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If you’re thinking of buying a new laptop this spring, my advice is to think again. Unless your laptop is on its last legs and you have to move quickly, there are compelling reasons to wait until at least the summer, and probably the fall, to buy a new machine, especially if you are looking for a Windows PC, but even if you are in the market for a Mac.

That makes this annual spring buyer’s guide a bit different. People always worry that buying tech products today carries a risk of obsolescence. Most of the time, that fear is overblown. But this spring really is a bad time to buy a new laptop, because genuinely big changes are due in the coming months.

On the PC side, Microsoft

is set to introduce Windows 8, the most radical new version of Windows in years, probably in the fall. PC makers will be introducing new laptop designs to take advantage of it. While Windows 8 will work with a mouse or touch pad and a keyboard, it will be heavily oriented toward tablet-type touch-screen navigation. Many PC makers are planning convertible Windows 8 models for the holiday shopping season that can act as either tablets or regular clamshell laptops.

If you buy a traditional Windows 7 laptop now, Microsoft says it will very likely be upgradable to Windows 8, but you won’t find the new styles of laptops on store shelves now. Even if you buy one of the rare touch-screen laptops now, Microsoft says it will likely work with the touch features of Windows 8, but it may not be optimized to do a great job with the new software. Also, in my view, it is always better, especially with Windows computers, to buy a new machine if you want a new version of Windows.

On the Mac side, Apple

also is bringing out a new operating system, this summer. Called Mountain Lion, it won’t be as big a change as Windows 8, partly because Apple already has integrated a lot of touch gestures and tablet-type features into the Mac using the touch pad, and has given no indication it plans touch screens.

However, Apple is overdue for redesigned laptops, especially in its MacBook Pro line, and it is a good bet that new, possibly heavily redesigned, models will begin appearing later this year. Current Macs will likely be upgradable to Mountain Lion, but if you buy now, you’ll miss out on the likely new hardware.

There is another factor that calls for waiting. Intel,

whose processors are used by most Windows PC makers and by Apple, is on the verge of introducing a new family of chips, called Ivy Bridge, which the chip maker claims will offer much faster graphics performance without sacrificing battery life. While some Ivy Bridge laptops will be available very soon, the new chips won’t show up in large numbers of consumer laptops until around June. So, even before Windows 8 appears, many consumer laptops you buy now will be outclassed by similar machines that will be introduced this summer.

There is a silver lining. If you watch prices carefully, you may find bargains on Windows 7 laptops running the current Intel processors—which are plenty capable—as the newer models get closer. And PC makers are likely, at some point, to offer free upgrades to Windows 8.

With all of that in mind, here is a cheat sheet to choosing a laptop now, if you must. As always, these tips are for average consumers doing common tasks—email, Web browsing, social networking, general office productivity, photos, music, videos and simple games. This guide isn’t meant for corporate buyers or for serious gamers and media producers.

Tablet or laptop

Tablets can reduce your reliance on a laptop and allow you to wait to buy a new one. Tablet users often find they use their laptops less often for daily tasks like email, Web browsing, or social networking.

Price

Windows PC makers are trying to nudge up the price of their laptops, since they feel they make too little profit on them. You can buy a stripped-down Windows laptop for under $300 and an adequate model for around $500. But a well-equipped model typically runs between $600 and $900. The cheapest Mac laptop, the 11-inch MacBook Air, costs $999, and prices quickly climb to $1,200.

Windows vs. Mac

Windows 7 laptops offer more variety in styles, and often more ports and larger hard disks, at less cost. But Apple laptops are sturdy, sleek and offer better built-in software. They have excellent customer support and can even run Windows, at an extra cost.

Also, Mac users have only the rare virus to contend with, while Windows users must worry about hundreds of thousands of potential attacks. Finally, Apple’s slim, light, speedy MacBook Air, which starts at $999, is a gem. It isn’t only a great traveling machine, but it can be used as your main machine.

Ultrabooks

Nearly every PC maker now has a MacBook Air-type model called an ultrabook. I have yet to find one that is quite as good as the Air, especially on my battery tests. But I like the ultrabooks a lot, and think most consumers will, too. The main downsides to the ultrabooks are that they are relatively pricey—some top $1,000—and have less storage. Like the Air, most use fast solid-state drives instead of hard disks, and these top out at just 256 gigabytes.

Memory

Get at least 4 gigabytes of memory, or RAM, on a new Windows computer. On a Mac, you can get away with 2 gigabytes, but 4 GB is better.

