Q&A: Ways to Watch Live TV on a Laptop or Tablet

Watching Live TV on the Go

Q. Is there a way to watch broadcast television channels live on a laptop or iPad without network apps or streaming from Web sites?

A. If you live within range of the broadcast signals from local television stations, a digital TV tuner accessory could do the job. These small TV tuner cards, which usually include a small telescopic antenna, connect to a laptop’s USB jack or the iPad’s connection port. You typically need to install a program or app for viewing and navigating the live television channels, too.

USB-based TV tuners can cost $50 or less from several manufacturers on sites like Amazon.com, Best Buy and TigerDirect. Compatible iPad tuners tend to cost around $100. Belkin and Elgato are among the companies selling iPad TV tuners that work with the Dyle Mobile TV system; Dyle service is not available nationwide yet and channels vary by area, so check the coverage map on the company’s Web site first (www.dyle.tv). Elgato also sells its own EyeTV software for Mac OS X that works with third-party TV tuners.

Other options include buying a Slingbox device ($180 or $300 at slingbox.com) to place-shift your programs over the Internet from your television at home to your laptop or iPad, or signing up for the Aereo live-television service (aereo.com). Aereo, now available in New York and a few other cities, costs $8 a month.

Spotting a Text Message Fraud

Q. I recently got a phone text message saying my “Google profile had been hacked” and asking me to text back when I am ready to get a “reactivate” number. Does this mean Gmail has been compromised?

A. Although Google does send text messages to your registered mobile number for security purposes (like account-verification codes) when you log in from new devices, messages that ask you to text or call back are fraudulent. Instead of replying or supplying any sort of personal information, forward the message to your wireless carrier’s number for spam reporting — many carriers use the number 7726. Google has more information on the issue.

You can check your account for any suspicious activity by logging in from a Web browser and clicking Account from the menu next to your profile picture. On the settings screen, click Security and then Recent Activity to see a record of your Gmail account’s use on your computers and devices set up with the service. If you do not recognize any of the sessions listed, change your password right away.

The Gmail Security Checklist on Google’s site has more advice. As for general online safety, Google’s official blog has recently been running a series of helpful tips, offering advice on making strong passwords, keeping home wireless networks secure and protecting Android gadgets.

TIP OF THE WEEK Keyboards on mobile devices are small and cramped compared with a regular computer and it may seem like keys are missing — like those for accented characters or special symbols. With both the Android and iOS operating systems, however, you can often find additional characters on the keyboard simply by pressing down on the virtual key for an extra second or two.

Holding down on the vowel keys (and certain consonants like “n” and “c”) reveals alternate versions of those letters with diacritics like the umlaut, tilde or acute accent. Lingering on the dollar sign reveals several international monetary symbols — including those for the yen, euro and pound sterling — and is faster than jumping to the symbol keyboard to get the same characters. On an Android device, you can also get fractions and superscript numerals by pressing and holding the number keys.

Gadgetwise Blog: A Gaming Laptop That's Quick and Costly

The word “extreme” may be overused in describing male-dominated activities like the X Games or the cinnamon challenge, but it fits the bill when it comes to the Razer Blade gaming laptop.

It is extremely fast, extremely thin and extremely expensive.

I don’t play computer games so I turned the Razer Blade over to two lifelong gamers, Evan and Morgan Dilks. Evan, as the owner of the Firehouse Coffee Company in Baltimore, has spent plenty of caffeinated play time on game consoles, like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 he currently owns.

The pair tried out Battlefield 3, which came preinstalled for demonstration on the machine. “One of the pros was how fast it was,” said Evan. “The processor is just crazy.” That crazy processor is an Intel Core i7, a quad-core chip found in some high end Macs.

That speed is paired with a 17.3-inch high-definition screen impressive enough that the brothers spent some time watching videos on it. Although the laptop is almost 11-by-17-inches to accommodate the screen, it is less than an inch thick and weighs 6.6 pounds, relatively light for a laptop this size. Part of the way Razer kept it thin was by omitting an optical drive.

What really sets it apart from other laptops is the Switchblade user interface. That is an LCD trackpad that shows game information, like who in your player group is inflicting the most damage on foes. Evan said his brother Morgan adjusted more easily to the controls than he did, but he caught on eventually.

