Mozilla’s new Firefox 0.8 browser (www.mozilla.org) speeds surfing by suppressing pop-ups and using a feature that has been around a while: tabbed browsing. You can set up your home page to be several of your most visited sites. When you start Firefox (formerly Firebird but rechristened after a dispute over the name), your favorite site loads first and the others load in the background, behind the window you’re perusing. The other sites appear as folder tabs on your screen. To switch to a new site, click on the tab. Also, if you’re surfing and come across a link you want to check out, shift-click on the link and it will open in the background while you continue reading your current page.
Tabbed browsing is not new, and similar things can be done in Microsoft’s widely used Internet Explorer, using IE’s “Open New Window” function and using the Windows task bar to switch among the windows. But Firefox makes all this much faster, especially when coupled with the browser’s pop-up blocker.
DELL STEPS INTO NEW ARENA
Dell (www.dell.com) is making a new high-end laptop for portable gamers, taking direct aim at market leaders Alienware (www.alienware.com) and Voodoo (www.voodoopc.com). Even though sales of PC games have been sliding the last couple of years, Dell thinks it makes sense to build faster-than-normal, easier-to-look-at laptops that gamers demand. Dell’s Inspiron XPS (3.4 gHz Pentium 4 with the Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics chip and a 15.4-inch screen) will start at about $2,800, in the range of Alienware’s Area 51m Extreme (3.2 gHz Pentium 4 with the Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro graphics chip and 15.4-inch screen) and Voodoo’s m:460 Envy (2.2 gHz Pentium 4-M, the Mobility Radeon 9600 graphics chip and a 15-inch display).
TRYING TO STRIKE A CHORD
Cordless phones don’t get the buzz they used to. Since 1997, cordless phones have been outselling corded handsets, but when pocket-size cell phones exploded in popularity, the boom seemed to drown out any news from the cordless world. Add to that the noise over number portability recently, and you’d be forgiven for forgetting that cordless phones exist.
Now, with wireless home networks taking off — wi-fi networking gear hit $2.5 billion in revenue last year, says the Synergy Research Group — homeowners are finding that those networks cause static on cordless phones in the 2.4 gHz radio spectrum. That’s why the new, clean-sounding 5.8 gHz phones are starting to look more attractive.
VTech, which makes cordless phones for AT&T and under its own label, is trying to make them as eye-catching as mobile phones. At $80, the 5801 model — which works as an extra handset with the company’s 5831 and 5881 base units only — can, like pocket phones, play downloadable ring tones, and display downloadable wallpaper.
XSN CROWNS CHAMPION
David Muellerweiss, 19, of Chapel Hill, N.C., recently survived a two-day video game marathon to win the XSN Sports World Championship in Los Angeles.
Playing XSN Sports’ “NBA Inside Drive 2004,” Muellerweiss defeated Nat Barrick, 20, of Mt. Holly Springs, Pa. The two gamers got to the finals through a round-robin format against six other players, competing in XSN Sports’ football, hockey, skateboarding, tennis and golf titles. The night before the final, Muellerweiss stayed up an extra five hours learning plays. His Eastern Conference All-Stars beat Barrick’s Western All-Stars 90-82.
Playing as the West, Barrick got help and encouragement from Shaquille O’Neal: “Of course, he kept telling me, `Pound the ball inside! Pound the ball inside!'”
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Eric Gwinn is at egwinn@tribune.com.