Processors

Intel’s chips—even the new ones coming soon—are called the i3, i5, and i7. An i5 is fine for most consumers, and even an i3 will do. But a laptop with chips from AMD is also fine.

Graphics

Usually cheaper machines have weak graphics hardware and costlier ones have better graphics. Better graphics can make a machine faster.

Hard disks

A 500 gigabyte hard disk should be the minimum on most PCs, except bargain and very light models. As always, be wary of sales pitches and don’t buy more laptop than you need.

—Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

A version of this article appeared April 18, 2012, on page D1 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Permission to Procrastinate: Wait to Get A New Laptop.

Here’s a shocker: Not everyone wants to buy a smartphone.

Parents, for example, often balk at paying high monthly cellular-data bills for their teens and tweens and would rather they stick with simpler phones, if they have phones at all. And even some adults prefer simpler, less costly phones.

For a lot of these users, a popular solution has been what’s called a connected media player: essentially a smartphone without cellular voice and data access, and without the monthly cellular bill. And the king of that category has been Apple’s iPod Touch, which starts at $199. A Wi-Fi-only device, the Touch looks like a thinner iPhone, with the same high-resolution 3.5-inch screen. It runs most of the same apps, handles email and Web surfing, and is a very capable hand-held game machine, music and video player, and photo viewer.

Now Samsung, Apple’s biggest rival in the smartphone arena, is going after the Touch with a new connected media player sporting a similar-sized screen, the Galaxy Player 3.6. But Samsung is charging about $50 less—$150. And in about 10 days, it’ll launch a second model, the larger Galaxy Player 4.2, for $200. Both devices run on a year-old version of Google’s Android operating system.

Samsung dipped its toe into this market last year with earlier Galaxy Players, but they were mostly ignored by consumers, partly because of bulky designs and high prices. Now, the Korean giant is doubling down with more compact and affordable models.

I’ve been testing the Player 3.6 for the past few days and comparing it with the latest iPod Touch. The Samsung has some advantages, such as a camera that takes better still pictures, an FM radio and expandable memory. But overall, it feels like a cruder device than the Touch. Its much lower screen resolution made text, video and images look grainy compared with those on the Touch, and its bulkier plastic case felt flimsy compared with the glass and stainless-steel case on the Touch, which uses Apple’s latest OS.

Still, for some people, especially parents buying for their kids, the Galaxy Player 3.6 may be good enough, especially since it costs 25% less. Its price advantage is even a bit better, because it comes with a charger, something the Touch doesn’t include. And its included earbuds are the in-ear type, with a microphone and play-pause button, which the included Touch earbuds lack.

Even though the Galaxy Player isn’t a cellphone, it can make voice and video calls, and send text messages over the Internet when you’re in Wi-Fi range. Just like the Touch.

Samsung insists the $200, 4.2-inch model will be a closer competitor to the Touch. I didn’t get a chance to put this model through its paces. But I did get to play with one for about an hour. Its screen resolution is much higher than its sibling’s, though still well below that of the Touch. It also has front-mounted stereo speakers that sounded great—better than the Apple’s speaker. And some users will prefer its larger screen.

Even the entry-level Samsung model might be considered an alternative to Apple’s, especially by prospective buyers who are price-conscious or prefer Android, or who want some Samsung features the Touch lacks. The Galaxy Player 3.6 is about 34% thicker, 8% heavier than the Touch, and is also longer and wider, but it is still comfortable in the hand and the pocket.

I tried music, videos, photos, games, email, Web surfing and third-party apps like Netflix and “Angry Birds” on the new Player. All worked fine, as did a movie I rented from Google’s online store, recently renamed Google Play from Android Market. To get media from a computer onto the Player, Samsung recommends plugging it in via a cable and dragging the files manually into specified folders on the device. This worked for me, but was tedious.

Samsung offers a Windows and Mac program called Kies that automates the transfer process. But in my tests, only the Windows version was able to work with the Player I was using.

The 2-megapixel rear camera on the Player 3.6 was better at still photos than the one on the Touch, but worse at videos. Still, neither comes close to matching the superb cameras in smartphones like the latest iPhone or the Android-based HTC One.

The Player 3.6 has an unusual feature: It can be paired with a cellphone—even an iPhone—via Bluetooth, and can be used to answer (not place) calls. In my tests, this worked, but I can’t imagine using it very often.

