Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: New Speeds for Old Machines

May 14

The look of Microsoft’s Windows 8 Start screen can be rearranged to match personal preferences.

May 14

Absolute Technology recently introduced Linkase, a $50 cellphone case for the iPhone 5 that uses electromagnetic waveguide technology to enhance the Wi-Fi signal.

May 14

Amazon.com displays on its home page products you browsed on recent visits to the site, but you can delete some or all of your shopping history.

May 13

The Ooma Telo is advertised as a “free home phone service,” and while it is nowhere near free, it may be a better deal than you currently get from your phone provider, plus the sound quality is excellent.

May 13

The new 802.11ac wireless-networking standard promises much faster data speeds, as long as you have the right equipment.

Internet Speeds Fail to Meet Promises in Germany, Study Shows

The study by the German telecommunications regulator, the Bundesnetzagentur, measured the Internet connection speeds of 250,000 consumers from June through December last year, making it one of the largest reviews of broadband service anywhere.

The results showed that only 15.7 percent of those using fixed telephone lines and 21 percent using mobile devices achieved the advertised maximum speeds.

Nearly half of German consumers using the supposedly fastest wireless broadband networks, which run Long Term Evolution technology, received Internet service at speeds that were no more than half as fast as the advertised maximum, the regulator found.

The German report is believed to mirror the results of an even broader study being compiled by the European Commission on broadband performance across the 27-nation bloc. According to a person with knowledge of the commission’s study, which is in the final review stages, it found that operators were largely failing to deliver on promises of broadband speeds across Europe.

For consumers, slower connection speeds can make for the correspondingly sluggish execution of nearly every click while using an Internet browser, resulting in delays in summoning Web sites or interruptions of streaming video, for example.

The study is significant because Germany was one of the first countries in Europe to adopt high-speed, Long Term Evolution service on a national basis.

In Europe, and in the rest of the world, telecom operators are not legally bound to provide broadband service at a specified rate of speed. Most advertise service in packages with speeds of “up to” a certain level, which in Germany can range from 2 to 50 megabits a second.

Attempts in Brussels to include a legal “minimum speed” obligation on European operators have so far been rebuffed by the telecommunications industry.

Jochen Homann, the Bundesnetzagentur president, said in a statement that he planned to begin a “dialogue” with operators to improve the accuracy of their advertising claims.

The German market is dominated by four main operators — Deutsche Telekom, which runs the former fixed-line monopoly and the mobile market leader, T-Mobile, and the mobile carriers Vodafone; O2, a unit of Telefónica; and E-Plus, owned by the Dutch operator KPN.

Philipp Blank, a Deutsche Telekom spokesman in Bonn, said technical reasons prevented operators from guaranteeing a specific broadband speed to each customer. The quality of a land-line connection is influenced by the length of the copper wire from a home to the phone junction box in the street, with longer connections leading to slower speeds, he said.

With mobile broadband, the level of traffic flowing over a single base station can significantly affect individual performance. Deutsche Telekom gives each customer a “very narrow range” of their expected broadband speed based on an analysis of local wiring, and consumers can void newly signed contracts for two weeks without penalty if they are unsatisfied, Mr. Blank said.

“For physical and technical reasons, we simply have to offer customers some kind of range of speeds in our tariffs,” Mr. Blank said.

A spokesman for the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association, a Brussels group representing operators, said it would not comment until it had read the study.

Michael Bobrowski, a spokesman for the Verbraucherzentral Bundesverband, the Federation of German Consumer Organizations, said he was skeptical that the regulator would be able to wring concessions from operators.

“This study is not surprising because we have known this to be the situation for years,” Mr. Bobrowski said. “We called for operators to stop doing this back in 2008, but none have done anything. So I’m not sure what voluntary agreements will achieve.”

Mr. Bobrowski agreed there were technical constraints that made it difficult for operators to guarantee broadband speeds. But the main reason for the discrepancy between advertised speed and performance is the operators’ advertising policies, he added.

“It’s the competitive situation,” Mr. Bobrowski said. “They are all trying to win customers by promising very enticing speeds. The problem is that consumers cannot verify in advance what kind of speeds they will ultimately receive.”

Mr. Bobrowski said that operators should be required to provide binding guarantees in service contracts.

Mr. Homann, the German regulatory chief, said he hoped to convince operators to offer a more narrow range of speeds in their broadband advertising.

“I am very hopeful that Internet providers will make an effort to provide the necessary transparency over what an Internet connection can deliver — and what it can’t,” Mr. Homann said. “Customers should be able to better evaluate the quality of their Internet connections.”