There are also 10 buttons above the trackpad that change their assigned functions depending on the game. They can represent different weapons, and automate actions that would normally take several steps, like drawing and loading a firearm. Or you can create your own custom actions, even for non-gaming software, like if you wanted to use the laptop for Photoshop.

What the brothers did not like about the Razer Blade was the price: $2,500. “That is a huge investment,” said Evan. “Add in accessories like a sound system, headset, game and gaming subscription, and special controllers you might need, and the price keeps rising.”

Bits Blog: NASA Says Staff Information Was on Stolen Laptop

NASA told its staff this week that a laptop containing sensitive personal information for a large number of employees and contractors was stolen two weeks ago from a locked vehicle.

Although the laptop was password protected, the information had not been encrypted, which could give skilled hackers full access to the contents.

In its notice to employees on Tuesday, the agency said:

On Oct. 31, 2012, a NASA laptop and official NASA documents issued to a headquarters employee were stolen from the employee’s locked vehicle. The laptop contained records of sensitive personally identifiable information for a large number of NASA employees, contractors and others. Although the laptop was password protected, it did not have whole disk encryption software, which means the information on the laptop could be accessible to unauthorized individuals. We are thoroughly assessing and investigating the incident and taking every possible action to mitigate the risk of harm or inconvenience to affected employees.

This is not the first time NASA has suffered a serious breach. The agency has long been a target for cybercriminals looking to pilfer sensitive research. In 2004, computers at several NASA sites, including its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., were breached. And as recently as March, the company reported a breach that was also caused by a stolen laptop.

Given its history, it is unclear why the agency has not stepped up its security practices. Beth Dickey, a NASA spokeswoman, said that in this most recent case, the employee’s laptop had been for a security upgrade.

“The laptop was scheduled to receive encryption, as part of an ongoing, agency-wide effort to encrypt whole disks of all NASA computers,” Ms. Dickey said. “This one just hadn’t been done yet.”

NASA has said it plans to have all of its laptops running whole-disk encryption software by Dec. 21.

The message was first posted by SpaceRef, a trade publication focused on space systems.

Tool Kit: An Updated Guide to Laptop Shopping

The results of that search, most likely, will tell you to keep track of these things: the processor’s speed, the amount of memory, the brand and the model of graphics card.

But for most of us, worrying about such features is a waste of time (with one exception).

First off, I want to reiterate — for most of us. If you need a laptop that will let you render 3-D graphics while also managing La Guardia’s air traffic control system, stop reading and come back next week. You can continue to buy laptops the old-fashioned way.

For those of you who are still reading, there are a few features that you should worry about that are unlikely to have come up in your search. You want a portable computer to get you online, and to allow you to watch some movies, answer some e-mails and work on a document, spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation.

So here’s a guide to help you figure out what’s worth paying attention to, and what you can skip.

WEIGHT Anything more than six pounds is a pain in the shoulder. Any number of laptops weigh far less than that (down to around two and a half pounds), so there’s no reason to get anything heavier.

SCREEN SIZE The smallest displays are about 10 inches, measured diagonally. This is too small. The next step up is around 11 and a half inches, which is great for a second laptop that you can take traveling. But for most of us, 13 inches is the sweet spot — big enough but still portable enough to be thrown in a bag.

Laptops with 15-inch displays are just a bit too big for that, to say nothing of IMAX-size 17- and 18-inch models, which are awkwardly huge and at eight pounds or more, violate our weight rule.

PROCESSOR Doesn’t matter. Seriously. Does the laptop you’re looking at have a 2nd Generation Intel Core i3-2377M Processor running at 1.4GHz with a 3MB L3 cache? That’s wonderful. Oh wait, it doesn’t? Still wonderful. For regular people, all processors are fine. Don’t get bogged down in the details — and don’t pay more for some optional chip that offers an incremental speed boost. For what you need a laptop to do, it’s fine as is.

BATTERY LIFE Take a look at this fine print about battery-life specs from Best Buy’s Web site: “Battery life will vary depending on the product configuration, product model, applications loaded on the product, power management setting of the product, and product features used by the customer.”

In other words, battery-life specs mean little. Have a power cord with you.

MEMORY Unlike the processor, RAM (random access memory) does matter. You want 4 gigabytes of RAM. A laptop with less than that will seem sluggish, with annoying delays between the time you click on a menu command or hit a key and something actually happens. If a manufacturer tries to sneak beneath a certain price with a model that comes with under 4GB, but you can upgrade for a couple of hundred bucks, you should upgrade.