Like the base $199 Touch, the $150 entry-model Player comes with 8 gigabytes of internal memory. But, unlike the Apple, you can expand its memory with an extra-cost memory card, up to 32 gigabytes. Apple offers higher-priced Touch models with 32 GB and 64 GB of sealed-in memory.

I didn’t do a formal battery test, but Samsung claims the Player 3.6 gets 30 hours when playing audio and six hours when playing video. Apple claims 40 hours for audio and seven hours for video on the Touch. In my use, the Samsung’s battery held up nicely, and the battery is removable.

Overall, the new Galaxy Player 3.6 is worth a look if you’re in the market for a device with many of the features, but not the monthly costs, of a smartphone, especially if you’re on a budget and can live with the poor screen resolution.

—Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

A version of this article appeared May 2, 2012, on page D1 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Samsung Aims to Get In Touch With Media Players.

For years, some people who wanted to store files on remote servers in the cloud have been emailing the files to their Gmail accounts, or uploading them to Google‘s

lightly used Google Docs online productivity suite, even if they had no intention of editing them there.

Now, Google is formally jumping into the cloud-based file storage and syncing business, offering a service called Google Drive, which will compete with products like Dropbox and others by offering lower prices and different features. It works on multiple operating systems, browsers and mobile devices, including those of Google’s competitors Apple

and Microsoft

. There are apps for Windows, Mac and mobile devices that automatically sync files with Google Drive.

I’ve been testing Google Drive, which launches today, and I like it. It subsumes the editing and file-creation features of Google Docs, and replaces Google Docs (though any documents you have stored there carry over). In my tests—on a Mac, a Lenovo PC, a new iPad and the latest Samsung

Android tablet—Google Drive worked quickly and well, and most of its features operated as promised. At launch, it’s available for Windows PCs, Macs and Android devices. The version for the iPhone and iPad is planned for release soon.

Google Drive, which can be found at drive.google.com, offers users 5 gigabytes of free storage, compared with 2 gigabytes free for the popular Dropbox, and equal to the free offering from another cloud storage and syncing service I like, SugarSync. That’s enough for thousands of typical documents, photos and songs.

Prices for additional storage drastically undercut Dropbox and SugarSync. For instance, 100 GB on Google Drive costs $4.99 a month. By contrast, 100 GB costs $14.99 monthly on SugarSync and $19.99 on Dropbox. Google Drive will offer huge capacities, in tiers, all the way up to 16 terabytes. (A terabyte is roughly 1,000 gigabytes.) And if you buy extra storage for Google Drive, your Gmail quota rises to 25 GB.

But one of Google’s biggest rivals isn’t standing still. Microsoft is expanding both the features and capacity of its little-known SkyDrive cloud storage service as well. That product started out as a free, fixed-capacity (25 gigabytes) online locker mostly for users of the stripped-down, cloud-based version of Microsoft Office, though it also has been available as an app for Windows Phone smartphones and for iPhones. It’s giving away even more free storage than Google—7 GB, though that is a cut from what it used to offer free. It also is charging less than Google. For instance, you can add 100 gigabytes for $50 a year. And users of the old version get to keep their 25-gigabyte free allotment. I wasn’t able to test this new version of SkyDrive for this column. It also is offering syncing apps for Windows and Mac.

Google Drive is meant as an evolution of Google Docs. While you could previously upload a file to Google Docs using your Web browser, for Google Drive, the company is providing free apps for Mac and Windows that, like Dropbox, do this for you. They create special folders that sync with your cloud-based repository and with the Web version of the product. So, you can drag a file into these local folders on your computer and that file will be uploaded to your cloud account and will rapidly appear in the Web version of Google Drive, in the Google Drive folders on your other computers, and in the Google Drive apps on Android, iPhone and iPad devices. These local apps also sync any changes to the files you make.

One big difference between Dropbox and Google Drive is you can edit or create files in the latter, rather than merely storing or viewing them. This is because Google Drive includes the rudimentary word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and other apps that make up Google Docs.

But there is a catch. If your stored document is in a Microsoft Office format, you can only view it. To edit it, you have to click a command to convert the file to Google’s own formats, or choose a setting that converts Microsoft Office files when uploaded. But this latter feature only works when uploading from the website.

Google Drive also is missing some features of SugarSync I like. The latter doesn’t require you to place files in a special folder; it syncs the folders you already use on your PC and Mac. Also, unlike SugarSync, Google Drive doesn’t let you email files directly into your cloud locker.