A change in Germany’s main telecommunications law last year gave the regulator the power to improve the “transparency” of telecommunications products. But whether that mandate would let the regulator impose “minimum speed” obligations, which would set a global precedent, is unclear and could be legally challenged by operators.

Noted: Social Media Speeds Up Criticism of Olympians - Noted

Thanks to the rise of social media, reverence for athletic achievement at the Olympics can now be measured in milliseconds. Even as Gabby Douglas was performing the routines that would earn her the all-around gold medal in gymnastics, a few Twitter users were criticizing her ponytailed clipped coif.

On Friday, Joe Scarborough ran a video clip of the American women’s soccer team’s gold-medal game, in which Carli Lloyd scored two goals for the team and went on to say: “When someone tells me I can’t do something, I’m going to prove them wrong. That’s what a champion is all about and that’s what I am: a champion.”

Mr. Scarborough and his cohorts then jumped on Ms. Lloyd for using the first-person singular too much (“There’s no ‘I’ in team”), questioning her chances for an endorsement deal.

By 8 a.m., during the show’s repeat coverage, the segment was gone (due to a video rights issue, a representative of the show wrote in an e-mail).

But it was only the latest example in a week of sniping that included brutish commentary from Conan O’Brien and others about Holley Mangold, the American weight lifter and sister of the New York Jets center Nick Mangold. “I predict 350 lb. weight lifter Holley Mangold will bring home the gold and 4 guys against their will,” Mr. O’Brien posted to his Twitter account.

The British swimmer Rebecca Adlington’s looks were criticized. “I worry that Rebecca Adlington will have an unfair advantage in the swimming by possessing a dolphin’s face,” wrote the comedian Frankie Boyle.

Ms. Adlington’s American counterpart, Allison Schmitt, may have fared even worse. The Canton, Mich., native was said to look and sound “retarded” by a multitude of social media users, as the sports site Deadspin pointed out.

Will the London Olympics one day be remembered as a cesspool of electronic negativity?

Past Games, of course, have not been without catty commentary. But formerly it was mostly aired, then snuffed, in living rooms, with television slow motion rendering the athletes more divine than human. The gymnast Mary Lou Retton’s thighs were strong rather than chunky, and the sprinter Florence Griffith-Joyner’s nails were flamboyant, not trashy.

Unlike seasoned survivors of media maelstroms like Kobe Bryant, many current Olympians compete in obscure fields and are pitched into the spotlight only every few years, making them less experienced at addressing the haters.

Ms. Douglas, at least, showed considerable savvy. Appointed a Procter & Gamble beauty ambassador just before the Olympic trials, she took the opportunity to inform Us Weekly: “I use great Pantene products in my hair. They make my hair silky, shiny and healthy.”

Gadgetwise Blog: A Router With a Fast Setup and Faster Speeds

The My Net N900, part of a new line of routers from Western Digital, offers speeds of up to 900 mbps.

Seeking to be a larger presence in the living rooms of media-consuming Americans, Western Digital recently expanded its product line, which had consisted primarily of storage drives, to offer routers.

The routers are intended not only to connect devices throughout the home to the Internet, but also to create a wireless home network for the high-speed delivery of content.

Many peripherals come with 1-2-3 setup instructions that really have a dozen more hidden steps. Often you have to spend time online searching for the full instructions. And if your computer does not recognize the peripheral, you get to experience the joy of trouble-shooting, which has tried my patience in the past.

But the setup for the Western Digital router I tested, the My Net N900, was about the easiest I’ve experienced, a refreshing turn of events that I was not expecting after having trouble installing a Western Digital external hard drive a few months ago.

This time, the engineers at Western Digital must have been working overtime to assure a smooth setup. As soon as I connected the router and turned it on, my laptop recognized the signal. After the quick setup, all my Wi-Fi-enabled devices were connected, and I was in business.

For those with more time to spare, the router has customization tools for setting up a firewall, parental controls and a guest network.

The router’s dual bands mean you get twice the bandwidth, with speeds of up to 900 megabits per second, which is great for streaming high-definition movies and playing online games. And Western Digital’s FasTrack feature (so fast, it only needs one “T”) prioritizes content, putting movies and games at the head of the line. While streaming a high-definition movie to my laptop, I was able to download another movie on my iPad and check my e-mail on my iPhone without any hiccups in the quality of the movie I was watching.

The My Net N900 router sells for about $180 at most electronics retailers. Western Digital also offers less-expensive routers with slower data rates and higher-end versions with integrated storage.