 2007 to December 2007) vulnerability comparison of the various operating systems as well. What I would really like to see is a comparison of the amount of time vulnerabilities have gone unpatched. I wonder how that would affect the results?
Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com
This article was written on November 27, 2007 by CyberNet.
… or so that seems to be the general consensus among many of the reviewers out there. The latest buzz is in regards to CNet UK’s Top Ten Terrible Tech Products, where they place Windows Vista at number 10. Is it deserving of such a pitiful ranking?
Personally, I don’t think it is. My experience with Vista has been rather good, but I strongly believe that every operating system has its own benefits:
And guess what, Vista’s reception is no different than XP! Six months after XP was released here’s what CNet had to say in 2002:
Microsoft’s latest operating system just turned six months old, and most would say that it’s neither a failure nor a raging success. While XP promised the latest and greatest multimedia, security, and ease-of-use features available, many users have not yet upgraded, fearing the hefty system requirements and potential compatibility disasters inherent in a major OS upgrade.
If you replace the instance of “XP” in that article with “Vista” you would essentially sum up what people are saying about Vista right now. Kinda funny, huh?
There are over 88 million people already running Vista (as of October 2007), which is double what XP had in the same time frame. Microsoft has also said that there are tens of millions of corporate volume licenses out there that have not been included in the 88 million users mentioned above. It’s estimated that 13% of businesses have already adopted Vista, which is quite good considering many enterprises will wait until Vista SP1 is released next year.
I think it’s safe to say that people are getting sick of all the Vista-bashing that is going on. I know Ed Bott is, and many of the readers over at Neowin are as well, so I think it’s time to bring an end to it.
Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com
This article was written on March 26, 2008 by CyberNet.
Web Browser Wednesday
We’ve been asked for quite awhile to provide a performance comparison of the different mainstream browsers out there, and so today we are going to show you the stats from several different areas that users generally find to be the most important. Things like memory usage, page load time, and JavaScript performance will all be covered below.
One thing that you need to remember with these tests is that the results are all relative to each other. Each browser is running on the exact same machine so that the comparisons are accurate. What we heard the last time we did tests like this is “such and such browser performed a lot better/worse for me.” We appreciate hearing what your results are, but for the sake of accuracy they can’t really be compared to what we get.
Notes:
We’ve previously run Apple’s SunSpider JavaScript tests, but there was apparently some controversy of using that because people felt that it could be a little biased. We wanted to pick a test that used tools you’ll find in sites you visit everyday. That’s why we went with the MooTools SlickSpeed test which checks the browser against different JavaScript libraries: Dojo 1.0.2, JQuery 1.2.3, MooTools 1.2B2, and Prototype 1.6.0.2.
Many sites use those libraries, and even we use JQuery for things such as the AJAX commenting. By putting the browsers back-to-back with the SlickSpeed test, we’ll be able to find out exactly which ones will give us the better JavaScript performance (this is what really matters on a day to day basis).
Pretty much none of the browsers were able to complete all of the tests error-free, and so we’re focusing purely on the speed. We ran each test three times, totaled the runtime (measured in milliseconds) for all four libraries, and then averaged the results. In the parenthesis you’ll see the results of each test we ran before averaging them together (the overall smaller number is better):
It looks like the new Safari 3.1 takes the crown on this set of tests!
I was trying to figure out what the best method would be to measure page load times in all the browsers. Sure some of the browsers report how long it takes for a site to load, but we wanted a universal way that would work across all of the browsers. We figured sitting here with a stop watch just wouldn’t cut it.
After some searching around I came across the Numion Stopwatch, which is a great tool for measuring how long it takes for a site to load. It’s entirely encased in a website so that there is nothing to install, and it uses JavaScript to notify you exactly how long it takes a page to load. From what I can tell it does a rather superb job!
We ran the page load test three times on two different sites so that we could really see what the results were like. We used the Official Google Blog and the Yahoo Search Blog for our benchmarks, and there are very good reasons that we chose those sites. Both of those serve up nearly the exact same content every time you load the site. If I chose a site such as ours we would run into the issue of different ads being served in the different browsers.
For each test the browser started with a cleared cache, and the three results were averaged together to get a single overall load time (measured in seconds). In the parenthesis you’ll see the results of each test we ran before averaging them together (the overall smaller number is better):
Note: I literally went and deleted each browser’s cache after each refresh just to remove any concern that a Control/Shift refresh was not deleting the site’s cache correctly.
The Google Blog:
The Yahoo Search Blog:
It looks like Safari 3.1 and Opera 9.5 both do really well in these tests, and I would consider it a tie between the two.
This is probably one of the areas that interests most of you. Memory usage has become a big concern these days as we’ve seen some browsers (*cough* Firefox *cough*) use up insane amounts of our computer’s resources. So we took each of the browsers seen in the previous tests, developed a list of sites to open in each, and went at it.