Google Drive allows you to share files and folders, and collaborate with others. You can also email files as attachments. People with whom you share files can be allowed different rights: to view, comment, or edit them. You can also keep the files private.

Because Google has run into hot water over keeping users’ information private, some people may be reluctant to trust their files to Google Drive. But the company insists that, while it does process and store your files, no human can see them and, at least today, the files aren’t used to target advertising at users. The company notes no file can be placed in Google Drive unless the user wants it there.

The service does a very good job of searching files, even finding words inside PDF or scanned documents. The company claims it can find images when you type in words describing them, like “bridge” or “mountain”—even if those words don’t appear in the image’s file name. But I found this mostly worked with photos of famous places or people Google has collected via its Google Goggles product. Google Drive failed to find images with generic file names on almost all of my own pictures, even when they included things like mountains or other common objects.

Google Drive did a good job in my tests with videos. It converts nearly every common video format into a format it can play, right inside its website. This process can take some time. While Google Drive can store music, it can’t play it directly via its website.

Google’s new service also works with third-party document creation and editing apps that are built to work with it. I used one, called Balsamiq Mockups, to create a quick wire-frame diagram.

I can recommend Google Drive to consumers looking for cloud-based storage, with the added bonus of integrated editing, at lower prices. But the new Microsoft SkyDrive also seems worth a try.

—Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

A version of this article appeared April 25, 2012, on page D1 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Google Heads To the Cloud For Storage to Sync and Edit.

I am writing this paragraph on an iPhone. But I am not typing it on the phone’s virtual keyboard. I am dictating it using a little-known feature that allows you to employ your voice, instead of your fingers, wherever text entry is possible on the device.

And now, for this paragraph, I have switched to an Android phone. Once again, I am composing these words using only my voice, and not typing them on the virtual keyboard.

Those two paragraphs, dictated as emails and then cut and pasted into this column on a computer, required far fewer corrections than you might think, given the bad reputation for accuracy that voice input on digital devices has acquired. I only had to add a comma I’d forgotten to specify in the first paragraph and capitalize the word “Android” in the second paragraph.

For me, a daily user of virtual keyboards, the process was quicker and more accurate than typing would likely have been, even for the relatively short blocks of text typically composed on phones.

So, on the suspicion that dictation on smartphones might prove useful for others as well, I’ve been testing it heavily over the past week. I used a top phone with Google’s Android software, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and an Apple iPhone 4S. In general, I found that, while dictation could occasionally fail badly, it worked surprisingly well in a wide variety of environments and applications.

On both leading smartphone platforms, I found that relatively short dictation—such as emails, texts, tweets, Facebook posts and notes—was at least as accurate, and often more, as typing on a glass screen. It was better in quiet environments, but did OK even in most noisy places like grocery stores, coffee shops and carwashes. It was also faster, since, as long as you don’t have to correct numerous errors, speaking is usually faster than typing on glass.

For this review, I am not mainly referring to Siri, the widely publicized, voice-controlled feature on the new iPhones, which can do things like tell you the weather, or stock prices. Nor am I discussing the “voice actions” on Android, which can perform Web searches and other tasks. Both can also help with some text dictation. I concentrated on a much simpler feature of both platforms: a small microphone key that’s included right in the phones’ on-screen keyboards.

Android phones have had this microphone key for a couple of years, and Apple added it to the latest iPhone, the 4S, last fall, and to the new iPad, when it came out last month. But I’m guessing that many users of these phones either haven’t used this special key, or haven’t even noticed it.

While the microphone keys work a bit differently on the two platforms, they are basically similar. When the keyboard appears, ready for you to type, you can instead hit the microphone key and simply dictate what you want to say. The phones then send your spoken words to a remote server, which rapidly translates them into text and sends them back to the phone’s screen. If corrections are needed, you make them by typing, though both platforms make this easier by indicating the likeliest errors, and suggesting alternatives.

A couple of caveats are in order. I didn’t compare dictation to typing on a phone with physical keys, whose devotees are often speedy and accurate. Instead, I thought the apt comparison was with a virtual keyboard, which is becoming the norm on phones, but is still a source of frustration for many users.

I also didn’t try dictating a long document, like this column, because phones are rarely used for lengthy composing.

I found that both platforms’ dictation systems worked well enough for me to recommend them. In case after case, both phones got it right, or close enough to require little correcting.

But there are differences. Android has an advantage in that, in the newest version of its operating system, it displays the dictated text almost in real time, lagging just slightly behind your spoken words. On the iPhone, the system only reveals its rendering of your dictation after you’ve tapped on a “Done” button.

