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To know the Fiat 500 is to know its numbers.

Fifty-four years ago, Italy’s Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino produced a car the size of a large coffee table. It was three meters long, powered by a 479-cc engine and about as quick off the line as a riding lawnmower. It produced 13 horsepower, or roughly as much as a modern portable electric generator. America laughed — you could cram a 500 into the trunk of a ‘57 Cadillac, and crashing one was certain death — but the rest of the world just went ahead and bought the silly thing. Three-and-a-half million times.

Thirty-six years ago, that car was discontinued. Almost three decades ago, Fiat left America because it couldn’t suss what Americans wanted in a car. Six years ago, the firm revived the 500’s name and profile for a new model, a 3.5-meter-long subcompact. And four months ago, Fiat unveiled the U.S. version of that car, the first Fiat to be sold in America in 28 years.

There has since been a lot of pushback. Small cars don’t work in America, people say, but Fiat reps point to the Mini Cooper, an example of which lives on every street from Pasadena to Pittsburgh. Fiat stands for Fix It Again Tony, pundits cackle, but Fiat employees roll their eyes and wearily point to the fact that their current lineup doesn’t fall apart or regularly catch fire. (Buy a ’70s Spider, though, and even devotees will admit all bets are off.) The paranoids scream about small cars being unsafe, which prompts Fiat to trumpet the 500’s five-star European NCAP safety rating.

In short, America isn’t the place it once was, and Fiat isn’t the company it once was.

Similarly, the 500 isn’t the car it once was. When the 2400-pound hatchback arrives at the dealers’ next month, it will come in three forms: Pop ($16,000), Sport ($18,000) and Lounge ($20,000). Each gets a 101-hp version of Fiat’s 1.4-liter four-cylinder (30/38 mpg city/highway) and a standard five-speed manual transmission. The three levels are separated by small differences like bumper trim, wheel size and suspension tuning, but they’re essentially the same car. Creature comforts like air conditioning and cruise control are standard, and a six-speed Aisin automatic is available across the line.

Looks aside, our 500 isn’t Europe’s 500. Everything from interior layout to crash structure has been tweaked in the interest of appealing to stateside needs. Because we’re a nation of fatties, the front seats have been widened, the center console narrowed. The back of the rear seat is now carpeted, not painted metal, because we supposedly like that sort of thing. Steering and suspension tuning have been modified. And there’s a glove box and driver’s armrest where Europe had none, because Europeans apparently don’t wear gloves, or perhaps have no arms at all. (The mind boggles. Maybe it’s a trend.)

The biggest change, however, is the engine. The 1.4-liter, 98 lb-ft four that lives under the 500’s hood is not offered in Europe, where the car makes do with a variety of smaller, hamster-on-a-wheel mills. This engine is a technological marvel; it’s tiny (note the iPhone placed on the intake manifold for scale), efficient and boasts Fiat’s MultiAir variable valve-timing technology, which does away with an intake camshaft and uses oil pressure to vary valve lift and timing. The MultiAir name comes from the system’s clever ability to open the valves multiple times in one intake stroke, promoting charge turbulence and aiding combustion.

The end result is a car that feels almost, but not completely, European. Like Europe’s 500, ours is impossibly nimble and slow as molasses: 60 mph arrives in an estimated 9.5 seconds.

Make no mistake: Dell will not be sitting out the Tablet Wars the way it did during the Struggle Against Smartphones. No, Dell is fighting, and by that I mean it is intent on pouring money into what is obviously a hole of futility.

Its latest volley in the skirmish is the Dell Streak 7, an overgrown version of the 5-inch tablet it kinda-sorta released last year. And in most ways the Streak 7 is a typical Dell affair: foolishly overdesigned in an attempt to stand out, and coming up short all around.

