IT Management

We placed ads on AdWords, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and StumbleUpon. Which service provided the best ROI? The results will surprise you.

You might have the best sales, marketing, and support teams on the planet, but without a solid customer relationship management (CRM) system, your business isn't going to get very far.

The Iomega px2-300d is a two-bay NAS box that delivers very good performance, excellent backup and surveillance features, and a helpful LCD that reports on the unit's status (IP address, current time, storage remaining, and so on). Its EMC LifeLine operating system is also one of the more feature-rich ones in the industry. But you should buy this box bare—Iomega populates it with enterprise-class hard drives that jack up the price.

The top tech products of 2012, in categories ranging from PCs to productivity software.

When we tested mobile device management (MDM) last year, the products were largely focused on asset management - provisioning, protecting and containing mobile devices.

As the arrival of Windows 8 draws ever nearer, it's not surprising to see the debut of a flurry of devices featuring the new OS.

A Start menu substitute can greatly reduce the shock of using Windows 8. Here are three alternatives that produce a reasonable experience.

Get behind the wheel of any new car and you'll quickly grasp the importance that electronics and gadgetry play in the auto industry these days. Companies are starting to put just as much effort into the entertainment system as the mechanics and that means some pretty high-tech rides like the Cadillac XTS.

If you create only the occasional label for files or objects, you can probably get by with one of the many sub-$100 label printers on the market. But if your business-labeling needs are more complex--for instance, you require support for bar codes or for multiple users who use different types of labels--the Dymo LabelManager 500TS could justify its admittedly high price ($200 on Dymo's site as of July 19, 2012, though you can find it for significantly less at some online retailers).

If you don't have VLC, aka the VideoLAN Player, installed on your system, the chances are you don't watch a whole lot of video. VLC has millions of users and supports virtually every type of video found on the Web, as well as audio. It's also mature, stable, cross-platform, and provides a lot of features not found in Windows Media Player or the Quicktime player.

Repeating an action every day is a common way to forge it into a lasting habit. This approach works for some habits, such as a simple exercise routine (say, the Fitness Ladder described in The Hacker's Diet). But other actions can't be repeated daily, and don't need to be as rigid: For example, you can't water your houseplants every day, and nothing bad would happen if you watered them in slightly irregular intervals as long as you didn't forget to do it for two weeks straight. That's when habit-forming gets tricky, and where the $10 utility Sciral Consistency shines with an interface like no other.

If you spend eight or more hours each day staring at a bright computer monitor in a windowless cube lit by fluorescent tubes, eventually your eyes will beg for mercy. Mine did, so I tried a pair of Gunnar glasses, billed as "technology eyewear."