Android’s dictation system also supports many more languages than Apple’s—40 languages and dialects, including Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and Hebrew. On the iPhone, only English, French and German are currently supported, though Apple says Chinese, Korean, Italian, and Spanish will be added later this year.

However, I found the iPhone 4S worked better than the Galaxy Nexus in noisier environments. For instance, in a crowded shopping-mall food court, while neither phone was perfect, the iPhone understood me to say: “I am dictating this email from the very noisy Court at Montgomery Mall on the iPhone”—missing only the word “food” and capitalizing “Court.” The Android phone mangled a very similar sentence as: “I am dictating this email on droid phone from the bearing noise for it montgomery mall.”

Google notes that, unlike Apple, it supports many phones, and that the results might have differed on another model, with better noise cancellation. Apple says the iPhone 4S does have noise cancellation. And, in any case, the two phones’ results were more comparable in quieter settings.

Apple’s system also did better at capitalizing proper names, like Stradivarius, or Red Sox, or even Google (which my Android phone, ironically, always rendered in lowercase). But Google says it will be updating its dictation feature in weeks to better handle proper names.

On the other hand, I found that, when Android did err, it had a more extensive and easier to use manner for correcting those mistakes than the iPhone did. Android was also more reliable; sometimes the iPhone returned no text at all.

Still, I found these differences less important than the fact that, for me, the results on both platforms were impressive. On both, if you say words like “period” or “comma,” you generally get the punctuation mark (though both try to make the distinction when you actually want a word like “period.”)

And, in test after test, both did a good job. Errors were generally fewer than if I had typed the words quickly.

Both have a downside: Because they do the transcription on their servers, and they are anxious to improve, they do retain some information about what you’re saying. Both companies say they respect your privacy, but, if you worry about transmitting your messages or notes to Apple or Google, don’t use dictation.

Otherwise, especially for those who find typing on glass clumsy, the microphone key on Android and the new iPhone is something you might want to add to your arsenal of ways to use your phone.

—Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

A version of this article appeared April 11, 2012, on page D1 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Take a Note: Typing With No Hands.

The plane lands, travelers grab their stuff, check their phones for email and voicemail and file past flight attendants for one last “buh-bye.” But increasingly, harried passengers are leaving something behind: their iPads.

Airlines say they are warehousing hundreds of iPads and other tablet computers and e-readers left behind by travelers. Carriers try to reunite the devices with their owners but are often thwarted by the lack of ID tags, password protection and Apple Inc.’s

reluctance to track down owners based on serial numbers.

Delta Air Lines

says it has several dozen unclaimed iPads in Atlanta, its largest hub, and a bunch more at other hub airports around the world. Southwest Airlines

says it has a “great number” of iPads. Virgin America Airlines says it ends up donating one or two every month to a San Francisco charity after declaring them lost causes after 30 days. (The length of time a lost item is kept varies by airline.)

“A bare iPad without any identifying feature is difficult for us,” said Delta spokesman Morgan Durrant.

After landing, travelers often grab their phones. But their thin tablets and electronic readers, typically stuffed in seat-back pockets, aren’t necessarily top of mind when they rush off planes. The devices can be hard to spot if covered up by discarded papers, magazines or trash. And airlines say they see more and more kids on airplanes using iPads to watch movies and play games—and apparently leaving them behind, too.

Logically, owners would contact airlines immediately after realizing their right hand was missing. But carriers say that often doesn’t happen—people assume the device was stolen or figure it was left somewhere else like a hotel or security checkpoint.

“Sometimes owners do not file a claim, apparently thinking that once it’s lost, it’s gone,” said Tim Smith, a spokesman for American Airlines.

That happens not only with iPads and electronic devices, but all kinds of passenger belongings, airlines say.

And sometimes when customers do contact the airline, there aren’t any identifying features to single out their iPad from the room full of devices—they don’t have the serial number or a unique case, for example. Currently, iPads come in only two colors.

In many cases, when unidentifiable devices are found, airlines use flight information and seat numbers to send emails to travelers asking if they left anything onboard. Julie Del Santo and her husband Tony left an iPad onboard a Virgin America flight to San Francisco from Palm Springs, Calif., earlier this month. The couple and their two small children had suffered a six-hour weather delay and after the midnight landing couldn’t wait to get home.

“Our minds were fried,” she said.

Twenty minutes after leaving the airport, she got an email on her BlackBerry from the airline asking her to call the local baggage office.