The size (7 inches diagonal) and operating system (dusty old Android 2.2) pit the Streak 7 squarely against the Samsung Galaxy Tab. Sadly, that is a battle that the Streak loses on virtually every front. Are looks important to you? The weird slopes and baffling button placement of the Streak 7 make it less comfortable to hold and far less pretty than the Tab. Or perhaps you’d like a something with a really nice display? The Streak 7 is an utter disaster on this front. It’s bad enough that the 800 x 480 display looks visibly chunky, but the viewing angle is so poor that moving your head even a few degrees from dead center creates a screen-door effect so bad that it borders on nauseating. It’s not just the worst tablet display I’ve ever seen, it’s the worst display of any kind I’ve seen since the dawn of the LCD screen.

Other drawbacks are palpable but pale next to the screen debacle: The Streak 7 can’t charge at all via USB — not even trickle charge. It needs wall power, and it gets incredibly hot to the touch after a few hours of use. Well, after an hour of use: We thought we were in for an easy “Tired” when we read reports that the Streak 7 could only muster five hours of battery life vs. seven or more for its competition. We were aghast when it turned out that the tablet crapped out after a mere two hours (and three minutes!) of video watching on the device (tested with radios on).

There is but one bright spot with the Streak 7, and that is performance: Equipped with the hype-fueled Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, the tablet absolutely rips at web page rendering, app loading, running Flash, and just about everything else. If we could actually make out the display, and the battery alert wasn’t constantly threatening to shut the thing down, it’d be totally awesome.

WIRED: Fast. Cheap.

TIRED: Mattel Football had a better screen. Dismal battery life. Crashed twice — once going dark for an hour — in the first day of testing.

Photos: Jonathan Snyder/Wired

After years as an iPhone customer on AT&T, I forgot what it was like to have a reliable, working phone.

But over the weekend, when I called buddies with both an AT&T iPhone 4 and subsequently a Verizon iPhone 4, we could immediately tell the difference.

“Holy crap, you sound so much better,” a friend said after I switched to the Verizon handset while walking through downtown San Francisco. “That’s amazing. I can actually hear you.”

Now I really know what “network congestion” means. Switching from an AT&T iPhone to a Verizon iPhone is like finally being able to breathe clearly after years of battling allergies. People can hear you better, and you can hear them better. It’s that simple. That’s the key reason so many people have clung to Verizon while resisting the shiny allure of the iPhone.

As we all suspected would be the case, the iPhone is a better phone on Verizon than it is on AT&T. It is not, however, a superior media-consumption device.

That’s simply because Verizon’s 3G-transfer rates are slower than AT&T’s. For the few days I’ve had the Verizon iPhone, I’ve been riding my motorcycle all around San Francisco to test its performance against the AT&T iPhone. The AT&T handset on average scored significantly better in speed tests: 62 percent faster for downloads and 38 percent faster for uploads. (If you’re curious about test procedures, check out our explainer and our interactive map on Gadget Lab.)

In real-world use cases, the Verizon iPhone’s slower transfer rates are noticeable. Netflix streaming is smooth on both devices, but on the Verizon iPhone, compression artifacts are more apparent: The video stream is adapting to the slower transfer rate (compare the screenshots in the gallery at the top, or see them here: AT&T, Verizon). Loading websites in Safari was faster on the AT&T iPhone, and so was installing apps.

However, the AT&T iPhone completely failed multiple tests when it could not connect to the network, whereas the Verizon iPhone was able to successfully get a connection in every location and complete every test. That’s important.

Notably, there were two persistent AT&T dead zones in San Francisco where the AT&T iPhone repeatedly failed to place a call or transfer any data — Gestalt bar in the Mission District and Velo Rouge cafe in the Inner Richmond district — while the Verizon iPhone was able to make calls and perform our bandwidth tests at each location with zero problems.

This all corroborates results of earlier independent studies comparing 3G networks: AT&T has a faster network, but Verizon has more coverage and therefore a more-reliable network.

The question remains whether the iPhone will inundate Verizon’s CDMA network as it did AT&T’s GSM network. That could ultimately degrade the service quality and make it a crappy phone all over again. But there are already a ton of Android customers on Verizon’s CDMA network, and the upcoming Android phones will be compatible with the next-generation 4G network, so I’m guessing the Verizon iPhone will remain a superior phone in terms of reliability and call quality.

