Mark A. Kellner

Verizon, unions ‘far apart’ as Sunday strike looms

Verizon Communications Inc., the region's top telephone service provider, is facing a 12:01 a.m. Sunday strike deadline, at which time 45,000 union employees in nine states, including Maryland and Virginia, as well as the District, may walk off their jobs. Published August 4, 2011

KELLNER: Can HP’s portable notebook slay the dragon?

Hewlett-Packard Co. will gladly accept $899 from you for the higher-end model of its HP ProBook 5330m notebook computer. Published August 3, 2011

KELLNER: How (not) to choose a computer for college

It may be broiling hot outside, but the thoughts of many of our nation's youth are on the beginning of college in a few weeks. Off to the halls of academe they will go, clutching something I couldn't have imagined in my Pleistocene Era college career: A portable computer. Published July 27, 2011

KELLNER: Apple’s new ‘Lion’ purrs, doesn’t yet roar

It was perhaps one of the most quiet launches in computer software history: the July 20 debut of Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X Lion, usually a cause for long lines outside of Apple retailers or anxious waiting for the FedEx truck, crept in, as Robert Frost said of the fog, "on little cat feet." Published July 20, 2011

KELLNER: Is Murdoch the last newspaper mogul?

Irrespective of the fate of News Corp. and its chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, those who can barely contain their delight at this man's current troubles might want to check their enthusiasm. Published July 19, 2011

KELLNER: Google, Apple ‘get’ customer service

Though the notion might evoke thoughts of an old "Twilight Zone" episode, a book titled "How to Serve Your Tech Users" should be required reading in many precincts. Published July 13, 2011

KELLNER: Peel is an iPhone-based remote, except when it isn’t

You have an Apple iPhone, and you have a flat-panel TV, a home sound system perhaps and certainly a cable/satellite box with a digital video recorder, or DVR. Maybe you also own a Roku player or an Apple TV to stream additional video content to the aforementioned TV. Published July 6, 2011

KELLNER: A successful test drive for Canon T2i

This was supposed to be a column about a personal triumph: finding a spot along Chocorua Lake, located in the New Hampshire town of Tamworth, and snapping off some wonderful shots of this glistening lake and its reflection of the sky and nearby Mount Chocorua. It wasn't to be. Published June 29, 2011

KELLNER: Tech progress impressive in Kenya

This booming Nairobi suburb of Ongata Rongai, Kenya, about 45 minutes from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, is growing so rapidly that land prices have multiplied exponentially in the past eight years. In the past six years, population here has doubled to 1 million people. Published June 22, 2011

KELLNER: Acer’s tablet shows promise, but Android worries a bit

Plop down $449 or so for Acer's new Iconia A500 Tablet computer and you get something with a good-sized screen, a nice operating system, Wi-Fi and (potential) wireless broadband data connectivity. It's not a toy, and it can certainly hold its own against the category leading (if not crushing) Apple Inc. iPad 2. Published June 15, 2011

KELLNER: ‘Quirky’ connections, raising a ‘rockus’

For at least the foreseeable future, I intend to have an Apple Inc. iMac computer on my desk at home. The model I'm using, vintage 2009, has a 24-inch display screen that's just right for my eyes, not to mention many other nice features. Published June 8, 2011

Lowly shrub grows in stature as biofuel

A plant that some have scorned as a predator might well turn out to be part of the answer to rising fuel bills for consumers. Published June 7, 2011

KELLNER: The coming digital tsunami will change everything

Barring catastrophic events, June 6, 2011, will likely go down as a day on which much of the computing world changed. Published June 1, 2011

KELLNER: Apple’s new desktop has almost no shortcomings

There are certain truths that are supposedly settled, among them the notion that anything Apple Inc. produces is not only better than its competition but also more expensive, sometimes almost prohibitively so. Published May 25, 2011

KELLNER: FiOS’ super-speed Internet service (largely) thrills

Verizon's FiOS service is often advertised as an "express lane" for computer users, versus the traffic-jammed other services from competitors. While I've had nominal FiOS service for the past three years, at a cost of $39.99 per month, the firm recently offered a test of its super-speed service, something that, if purchased, would add about $250 per month to my bill. Published May 18, 2011

KELLNER: It’s the post-merger, folks, after deal for Skype

Tuesday's announcement of the $7.7 billion acquisition of voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) phone service provider Skype by Microsoft Corp. has set off all sorts of alarm bells. Aping the old grade-school game of "Telephone," rumors are flying thick and fast as to What It All Means for consumers, developers and investors. Published May 11, 2011

KELLNER: A complicated and incomplete PlayBook

If tablet computing is as hot as the analysts say — tech research firm IDC says 50 million units will be sold this year — then Research in Motion's BlackBerry PlayBook, priced at $499, should have a good chance of picking up a slice of the market. (The same IDC analyst also says that Apple Inc. will remain king of Tablet Mountain.) Published May 4, 2011

KELLNER: A user can get lost in Atrix’s matrix

Sometimes, you want to like a product a bit more than you do. The Motorola Atrix 4G smartphone is one of those products. Published April 27, 2011

KELLNER: Deciding next computer purchase

So, my Facebook friend pings me — that's how the cognoscenti speak, it seems — and asks, should he get the Dell laptop with the screaming Intel chip and backlit keyboard, or should he go for the Hewlett-Packard model with an AMD processor? Published April 20, 2011