“Immediately my husband said, ‘Oh, no. My iPad,’ ” she said.

The direct number was answered even though it was after midnight. After describing the device, she had Virgin America ship it FedEx to her office.

“That was a class act,” she said. From past experiences with airlines, “it’s like pulling teeth to get something back.”

Emailing potential owners by seat number doesn’t work if travelers don’t have contact information on file at the airline, or if the aircraft itself has flown several other trips before the lost device is discovered. Planes often don’t always get cleaned thoroughly after every flight.

Some carriers say half of the iPads they find go unclaimed. That is all the more surprising since the latest versions of the popular electronic tablet have a “Find My iPad” tracking option. An owner who has registered the device and loaded that application can track the location of the device and even send a message to it so that someone who powered it up would get a message with the owner’s contact information.

The tracking option, though, has its limitations. Some owners don’t set it up, and even if they do, the device has to be connected to the Internet by Wi-Fi or cellular service. An iPad locked in a baggage room at an airport may be literally left in the dark.

Virgin America, which in March collected six iPads left behind from 527,000 passengers, with a few iPads still unclaimed, invested in a massive charging station to power up lost devices. Airport workers take a photo of the device with the seat number, date and flight number written on it. When a customer calls in, the airline can search through the digital pictures.

“We are seeing fewer phones left behind, but a lot more iPads and Kindles,” said Tim Thornton, director of airport operations and guest services for Virgin America.

When phones do get left behind, airlines say they have an easier time repatriating them with owners. Airlines try to keep them charged up, figuring owners will call. Many aren’t password protected or have contact information that is easily found. Sometimes simply redialing the last call connects to owners.

Kindle electronic readers are easier to reunite with owners than iPads, airlines say, because they often aren’t locked with password protection. That means email addresses can be retrieved. And carriers say Amazon.com Inc.

has been cooperative at contacting owners based on serial numbers.

Several carriers say Apple, on the other hand, won’t help when only a serial number is identified. US Airways Group Inc.

said its baggage service unit actually worked out a special relationship with Apple, but other carriers say they haven’t been able to do that.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

Theft of iPads and other devices has also been a problem for travelers. Airlines say they police their cleaning crews and often require two people to work a plane at the same time. While cleaners turn in many expensive computers and some wallets full of cash, there also have been instances of workers getting caught pocketing found valuables.

Worse, baggage handlers and Transportation Security Administration officers have been caught stealing valuables from checked luggage. Some have been arrested for removing items they’ve seen on X-ray images of luggage—they know right where to grab.

In January, TSA officer Clayton Keith Dovel was accused of taking eight iPads from bags checked at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. He has been charged with theft by a public servant after one victim said he used “Find My iPad” to track the device to Mr. Dovel’s home in Bedford, Texas.

Airlines exclude valuables and computer equipment from liability and reimbursement if luggage is lost or stolen, and travelers should always carry computers, cameras and jewelry with them onboard rather than checking it in luggage.

Protect Yourself

How to safeguard data and personal information on iPads, tablets and e-readers:

For a new device

–Apple can engrave information on the back. Securely taping a business card to the device works, too.

–Buy a brightly colored case that is easy to spot in a messy airplane cabin. A unique case will also help airline personnel locate the device in a storage room.

–Enable cloud storage for sensitive data, such as Apple’s iCloud, Google Drive or Dropbox.

–Go to settings on your iPad and enable Find My iPad.

–Set up your screen saver to display a phone number that someone can see even if the device is locked.

–Keep serial numbers of all devices in a safe place. That will help the manufacturer’s customer-service representatives offer guidance.

Before a flight

–When purchasing a plane ticket, provide a phone number that the airline can use to contact you.

–Write down flight numbers and seat assignments for each leg of your trip to help airline personnel narrow their search.

After you realize it’s lost

–Contact the airline immediately and file a claim. Check the carrier’s policy on how long an item is kept before being donated or sold to a third-party company.

–On iPads, enable Find my iPad. The location of the device will be displayed on a map. It can play a sound—overriding volume or silent settings—to help with the search.

–On the Samsung Galaxy Tab, enable the Find My Mobile feature to trace the location of the device.

Last resort

–On the Kindle Fire, Nook, Sony and other e-readers, go online or call customer service to de-register the device. That keeps anyone who finds it from making purchases using credit-card information associated with the device. Also cancel any automatic subscriptions until the device is found.