And so far, the Verizon iPhone is pretty damn reliable. It has a hot-spot feature to turn the handset into a Wi-Fi connection to share with multiple devices. I used the hot spot to do work on my laptop for six hours without getting disconnected. (It was plugged in — no iPhone’s battery would have lasted that long on its own.)

However, earlier in the morning when I received a phone call on the Verizon iPhone, I was booted off the hot-spot network. This is a limitation of Verizon’s CDMA network: It does not support simultaneous voice and data transmissions, which may be a big minus for some customers, especially business-oriented “power users.”

Otherwise, the Verizon iPhone is the same smartphone we’ve all grown familiar with since the iPhone 4’s debut in summer of 2010. It’s got the same glass body, a 5-megapixel camera and a front-facing camera for FaceTime, which all work the same as its AT&T counterpart.

However, I did notice one odd difference when holding the Verizon iPhone next to multiple AT&T iPhones. The AT&T iPhone’s screen is a little bluer, and the Verizon iPhone’s is a little whiter. Both look great, but personally I prefer the whiter Verizon iPhone display. This is only a minor difference, though.

If you have the liberty to choose between AT&T and Verizon to buy an iPhone, your best choice depends on what you value. If you enjoy making phone calls, the Verizon iPhone is the obvious winner. Or if you’re an AT&T iPhone customer and your reception is just pathetic wherever you live, then by all means, pay the price and jump ship to Verizon.

With all that said, if you use your iPhone more often as a general computing device rather than a phone, then the AT&T iPhone’s faster transfer rates should serve your needs.

WIRED It’s a better phone, period. More likely to pull a signal, even indoors — this could change the way we converse at bars. Hot-spotting is well-integrated and very easy to use. Has a whiter, slightly better-looking display.

TIRED Slow data transfers compared to the AT&T iPhone. Sluggish app installs take away from the App Store’s instant gratification. Video streams are compressed more heavily, so Netflix and YouTube are uglier. No simultaneous voice and data transmissions thanks to the limitations of CDMA.

Photos by Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com

In its first editorial, The Daily bills itself as “the newspaper of the 21st Century.” In truth, News Corp.’s stab at a daily news publication produced solely for tablets looks a lot like a re-imagined digital magazine that is updated every day.

Wednesday’s launch event announced that The Daily will be free for the first two weeks, thanks to a sponsorship from Verizon, making it well worth a peek. Thereafter it’s $1 for a week, or $40 for a year — and it’s the first publication Apple will permit to sell subscriptions within the app, not through the iTunes store.

Time will tell if that’s a good model for newspapers, magazines and readers. But at first blush, The Daily looks like it may be onto something editorially, even if the economics are a challenge.

After a splash screen — accompanied by unnecessary audio — the reader is taken to a starting window that is both a dashboard and a home page. Right away, The Daily seems to have solved a Big Problem faced by publishers in print, on the web and in apps: How do you convey the totality of your content without overwhelming the reader and blurring everything?

The Daily uses the cover-flow paradigm popularized by Apple in iTunes. Lateral swipes move you swiftly through the page thumbnails, all rendered large enough for you to quickly glean what they contain. They are always in view.

Cover flow is The Daily’s front page. The flow also rolls on its own, page by page, every few seconds, which may or may not be a good thing. And there is a button which allows you to page quickly and stop at will, just in case swiping is too tedious.

But just as Apple discovered that cover flow worked great for thumbing through your music collection, this Apple-supported news publication is letting the reader thumb through its pages. It doesn’t run terribly smoothly — it’s not nearly as responsive as it should be — and the thumbs are oddly pixelized. Both of these issues are, presumably, addressable in app updates.

The real front page isn’t a newspaper page at all, but more like a magazine: A huge picture, large but not tabloid-shouting font, and a logo in the upper-left-hand corner. The Economist, anyone?