Do you need more than 4GB? Let me ask you this: Are you a video editor? Do you like to leave more than a dozen applications open at once? If your answer is “no,” you don’t.

STORAGE This used to matter a lot, but with the rise of streaming services and cloud computing, the amount of storage on your computer has become a little less important. Music can be streamed from Spotify, Rhapsody and other services. Documents and other files can live on Google Docs. Photos can be uploaded to iCloud or SmugMug or Flickr. TV shows and movies can be streamed from Netflix, Amazon and Hulu.

Even if you want to keep files stored on your computer’s hard drive so that they can be available when you do not have an online connection, services like Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive can let you select the specific files you want to keep locally, while keeping copies in the cloud. When you make changes to files that live on your computer, they will sync up with their online twin, so you don’t have to worry about which version you were working on.

Tool Kit: An Updated Guide to Laptop Shopping

The results of that search, most likely, will tell you to keep track of these things: the processor’s speed, the amount of memory, the brand and the model of graphics card.

But for most of us, worrying about such features is a waste of time (with one exception).

First off, I want to reiterate — for most of us. If you need a laptop that will let you render 3-D graphics while also managing La Guardia’s air traffic control system, stop reading and come back next week. You can continue to buy laptops the old-fashioned way.

For those of you who are still reading, there are a few features that you should worry about that are unlikely to have come up in your search. You want a portable computer to get you online, and to allow you to watch some movies, answer some e-mails and work on a document, spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation.

So here’s a guide to help you figure out what’s worth paying attention to, and what you can skip.

WEIGHT Anything more than six pounds is a pain in the shoulder. Any number of laptops weigh far less than that (down to around two and a half pounds), so there’s no reason to get anything heavier.

SCREEN SIZE The smallest displays are about 10 inches, measured diagonally. This is too small. The next step up is around 11 and a half inches, which is great for a second laptop that you can take traveling. But for most of us, 13 inches is the sweet spot — big enough but still portable enough to be thrown in a bag.

Laptops with 15-inch displays are just a bit too big for that, to say nothing of IMAX-size 17- and 18-inch models, which are awkwardly huge and at eight pounds or more, violate our weight rule.

PROCESSOR Doesn’t matter. Seriously. Does the laptop you’re looking at have a 2nd Generation Intel Core i3-2377M Processor running at 1.4GHz with a 3MB L3 cache? That’s wonderful. Oh wait, it doesn’t? Still wonderful. For regular people, all processors are fine. Don’t get bogged down in the details — and don’t pay more for some optional chip that offers an incremental speed boost. For what you need a laptop to do, it’s fine as is.

BATTERY LIFE Take a look at this fine print about battery-life specs from Best Buy’s Web site: “Battery life will vary depending on the product configuration, product model, applications loaded on the product, power management setting of the product, and product features used by the customer.”

In other words, battery-life specs mean little. Have a power cord with you.

MEMORY Unlike the processor, RAM (random access memory) does matter. You want 4 gigabytes of RAM. A laptop with less than that will seem sluggish, with annoying delays between the time you click on a menu command or hit a key and something actually happens. If a manufacturer tries to sneak beneath a certain price with a model that comes with under 4GB, but you can upgrade for a couple of hundred bucks, you should upgrade.

Do you need more than 4GB? Let me ask you this: Are you a video editor? Do you like to leave more than a dozen applications open at once? If your answer is “no,” you don’t.

STORAGE This used to matter a lot, but with the rise of streaming services and cloud computing, the amount of storage on your computer has become a little less important. Music can be streamed from Spotify, Rhapsody and other services. Documents and other files can live on Google Docs. Photos can be uploaded to iCloud or SmugMug or Flickr. TV shows and movies can be streamed from Netflix, Amazon and Hulu.

Even if you want to keep files stored on your computer’s hard drive so that they can be available when you do not have an online connection, services like Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive can let you select the specific files you want to keep locally, while keeping copies in the cloud. When you make changes to files that live on your computer, they will sync up with their online twin, so you don’t have to worry about which version you were working on.

Gadgetwise Blog: Tool Kit: How to Buy a Laptop

If you are looking to buy a laptop–and now is a good time of the year to do that–forget about the processor’s speed, the amount of memory, the brand and the model of graphics card. Sam Grobart describes the smart way to buy a laptop in this day and age. (And watch his video on the subject.) Read more »