We’re not going to list out all of the sites that we decided to visit, but they are all sites that are extremely popular. Places like MySpace, YouTube, CNN, and others were all included as we chugged through our four different memory usage readings:
And now for the results! The table below lists the different browsers and the result from each test mentioned above. The best browser from each test is highlighted in green, and the worst is highlighted in red.
| Startup | 10 Sites | 25 Sites | 25 Sites After 10 Minutes | |
| Firefox 2.0.0.12 | 14.9MB | 110.8MB | 151.6MB | 172.8MB |
| Firefox 3 Beta 4 | 21.3MB | 68.9MB | 118.2MB | 124.7MB |
| Opera 9.26 | 12.6MB | 71.9MB | 127.6MB | 133.1MB |
| Opera 9.5.9841 Beta | 15.8MB | 98.3MB | 184.4MB | 186.5MB |
| Internet Explorer 7 | 6.3MB | 134.1MB | 248.3MB | 249.7MB |
| Internet Explorer 8 Beta | 5.6MB | 141.6MB | 244.2MB | 248.7MB |
| Safari 3.1 | 25.2MB | 97.1MB | 191.6MB | 210.4MB |
For this round it’s clear that Firefox 3 Beta 4 walks away as the clear winner. Mozilla has obviously put some work into making Firefox 3 a more memory efficient browser than it previously was, and this is proof of that.
I can’t say that I was surprised that some version of Internet Explorer almost always did the worst, but I was quite taken back that Internet Explorer 8 shows little improvement over version 7. Apparently that is not the focus of Microsoft right now.
It took us about 6 hours to compile all of the results that you see above, and I would say that doing this on your own is not really for the faint of heart. Things like not being able to run IE7 and IE8 side-by-side is really a time killer, but we wanted to be sure to include both versions in our results. And surprisingly the only browser that crashed on us was Internet Explorer 8 Beta when trying to open the 25 tabs.
We’d love to hear any comments you may have regarding our results, but remember that what you’ll see on your computer will likely differ from what we see. The important thing to take out of the stats is how each of them relatively rank up against each other.
Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com
This article was written on August 11, 2011 by CyberNet.
A lot of reviews for browsers reference a lot of performance and standards compatibility tests, such as the SunSpider or Acid3 tests. There is another test available to help you figure out how well your browser supports HTML5 already. The site is HTML5Test.com and scores the browser out of a possible 450 points.
The problem is that the HTML5 specifications hasn’t been finalized and so browser makers don’t have a full set of standards to work off of yet. Many of them are already working hard at incorporating many of the special elements for audio, video, forms, geolocation, WebGL, storage, and more.
My screenshot above is from the four major Windows browsers, and Chrome takes the cake with a score of 328 while Internet Explorer is lagging behind (duh) with a score of 141. It’s exciting to see Chrome so far out in the lead because that means other browsers like Opera and Firefox will definitely push hard to catch up.
Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com
Now that the LG G2 is official, the battle between mid-2013 Android flagships is fully underway. But which wins the war? We’ve pitted the new smartphone against its biggest competitors in the US — Samsung’s Galaxy S 4, the HTC One and the Motorola Moto X — to understand which device most deserves a place in your pocket.
Based purely on the spec sheet, the G2 is the frontrunner. Its larger 5.2-inch screen, quicker 2.3GHz Snapdragon 800 and image-stabilized 13-megapixel rear camera will please those who want a media powerhouse. Its extra-large battery and 24-bit / 192KHz audio are also unique in a category where longevity and sound quality tend to play second fiddle. If all you want is the most technically capable device, look no further.
Yet each of the G2’s competitors has an advantage that’s harder to quantify. The GS4 has a full set of hardware nav keys (for those who prefer them), air gestures and a slightly tougher plastic build. The One claims superior low-light photography and dual speakers. And the Moto X partly makes up for its lackluster speed through design customization and helpful tricks like Touchless Control. To us, that puts LG in an awkward middle. While the G2’s performance is almost beyond compare, many of its software features aren’t all that unique — those who aren’t sold on its performance could easily be lured away.
When we first got our hands on the Moto X
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After countless months in hibernation, Motorola has arisen from its deep slumber in a rather major way. The phone maker not only unleashed a full trio of Droid devices last week, it introduced the Moto X, long known as the company’s not-so-secret weapon. We’ve already discussed our impressions of the firstfruits of post-acquisition Motorola, along with its interesting array of color customization options, but we’ve put together a handy comparison sheet that shows off how the Moto X fares against its Droid-branded brethren. When it comes to components, the suite of smartphones are actually quite similar to each other. Take a look after the break to see how it all breaks down.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile
Well, we already knew pretty much everything
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
This year, after having 