Labels containing technology specifications and jargon are "misleading people buying new electronic devices" claims Which?

In many cases, the statistics of different brands are not comparable, says the consumer watchdog group.

Shops can add to the confusion by not understanding the significance of the labels either, according to the Which? report.

The firm looked at a range of devices including TVs, cameras, and laptops.

"Televisions make a lot of claims and use a lot of big numbers," said Matt Bath, technology editor at Which?

"One set claimed to have 'four trillion colours' - which sounds fantastic. The trouble is, programmes aren't broadcast in that many colours and in any case, we can't see that many; it's meaningless."

He also warned consumers against comparing statistics - such as contrast ratios between different sets - because the manufacturers do not have a common standard, so the numbers they use are not the same.

No Comparison

 

Televisions marked 100Hz, 200Hz, and 600Hz are also not measurements of the same specification, although they can be presented as if they are, Mr Bath told BBC News.

100Hz and 200Hz relates to the number of times a screen refreshes itself per second, while 600Hz refers to the number of individual pixels, rather than the whole picture, which refresh in the same amount of time, he said.

"It's like comparing two cars when one claims to reach 100 miles per hour and another 1000 revs per minute," said Mr Bath.

Digital camera marketing also came under scrutiny. Some devices claim to have an impressive "digital zoom" rate, but this simply means that they enlarge part of the original image, rather than refocus the lens (optical zoom), according to the report.

"It's certainly marketing hype," said Mr Bath.

"Plastering products with big numbers will make some consumers choose the brand which sounds more impressive. But when it comes to technology, bigger doesn't mean better."

 

Tech Specs Confuse Gadget Buyers

Source: BBC   http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10393377.stm    author not listed

Adobe has acknowledged a "critical" security flaw in its Reader, Acrobat and Flash Player software.

Adobe says the vulnerability potentially enables hackers to take control of affected computer systems.

Users running Windows, Macintosh or Linux might all be open to attack.

The company is working to fix the problem. In the meantime, users of Reader, Acrobat and Flash are advised to ensure their anti-virus software is up to date.

"It doesn't really get any worse than a 'zero-day' vulnerability like this," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, a security software company.

He said that hackers could create a "booby-trapped Flash animation, or PDF" that would give them access to a person's computer, potentially allowing them to harvest personal information or use the machine to send spam messages.

In recent years, PDFs have become a popular means of sharing documents that are not easily altered by the recipient.

In a security advisory, Adobe said: "There are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild against both Adobe Flash Player, and Adobe Reader and Acrobat".

Whilst it works to fix the problem, the company suggested upgrading to the latest "release candidate" for the Adobe Flash Player, version 10.1, which it said "does not appear to be vulnerable".

Alternatively, the company said that Adobe Reader and Acrobat users could delete or rename the "authplay.dll" file on their system.

However, Adobe said that doing so meant that "users will experience a non-exploitable crash or error message when opening a PDF file that contains SWF [Adobe Flash] content."

Mr Cluley said that keeping anti-virus software up to date would also help to avoid problems.

"There has been a long history of vulnerabilities being found in Adobe's products," he said.

"This is probably because they are everywhere and omnipresent."

Adobe estimates that more than 95% of computers worldwide have Flash Player installed.

Apple has been criticised for preventing its popular iPhone and iPad devices from viewing Adobe Flash animations and videos.

Apple boss Stve Jobs recently wrote an open letter explaining that Adobe's Flash was, amongst other things, "the number one reason Macs crash".

Mr Cluley said: "The more people who are concerned about Adobe's products and the ability for them to be written securely, the more it backs up Steve Jobs's argument that Adobe's software is buggy.

"The crux of the problem is that Adobe have overloaded some of their programs with so many bells and whistles, that with lots of code, there is a much higher chance that there will be a bug.

"This vulnerability exploits a feature of a PDF file format that will not be widely used.

"A simpler code might have led to a simpler life."