Content will make or break this app, and it’s too early to judge the quality of The Daily’s journalism — though nothing we read in the inaugural edition disqualifies it. But there’s a lot of content, thanks to the roughly 50 journalists News Corp. hired to write and edit this iPad-only publication. Maybe even enough for people to spend a buck a week, or less than that for a full-year subscription to a “real” newspaper.

That’s the rub: The Daily genuinely defies description in traditional terms. Is it a newspaper, in the sense that it updates in real time — or at least once a day? Is it a magazine, in the sense that page elements and layout are at least as important as editorial content? Today, it’s both, with a lead story about the uprising in Egypt, and a feature headlined “Woof, There It Is!” about a New York disco that caters to canines.

There’s plenty of video, of course, including a brief overview read by … a news anchor? At first, we wanted to hate this. But it is brief, calls out blessedly few articles, and the video lets you jump to the story being featured at any time. In a mix of navigation and internal-discovery metaphors, this one works just fine, too.

Pages are very readable, with plenty of negative space. But each page doesn’t contain a single story, which creates at least two problems: There is only one comment stream per page, even if there’s more than one story, so it’s not clear how or where to weigh in, if you want to leave a comment.

It’s the same with “saving” within the app to read later: Save a page with multiple stories and it saves the page, not the one clip you wanted, because there is no way to clip just one story on a multistory page.

And there is nothing one can do with a saved page. It can’t be shared, and there is no provision to print it. It doesn’t link back to the “live” page, which presumably expires at some point. You could take a screen grab with the iPad, and manipulate that copy, but who wants to do that?

But this multiple-story-per-page problem becomes really serious when it comes to sharing. The Daily says it will not be an island, living in an app universe largely isolated from the web world. So that’s one of the first things we put to the test.

The Daily may not be cut off from the web, but the bridge to and from is pretty narrow.

The first head-scratcher: There are no hyperlinks in stories. The map of related content on the greater web, at least so far, is invisible.

When you send an article to Twitter, what the app generates is this: “Check out this article from The Daily: [bit/ly shortened URL here].” No headline. And no way to insert the headline, or copy it. So if you want to customize that message, you do so off the top of your head.

With all the time and effort it took to develop this app, one of the most basic, self-promoting features should be there on Day One. This point should be enough for News Corp. to feel embarrassed about the lame Twitter integration: With the now ancient Financial Times app, it is even possible to chose and order elements to include or exclude from a tweet. There, I said it.

The good news is that The Daily URL tweet takes you to a screen grab on thedaily.com, where there are more sharing options. But there is no navigation to any other story — truly a way of limiting the web component to share with people who don’t subscribe. If you are a Daily subscriber, but discover a story from another reader on Twitter, there is nothing to take you to that item in your app.

There may be some ways to sort through these mind-bending paradoxes, but for now this is but a small step in the right direction.

There is at least one nod to the outside world in “What We’re Reading,” which is a list of links to articles on websites, displayed in an in-app browser.

WIRED: This a serious effort to figure out how to create a for-profit news experience on an very new medium from a publisher with deep pockets who sees magazines as the future of newspapers. Who can argue with that?

TIRED: Long download, lots of crashes, somewhat clunky animation. Articles tend to the short side — neither brief, nor long form. Shades of USA Today?

All photos: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

That full-size shovel in your toolshed is too big for a tactical backpack and too unwieldy for hand-to-hand combat: For those who spend time planting surveillance hardware, burying their secrets, or digging up someone else’s, a foldable entrenching tool is a must-have. Gerber’s new E-Tool With Pick boasts a powder-coated steel blade with serrated edge for cutting through roots or … um… limbs and a sharp spike for piercing ice, walls, and attackers’ skulls. A compact 9.3 x 6 inches when folded, it opens to nearly 2 feet long in seconds. And the fiberglass-filled nylon handle and aluminum shaft leave almost all of its 2-pound, 3-ounce heft at the business end, where it belongs.