–On iPads, go to the iTunes store to cancel any automatic subscriptions and remove credit-card information associated with the device.

–Apple and Samsung let you initiate a remote wipe to restore the device to its factory settings. Data can be restored using your most recent backup from the cloud.

Write to Scott McCartney at middleseat@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared April 26, 2012, on page D1 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Oops! I Forgot My New iPad On the Plane; Now What?.

By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER and JESSICA E. VASCELLARO

Dropbox Inc. followed the Internet start-up playbook to a tee last year.

The online file-sharing company became a hot property in Silicon Valley and snagged a $250 million in venture capital at a $4 billion valuation. It even secured celebrity investments from U2′s Bono and his bandmate, The Edge.

Now comes the hard part: Living up to the hype.

At that valuation, five-year-old Dropbox is worth as much as companies with multi-billions in revenue, such as Cablevision Systems Corp.

and Expedia Inc.

Through little more than word-of-mouth the company has racked up more than 50 million customers who use its software to store and retrieve their photos, documents and videos from Web-connected devices.

Dropbox is now racing to keep up with that growth and prove its business is sustainable. The 100-person company recently moved into an 87,000-square-foot office in San Francisco where it plans to hire hordes of engineers and product managers. It made its first acquisition in February to grab personnel with experience from the early days of Facebook Inc.

The company is also forging partnerships with device makers and app developers to get its service on mobile devices and televisions. And it’s pushing a premium service into businesses where it will meet competition from start-ups such as its closely-named rival, Box Inc.

At the same time, Dropbox must battle tech giants including Apple Inc.,

Microsoft Corp.

and Amazon.com Inc.,

all of which offer online storage and sharing that is tightly embedded with their own services. Google Inc.

is close to launching its own cloud-storage service called Drive, say people familiar with the matter. (A Google spokesman declined comment.)

Drew Houston, Dropbox’s 29-year-old co-founder and chief executive, said he doesn’t spend much time thinking about the competition or living up to a big valuation. Instead, he said he focuses on building a team that can fulfill its big ambitions.

“Companies die from not being eaten by their competitors, but from self-inflicted wounds,” Mr. Houston said. “They don’t have discipline. Their best people get frustrated. They chase all these shiny objects that aren’t core to the business. They become complacent because of early success.”

While studying at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he and another student, Arash Ferdowsi, co-founded Dropbox in 2007 after becoming frustrated with email attachments and forgetting their USB storage drives.

That same year, Microsoft launched its SkyDrive storage service as many consumer tech companies began to see the value of shifting consumers to the “cloud”—convincing users to rent digital space, rather than owning it on their computers. In 2009 Apple CEO Steve Jobs approached Dropbox with a buyout offer as Apple sought to enable its customers to sync their files between iPhones, iPads and Macs. Mr. Houston refused. (Apple declined to comment.)

Apple launched iCloud in October, and to date more than 100 million consumers have signed up for accounts. Amazon also introduced its online storage service Cloud Drive last year. Microsoft, meanwhile, is trying to jumpstart SkyDrive by better integrating it with its software.

Even with the competition, venture firms such as Index Ventures and Benchmark Capital were clamoring to invest in Dropbox last year at the $4 billion valuation. Mr. Houston wouldn’t disclose Dropbox’s revenue but said it is profitable even though a minority of its users pay fees, which begin at $10 per month for 50 gigabytes of storage.

Last fall, Dropbox joined the exclusive class of Web start-ups such as Airbnb Inc. and Square Inc. that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars at high valuations, which can “create huge pressure on these companies,” said Matt Murphy, a partner at Square investor Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The trick to surviving high employee and investor expectations, he says, “is a maniacal focus on the user experience and product.”

At least one early Dropbox investor has been pushing the company to complete another financing round to cash out existing shareholders, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Houston said investors “are thrilled we are on plan.” He said he’s “not focused” on an initial public offering, right now and Dropbox doesn’t need any more capital. “We don’t think of financing or other milestones as endgames,” he said.

Ali Partovi, a Dropbox investor and adviser, said the company’s biggest challenge is establishing processes as it grows. They have to “hire people fast enough and get them into a streamlined organization efficiently enough that they can capture all of the opportunity.” He and his brother Hadi have increased their initial investment in the last round, Mr. Partovi said.

Dropbox has faced snafus. In June, a programming error temporarily allowed any password to be used to access any account. The glitch affected fewer than 100 accounts and was quickly corrected, but it was an embarrassment for a company that touts its encryption.

