Reviewing Security Bundles

For all the occasions when I have the luxury of trying out high-definition TVs or new digital cameras for my column, I also have to spend time testing products that nobody actually enjoys that much. Take yesterday's column, in which I assessed five different Internet-security bundles for Windows ... and couldn't find an overwhelming favorite among them.

It's not that packages like CA's Internet Security Suite 2007, McAfee's Internet Security Suite 2007, Panda Internet Security 2007, Symantec's Norton Internet Security 2007 and Trend Micro's PC-cillin Internet Security 2007 can't help a computer stay healthy -- or help heal a sick PC. But as I wrote yesterday, they don't seem to offer enough to outweigh their cost and complexity.

Read the column: The Best Security May Still Be Free.

[Keep updated on the latest computer security news with washingtonpost.com's Security Fix blog.]

Verizon's Treo Talks to Toyotas

Here's some welcome news on the Bluetooth front: Verizon Wireless has finally released a software update that fixes one of the more annoying compatibility glitches with its version of the Palm Treo 650 smartphone. I wrote about this in Help File back in April.

Essentially, a Verizon Treo 650 would be unable to finish the "pairing" process necessary for it to use Toyota's or Lexus's Bluetooth hardware as a hands-free kit. There was no hardware fault to blame for this; other carriers' Treo 650s had included the required software fix for months already.

About two weeks ago, Verizon caught up to them. After waiting a week or so to see if other users had reported widespread problems, I applied this updater to my own 650. The software-upload process was the usual annoying routine of first backing up the Treo's data, then wiping its memory--required to free up enough memory for the updater--running the updater, then reloading all my data.

But at the end of the process, the 650's Bluetooth finally worked as advertised, pairing up successfully with the Bluetooth gear in our own Toyota Prius. And whaddyaknow, this option is really convenient! With the phone and car linked via Bluetooth, an incoming caller's number shows up on the Prius's central display; when I press the phone-answer button on the steering wheel, the stereo pauses and I can carry on the conversation using the car's own speakers and microphone. Much more convenient than trying to fish the phone out of a pocket, then hold it to my head or activate its own speakerphone function.

I can also beam over address-book entries from phone to car, then dial them with a press of a button on the Prius's screen. The only catch is the Toyota software's limit of one phone number per contact; I'll have to edit the 650's address book temporarily before sending over the numbers for the people I call most often.

I've had this Treo 650 for almost a year and a half, but this is the first time I've had a good reason to keep its Bluetooth function enabled.

Putting Your Cell Phone Service on the Map

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a notice in a Web forum that Sprint PCS had just introduced a new coverage-mapping tool on its Web site that lets you see its signal strength on a block-by-block basis. Intrigued, I clicked through and saw that this new site worked as advertised, and could be used to map Nextel's coverage too.

Finally, I thought, another carrier has joined T-Mobile in offering this kind of necessary guidance (that carrier introduced its own street-level mapping over a year ago. But then I hit Cingular's site and saw that it, too, had this feature.

So it looks like Verizon is the lone holdout here: Its coverage map doesn't let you zoom in any closer than one city at a time.

I'd like to see Verizon join the crowd. City-wide coverage maps are never going to tell you whether somebody's signal fades halfway down your block; being able to see that online is a lot easier than canvassing the neighbors.

Sunday Tech Recap

Elsewhere in the Sunday Business section's personal-tech pages, we have these other stories:

* In Web Watch, Frank Ahrens covers the U.S. intelligence community's new Intellipedia, a classified, user-editable collection of reports and analysis that's modeled after the Wikipedia online encyclopedia.

* Contributor Daniel Greenberg tries out a variety of products that can soup up your home network, from tune-up software to networked hard drives.

* And in Help File, I share a workaround for a strange conflict between some Hewlett-Packard printing software and Microsoft's new Internet Explorer 7, then explain how to change a hidden cookie setting in Firefox 2.0.

Plus, keep clicking to Post I.T., the new blog written by my colleagues here, for news and chatter about tech-news developments throughout the day.

Finally: Election Day's tomorrow. Remember to vote.