The incident was “an important reminder to us that security and reliability and not losing data require specific attention,” Mr. Houston said.

Besides ensuring its safety to users, Dropbox is also trying to get its service in front of as many consumers as possible.

In October, the company updated its open software platform that allows other developers to build Dropbox inside their services to better support websites. Dropbox says thousands of developers have used its platform.

Quickoffice Inc., which makes software for working with business documents that is installed on 400 million devices, first integrated Dropbox into its software in 2009. The company was drawn by Dropbox’s “ease of use and the massive, quick user adoption,” said Kristine Rogers, the company’s vice president of business development.

But Quickoffice isn’t an exclusive Dropbox partner. It also integrated with Google Docs, Box, and other cloud storage providers, though it says Dropbox is popular with users.

Another app developer, mobile-game maker Pocket Gems Inc., said Apple’s iCloud makes more sense to integrate into its games. “It’s already part of the platform, and it’s fully integrated,” said Chief Technology Officer Harlan Crystal.

Mr. Crystal said his company has discussed iCloud with Apple, but not yet integrated it into its games. He adds that he would consider Dropbox if being compatible across different smartphone operating systems was more of a concern.

Dropbox also plans to survive the competitive onslaught by offering its service across a growing array of devices. It has forged partnerships with handset makers such as HTC Corp.

The company recently launched a service for phones powered by Google’s Android software that automatically syncs photos taken on the devices with a Dropbox account.

Services from companies such as Apple and Microsoft “work really well on their own platform, but others are an afterthought,” Mr. Houston said. “No matter what you use, Dropbox will work.”

Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com and Jessica E. Vascellaro at jessica.vascellaro@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared April 3, 2012, on page B1 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Hype Hangs Over Dropbox.

By JULIA ANGWIN

(See Correction & Amplification below
.)

Sens. John Kerry and John McCain proposed legislation Tuesday to create a “privacy bill of rights” to protect people from the increasingly invasive commercial data-collection industry.

The bill, labeled the Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights Act of 2011, would impose new rules on companies that gather personal data, including offering people access to data about them, or the ability to block the information from being used or distributed. Companies would have to seek permission before collecting and sharing sensitive religious, medical and financial data with outside entities.

The bipartisan proposal would create the nation’s first comprehensive privacy law and largely adopts recommendations made by the Obama Administration last year. Current laws cover only the use of certain types of personal data, such as financial and medical information.

The move comes amid widening scrutiny of the commercial data-gathering industry, which has been chronicled in The Wall Street Journal’s “What They Know” series. In his comments, Sen. McCain, an Arizona Republican, read an excerpt from the Journal series revealing that 56 popular cellphone applications transmitted information about users to outsiders without users’ awareness or consent. “Customers must have control of their data when it is transferred to a third party,” Sen. McCain said.

“These companies can do virtually whatever they want with our personal information,” said Sen. Kerry (D., Mass.). “Sen. McCain and I seek to change that.”

Some provisions of the bill changed from a draft the senators circulated a month ago. The bill no longer requires data gatherers to seek permission for sharing any data with outsiders—now the requirement is only for sensitive data.

The senators also added an exemption for companies that gather data through others, but have an “established business relationship” with a customer and are “clear, conspicuous and visible” to the customer.

Some privacy advocates said that could benefit Facebook Inc., which gathers data on its users as they browse other sites. A Facebook spokesman, Andrew Noyes, said the company is pleased the bill “encourages those who offer products and services on the Internet to have a trusted relationship with their users.”

Sen. McCain said the senators attempted to “strike a balance” between consumer-advocacy groups and industry.

Other consumer-advocacy groups, including Consumers Union and the Center for Democracy and Technology, praised the bill, as did four big technology companies: Hewlett-Packard Co., Microsoft Corp., eBay Inc. and Intel Corp.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau, whose members are responsible for most online tracking, said the bill gave too much discretion to the Federal Trade Commission. The bill would give the FTC authority to write rules for personal-data gatherers. The Commerce Department could help craft those rules.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a statement, “It’s terrific that we’re seeing so much Congressional interest in protecting consumer privacy.”

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in a statement that he was pleased that the legislation incorporated the administration’s recommendations.

Write to Julia Angwin at julia.angwin@wsj.com

Correction & Amplification

Interactive Advertising Bureau members were responsible for most of the online tracking discovered in a Wall Street Journal survey last year of the top 50 U.S. websites. This article incorrectly says that the group’s members are responsible for most online tracking.